Before imposing the 15-month sentence, a far stiffer sentence than federal guidelines suggested, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin spent almost an hour Wednesday rebuking the 74-year-old Republican for sexually abusing high school athletes decades ago, when he was a wrestling coach.
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Last year, Hastert pleaded guilty to illegally structuring bank withdrawals to avoid reporting where he was sending funds as part of a $3.5 million settlement over the abuse, said to have been committed three decades ago.
In addition to the prison sentence, Hastert will be required to submit to supervised release for a period of 2 years and also pay a $250,000 fine.
The judge did not say where Hastert would serve time when he reports later this year, but he cited one possibility – a prison in the Rochester, Minnesota, area, that already has many child molesters.
One of the alleged victims was identified as Stephen Reinboldt, who died of AIDS in 1995.
The man, now in his 50s, said he sought professional help and had trouble sleeping as a result of the abuse.
Hastert pleaded guilty previous year to breaking banking laws as he sought to pay $3.5 million to someone identified in court papers only as Individual A to hide a dark secret from his past.
“I trusted him. I believed in what he was saying and took him at his word”, he said. He has also accused Hastert of sexually abusing him when he was a teenager.
Prosecutors did not recommend a specific sentence, but their reference to sexual abuse on almost every page of their 26-page sentencing memo suggests they want notable prison time.
Durkin said he would recommend Hastert being sent to a prison hospital.
Burdge described her encounter with Hastert in court this morning: “I looked at him and he looked at me and I hope that he remembers that no matter how big or how powerful you are, you can’t get away with molesting children”. “I know I am here because I mistreated some of my athletes”.
Because of Hastert’s false accusations, “the full weight of the federal government’s resources” was thrown at Individual A, the judge said. “Tell the truth. What you did was not misconduct, it was sexual abuse of a minor”.
He faces a prison sentence of up to five years.
“You set him up”, Durkin said, adding that Individual A might have been forced to endure more suffering because Hastert tried to portray himself as a victim. Durkin said that an extremely aggravating factor in the sentencing was that Hastert lied to federal agents about the money and falsely claimed that the victim was extorting him. It means that for years Dennis Hastert worked with and politically supported the brother of one of his victims.
Attorneys have said Hastert has been in poor health after almost dying from a blood infection and suffering a stroke in November. “I felt intense pain, shame and guilt”. Hastert’s wife and brother wrote of his character, as did former House majority leader Tom DeLay, who wrote that his colleague “doesn’t deserve what he is going through”. Hastert then “performed a sexual act” on him, the court documents said. Durkin said the sentence would have been even longer if it weren’t for Hastert’s age, 74, and poor health.
Hastert had originally pleaded not guilty, even after the sister of another purported sexual abuse victim came forward to tell her late brother’s story to ABC News.
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Durkin reviewed the whole sordid escapade of Hastert trying to cover up his crimes with payoffs to the victim known as Individual A, and then lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claimed that he – Hastert – was being blackmailed.
