Allegations of sex abuse detailed
A Chicago Tribune probe reveals at least four alleged sex abuse victims, sources say.
An investigation has uncovered new information on sexual abuse allegations by at least four people against former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, left.
CHICAGO — For months, federal authorities have hinted at the motive behind the hush-money payments former U.S. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has admitted to making: the sexual abuse of a teenage boy when Hastert was still a suburban high school teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois.
But now, a Chicago Tribune investigation has uncovered new details of the case — at least four people have made what law enforcement sources say are credible allegations of sexual abuse against Hastert.
The Tribune has determined the identities of three of them, all men, whose allegations stretch over a decade when they were teenagers and Hastert was their coach. One is dead. The Tribune has approached the other two, described in federal court records as Individuals A and D, and confirmed their roles in the case.
The man who received $1.7 million from Hastert and is at the center of the federal indictment — Individual A — declined to be interviewed by the Tribune. Behind the government’s carefully worded court documents, reporters discovered a sometimes-pained narrative of his life since his days as a standout wrestler in the 1970s and how his interactions with Hastert might have affected him.
Individual D has talked to the Tribune at length but has not agreed to be named. The Tribune typically does not name victims of alleged sexual abuse without their consent and is not doing so here.
Hastert is alleged to have sexually abused the teens identified by the Tribune when he was a teacher and coach at Yorkville High School in the far southwest suburbs, decades before he became the longest-serving Republican speaker.
One of the alleged victims served as a team equipment manager a few years after Hastert arrived at the school in 1965. Stephen Reinboldt died of AIDS in 1995, and his younger sister has long spoken out about the details she said he shared with her while alive. Two others, who came to the school later, were talented and popular studentathletes from well-known local families. They all graduated from college.
The identity of the fourth accuser, whom authorities have deemed credible, remains unknown.
In a statement, Hastert attorney Tom Green did not specify any sexual abuse by his client but did say Hastert was apologetic and had suffered humiliation and shame.
“Mr. Hastert has made mistakes in judgment and committed transgressions for which he is profoundly sorry,” he said. “He fully understands the gravity of his misconduct decades ago and regrets that he resorted to … an effort to prevent the disclosure of that misconduct.”
Now 74 and said to be in failing health after suffering a near-fatal blood infection and stroke, Hastert has not been charged with harming a child. Such charges, according to legal experts, would be barred by statutes of limitation. Instead, Hastert pleaded guilty last year to illegally structuring cash withdrawals to evade bank currency-reporting requirements as he pooled his money to give to Individual A as part of an agreement to keep him quiet.
Hastert agreed during a 2010 meeting with Individual A to pay him $3.5 million in a financial agreement sources described as more akin to an agreed out-of-court settlement rather than extortion. The sources confirmed Individual A’s identity to the Tribune.
For nearly two years beginning in June 2010, Hastert made 15 cash withdrawals of $50,000 each, giving the $750,000 to Individual A at meetings about every six weeks, according to Hastert’s plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Then in April 2012, nearly two years after he had begun the withdrawals, bank officials warned Hastert such large withdrawals had to be reported to financial regulators.
So he began illegally structuring the transactions in increments of less than $10,000 to avoid the requirement. In the more than two years that followed, Hastert made a total of 106 withdrawals in sums of less than $10,000, totaling $952,000, which he gave to Individual A.
By the time FBI agents questioned Hastert in December 2014 in his Plano, Ill., home, he had paid Individual A about $1.7 million.
Soon, the investigation led agents to a former school cheerleader now living in Montana who had long alleged her dead brother was also one of Hastert’s victims. Jolene Burdge, the ex-cheerleader, said one of her older brothers, Stephen Reinboldt, confided to her in the summer of 1980 that Hastert had sexual contact with him all through high school. Reinboldt, who graduated in 1971, was an equipment manager for the school’s wresting and football teams.
His allegation came during a conversation outside a Yorkville bowling alley as he told her for the first time that he was gay, she said. Burdge asked “Stevie,” as she still calls him today, about his first same-sex experience.
“He almost said it like, ‘Oh, it was Denny Hastert,’” said Burdge.
Burdge asked Reinboldt why he never spoke up. He said no one in town would have believed him.
“And I knew he was right,” she said.
A former classmate, Kevin Ross, who then went by the last name Hauge, confirmed the account, saying Reinboldt also confided in him about Hastert during Christmas break in 1974 when both were home from college.
The man whom prosecutors recently publicly described as Individual D has spoken privately with the Tribune in a quest to learn more about the scope of the case.
A few years younger than Individual A, Individual D was a popular student and good athlete. He grew up to marry, have children and become a successful businessman.
Prosecutors have recommended a sentence for Hastert ranging from probation to up to six months behind bars — the lowest possible sentence under federal guidelines for anyone convicted of a felony. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin has noted that he is free to sentence Hastert to as long as five years in prison. Although the case has been shrouded in secrecy, the judge acknowledged for the first time during an unannounced court hearing last month about Individual D that it involved allegations of sexual abuse.
“If Individual D wants to come in and talk about being a victim of sexual abuse, he’s entitled to do so because that informs my decision about the history and characteristics of the defendant,” Durkin said, according to a transcript of the late March hearing obtained by the Tribune.
It was the second time in a week the judge had held a hearing in the case without any public disclosure in advance. The hearing became known only after Durkin posted an order announcing Hastert’s sentencing date had been pushed back to accommodate Individual D’s schedule, should he appear for the sentencing.
Hastert’s attorneys, at least preliminarily, said they didn’t plan to contest any facts alleged by Individual D, according to the transcript.
With the sentencing hearing looming, a source said Hastert called one of Individual D’s relatives, hoping to get a letter to show Hastert had done good things with his life; that letter could help persuade Durkin to give Hastert a more lenient sentence.
Individual D then made a call of his own. He told federal authorities he would prepare a statement to be used in court detailing what Hastert did to him.