CHICAGO — Dennis Hastert, once among this nation's most powerful politicians, was sentenced to 15 months in prison Wednesday for illegally structuring bank transactions in an effort to cover up his sexual abuse of young members of a wrestling team he coached decades ago.
Hastert, 74, who made an unlikely rise from beloved small-town wrestling coach in Illinois to speaker of the House in Washington, sat in a wheelchair in a federal courtroom here as a judge announced his fate.
"The defendant is a serial child molester," said Judge Thomas M. Durkin, of U.S. District Court, in a tough rebuke of the former speaker before issuing his sentence. He added, "Nothing is more stunning than having 'serial child molester' and 'speaker of the House' in the same sentence."
Pointing out the vulnerability of Hastert's young victims, he said they were damaged for years.
"If there's a public shaming of the defendant because of the conduct he's engaged in, so be it," Durkin said.
Hastert has suffered a series of ailments in recent months including a stroke, a blood stream infection and a spinal infection.
The judge noted: "There are no guarantees that the defendant won't get sicker in prison. There are no guarantees that he won't get sicker at home."
The felony count to which he had pleaded guilty carried a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, and Hastert's lawyers had sought probation. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors had said they would support a sentence of 6 months or less.
The judge also imposed a $250,000 fine and said he would recommend that Hastert be sent to a prison hospital.
"This is not meant to be a death sentence," he said.
The sentence followed Hastert's admission that he had molested members of his wrestling team, and his apology for the harm that he caused them.
"The thing I want to do today is say I'm sorry," Hastert said.
That followed the tearful statement by one of his victims, who described being sexually abused as he lay on a locker room training table decades ago.
"As a high school wrestler I looked up to Coach Hastert — he was a key figure in my life," the man, Scott Cross, now a 53-year-old businessman in Chicago, told a judge. Stopping once to compose himself, he said, "I felt intense pain, shame and guilt."
He said that he had gone years without speaking of what had happened, and that the experience had caused him lifelong trauma.
"I've always felt that what Coach Hastert had done to me was my darkest secret," he said, as Hastert looked on.
Cross, is the brother of a former Illinois House Republican leader, Tom Cross. The sentencing judge, Durkin, is the brother of another prominent Republican lawmaker in Illinois, Jim Durkin.
Hastert's fall from genial retired House speaker and hometown celebrity on the far edge of Chicago's western suburbs was sudden and steep.
For decades, both in Washington and in Yorkville, where Hastert had coached the local high school wrestling team to a state championship, he had a reputation for appearing down-to-earth and steady — with little hint of scandal.
Hastert, who was first elected to Congress in 1986, found himself catapulted to speaker in 1999, in part, because he seemed to be a safe, agreeable option: The Republicans' first choice, Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, stepped away from the post even before he took it, acknowledging adulterous affairs in his past.
Hastert grew up delivering feed for his family's farm supply business, and held onto his plain-speaking style long after he left teaching and coaching for a life in the state legislature in Illinois and then in Washington, before he became a high-paid lobbyist.
"I've always thought of myself as a kid from the cornfields," Hastert wrote in his 2004 memoir, "Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics."
Hastert never appeared to shy away from the wrestling world he had built in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s as a coach at Yorkville High School, continuing to advocate for the sport in Congress and to hire former student wrestlers as his aides and advisers.
Yet it was a former student wrestler, prosecutors say, who eventually would lead to Hastert's downfall after a series of revelations that left many — even Hastert's onetime assistant wrestling coach — stunned. Some wondered how the allegations could be kept secret in such a small town for so long.
Hastert was charged in May with lying to the FBI and making cash withdrawals in a way designed to hide the fact that he was paying $3.5 million to a former wrestler for misconduct from years earlier. The former wrestler and family friend of Hastert, identified in documents as Individual A, told of abuse in a motel room during a wrestling camp trip when he was 14.
Prosecutors said Individual A approached Hastert to talk about the incident years later, in about 2010, asking Hastert whether there had been other victims and whether he would pay Individual A for what he had done.
After the payments began, federal authorities took notice of large, unexplained withdrawals Hastert was making from his bank. When told that large withdrawals had to be reported, Hastert began drawing smaller sums, prosecutors say, to avoid notice.
Federal investigators approached Hastert in late 2014, inquiring about the many withdrawals — he had paid Individual A some $1.7 million by then — and Hastert said he simply did not trust banks and was keeping the money in a safe place. Not long after, Hastert's lawyer contacted officials with a different story, prosecutors say: Hastert was the victim of extortion by Individual A for false molestation accusations, the lawyer said.
But after recording conversations between Hastert and Individual A, the authorities concluded that there was no extortion. They found that Individual A had wanted to bring lawyers in to negotiate a formal settlement with Hastert, but that he had declined to involve anyone else.
Prosecutors say Individual A was not the only student molested. At least three other men — all former members of the team, as young as 14 — said they, too, had been abused. The acts included "touching of minors' groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor," prosecutors said. One man, Stephen Reinboldt, told his sister, Jolene Burdge, of repeated incidents of abuse, all through high school; he died in 1995.
Hastert has not been charged with sexual abuse, and prosecutors said the reported incidents were beyond the statutes of limitation.
Still, Hastert's lawyers have said he was "deeply sorry and apologizes for his misconduct that occurred decades ago and the resulting harm he caused to others." In the case of at least Cross, the former wrestler who testified Wednesday, Hastert's lawyers had said he does not contest the allegations, but that "in all candor he has no current recollection of the episode."
A long list of supporters — from Hastert's wife Jean to Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader — sent letters of support for Hastert to Durkin, who is the brother of a Republican state lawmaker in Illinois.
"He doesn't deserve what he is going through," DeLay wrote.
Hastert's brother, Dave, wrote that he feared Hastert would fall into depression, given his circumstances and the physical ailments that have left him in a wheelchair.
"If it were me, I'd be wheeling that chair to the highway, and waiting for a semi," his brother wrote.
Other supporters included wrestling coaches, lawyers, former students and former law enforcement officials.
"By any measure, appearing before this court to receive its sentence will be the most difficult day in Mr. Hastert's life," his lawyers wrote in a memo to the judge. "Mr. Hastert's fall from grace has been swift and devastating."
Prosecutors have argued that a sentence for Hastert must balance Hastert's years of public service with a need to "avoid a public perception that the powerful are treated differently than ordinary citizens when facing sentencing for a serious crime."
Hastert's history, the prosecutors have written, is "marred by stunning hypocrisy."
"While the defendant achieved great success, reaping all the benefits that went with it," they wrote, "these boys struggled, and all are still struggling now with what defendant did to them."