Category Archive for : ‘STATE BY STATE ILLINOIS’

Serial child molester Dennis Hastert is back in Illinois for a month of supervised confinementto wrap up his 15-month federal prison sentence. Let’s not pretend he’s paid his debt tosociety.

The former U.S. House speaker, now 75, caught a break, pleading guilty to a financial crimebecause it was too late to prosecute him for sexually abusing boys while he was the wrestling coachat Yorkville High School in the 1960s and ’70s.

For decades, Hastert’s victims struggled with confusion and shame as they watched their formerteacher rise from the Illinois General Assembly to

Newsday

Lawmakers across the country are doling out tougher punishments for sex offenders – fromsatellite tracking to the death penalty – but a handful of states are starting to ease up onpenalties in cases of youths arrested for sex. Laws enacted this year in Connecticut, Florida,Indiana and Texas, and a bill waiting for the governor’s approval in Illinois, try to draw clearerdistinctions between sexual predators and adolescents who pose less of a risk, such as those caughtin the so-called Romeo and Juliet relationships. Even when adolescents are only a few yearsapart,