Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert molested at least four boys over multiple decades, federal prosecutors alleged on Friday.
Hastert, the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history, had already pled guilty to using hush money to cover up abuse allegations, but Friday was the first time the government detailed the full nature of some of the charges against him in a filing for the judge overseeing Hastert’s sentencing. The allegations stemmed from Hastert’s time as a high school wrestling coach in Illinois between the 1960s and the 1980s.
Here’s how the Associated Press described one of the allegations:
Prosecutors say in the filing that Hastert’s known sexual acts against Individual A and other accusers consist of “intentional touching of minors’ groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor.”
According to the document, Individual A told prosecutors the abuse occurred in a motel room on the way home from wrestling camp. Hastert, the only adult on the trip, told the 14-year-old that he would stay in his room while about a dozen other boys stayed in a different room. Individual A said Hastert touched him inappropriately after suggesting he would massage a groin injury the boy had.
Hastert’s downfall began after federal agents questioned him about several suspiciously large bank withdrawals, as the Chicago Tribune recounted on Saturday.
Wasn’t Dennis Hastert the lead drum beater to have Clinton impeached for having sex with a grown woman? Some of these dudes just don’t have any sense of shame. It sounds to me like Hastert was a rank and file child molester.
After the Elizabeth Smart abduction, he called for life sentences for child molesters. I think I agree, although I am sure he wasn’t speaking of himself.
There just isn’t much else to say….Jerry Sandusky of the House of Representatives? Is there anything even comparable? Maybe if Congress stopped thinking about sex so much and how to interfere with what others did legally with their private lives, we would all be better off. From now on, when one of these chaps starts ranting and raving about anything sexual, I am going to just start looking under every rock to see what they might be hiding,
Shame on Hastert. Sending him to prison really won’t do any good. He is now a stroke victim. Will he keep his pension, parking privileges, gym membership and all the other perks afforded a U.S. Congressman? Probably.
It is a shame what he did to those boys. I do hope his real estate dealings while he was Speaker get investigated. He was also Speaker when Congressman Foley has his issues – and the warnings were ignored by the Speakers office. There could be more there.
Shame that one boy ended up committing suicide – he was troubled that someone that could do that to him could end up in such a prominent position.
It is common in these cases which span years and decades: someone new someghing and chose to turn a blind eye. They are just as guilty. Think about it: how many times did Hastert run for office or reelection? How could he keep this secret under all that scrutiny? He had help, and those who helped him are accessories. Bury him under the jail, and fill it with those who helped him.
That’s pretty much what happened at Penn State. Joe Paterno never molested children. He still got tarred and feathered because he knew something.
I don’t know how much he knew…but enough to pull his statue down.
Christopher Hitchens used to say that whenever he heard a politician bloating about “family values” and other such electoral chum, he would set his watch for the next vice raid (I paraphrase, but I think I’ve done justice to Hitchens’s point).
Humans are fallible without regard to political orientation. Certainly the Dems have Anthony Wiener and Bill Clinton and, perhaps the sleaziest of the known miscreants, But for some years now, it has been the Republican Party that has wrapped itself in personal morality issues and tried to spin that thread into votes. Juxtaposed to this tactic, we have this parade of Vitter, Foley, Craig, Livingston, Sanders, Newt, and now Hastert (and no doubt people I’m forgetting). It suggests that perhaps we ought to just lose the electioneering on empty proclamations about personal morality. The voters aren’t entirely without ability to sniff out hypocrisy. A man who has led a morally and ethically upright life doesn’t have to make it a campaign theme. The people who have known him for some time will have sensed through example that he is a good man. The voters will pick up on that too, without him having to make a phony carnival out of it.
Absolutely. Totally agree. I don’t mind the sleaze factor nearly as much if someone hasn’t set themselves up to be self-righteous and better than everyone else.
Let’s put it this way…I have lots more patience with the Bill Clintons of the world than I do someone like Henry Hyde who described his affair as a youthful indiscretion. The problem was he was around 40.
PS – my last comment failed to take my insertion of the name of John Edwards as the “perhaps the sleaziest” of known morals offenders. The omission kind of affects the flow.
I haven’t figured out how to fix it with the edit function on the new site design.
I agree. John Edwards was just a morally reprehensible slime ball. Here he was cheating on his dying wife and over making goo goo eyes at Bunny Mellon so she would give him campaign contributions. The problem–she was about 100 years old.
I am not wild about that other slime ball who was involved with Chandra Levy….Condit…he might not have killed her but he killed his political career.
I am not sure how to work the edit either.