Hastert's attorneys have nerve to ask if coach's groin massage is abuse? -...

[massage]

A grown man — a coach and teacher — takes a high school student to a motel room and, on the bed, begins rubbing the boy's groin.

Would that be considered sexual abuse today? Would it have been considered sexual abuse in the early 1970s?

Most sane adults would say yes, and if you're the parent of such a child, you might want to elaborate even further. Not with words alone, but with a baseball bat upon the coach's hands until they're pulpy, or on other sensitive parts.

But the lawyers for Dennis Hastert, former U.S. House speaker, wrestling coach and Republican paragon of virtue, are quite creative.


They have to be creative. Hastert is also an alleged child sex abuser who kept a recliner chair in the wrestlers locker room at Yorkville High School so he could kick back and monitor horseplay in the showers.

"While undoubtedly many would consider this episode as described by [Individual A], consisting of a groin rub for a groin pull and a massage, to be misconduct, we are not so certain that the incident qualifies as sexual misconduct, especially for a coach and trainer forty-two years ago," Hastert's lawyers wrote in a court filing made public Wednesday.

They are not so certain it would qualify as sexual misconduct?


What if a coach put his hands on the son of one of Hastert's defense lawyers? You think they'd find that objectionable?

You bet they would. They might even call friends in law enforcement and demand an investigation. Most lawyers I know would sue the coach, the school, the motel and just about everyone they could go after.

Hastert has not been charged with sexual predation. The statute of limitations on that has run out. But he has pleaded guilty to illegal bank structuring by trying to hide the withdrawal of $1.7 million in hush money paid to one of his alleged victims.

There are at least five former students now. Chicago Tribune reporters Christy Gutowski and Jeff Coen first made public that there were four, and federal authorities have since revealed a fifth. But I figure more are out there. Sexual predators tend to keep going. They're wired that way, even if they are prominent political figures.

Some of Hastert's alleged victims and at least one family member are expected to make statements at his sentencing hearing April 27.


The big question is whether Hastert gets a slap on the hand and probation or a real sentence of more than a few months. He should miss more than just one baseball season.

What's amazing is that Hastert's lawyers argued that some 40 years ago, what Hastert is alleged to have done with the boy might not be considered abuse.

In whose universe would that not be considered abuse?

That's the amazing thing about defense lawyers. Many are brilliant and instinctive, and most have a good diabolical sense of humor. They provide the best defense possible for their clients, and I understand that's their job.

But some can be as shameless as their clients.

And it's the shamelessness of Hastert that's so sickening. He paraded about Illinois and later Washington as a publicly decent man with a solid Midwestern moral compass. Now he's humble and weak and begging for mercy and arguing through lawyers that massaging a boy's groin may be OK.

"What parent would think that taking a student to a room and massaging his groin is an acceptable scenario?" asked a mom I know.

Perhaps there's a secret class in our American law schools where all shame is removed, to allow the creative impulses of young lawyers to flourish without the weight of moral guilt.

Consider the now famous "affluenza defense," used by attorneys of wealthy Texas teenager Ethan Couch, who killed four people in a drunken crash in 2013. The lawyers argued that he was so spoiled and rich that he suffered from "affluenza." The rich boy was given probation, but he couldn't even handle that and fled to Mexico. Now he's behind bars.

"I wish I hadn't used that term," G. Dick Miller, the psychologist, told CNN. "Everyone seems to have hooked into it. We used to call these people spoiled brats."

What would you call Heather Faria, a special education teacher in Massachusetts who told her students, coworkers and friends that she was suffering from stomach cancer?

Everyone who knew her was so upset that they couldn't help but donate. And she collected $37,000 from those made sad by her plight.

There was one problem. She didn't have cancer. And she spent the cash on jewelry and Caribbean vacations, a big TV and other fun stuff.

Faria was convicted in 2006 on fraud charges and sentenced to two years in prison and eight years' probation.

Her lawyer, Francis O'Boy, deserves entry into the Criminal Defense Hall of Fame for this simple quote.

"This was a situation where she couldn't stand the pressure of opportunity," said O'Boy.

In yet another shameless case, the charismatic CEO of a major concern was being investigated. His issue? Whether he lied before a federal grand jury about having sex with an intern.

He wasn't just any chief executive. He was also a crafty lawyer.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," he said, and skated away.

But he wasn't the speaker. He was just the president.

Listen to "The Chicago Way," radio-free Chicago in podcast form, with John Kass and Jeff Carlin. Find it at www.chicagotribune.com/kasspodcast.

jskass@tribpub.com

Twitter @John_Kass


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