Court documents detail Dennis Hastert sex abuse allegations

A presentencing filing late Friday revealed more details about the decades-old abuse allegations leveled against former U.S. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, the Associated Press reported last week.

Hastert pleaded guilty last fall to violating banking laws in how he structured his cash withdrawals. Prosecutors said they would have considered abuse charges, but the statute of limitations for bringing such charges expired decades ago.

The court documents detail sexual abuse allegations involving at least four boys that took place at a motel or in the boys locker room at Yorkville High School, where Hastert taught and coached from 1965 until 1981. It describes a “Lazyboy” style chair where Hastert often sat in the locker room with a direct view of the stalls where the boys showered, according to the AP report.

An emailed statement from Hastert’s lawyer, Thomas Green, on Saturday – as in earlier defense filings – refers only in general terms to past misconduct by Hastert.

“Mr. Hastert acknowledges that as a young man he committed transgressions for which he is profoundly sorry,” Green wrote.

Hastert left Yorkville High School for the state legislature in the early 1981. He entered Congress in 1987 and became speaker in 1999, holding the spot until his retirement in 2007. He now lives near Plano.

In the court filing, prosecutors say Hastert “was so sure his secrets were safe that he apparently had no fears about entering a profession where one is subject to constant scrutiny and media attention,” the AP story says.

Around 2010, one of the victims confronted Hastert about what he had done to him decades earlier, prosecutors contend. After the two agreed on a total payment of $3.5 million, Hastert managed to pay $1.7 million from 2010 to 2014. They stopped when the FBI questioned Hastert in late 2014 about his massive cash withdrawals, according to the AP. They had no inkling abuse allegations had anything to do with the case when they first approached Hastert, Friday’s filing said.

According to prosecutors, it was only shortly after that first interview that a Hastert lawyer got back to agents with an explanation: Hastert was being extorted by the former student, who is referred to in the filing as Individual A, on a contrived claim of sexual abuse.

The AP reported that Hastert agreed to let investigators record his phone conversations with Individual A in March 2015, saying the calls would prove his extortion claim. They didn’t. On the contrary, prosecutors concluded that Individual A never threatened Hastert and that he pushed their agreement to be formalized in documents drawn up by lawyers. It was Hastert who wanted no one else involved, they said.

Prosecutors recommended Friday that Hastert get up to six months in prison when he is sentenced on April 27. Defense lawyers have asked for probation, citing what they described as the already steep price he’s paid in public shame.

Hastert’s many local friends and former co-workers continue to try to reconcile the Hastert’s guilty plea and the abuse allegations.

Bob Evans, a former school colleague and friend of Hastert’s, recalled for an AP reporter how he told someone during a fishing trip in Canada years ago that he was from Yorkville and the person knowing it was the House speaker’s hometown.

“It hurts even more because we were all so proud of him,” he said of Hastert.

Now, Evans said he and many others in town are asking themselves the same question: “All this time together, what the hell did I miss?”

Tony Graff, Yorkville’s former police chief and city administrator, said that although the Hastert scandal has left the town with a black eye, locals have always had other things to be proud of, including a tradition of community service.

“The pride is still there,” Graff told the AP. “The community will get through this.”