Monster

I have no sympathy for him at all. Rot in hell.

Judge sentences former U.S. House speaker Dennis Hastert to 15 months in federal prison
By Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post
April 27 at 3:55 PM

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert to one year and three months in federal prison — a term above what even prosecutors had recommended and one that clearly took into account the sexual abuse allegations that generated the criminal case against the Illinois Republican.

Prosecutors called the sentence a “day of reckoning” for a man who was once a revered high school teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois and who ascended into the highest ranks of American politics. Even before the hearing, prosecutors had revealed in court filings how Hastert allegedly had molested or inappropriately touched five teenagers affiliated with the wrestling team he coached decades ago, and U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin on Wednesday forced him to acknowledge that abuse in specific terms.
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Hastert, 74, who arrived at the courthouse in a wheelchair, was allowed to remain free until federal prison officials find a facility that can tend to his substantial health problems. As part of his sentence, he will have to undergo sex offender treatment. He left the courthouse without talking to reporters.

Hastert did not plead guilty to any sex crimes. Rather, he admitted in October that he had withdrawn money in increments that would allow him to avoid having to report it — itself a crime carrying a maximum five-year sentence. The money, investigators would come to learn, was meant to buy the silence of a man who alleged Hastert had victimized him as a youth.

In court, though, Hastert was forced to face abuse allegations in all their dark detail. Jolene Burdge — who has alleged previously that Hastert abused her now deceased brother, Steven Reinboldt, years ago — told Hastert how Reinboldt felt “betrayed, ashamed and embarrassed” by what had happened to him. She said she hoped by sharing his story publicly, she had become Hastert’s “worst nightmare.”

“You were supposed to keep him safe, not violate him,” Burdge said.

Scott Cross, 53, a married father of two, fought back tears as he told the judge how Hastert, who also is married and has two children, abused him during his senior year of high school. Cross, who wrestled on a team Hastert coached and whose brother is a former Illinois legislator, said he “looked up to Coach Hastert. He was a key figure in my life.”

But one day after practice, when Cross stayed late to cut weight, he ended up alone with Hastert in a locker room, and Hastert offered him a massage.

Cross said that while he was lying on a training table, Hastert pulled down his shorts and touched him in a sexual way.

“I was stunned by what he was doing,” Cross said. Cross said he got up, left and “did not say anything to anyone.”

“As a 17-year-old boy, I was devastated,” he said. “I tried to figure out why Coach Hastert had singled me out.”

Prosecutors had shared the outlines of Cross’s story in sentencing papers — identifying him only as Individual D — but Wednesday marked the first time that he or any victim had shared their experience publicly. As Cross talked, Hastert sat motionless, his head tilted slightly toward the ground.
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Block said prosecutors would have charged Hastert with sex crimes, or referred him to their state counterparts, if not for the statutes of limitations. And he said they agreed to a plea deal in the case only because it spared a victim who did not want to be identified from having to take the witness stand at a trial.

“Trying to respect his decision was a driving force for us,” Block said.

U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon said after the hearing that the outcome was “imperfect, but it’s what we get.” He said that had FBI and IRS investigators and federal prosecutors not pursued the matter so aggressively, “history would have told a lie.”
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“We followed the case where it led. We brought the charges we could bring,” Fardon said. “And through that, Mr. Hastert’s legend and legacy are gone, and in its place, are a broken, humiliated man. That is as it should be.”