National Wrestling Hall Of Fame Revokes Dennis Hastert's Awards

By Mae Rice in News on May 3, 2016 4:21PM

The National Wrestling Hall of Fame (NWHF) will revoke Dennis Hastert's wrestling awards, in light of accusations that the former Speaker of the U.S. House abused teenage boys while working as a high school wrestling coach in Yorkville, IL decades ago.

The NWHF ethics committee found that Hastert's actions were "detrimental to the ideals and objectives" of the organization, the NWHF said in a statement.

“In the 40 years since it was founded, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame has never had to remove an individual who had received one of its highest awards,” Lee Roy Smith, Executive Director of the NWHF, said in a statement.

In total, Hastert was stripped of four awards: the Order of Merit and the Outstanding American awards he received from the NWHOF in 1996 and 2000, the Outstanding American award he received from the Illinois Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Sport of Lincoln Award he received from the Dan Gable Museum in 2009.

Last week, Hastert was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for committing federal bank fraud. The fraud was bound up in the abuse allegations against Hastert, though; he allegedly broke the law while paying for the ongoing silence of his victims.

[h/t Associated Press]