US judge bars disgraced ex-House speaker Dennis Hastert from being alone with children
A US federal judge has ordered that Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives in Congress, never be left alone with anyone under 18 unless another adult is present who is aware of his conviction related to child sex abuse.
In his ruling on Tuesday from Chicago, US District Judge Thomas Durkin also ordered Hastert to install software that records all his computer activity, from browser history to email correspondence and internet chats.
The judge didn't explain why the new restrictions on Hastert were called for now, three months into his two-year period of supervised release from prison.
Durkin sentenced Hastert, once one of the country’s most powerful politicians, to 15 months in prison in May 2016 for a financial crime linked to sexual abuse of boys.
Durkin described the former congressman as "a serial child molester" during the sentencing.
Hastert, 75, is America’s longest-serving Republican House speaker from 1999 to 2007 and the highest-ranking politician in US history to have gone to prison.
Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to violating banking rules as he sought to pay $3.5 million to a victim referred to only as Individual A to keep him quiet about the sex abuse.
Hastert couldn't be charged with sexual abuse because statutes of limitation had long since expired.
Among the conditions Durkin set during sentencing in 2016 was that Hastert undergo intensive sex-offender treatment, which is designed to gauge the risk molesters still pose to children.
One common treatment for sex-offenders involves a penile plethysmograph, which gauges a known molester's physical reaction to specific images.
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