Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., sexually abused a student who was working as the equipment manager of the high school wrestling team that Hastert coached, according to the sister of the student.
ABC News reported that Steven Reinboldt was an alleged victim of abuse at the hands of Hastert. Reinboldt is the first name of any victim to surface publicly in the case, which shocked Washington, D.C., when it was reported last week.
Hastert, 73, who served as the Republican speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007, was indicted for allegedly lying to the FBI about $3.5 million he agreed to pay to an anonymous person to “cover up past misconduct.”
Jolene Reinboldt, Steven’s younger sister, said she learned about Hastert’s abuse when he told her in 1979, years after he had left the school where Hastert worked, that he was gay.
“I asked him, when was your first same-sex experience. He looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert,'” Jolene told ABC News. “I was stunned.”
Jolene asked her brother why he never told anyone.
“And he just turned around and kind of looked at me and said, ‘Who is ever going to believe me?'” she recalled.
Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Ill., between 1965 and 1981. Reinboldt endured the abuse during all four years of high school when he was serving as team student manager, his sister said.
“[Steve] just told me the basics. I believed him 100 percent. But he never went into any details — where it happened, or what the sexual experiences were like, anything like that,” Jolene said.
Steven passed away from AIDS in 1995. Jolene Reinboldt maintains that she never asked Hastert for money, but believes that the unnamed individual who did get money from him knew about what happened with her brother.
The abuse, she said, changed her brother’s life for the worse, but she is thankful now that Hastert’s alleged misconduct is coming to light.
“He took his belief in himself and his kind of right to be a normal person,” Jolene told ABC News. “Here was the mentor, the man who was, you know, basically his friend and stepped into that parental role, who was the one who was abusing him … He damaged Steve I think more than any of us will ever know.”
Jolene said she tried to alert news organizations about Hastert in 2006, including ABC News, but none picked up the story because of the lack of corroborating evidence.
Two weeks ago, Jolene said she got a message from the FBI wanting to talk about Hastert, after years of being hurt watching him rise to fame and power.
“That’s when I just kind of lost it and said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe – I never thought I was going to get this phone call … I thought it was over,'” she said.
Hastert is scheduled to make his first court appearance regarding the fraud charges next week. Both he and his representatives declined to comment on the allegations.
