Former US House of Representatives speaker Dennis Hastert, once among the nation’s most powerful politicians, was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday for illegally structuring bank transactions in an effort to cover up his sexual abuse of young members of a wrestling team he coached decades earlier.
In a hearing that was by turns harrowing and revelatory, Hastert publicly admitted for the first time to abusing his athletes, was confronted in emotional addresses by one of the former wrestlers and the sister of another, and faced a long, scathing rebuke from the judge.
Hastert, 74, who made an unlikely rise from beloved small-town wrestling coach in Illinois to speaker of the House in Washington, sat slouched in a wheelchair in a US federal courtroom in Chigaco as a judge announced he was rejecting pleas for probation from Hastert’s lawyers, as well as prosecutors’ endorsement of a shorter prison stay.
Photo: EPA
While the sentencing hearing was, technically, about a violation of banking rules and regulations, the proceedings focused squarely on the underlying reason for Hastert’s puzzling bank withdrawals — his abuse of young wrestlers who had viewed him as a role model.
“The defendant is a serial child molester,” said Judge Thomas Durki, as Hastert sat impassively, often staring downward, hands crossed on his lap.
He added; “Some actions can obliterate a lifetime of good works. Nothing is more stunning than having ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence.”
Hastert was not charged with sexual abuse because statutes of limitation for acts in the 1960s and 1970s have run out and the judge noted pointedly that punishment for such a conviction would have been far worse.
Illegally structuring bank transactions to keep such abuse secret — the felony count to which Hastert pleaded guilty — carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Hastert, whose date to report to prison has yet to be set, was ordered to pay US$250,000 in fines, never to contact his victims and to receive sex-offender treatment.
“If there’s a public shaming of the defendant because of the conduct he’s engaged in, so be it,” Durkin said.
Hastert has had a series of ailments since last year, including a stroke, a blood stream infection and a spinal infection — factors his lawyers and family members argued should be taken into account in the sentencing. They urged the judge to consider the entire arc of his life and career, including his years of public service.
As Hastert prepared to address the judge, he used a walker to rise to his feet, but his voice was firm and clear.
“The thing I want to do today is say I’m sorry to those I hurt and misled,” said Hastert, whose grown sons were in the courtroom. “I want to apologize to the boys I mistreated when I was their coach. What I did was wrong and I regret it.”
Hastert’s remarks followed a tearful, halting statement from one of his victims, Scott Cross, a former wrestler, who had never before spoken publicly about his abuse and who said he had not even been sure whether he could bring himself to make his statement in court.
“As a high-school wrestler, I looked up to coach Hastert — he was a key figure in my life,” said Cross, now 53 and a businessman who works in financial services in the Chicago area.
From a podium just several feet from Hastert’s wheelchair, Cross recalled abuse that occurred on a locker room training table when he was 17.
“I felt intense pain, shame and guilt,” he said.
He said he had gone years without speaking of what had happened, even to his parents and closest friends.
“I’ve always felt that what coach Hastert had done to me was my darkest secret,” Cross said.
The sister of another victim, Stephen Reinboldt, spoke directly to Hastert, describing lonely, isolated years Reinboldt spent after repeated abuse by Hastert in high school until his death of AIDS in 1995.
“You took his life, Mr Hastert,” Jolene Burdge, the sister, said. “Not because he died of AIDS, but because you took his innocence and turned it against him.”
Hastert was charged in May with lying to the FBI and making cash withdrawals in a way devised to hide the fact that he was paying US$3.5 million to a former wrestler for misconduct.
The wrestler, whose name has not been revealed and who is identified in documents only as Individual A, told of abuse in a motel room during a wrestling camp trip when he was 14.
After the payments began, in about 2010, the US federal authorities took notice of large, unexplained withdrawals Hastert was making from his bank. When told that large withdrawals had to be reported, Hastert began drawing smaller sums, prosecutors said, to avoid notice.
The wrestler sued Hastert this week, saying he still owed him US$1.8 million of their agreed-to settlement.
For nearly 45 minutes on Wednesday, Durkin held forth in a passionate, often contemptuous tone, with little interruption.
He dismissed the defense’s arguments that Hastert was too old, frail or ill to be properly taken care of in a US federal prison.
And he ended with a blunt synopsis.
“This is a horrible case — a horrible set of circumstances, horrible for the defendant, horrible for the victims, horrible for our country,” he said. “I hope I never have to see a case like this again. Court adjourned.”
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