Editing Grover Cleveland (section)

===Maria Halpin===
About a decade before his first term as president, Cleveland fathered an illegitimate child with a woman named Maria Halpin, and did so after violently raping her and essentially blackmailing her to keep quiet about it. When Halpin learned she was pregnant with Cleveland's child, he wanted nothing to do with, arranging for the child to be put up for adoption when it was born and subsequently had Halpin committed to a mental asylum, although the facility's medical director quickly released her after an evaluation.

The scandal remained a secret until he began running for president, during which Cleveland launched a smear campaign and lied about the whole thing, claiming that the act was consensual, that Halpin was actually a prostitute, and denying that he was the father of the child. Cleveland managed to win the Presidency that year despite the scandal threatening to tarnish his image. The controversy prompted Cleveland's opponents to adopt the chant, "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" After Cleveland won the election, the chant was answered by, "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!"