Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert suspected of paying $3.5 million to victim he allegedly molested
CHICAGO — Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million to a person the former House speaker sexually abused when the victim was a 14-year-old wrestler on a team coached by Hastert, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday that details allegations by five former students.
Prosecutors believe former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse allegations.
The filing is the first time prosecutors have confirmed Hastert paid hush-money to conceal sex abuse. It chronicles a chain of deception that began with Hastert exploiting his position of trust as a teacher and coach and carried on years later to include lying to bank officials and making false claims of extortion to the FBI to conceal his wrongdoing.
The filing recommends that a federal judge sentence Hastert to up to six months in prison for violating banking laws as he sought to pay one of his victims, identified in court documents as "Individual A," to ensure the person kept quiet. The sex-abuse allegations date to Hastert's time at Yorkville High School in the Chicago suburb of Yorkville from 1965 to 1981.
"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. Some have managed better than others, but all of them carry the scars defendant inflicted upon them," the filing says.
Prosecutors say Hastert still was abusing boys when he first decided to run for office, but the now-74-year-old Republican managed to keep any hint of sexual misconduct quiet throughout a political career that carried him from the Illinois Legislature to the halls of Congress and eventually to the speaker's office, where he was second in the line of succession to the presidency.
Hastert, who pleaded guilty in October to breaking banking laws, is scheduled to be sentenced April 27. The defense has asked the judge to give Hastert probation and spare him prison time, citing Hastert's deteriorating health and the public shame he's already suffered.
Dennis Hastert, top and Steve Reinboldt, bottom, from a yearbook photo of the1970 Yorkville High School wrestling team. Enlarge 
Sign at the former Yorkville High School building where former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert coached wrestling from 1965-1981 in Yorkville, Illinois, Saturday, May 30, 2015. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty) Enlarge
Dennis Hastert, a former wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, paid an alleged molestation victim $3.5 million to stay quiet about the assaults.
Hastert's lawyers didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment about prosecutors' filing Friday night.
Individual A is one of at least four people cited in the filing as saying that Hastert sexually abused them as children. Three were wrestlers and the fourth was a student-manager on the team Hastert coached. Another wrestler said Hastert touched his genitals while he was on a locker room massage table, but he wasn't sure if it was intentional.
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.
The other former wrestlers told prosecutors Hastert touched them in the locker room at Yorkville High, after saying he would give them massages. Two of those wrestlers, who were ages 14 and 17, say Hastert performed sex acts on them.
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