Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Dies at 84

Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican US House of Representatives speaker who later admitted to sexually abusing boys as a high school wrestling coach and pleaded guilty to charges arising from the scandal, has died, CBS News reported on Oct 5, citing a coroner in Illinois. He was 84.

Hastert, sentenced in April 2016 to 15 months in prison for bank fraud for trying to cover up payments to keep his molestation secret, died at his home over the weekend due to natural causes, Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell told CBS News.

Known as “Denny” to his friends, Hastert was one of the United States’ most powerful politicians during his time leading the lower chamber of Congress from January 1999 to January 2007, during the presidencies of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush.

The burly Midwestern conservative had been seen as an amiable lawmaker, although his leadership tactics perpetuated the partisan polarisation in Congress. His reputation was destroyed eight years after he quit the House when revelations emerged about his sexual abuse of boys as a civics teacher and coach at Yorkville High School in suburban Chicago from the 1960s to the early 1980s.

“The defendant is a serial child molester,” US District Judge Thomas Durkin said of Hastert when he sentenced him, at age 74, to prison. “Some actions can obliterate a lifetime of good works.”

Hastert pleaded guilty to violating federal banking laws by structuring financial transactions to evade bank reporting requirements to try to keep hush-money payments to a sexual abuse victim hidden. Hastert did not face criminal charges for sexually abusing the boys because the statute of limitations had long expired.

Prosecutors detailed Hastert’s actions towards five boys as young as 14. They said Hastert, exploiting his position of authority as the school’s wrestling coach, committed acts including “intentional touching of minors’ groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor”.

In one instance, they said, Hastert asked a boy during a wrestling camp to stay in his hotel room, and then abused him. That boy, decades later, confronted Hastert about the abuse. Hastert made a secret deal to pay him US$3.5 million (S$4.5 million) to compensate him for his ordeal and buy his silence.

When law enforcement authorities investigated suspicious withdrawals from Hastert’s bank account stemming from payments to his victim, he initially said they were nothing unusual. Hastert, through his lawyer, then lied to investigators that he was the victim of an extortion attempt by someone falsely accusing him of sexual abuse.

After suffering a stroke, a frail Hastert entered his sentencing hearing in a wheelchair.

“I want to apologise to the boys I mistreated when I was their coach,” Hastert told the judge.

“Don’t be a coward, Mr Hastert,” the sister of one of the victims said in court. “Tell the truth. What you did wasn’t misconduct. It was sexual abuse of a minor.”

The judge also ordered Hastert to enter a sex offender treatment programme and pay US$250,000 to a victims’ fund.

Hastert’s portrait was removed from the US Capitol building. His alma mater Wheaton College stripped his name from a public policy centre.

John Dennis Hastert was born on Jan 2, 1942, in Aurora, Illinois, and grew up on a farm. After six years in the Illinois legislature, he was elected to the US House in 1986. He represented his Illinois district outside Chicago for two decades.

Fortuitous circumstances led to his accession as speaker.

With House Republicans moving towards impeaching Clinton over his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the abrasive and strident Georgian Newt Gingrich stepped down as speaker three days after the 1998 elections.

Gingrich’s designated successor, Bob Livingston of Louisiana, then abruptly resigned after acknowledging his own extramarital affairs.

House Republicans turned to Hastert, a self-described born-again Christian seen at the time as untainted by scandal and who called Clinton’s affair immoral. Hastert served as speaker for eight years, placing him second in the line of succession to the presidency.

In 2006, he passed Joseph Cannon as the longest-serving Republican House speaker. Hastert resigned from the House in November 2007, having lost the speaker’s job when Democrats regained control of the House in the 2006 elections.

Hastert contributed to the increasing partisan divide in Washington. As speaker, Hastert marshalled his own often-fractious Republican legislators to pass conservative Bills with little or no outreach to the Democratic minority.

He was credited with instituting the “Hastert Rule” under which only Bills supported by “the majority of the majority” party would be brought to a vote on the House floor. As a result, he let major legislation die rather than allow it to pass with mostly Democratic support.

The House ethics committee in 2006 found Hastert, along with other Republican leaders, negligent in failing to protect teenage boys from sexual advances by a gay Florida Republican congressman named Mark Foley. The boys were congressional pages, doing chores and errands for members of Congress.

The panel said the inaction by Hastert and the other Republicans might have been intended to insulate fellow Republican Foley from political harm. The Foley scandal contributed to the Republicans losing control of the House.

After leaving Congress, Hastert became a highly paid lobbyist.

Hastert married his wife Jean in 1973. They had two sons. REUTERS