Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, will be sentenced today for illegally structuring bank account withdrawals over a four-year period to pay off “Individual A,” a man he is alleged to have abused on a school wrestling trip decades ago.
Hastert was indicted in May 2015 for illegally structuring money in a way to avoid reporting requirements as well as lying to investigators. Yet, it was not the structured banking counts against him that cast the darkest shadow over his legacy as speaker, but what had allegedly transpired when he was a high school teacher and wresting coach between 1965 and 1981. They were alleged transgressions Hastert had paid to be kept quiet.
He was never charged with any of the alleged sex abuse that eventually poured into public view and he never will be. The statute of limitations on the alleged crimes have run out. Yet, the public knows far more about the alleged sex crimes than was originally expected to be revealed when Hastert struck a plea deal in lieu of exposing himself to a public trial.
“I think the one thing you can say with confidence is that the plea deal is the best chance that Hastert has of preventing all the rest of this from coming to light,” Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and an adjunct law professor at George Washington University, told TPM in October.
However, sentencing documents filed earlier this month explicitly chronicled several alleged sex acts against minors and paints an alleged pattern of abuse involving four alleged victims. One of them, “Individual D,” is expected to testify at Hastert’s sentencing hearing Wednesday. Another, the sister of a deceased victim, also has said she will testify.
“The actions at the core of this case took place not on the defendant’s national public stage, but in his private one-on-one encounters in an empty locker room and a motel room with minors that violated the special trust between those young boys and their coach,” the sentencing document read.
Originally, Hastert had told authorities investigating his structured banking withdrawals that he was being extorted by a man wrongly accusing him of sexual abuse from decades ago. Eventually, authorities concluded that Hastert was actually willingly paying this Individual. And in an interview agents had with “Individual A” in 2015, they heard another side of Hastert’s story.
In the interview, Individual A alleged that Hastert had isolated him during a trip to wrestling camp. Roughly a dozen boys were on the trip and Hastert had been the sole adult. On the trip, Hastert allegedly asked Individual A stay with him in his room while the other boys stayed together. Then, after Individual A complained of a groin injury, Hastert allegedly offered to massage it and asked Individual A to remove his underwear. Individual A told officials that Hastert was “touching him in an inappropriate sexual way.” Upset and “confused”, Individual A went to the other half of the room, but eventually went back where Hastert allegedly asked Individual A to sit on him and administer a back massage while Hastert was in his underwear.
“They then went to sleep in the same bed,” the sentencing document alleged.
The next night when Hastert allegedly asked for Individual A to come back to his room, Individual A told authorities he “refused to go.”
But that was just one incident detailed in the prosecution’s sentencing guide. The sentencing guide noted the existence of three other Individuals who alleged Hastert sexually abused them as well; Individual B, D and Stephen Reinboldt, a student wrestling manager between 1968 and 1970. Another Individual, Individual C, told authorities that he received a massage from Hastert, Hastert “brushed his hand against Individual C’s genitals.” Yet, Individual C had no idea if it was intentional or not.
According to the sentencing guide, Individual B was 14 at the time of an alleged unwanted sexual encounter with Hastert. He wrestled at Yorkville High School and told authorities that he had either just emerged from the shower or was changing when Hastert asked him to hop on a table so Hastert could stretch him out. That is when, according to Individual B, Hastert “performed a sexual act on Individual B.” Individual D, meanwhile, gave authorities another account of his time as a wrestler at Yorkville High School. According to Individual D, Hastert “put a ‘Lazyboy’-type chair in direct view of the shower stalls in the locker room where he sat while the boys showered.”
Again, Hastert allegedly offered to give Individual D a massage, which Hastert told the wrestler could help him shed pounds to qualify in his wrestling weight class. On the massage table after Hastert had allegedly had taken off Individual D’s pants, he performed “a sexual act.”
The only named individual in the sentencing guideline is Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995. According to the sentencing document, his sister Jolene Burdge said her brother had told her that Hastert had “abused him all through high school.” Burdge reported that she and her brother had come from a “difficult home” and that she was “stunned” when her brother confided in her about the abuse years later because she told authorities that she had “always thought that [Hastert] was like a father figure.” She said that her brother had not told anyone about the abuse at the time because “he had no one to turn to and did not think anyone would believe him.”
The stories included in the sentencing document shed light on cases that will never be heard in court. The individuals alleging sexual abuse never filed charges and it is too late to do so now.
On Wednesday, Hastert will be sentenced. Both the prosecution and defense have agreed via the plea deal that he is subject to between 0 and six months in custody. But the prosecution’s focus on the alleged sex acts in the sentencing guide, even though the statute of limitations have long run out, provides a fuller picture of the former speaker’s legacy. Individual A has also sued Hastert to collect the rest of the $3.5 million he says Hastert still owes him in hush money.
In the sentencing document, the prosecution noted an excerpt from Hastert’s 2004 book, “Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics.” Hastert wrote “there is never sufficient reason to try to strip away another person’s dignity,”
“Yet, that is exactly what defendant did to his victims,” authorities wrote in their sentencing document. “He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty and devoid of dignity.”
