Sex sold from congressman's apartment; School used as base for sex ring George Archibald and Paul M. Rodriguez The Washington Times; Part A; Pg. A1 August 25, 1989, Friday, Final Edition

A male prostitute convicted of drug trafficking and sex offenses against a minor used the Chevy Chase Elementary School in late 1987 to run his prostitution operation after the school's principal began buying sex from him, an investigation by The Washington Times has revealed. The call boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus, Mr. Massaro said. The principal, Gabriel A. Massaro, conceded in a two-hour interview with The Times Wednesday that he had a four-year relationship with the prostitute and provided him with a guidance counselor's office and telephone at the model "magnet school" even while children were in classes elsewhere in the building. The 48-year-old principal also confirmed that he told the school's custodian to give the prostitute - who told The Times that he has also worked for a homosexual prostitution service now under investigation by federal authorities and the subject of earlier articles - unlimited access to the building. Their relationship ultimately soured, Mr. Massaro said, in part because the prostitute used his credit card number without his permission to pay for a personal ad in The Washington Blade, a weekly newspaper of the homosexual community. "I knew he was an escort, but I didn't know he was running an escort service," Mr. Massaro said. "I couldn't condone it from going out of here . . . He may have done that, but I did not know that." The escort, who asked to be identified as Greg Davis, the alias he uses in personal ads, told The Times he was at the school at Mr. Massaro's invitation "on a fairly regular basis" during October and November 1987 and that he regularly used drugs in the building during that time. Davis said Mr. Massaro "was very aware of what I was doing and what was going on" when he was at the upscale Montgomery County school, which enrols about 350 children, aged 9 through 12, in the third through sixth grades. "I would be allowed to use the telephones to check my [computerized answering] service and to set up appointments [with homosexual and heterosexual clients], as long as they weren't set up at the school - that was the arrangement," the prostitute said in one of several interviews. Davis said Mr. Massaro also explained to him how to turn off the school's audio security system so his calls would not be overheard. Mr. Massaro confirmed that such listening devices were installed in the school ceilings but denied telling Davis how to have the security system turned off. "How would I know that these devices were in operation at the school unless he had warned me about them?" Davis asked. "I normally used the time between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. to set up the appointments for that evening with any of the ladies or myself. And then after 10 o'clock I would have a person who was used as the driver for the [escort] services pick me up at the school. He would pick me up about 10 p.m.," Davis said. On at least one occasion, Davis claimed to have performed homosexual sex with a client in the guidance counselor's office. The 45-year-old man who came to the school to have sex with Davis "was a regular client that I knew," the prostitute said. "When I told him that he was going to come to a school, at first he sounded concerned on the telephone. In a joking sort of manner, he asked me if he was being set up. ". . . The client, after thinking about it for a couple of minutes, said, 'Well, it might be a kick.' That was his response. In other words, it was a turn-on for him," Davis said. The Times has been unable to locate the customer to confirm Davis' story. The prostitute said that Mr. Massaro did not know "that I had met a client at the school." "He knew me well enough to know that that was possible and told me that that was not supposed to be done," Davis said. "For the most part, I agreed. I went along with it because it was a threat to the security of the [prostitution] service to have anybody come to the school." Davis also said Mr. Massaro never knew that his driver went into the school or about the drug use in the building. "I would be there maybe three out of the five nights a week," the prostitute said. Mr. Massaro said Davis came to the school several times a week during the two-month period in question. The principal's secretary, Peggy Monday, confirmed Davis's access to the school, but said she saw him no more than once a week. Mrs. Monday said that Mr. Massaro explained Davis' presence at the school by saying the man was a friend of his. "I would either use his [principal's] office or I would use a guidance counselor's office upstairs" on the school's second floor where 6th grade classrooms and a science lab are located, Davis said. Told that Davis had given The Times a detailed accounting of his call boy activities and criminal convictions, the principal conceded that he was aware of Davis' work as a prostitute. Mr. Massaro said he knew the prostitute was still on probation for felony drug and sex offenses and undergoing court-ordered psycho-sexual therapy when he allowed him to use the school's facilities. A former school counselor, Mr. Massaro said he talked to Davis's sex therapist about his court-ordered treatment after the call boy's felony conviction in 1982 on four charges: possession of obscene material, production of obscene items involving a juvenile, oral sodomy and possession of cocaine. Davis was convicted in 1975 of cocaine distribution. "There were some afternoons when he just had nowhere to go, so I would just let him come here to the school and just use the bathroom and stuff like that," Mr. Massaro said. "[The prostitute] used that [counselor's] office," the principal said. Asked if he authorized the escort free use of school phones, Mr. Massaro responded, "Oh, yes." Pressed whether Davis might have molested or tried to molest any children at the Chevy Chase school, the principal said, "Oh God, no. He couldn't have. I don't think so. No." Davis said he had no dealings with any of the children who attended the elementary school. The call boy was allowed to sleep and use phones in the school even after the principal left at 5 p.m., while teachers and the children were still involved in after-school activities such as chorus, Mr. Massaro said. "I introduced him to one of the custodians and the custodian just let him use the facility," he said. "I told him [the custodian] that he was my friend." "I would leave at five and I thought he [the prostitute] would leave shortly thereafter, but before the custodian would close the building," Mr. Massaro said. Davis said he advertised his services as an "escort/model" in the classified section of The Washington Blade. He also advertised homosexual escort services under the name "Male Ad" and services for bisexual threesomes under the name "Bi-Couples."

Davis said he and a woman partner in the "Bi-Couples" business also ran a female prostitution operation called "Touch of Class," which advertised in City Paper, a District weekly newspaper. In his interview with The Times, Mr. Massaro, who is married, at first denied procuring sex from the male prostitute. But as the interview continued, and a photograph of himself with Davis in the audience of a 1986 telecast of the Phil Donahue show, the principal said he had had a longtime, secret sexual liaison with Davis. "That's not true [previous denials of having homosexual sex with Davis]," Mr. Massaro said about 30 minutes into the interview. "I did. Yes, I did. But it was nothing, though. I mean it was. . . ." His voice trailed off as he fought back tears. "My son died very suddenly [in 1984] and I met [Greg] through a friend" - another education professional, he said. The friend, whom he declined to identify, gave Mr. Massaro the prostitute's telephone number listed in his escort advertisement in The Washington Blade. "I began to know [Greg] and I got to know him very well," Mr. Massaro said. "He became also a surrogate son to me . . . I don't want you to think I behaved this way with my son. I had a normal father-son relationship with my own son, John." Mr. Massaro's son died at age 19 in August 1984 of a viral infection resulting from drug abuse, the principal said. Mr. Massaro acknowledged frequent payments in cash and by check to Davis ranging from $20 to $100. He also gave the call boy gifts of clothing and restaurant outings, and the loan of his car when the principal went to the beach with his wife and daughter. After Davis lost his bank account, Mr. Massaro paid for his trysts with checks made out to Davis's roommate, also the call boy's homosexual client and a social friend of the elementary principal, he said. The roommate has confirmed the arrangements. Both Davis and Mr. Massaro said the call boy was not only a sex partner to the principal but also a family friend. However, Mr. Massaro said neither his wife nor daughter knew about his secret homosexual sex life. Mr. Massaro acknowledged that he attended a meeting between Davis and his Alexandria probation officer at the Capitol Hill home of Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, another client whose home the call boy used to perform sexual services. "We [Mr. Massaro and Mr. Frank] tried to help him through it [the probation]," the principal said. "[Davis] invited me over [to Mr. Frank's house] one day and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to meet with this person,' and he was trying to get off [probation]. I don't even remember all the details . . . I went as a friend of [Davis's] who could vouch for him as being the person who was trying to pull his life together." On some days, Davis said he would arrive at the Chevy Chase school as early as noon, when classes were still in session. "There were times when the guidance counselor's office was not available to me," the prostitute said. "I would actually use the principal's office itself, and he would move to another location and I would sit at his desk using his telephones on his desk." The phone numbers listed in his escort advertisements were call-forwarded to a Maryland-based answering service called Compu-Voice, he said. "It's all done by computer. When a client calls the answering service, they hear my voice, recorded by remote from a telephone using a series of code numbers. I would call my own phone number and, through punching in a series of code buttons [on the telephone dial] I was able to obtain access to my own system, and I was able to obtain the messages from the system, and then erase them after I had recorded them into the appointment book," Davis said. "I let them know on the tape that I usually returned calls within one hour. And at the time that I was at the school, I would check in every 15 minutes," he said. "And I would go ahead and set up the appointments for the evening until Bobby [the man who would drive him to his sexual liasons and supply him with illegal drugs] would arrive." Davis said he used cocaine in the school with Bobby and that the two men often raided the school's cafeteria for their dinner. "Bobby and I would make something to eat, we'd play a little basketball [in the school gym], we'd do some coke, and then we'd go out to meet the appointments and to meet the ladies and obtain the commissions from their appointments." On several occasions Davis said he and Bobby "did use cocaine in the guidance counselor's office," Davis said. Davis said Mr. Massaro "instructed me on how to have the [school's audio] security system turned off so that the conversations would not be overheard [when he was conducting his prostitution business]. They [security listening devices] were in operation after 5 p.m. when all the administration leaves," he said. "I would call the security of the school system, report in . . . I would call in and tell them that I would be there until 10 p.m. doing work for Dr. Massaro," Davis said. The prostitute said he "never stayed overnight [at the school] or anything like that. I would take a nap there maybe - there was a couch there - because I was running around a lot from place to place at the time." Mr. Massaro said he helped Mr. Davis move from one apartment to another on several occasions during their relationship, and allowed the male escort to store his personal effects and furniture in the school's basement machine room in 1987 while he was looking for a new place to live. His landlord found out that he was running a prostitution operation and kicked him out of the apartment, Davis said. Mr. Massaro said the relationship ultimately soured just over a year ago when Davis started stealing from him. "I loaned [Greg] my car, and he literally stole it. He never returned it. He finally did return it. I sent him money and he did return it," the principal said. Also, Davis used the principal's credit card number without permission to pay for his escort ads in The Washington Blade, Mr. Massaro said. A spokesman for the newspaper's publisher confirmed "a problem" that caused The Blade to cancel Davis's ads but would not elaborate. "I just used very poor judgment, what can I tell you?" Mr. Massaro said. "It was just stupid. I just never thought it through. I just thought I was helping somebody." After the car and credit card incidents, Mr. Massaro said he told Davis, " 'Hey, you've got real problems and I can't help you.' So that was it and he just left. And I guess it was then that I really realized that he was a drug abuser." Asked if Davis had ever used drugs in his presence, Mr. Massaro said he "may have" smoked marijuana. "I don't remember that. He may have. He never used anything else, though, other than pot. I don't think I ever knew that, until very recently. . . . "I've never used the stuff. I don't know what it's like. And we talked about that in trying to get off it and trying to help him get off it . . . Our lives just became very intertwined and I guess I felt as though I could save him." Davis, for his part, said that the relationship with Mr. Massaro soured because of a lack of "sensitivity" and "a lack of interest" on his part sexually towards the principal. Mr. Massaro characterized Davis's action in going public as "an effort to get back at me." He said Davis "was always going to sell his story and I was going to write a book for him and make him famous . . . He said he had a very interesting life, and one day we were going to sit down and write a book, and I guess that's what he's doing." Photo, Homosexual escort services were operated out of Chevy Chase Elementary School and the Capitol Hill basement apartment of Rep. Barney Frank., Photos by Joseph Silverman/The Washington Times