Hastert accused of molesting 4 boys as coach

Monica Davey and Mitch Smith, New York Times News Service

Saturday, April 9, 2016 | 1 a.m.

CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors Friday for the first time provided details of sexual abuse allegations against J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, asserting that he molested at least four boys, as young as 14, when he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades ago.

Hastert, 74, is not charged with abuse because of statutes of limitation, prosecutors said, but he was accused last year of illegally structuring bank withdrawals to pay one of his victims in an effort to hide the abuse. He pleaded guilty in October to the banking violation and suffered a stroke in November while awaiting sentencing, set for April 27.

In a court filing late Friday, making suggestions for a judge who will decide Hastert’s sentence, the prosecutors described specific, graphic incidents that they say occurred when Hastert was a popular, championship-winning coach in a small Illinois town in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The “known acts,” the prosecutors said, consisted of “intentional touching of minors’ groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor.”

“The actions at the core of this case took place not on the defendant’s national public stage but in his private one-on-one encounters in an empty locker room and a motel room with minors that violated the special trust between those young boys and their coach,” the prosecutors wrote.

A lawyer for Hastert did not reply to a request for comment on the prosecution claims. In a court filing this week, Hastert, who has stayed largely out of view since the charges emerged nearly a year ago, requested probation and said he was “profoundly sorry” for past conduct, although he did not specify those actions. On Friday, Hastert also filed under a seal a response to the government’s pre-sentence investigation. A hearing is set for next week on whether his filing will remain under seal.

According to the prosecutors, Hastert gave one boy, a 14-year-old freshman wrestler, a massage in the locker room, then performed an unspecified sex act on him. Another boy, Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995, was sexually abused by Hastert throughout high school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his sister and others told the prosecutors. A third boy, who was 17 and remembered Hastert sitting in a recliner-type chair with a direct view of the locker room shower stalls, said Hastert had told him that one way to make his wrestling weight was to get a massage, then performed a sexual act. And prosecutors said Hastert had massaged another boy’s groin area after asking the boy to stay in his hotel room during a wrestling camp.

That incident became the center of the prosecution’s case. It was also the reason that the allegations, which were never exposed during Hastert’s eight years as the Republican speaker of the House, came to light. The boy, known in court documents as Individual A, confronted Hastert years later, around 2010, asked him why he had done what he did, and sought a settlement — beginning the payments that would be Hastert’s downfall.

In late 2014, as law enforcement authorities were investigating unusually large withdrawals from Hastert’s bank account, Hastert said that he was doing nothing unusual with his money — and that he simply did not trust banks. Not long after, his lawyer told the investigators a different story: The lawyer said that Hastert was paying large sums — and promising as much as $3.5 million, authorities say — to Individual A because Individual A was extorting him for false allegations of abuse.

After a series of recorded phone calls, with Hastert’s cooperation, the investigators concluded that there was no extortion but that Hastert was actually carrying out an agreed-to settlement for real abuse.

Even when Hastert told Individual A, as investigators listened in, that he needed more time to come up with more money, Individual A “did not make any threats” and even “expressed understanding,” the prosecutors said. At another point, Individual A seemed agreeable, even empathetic, suggesting that they settle on smaller amounts and keep the payments as a “private, personal matter.” Individual A even pushed Hastert to tell his wife about the payment agreement and suggested that an outside lawyer or confidant might be called in.

Of the abuse of Individual A, prosecutors said there was “no ambiguity.”

Prosecutors said the motel incident had happened during a trip to a wrestling camp, in which several other boys shared a room but where Individual A and Hastert spent the night together. Individual A told prosecutors he did not know why Hastert had singled him out.

The court filing says Hastert had the boy strip naked and lay on a bed under the guise of treating a groin pull, but it “became clear to Individual A that defendant was not touching him in a therapeutic manner to address a wrestling injury but was touching him in an inappropriate sexual way.” The boy then ran across the room, confused and embarrassed, before Hastert asked him to get onto Hastert’s back and to give the coach a massage. “Defendant lay on the bed in only his underwear, and Individual A gave him a back massage,” the prosecutors said. “They then went to sleep in the same bed.”

When Hastert was charged last year, the accusations rattled the town of Yorkville, Illinois, about an hour west of Chicago. Hastert, a Republican who served as House speaker from 1999 to 2007, was regarded as a hero by many in Yorkville, where he had taught high school. But prosecutors said Hastert’s life had been “marred by stunning hypocrisy.”

“He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty and devoid of dignity,” the court filing said. “While defendant achieved great success, reaping all the benefits that went with it, these boys struggled, and all are still struggling now with what defendant did to them.”

In the court filing, prosecutors said they believed Hastert should face as much as six months in prison, as suggested under federal guidelines.

Prosecutors took note of Hastert’s poor health but said that Hastert could continue getting medical care in prison if needed.

Steven A. Block, an assistant U.S. attorney, said that Hastert’s sentencing judge should “balance the positive nature of defendant’s public service with the need to avoid a public perception that the powerful are treated differently than ordinary citizens when facing sentencing for a serious crime.”