YORKVILLE, Ill. (AP) — Before Dennis Hastert was U.S. House speaker and second in line to the president, he was known around Yorkville, Illinois, as Denny the coach.
Hastert was a beloved mentor to athletes on the high school wrestling team and in Scouting groups.
This week’s indictment accuses Hastert of manipulating bank accounts and lying to the FBI to allegedly cover up past “misconduct.” It has left hometown admirers searching back through fond memories and struggling to understand how a case of alleged sexual abuse and extortion could have emerged from that period.
Hastert’s assistant wrestling coach, Bob Evans, joined him in taking Scouts camping and fishing in northern Minnesota.
He said there was never a hint of wrongdoing and that he was angry someone was accusing Hastert without even coming forward publicly.
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“…he was angry someone was accusing Hastert without even coming forward publicly.”
But if you “come forward publicly” they say you’re just out for publicity.
There seems to be no disagreement that Hastert “misbehaved.”
The real unanswered question here is, Where did School Teacher, Representative Denny get the $3.5 million to pay someone to keep their mouths shut? After all it is said that he had become a millionaire while serving in Congress, well before becoming a lobbyist.
“…he was angry someone was accusing Hastert without even coming forward…”
So this guy contends that Hastert was willing to give $3,000,000 to alleviate a private threat he could easily defeat everywhere on earth for free?
Nah.
No way was that even half the money he accumulated. I’d like to know just how much his haul was.
Of course his colleagues didn’t know. Pedophiles are very careful. They target kids who can be manipulated, kids with issues, kids without a father who love the attention from a man who is admired by the community. They don’t abuse the kids where others can find out. If something is said, they have plausible excuses for whatever someone thought they saw or heard. And most of us don’t want to believe it.
I worked in administration at a high school. We had a few cases over the years of inappropriate behavior by coaches (thank god none of them were teachers.) We acted quickly to protect the students and get rid of the coaches. Protecting the student was our number one priority. Luckily none of the incidents rose to the level of physical molestation, but one of the fired coaches showed up on the news a couple of years later in one of those on-line predator stings. We would have told anyone who called for a reference that he had been fired for inappropriate behavior, but no one ever asked. (He won a lot of games.)