Lawmaker Hastert urged life sentences for repeat child molesters.........
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During nearly 30 years as a state and federal lawmaker, Dennis Hastert presented himself as a champion of children, a hardworking, humble boy from the cornfields of Illinois who learned valuable moral lessons as he rose to become one of the most powerful men in federal government as U.S. House speaker.
In Congress, Hastert supported the Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2000, which among other measures, sought to prevent and punish the sexual abuse of minors.
And in 2003, when Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart was recovered after being kidnapped, sexually assaulted and held captive for nine months, Hastert took a strong stance in a statement.
"It is important to have a national notification system to help safely recover children kidnapped by child predators," he said. "But it is equally important to stop those predators before they strike, to put repeat child molesters into jail for the rest of their lives and to help law enforcement with the tools they need to get the job done."
Now, prosecutors say Hastert sexually abused five students decades ago when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School.
And Hastert's attorneys are asking Judge Thomas M. Durkin to keep him out of jail.
In a court filing last week detailing the financial crimes for which Hastert faces sentencing on April 27, federal prosecutors say Hastert was attempting to withdraw $3.5 million to compensate a man whom, at 14 years old, Hastert had sexually abused when he was the boy's coach.
"The actions at the core of this case," prosecutors wrote in the court document, "took place … in his private one-on-one encounters in an empty locker room and a motel room with minors that violated the special trust between those young boys and their coach."
The allegations stand in contrast to Hastert's portrayal of his own high school football coach, whom he praised in his 2004 autobiography as a fiercely competitive disciplinarian who set high expectations and demanded total loyalty.
"He'd push, push, push, but he would never invade an athlete's dignity," Hastert writes in the book, "Speaker." "His boys loved him for that, and it taught me a lesson I've tried to remember ever since: There's never sufficient reason to try to strip away another person's dignity."
In asking for probation in a nine-page sentencing memorandum, Hastert's attorneys said he was remorseful but stopped short of acknowledging accusations that he sexually abused students.
"Despite his mistakes in judgment and his transgressions, for which he is profoundly sorry," his attorneys wrote, "we implore this Court ... to consider the entirety of Mr. Hastert's life (including the fact that he reshaped his life many years ago)." Hastert, 74, "has enriched the lives of so many over his lifetime, including his family, his employees, his students, his mentees, his constituents, and others who he has met along the way."
In addition, his attorneys note that Hastert uses a wheelchair after suffering maladies that include a blood infection, "small stroke," lumbar back pain, diabetes and an enlarged prostate. He pleaded guilty Oct. 28 to illegally withdrawing $1.7 million in cash from several financial institutions over 4 1/2 years.
Hastert's descent started with the enforcement of federal legislation that he championed: the Patriot Act. The anti-terrorism law requires banks to report cash transactions over $10,000 to flag potential terrorist financial activities, among other measures. The act also makes it illegal to structure transactions to evade that reporting.
The law passed weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In his recollections of the attacks a decade later, Hastert told RealClearPolitics, "then we did the Patriot Act because we had to be able to do that. There were 20-something cells in the United States. We've got to find out who they were and where they were. It wasn't popular, and there was a lot of fight in the Congress. … But those were the types of fights that we had and the things that we had to do, but we had to get them done."
About seven months after that recollection, a bank teller supervisor contacted Hastert and said "the bank needed to understand his transactions pursuant to the PATRIOT Act," prosecutors state in their 26-page court filing. The filing also notes that Hastert crossed a bank officer who explained the institution needed information about Hastert's cash withdrawals to comply with the Patriot Act.
"Defendant stated that he was aware of the law," prosecutors wrote, "but that the PATRIOT Act was just for terrorism and he was not a terrorist."
Hastert's evasive answers back in 2012 led to more pressing questions and to his indictment in May 2015.
His alleged misconduct sheds new light on the way Hastert handled the notorious case of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who resigned in September 2006 after allegations surfaced that he had written sexually explicit emails to a former teen page.
By the end of 2006, a House Ethics Committee investigating the Republican leadership's response to Foley's misconduct concluded that Hastert — then U.S. House speaker — failed to act on earlier warnings and was among many individuals who remained "willfully ignorant" of Foley's misbehavior.
Then-U.S. Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio, was one of those who spoke earlier to Hastert about Foley's misconduct. Boehner told the committee that Hastert had told him the matter "has been taken care of." No one was sanctioned for violating House rules in the case.
Earlier that year, after passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which required states to expand sex offender registries, Hastert said in a statement: "At home, we put the security of our children first, and Republicans are doing just that in our nation's House. We've all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist. Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists."
The same day Hastert released his statement, Foley publicly thanked the speaker for pushing the bill.
In their court filing, prosecutors cited the passage in Hastert's autobiography that singles out his former coach for never stripping away a person's dignity.
"(T)hat is exactly what defendant did to his victims," prosecutors wrote. "He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty and devoid of dignity. While defendant achieved great success, reaping all the benefits that went with it, these boys struggled, and all are still struggling now with what defendant did to them."
That personal history, prosecutors said, represents "stunning hypocrisy."
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