Horry councilman says he was shell shocked by dropped prostitution charges

Horry County councilman Marion foxworth talked with News13 Friday afternoon about all of his charges being dropped.

The councilman was charged with soliciting prostitution in 2007.

He told News13’s Thema Ponton he found out the charges had been dropped when he got a text alert from scnow.com, while he was at a county council committee meeting.

Foxworth said he didn’t know what to think when he read the text alert on his phone and was shell shocked and caught off guard by the news.

“There are a couple of phrases in that statement that I do agree with. One is that it was investigated to the hilt, they’re accurate about that, to say that it was treated like any other case, I think boggles the mind.”

Foxworth said with eight forensic tests and six DNA tests; this was not treated like a routine loitering case. He said he is damaged by the incident.

“It’s a situation that I’ll likely carry with me and regardless of the outcome, but at this point it’s not really about Marion. Marion and Marion’s family really has caught a lot of grief over the last seventeen months.”

Foxworth said his oldest son went through his senior year of high school with the incident hanging over his head and his only daughter went through her freshman year of high school and sweet sixteen birthday, with the incident hanging over her head. Foxworth also said he had talks with his two younger children he wasn’t ready to have with them. He said the situation and the attention surrounding it was distressing because it dragged on as long as it did and it was also disappointing.

Foxworth said, “This really isn't about Marion now, how do you put a price on a 23-year marriage? By the same token, I think what we should do is move forward from here, this has been a dark and sordid tale for over a year now and I'm not the only one damaged, a lot of people have been damaged. I'm exceedingly grateful to the good Lord for growing my faith with this obstacle, my family and my friends, my constituents that re-elected me in spite of this cloud hanging over my head. What’s important is the people that did re-elect me are given an equal shot at the distribution of governmental goods and services, which I feel is probably at the root of this entire situation. It’s for that reason that I’m trying to make lemonade out lemons. I’m dedicating myself to the reapportionment that’ll follow the 2010 census, in terms of the existing single member district configurations throughout the county and specifically for this part of Horry county and more importantly to pursue with all the vim and vigor I can muster, to change the election method within Myrtle Beach to a more representative single member district election method. Move the election to even numbered years to correspond with general elections so that a larger sampling of the electorate and more representative sample of the electorate can decide what goes on in Myrtle Beach. And I don’t think you have to look much farther than this week and you ability to stroll across Ocean Blvd. at this point in time to see that perhaps a city council with six out of seven, basically living in two neighborhoods, perhaps they don’t speak for the entire town.”

Thema asked Foxworth if he ever thought the arrest and the attention surrounding him would ever be behind him for good. Foxworth said, “I’m a firm believer that everyone has an obligatory paragraph that follows them and once you get something in that obligatory paragraph, it stays until you add enough to the obligatory paragraph that it just gets pushed out the bottom. I intend to move on, move forward and perhaps the legacy or perhaps what I’m able to accomplish in terms of recreation facilities on Pine Island and Carolina Forest and even right here in the city of Myrtle Beach, and the changing, or being a part of the changing of the election method, so that people in this part of town actually have a voice at the table will mean more to folks in years to come than this situation. They’ll be some people regardless of the outcome, I could have been found innocent by jury, that would have still thought I was guilty, there were some that if I were found guilty that would probably think I was railroaded, regardless of the outcome, I’ve been damaged, I bear the scars, I bear the baggage.”