OK, well. . . OK. My feeling is that I’m thankful he’s going to prison for something, and that his reputation is ruined.
I appreciate that he was too stupid to realize that the proper response to being told that he had to report bank transactions was simply to report his bank transactions. I’m glad that he evaded reporting, and I’m glad that he got caught, and I’m glad that he’s going to prison.
It would have been very easy for this to have never, ever have become public knowledge, but due to Hastert’s idiocy, he’s been humiliated and is going to prison. shrug Works for me.
Can he say abracadabra instead? You’ll never know what he has or hasn’t accepted. He could say ‘I’m a child molester’ and still not believe it’s true.
You’re never going to get the satisfaction the beast inside you wants.
I’m satisfied knowing his deeds are known to the world and he’ll never be able to do them again. His legacy is destroyed and no one will ever be able to invoke the Hastert rule without people snickering.
Well, he’s an old man now. The wheelchair puts his mouth at the appropriate level without stressing out his knees. <snicker>
I think you’ve got it backwards – it was him sucking the cocks of the boys. And I don’t think that is what the “guys doing hard time” would want to do to him.
Yes, that has expired. The boys could still sue him in Civil Court for damages, if they could prove them. But due to this scandal, he probably no longer has the assets or earning power to pay much in damages.
No, he does not. Why should he – pensions are not gifts, they are earned by employees working their jobs.
And the stuff he is accused didn’t occur while he was in Congress: the sex stuff happened before he was elected; the money laundering happened after he left office.
He has some assets and he’s got more than one pension.
It would bother me not at all if his victims sue the pants off him, get awarded a portion of those pensions, and leave him a tiny pittance to live on, a dingy, one-room flat in a flophouse and only crappy discount ramen noodles to eat.
Actually, Individual A has filed suit against Hastert. For breach of contract. Hastert agreed to pay the victim $3.5 million; it was how he withdrew the cash to make those payments that led to him getting arrested. The suit alleges he still owes about half that money, plus interest.
I hate to continue to be the one to upset your plans, but I’m not as sanguine as the prior commentator that a civil suit is viable.
Now, to be clear, I’m discussing lawsuits that sound in tort from the abuse itself. My understanding is that “Victim A,” is suing Hastert right now for breach of contract, the contract in question being Hastert’s agreement to pay the victim a settlement.
That claim may or may not be viable. I welcome comment from someone more versed in civil law than I am. The factors that I think might come into play there include a failure of consideration: can Victim A’s agreement not to sue be valid consideration if such a suit would itself have been barred by Illinois’ statute of limitations?
Illinois recently removed both the criminal and civil statute of limitations for sexual abuse (Senate Bill 1399 in 2013). But this bill did not operate, at least as I understand it, retroactively.
So for this reason, I don’t believe a victim can sue Hastert now for events that happened then, but since the civil arena is not my cuppa tea, it’s very possible I am missing some nuance. I think the suit by Victim A has a stronger chance of succeeding, since if there was a contract formed, Hastert’s breach is well within the statute time frame. My only thought there is the potential lack of a valid contract to begin with.
The usual way to* try* to get around the civil statute of limitations is the “discovery rule.”
Usually that means you have 2 years (or whatever time period) to file suit from the time you discover you’ve been injured. In child abuse cases, plaintiffs sometimes argue that 1) they didn’t remember being abused into later in life or 2) they knew they had been abused but didn’t discover the ways it had injured them until later in life. The second might be a hook for the men Hastert abused. I don’t know how Illinois addresses these concepts, but generally it’s a very hard sell.
I don’t know either, but I agree with you that the plaintiff cannot simply allege that he was unaware of the extent of the damage until 2013, and so falls within the statutory time limit.
On the other hand, it may be enough that their is the *chance *of such a result, to be adequate consideration for the out of court settlement. Defendants settle cases they think are winnable all the time, and courts generally won’t review the adequacy of the consideration for a contract.
I didn’t want to start a separate thread for scummy Mormon behavior. It’s well known that being a Mormon is more correlated with voting Republican than any other simple demographic. (Utah often has the highest GOP vote of any state.)
Wait. You understand that Hastert is no longer in Congress, right?
So is the analogy you’re picturing of a more normal person who has a job that earns a pension, retires from that job, and then is discovered to have been a child molester during the period before he entered that job?
Er… Then how could that normal person be fired? He’s already not in the job.
How could that normal person be imprisoned for several years? Do you think the statute of limitations has two time frames, one for Congressmen and one for normal people?
And while I suppose it’s possible for some normal job to include a pension restriction that loses the pension for criminal conduct that occurred before the job was undertaken or after the job was left, but I haven’t ever heard of that normal job.
Can you explain which normal job you believe would impose such a condition on their pension?
Calling child molestation a family values issue is like calling rape and murder a family values issue. Family values is a political dividing line. I don’t think child molestation is a political social issue like gay marriage, divorce, sex education, or anything to do with homosexuality.