Former US House speaker Dennis Hastert sentenced to 15 months’ jail over hush money paid to sex abuse victim
The longest-serving House speaker in US history, Hastert occupied the role from 1999 to 2007.
Former US House speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday for paying hush money related to the sexual abuse of a teen boy he coached in high school.
Shortly before the sentence was handed down, the 74-year-old admitted for the first time he sexually abused boys when he taught wrestling at Yorkville High School in Illinois from the 1960s to the early 1980s.
US District Judge Thomas M. Durkin was reported as telling Hastert: “Nothing is more stunning than having the words serial child molester and speaker of the House in the same sentence.”
Nothing is more stunning than having the words serial child molester and speaker of the House in the same sentence
Prosecutors have provided details of abuse of at least five boys as young as 14, in cases dating back decades for which the Republican politician can no longer be tried.
“What I did was wrong and I regret it,” Hastert, who attended the court hearing in Chicago in a wheelchair, said as he admitted the abuse under sustained questioning.
“They looked to me and I took advantage of them,” he added, according to comments reported by the Chicago Tribune.
Judge Durkin also ordered Hastert to pay a US$250,000 fine to a crime victims’ fund and set two years of supervised release on the condition he participate in a treatment programme for sex offenders.
Lawyers for Hastert, who suffered a stroke last year, had pointed to his ill health to ask for probation.