Former US House speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday (Apr 27) for paying hush money to a victim who said the former high school wrestling coach abused him as a boy, US media reported.
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Hastert, the 74-year-old who had served as U.S. House Speaker from 1999 to 2007, pleaded guilty in October last year to breaking banking laws as he attempted to pay $3.5 million to a person named in court documents as Individual A to hide his past.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert a serial sex abuser in handing down the sentence, which was longer than the zero to six months recommended by federal prosecutors.
The judge in Hastert’s case, Thomas Durkin, called Hastert a “serial child molester” during sentencing and asked him directly whether he had sexually abused certain individuals.
A victim and the sister of another victim testified in court.
Cross was known as “Individual D” in earlier hearings and had said that Hastert put a Lay-Z-Boy reclining armchair in direct view of the boys’ showers where he would sit and watch them. Hastert asked Tom Cross, a former political ally, for support before he was sentenced, according to his lawyer, who said Hastert’s actions were evidence that he was “compartmentalizing” what he had done.
His attorneys had also filed a number of letters on his behalf, including from his wife, who pleaded with the judge to consider the “terrible toll” on the family the case has taken and Hastert’s “selflessness” throughout his life. A date hasn’t been set for the former speaker to report to prison as officials seek a federal facility that can handle the level of medical care he needs. The sentencing was the first time Hastert publicly admitted to abusing wrestlers on his team. “What you did wasn’t misconduct”.
“I want to apologize to the boys I mistreated when I was a coach”, he said.
Hastert said he didn’t remember abusing Cross, but that he accepted his statement.
Burdge then turned to Hastert and said, “I hope I have been your worst nightmare”. But his sentencing hearing focused more on the sexual abuse he admitted to committing decades ago as a high school wrestling coach.
Individual D told prosecutors previously he was 17 when Hastert molested him in a locker room at Yorkville High outside Chicago. He said that the sentence he imposed was relatively light because of Hastert’s advanced age and poor health.
Hastert came to court in a wheelchair after suffering a stroke past year.
“It is important to have a national notification system to help safely recover children kidnapped by child predators”, Hastert said in 2003.
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“Because I trusted him, I believed him and took him at his word”, he said Wednesday in his victim impact statement. “I felt terribly alone”, Scott Cross testified, according to NBC News.
