A SECOND CELEBRITY HAS NOW GONE TO PRISON FOR CHILD MOLESTATION

…The former Speaker that will now be going to prison.

 

Sexual abuse laws across the country must change!

 

The former Republican House speaker J. Dennis Hastert has received a 15-month prison sentence for molesting his Yorkville High School wrestlers as their wrestling coach.  Hastert’s supporters believe the 15-month sentence he received was too harsh, considering his ill health and his career in Congress.  But the reality is that he did much better than the difficult decades that he offered for those Yorkville High wrestlers whom he wounded for life.

 

 You will recall that Coach Jerry Sandusky was sent to prison for his molestations at Penn State in 2011.  Some of you may have thought that put to rest the old belief that child molesters are just a bunch of unwashed guys hanging around outside children’s playgrounds.

 

But this was the individual that as the longest serving House Speaker ever, for all those years he remained 3^rd in line for the US presidency.  That is seriously disturbing.

 

The concept that “nice guys don’t molest children” has now been shown twice on the world stage to be a real crock.

 

On top of all that, this same so called up-standing former politician paid hundreds of thousands in hush money to a high school student he had sexually abused decades earlier.

 

The US Attorney’s sentencing brief detailing the history of Hastert’s sexual abuse is a classic example of how the victims are fooled into being a molested victim.  In Hastert’s case, one young 14 year old victim was told to “get up on a table so the coach could loosen him up”.  Then the coach began the process for molesting him.

 

The real problem is that the molesters, hiding behind their false pretense of being kindhearted, they know they are committing the almost perfect crime.  They know that in most cases, it silences its victims forever. For those few that have the strength to come forward years later, it is the law itself that denies the victims any justice.

 

As an example, the state of Maryland gives victims just seven years after their 18th birthday to file civil lawsuits.  This is too soon for the victims to acknowledge the horrific violation they experienced.

 

Not one of Hastert’s victims ever came forward to report on him.  As it was, it was a banking compliance officer who alerted federal officials after noticing unusual activity on Hastert’s large bank accounts. As the US Attorney in this case has noted, the federal and state statutes of limitations regarding the sexual-abuse-related offenses had long since expired.  They could therefore not prosecute Hastert for any of his sexual crimes, so they went after his improper bank activity of paying hush money to a former molested victim.

 

It has been long shown that child molesters are willing to spend months working their way into a child’s life.  They then use the child’s lack of life experience, while giving them gifts and personal adulation to gain their trust. The molester then makes an “innocent” rubbing of the shoulders as a normal part of his relationship with the child. Then the more obvious forms of sexual abuse begin, and the child’s situation has been sealed.

 

Hastert had obviously done his disgusting job very well, and he counted on his victim’s embarrassment, fear and shame, to remove any thought of reporting the abuse.  There was no reporting when it occurred, or at any time in the future.

 

This situation was well described by a sister of one of Hastert’s victims. She quoted her brother as saying he didn’t tell anyone about the abuse because: “Who is ever going to believe me?” Given the response of those in Hastert’s community to the initial accusations, that attitude was correct.

 

OK, so where do we go from here?

 

Since the laws mean that their statute of limitations effectively removes numbers of victims from ever seeing justice, those laws have to change.

 

Maryland is now stepping forward and the passage of their House Bill 1215 and Senate Bill 69, would give sexually abused victims until their 38th birthdays to file a suit.  This will at least give them back their voices. Anything less would continue to protect the abusers and the institutions that failed to deal with them.

 

J. Dennis Hastert’s prison sentence should become the minimum standard for all abusers and the Maryland bills should be passed and duplicated throughout the country.

 

It must be done, for our children’s…and their children’s sake.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016