Former high-ranking politician’s sex-abuse saga enters new stage
We last left off with one-time U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert in a previous post, noting therein that the former politician — the longest-tenured Republican House speaker in the nation’s history — was soon scheduled to be sentenced in a high-profile criminal case involving allegations of sexual abuse committed against juveniles.
There was a twist in that case, namely this: Although the Hastert matter has been centrally about his alleged criminal conduct against multiple teenagers under his charge decades ago when he was a high-school wrestling coach, Hastert’s sentencing focused on another matter altogether.
That is his commission of criminal acts regarding evasive money transactions he was involved in for years, with the ex-speaker paying hush money to one of his victims. Hastert was ultimately not sentenced on charges relating to sexual misconduct, owing to the expiration of a statute of limitations relevant to sex crimes.
Today’s post picks up the Hastert trail once again, noting that the former legislator reported to prison last week. Hastert will spend the next 15 months in a locked-down federal medical center.
Again, and notwithstanding that Hastert’s sentencing judge called him “a serial child molester,” the sentence handed down related to the illicit money transactions and not to any sexually related crime.
In addition to his incarceration, though, Hastert must also pay a quarter of a million dollars to a victims’ fund and also participate in a treatment program for sex offenders.
The ex-speaker had advocates that petitioned the court for leniency, with his recent health problems being cited. One supporter stated that Hastert “doesn’t deserve what he is going through.”
Likely, that comment and similar utterances don’t remotely resonate with Hastert’s multiple victims, who might reasonably hold the view that their ex-coach absolutely merits the sanctions handed down and that the outcome should have been more severe than it was.
“As a 17-year-old boy, I was devastated,” noted one of Hastert’s victims.
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