New sexual abuse claims surface against Dennis Hastert

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Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is serving a 15-month prison term in a sexual abuse case, departs the federal courthouse in Chicago on April 27, 2016. Now, two years after his bombshell federal indictment, new claims of sexual abuse are emerging against Hastert. | Charles Rex Arbogast/AP file photo

Two years after his bombshell federal indictment, new claims of sexual abuse are emerging against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Another accuser has filed a lawsuit in Kendall County alleging Hastert sodomized him in a bathroom stall in the early 1970s when Hastert was a teacher at Yorkville High School. The plaintiff is identified only as “Richard Doe” in the lawsuit and, if his claims are true, he would be the sixth known victim of sexual abuse by Hastert.

Hastert is roughly three-fourths of the way through a 15-month prison sentence he is serving for a financial crime he committed while trying to cover up his past abuse. At his sentencing hearing in April 2016, Hastert admitted he had sexually abused teenage boys.

The latest accuser alleges he was abused by Hastert either in 1973 or 1974, when he was in the fourth grade. That’s when he said he was riding his bike along Game Farm Road and stopped at the Game Farm Building — now the Yorkville High School parking lot — to use the bathroom.

While inside a bathroom stall, he claims he heard a male voice “mutter something.” That’s when the stall door opened and a large man “now known to be Hastert” entered the stall and sodomized the boy, according to the lawsuit.

The alleged victim claims he saw his attacker’s face but didn’t recognize him. However, he said he spotted Hastert several weeks later at gym class and began to shake and cry. The lawsuit alleges Hastert spoke to the gym teacher, took the alleged victim by the neck, led him into the hallway, dropped to his knees and asked if he had told anyone about the assault.

“Hastert warned plaintiff against reporting the attack, threatening that Hastert’s father was the sheriff and, if plaintiff told, his parents would be put in jail,” the lawsuit states.

The alleged victim claims he tried to report the assault in the mid-1980s but was threatened with prosecution by then-Kendall County State’s Attorney Dallas Ingemunson for slandering Hastert’s name.

Hastert already faces a lawsuit in Kendall County brought by the man known publicly as “Individual A,” who was sexually abused by Hastert decades ago, when he was a teenager. Hastert agreed to pay that man $3.5 million in exchange for his silence. But Hastert had only paid $1.7 million before it was discovered by the FBI. It later became central to Hastert’s indictment.

Contributing: Jacob Wittich

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