Dennis Hastert molested at least four boys, prosecutors say

In a court filing late Friday, making suggestions for a judge who will decide Mr. Hastert’s sentence, the prosecutors described specific, graphic incidents that they say occurred when Mr. Hastert was a popular, championship-winning coach in a small Illinois town in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The “known acts,” the prosecutors said, consisted of “intentional touching of minors’ groin area and genitals or oral sex with a minor.”…

According to the prosecutors, Mr. Hastert gave one boy, a 14-year-old freshman wrestler, a massage in the locker room, then performed an unspecified sex act on him. Another boy, Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995, was sexually abused by Mr. Hastert throughout high school in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his sister and others told the prosecutors. A third boy, who was 17 and remembered Mr. Hastert sitting in a recliner-type chair with a direct view of the locker room shower stalls, said Mr. Hastert had told him that one way to make his wrestling weight was to get a massage, then performed a sexual act. And prosecutors said Mr. Hastert had massaged another boy’s groin area after asking the boy to stay in his hotel room during a wrestling camp.

That incident became the center of the prosecution’s case. It was also the reason that the allegations, which were never exposed during Mr. Hastert’s eight years as the Republican speaker of the House, came to light. The boy, known in court documents as Individual A, confronted Mr. Hastert years later, around 2010, asked him why he had done what he did, and sought a settlement — beginning the payments that would be Mr. Hastert’s downfall.