J. Dennis Hastert has died at the age of 84, his legacy as the longest-serving House Republican speaker eclipsed by later revelations that he had abused underage boys as a high school teacher and wrestling coach. 

Kendall County, Ill., Coroner Jacquie Purcell issued a statement Monday confirming that Hastert died at his home over the weekend of natural causes. 

At a time when tributes and remembrances would ordinarily be pouring in for a former House leader, politicians and public figures had little to say. 

First elected to the House in 1986, Hastert departed Congress amid poor health in 2007, lauded at the time by colleagues in both parties who predicted he would be celebrated as one of the great congressional leaders whose guidance helped keep the nation safe after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

Less than a decade later, Hastert was in prison.

In 2015, he was convicted of attempting to hide hush money payments to a man who said he had been abused years earlier, one of at least four underage boys prosecutors alleged Hastert had abused when he was a high school wrestling coach in the 1970s and 1980s. 

It was not until the man was questioned by law enforcement agents investigating Hastert’s banking activity that he said he was sexually abused in a motel room during a wrestling camp trip when he was 14, according to a civil suit filed the following year.

Hastert admitted to the abuse at his sentencing, replying “yes” when Judge Thomas Durkin asked, point-blank, whether he had committed the abuse, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time. The statute of limitations in those cases had expired by the time authorities uncovered the abuse.

“What I did was wrong and I regret it,” Hastert told the judge. 

He was handed a 15-month sentence. 

“Nothing is more stunning than having the words ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence,” Durkin said at the sentencing.

After suffering a stroke, Hastert was incarcerated at the Rochester Federal Medical Center in Minnesota. 

A former high school football player and wrestler from Aurora, Ill., Hastert set his eyes on coaching after a shoulder injury sidelined him in college. With a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University, he became a high school social studies teacher and wrestling coach in nearby Yorkville.

After news of his abuse came to light, locals who spoke to CQ Roll Call remembered being taught by Hastert and seeing him around town or at athletics events. In a town where high school sports were serious business, Hastert’s role as a coach gave him status and respect in the community — and helped his abuse go unpunished.

“Think about it. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, there wasn’t really a safe place for a lot of kids to come forward in a very, very conservative Republican town,” Rhonda Annala, who at the time directed sexual abuse prevention programming at Aurora-based nonprofit Mutual Ground, said in a 2016 interview.

Hastert entered politics in 1981, with a seat in the Illinois General Assembly. He arrived in the House six years later.

He was a relative unknown when he won the speakership in 1999, taking over the role from Newt Gingrich, who stepped down after the GOP lost seats in that cycle’s midterm elections. 

Hastert would prove to be one of the most durable lawmakers to hold the office, serving as speaker for eight years until Republicans lost the majority in the 2006 midterms. He enjoyed goodwill from colleagues, who credited him with holding together a narrow majority. When members did butt heads, a largely hands-off approach helped keep Hastert above the fray. 

But that environment also fostered scandal. Hastert notably declined to distance himself from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, his friend and mentor, even after DeLay was implicated in campaign finance and bribery scandals. His credibility was further damaged after Florida Republican Mark Foley resigned in 2006 amid news reports that he had sent sexually explicit emails to former congressional pages.

Hastert later acknowledged that he had known Foley sent questionable emails, and had not launched a thorough investigation into the messages or Foley’s habit of spending large amounts of time with male pages, inviting accusations of protecting Foley to hold on to a slim GOP majority.

Battling health problems, including diabetes, Hastert resigned from the House in late 2007. 

One of his enduring marks on the institution was the so-called “Hastert rule,” an informal rule that the speaker should not send a bill to the floor unless it’s supported by most members of the majority party — the “majority of the majority.” 

But after Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to the hush money scheme, even that part of his legacy was beginning to leave a bad taste.

“I think they should come up with a new name,” Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid told reporters at the time. “I don’t think ‘Hastert rule’ is a good name.”