Dennis Hastert, Anti-LGBTQ+ Republican House Speaker and Admitted Sexual Abuser, is dead at 84

Editor’s note: This article includes mentions of sexual abuse that may be upsetting for some readers.

Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in United States history and was accused of abusing teen boys who went to a high school where he coached wrestling, died Monday at the age of 84.

Hastert was Speaker from 1999 to 2007. He died at his home while under hospice care, according to a local coroner’s office in Illinois.

While in office, he was a vocal opponent of marriage equality and LGBTQ+ rights. He reportedly kept a file on “homosexuals” in his office during his time in Congress.

In 2015, Hastert was accused by authorities of evading bank regulations while paying a person hush money over alleged sexual abuse. Prosecutors said that the Republican lawmaker abused at least four high school boys from 1965 to 1981, according to the Associated Press.

The person he was paying, identified in court documents as Individual A, said the abuse happened when he was 14 and at a wrestling camp. Other allegations from former students included Hastert touching students in the locker room. Two students said Hastert had performed sex acts on them, according to the AP.

Prosecutors could not pursue charges at the time due to the statute of limitations. However, they did pursue the banking charge.

Hastert pleaded guilty. He’d paid Individual A about $1.7 million of a promised $3.5 million — that sometimes included $100,000 in cash.

He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. During Hastert’s sentencing, the judge angrily called Hastert a “serial child molester.”

Hastert said he was “deeply ashamed” and said he had “mistreated” some of the student-athletes.

The judge questioned Hastert about each victim, with Hastert admitting to sexually abusing some while others he said he accepted the allegations of others, according to the New York Times.

One former athlete said the abuse he suffered “was my darkest secret.”

Jolene Burdge, sister of another athlete, Stephen Reinboldt, spoke to Hastert and said her brother had suffered from the years of isolation the abuse caused. Reinboldt died of complications from AIDS in 1995.

“You took his life, Mr. Hastert,” Burdge told Hastert. “Not because he died of AIDS, but because you took his innocence and turned it against him.”