Dennis Hastert seeks repayment of $1.7 million from sex abuse accuser

CHICAGO – Imprisoned former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert has asked a Kendall County judge to not only reject a sexual abuse victim’s breach-of-contract lawsuit, but also to make the man pay back $1.7 million in secret hush-money payments.

In response to the lawsuit and in his counterclaim, made public Thursday and signed by Hastert, he denied that the oral pact is akin to a valid and enforceable contract and, if so, it would be the plaintiff who breached it when he broke his silence and spoke to federal authorities.

The lawsuit was filed in April by a now middle-age married man whom Hastert coached decades ago at Yorkville High School.

The man, known as Individual A in the federal case, said Hastert had agreed in 2010 to pay him $3.5 million if he didn’t disclose publicly that Hastert inappropriately touched him in the 1970s, when Individual A was 14, during a wrestling trip while the two stayed overnight in a hotel room. Hastert was close friends with his boy’s parents.

He went on to become a standout student-athlete in high school but later suffered panic attacks, unemployment, bouts of depression and psychiatric treatment, according to his lawsuit.

His attorney called Hastert’s response “predictable.”

“Mr. Hastert has decided that rather than live up to his promise to compensate his victim for his molestation and resulting injury, he will ask his victim to pay him,” attorney Kristi Browne said. “He admits to agreeing to make payments, but then denies that it is an agreement that he has to keep.”

Hastert paid the former wrestler $1.7 million over 4 years through 2014, but he stopped making payments that December after the FBI questioned him in his Plano home about the large bank withdrawals. Hastert is serving a 15-month federal prison sentence in Rochester, Minn., for illegally structuring the bank withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements.

In his lawsuit, Individual A asks that Hastert pay the remaining $1.8 million.

At his April sentencing hearing, Hastert admitted to inappropriate conduct with the man and some of his former student-athletes before going into politics in the 1980s. In his latest response to the lawsuit, regarding the sexual abuse allegations, Hastert said he had “insufficient information with which to admit or deny the allegations.”

Browne said the oral agreement with Hastert was similar to an out-of-court settlement had he filed a personal injury claim. In response, Hastert attorney John Ellis has argued the man would have been legally barred from pursuing such a claim. Ellis also raised several other legal defenses in his latest response, including that any pact is unenforceable because Hastert would have been under “duress” at the time an alleged contract was formed.

The accuser’s “retention of the $1.7 million is unjust,” Ellis wrote. Hastert also is seeking “reasonable expenses, attorneys’ fees, and costs.”

Hastert had admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he was making the withdrawals to pay off the man to hide wrongdoing from his past.

Federal prosecutors said Hastert inappropriately touched several male students when he was a wrestling coach from 1965 to 1981. The statute of limitations to bring charges for sexual abuse had long since run out, and prosecutors said their best option for holding Hastert accountable was for banking violations.

His bombshell federal indictment was made public in May 2015. For nearly a year afterward, federal prosecutors kept any mention of Hastert’s sexual abuse of children confidential in the proceedings. But a Tribune investigation uncovered the nature of the allegations and identities of most of Hastert’s victims, including Individual A. The man, who retired early from his chosen profession, has declined requests for comment, but his wife has acknowledged to the Tribune that he is a victim.

The Tribune typically does not name victims of sexual crimes without their permission.

Another of Hastert’s accusers was Scott Cross, a younger brother of former Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross. Scott Cross appeared publicly during Hastert’s sentencing hearing in Chicago and detailed a one-time incident in fall 1979 in which he said Hastert inappropriately touched him during a massage after wrestling practice.

The case began to unfold after a Yorkville bank noticed Hastert making suspicious withdrawals. In December 2014, FBI agents confronted Hastert. He told them he was trying to keep his money safe, but he later alleged he was a victim of an extortion plot. At the request of authorities, Hastert secretly recorded two calls to Individual A to catch him making threats, but agents soon realized it was Hastert who was lying.

Hastert, 75, is due to be paroled in August.