As former House Speaker Dennis Hastert awaits arraignment next week on a federal indictment, a Montana woman who stepped forward with a specific allegation of sexual misconduct involving her brother suggested on social media that Hastert may have other victims from his days as a small-town high school teacher and coach.

In a Facebook posting discovered by POLITICO, Jolene Burdge told friends she was pleased to see Hastert indicted on charges he schemed to cover up $3.5 million in hush money allegedly paid to another victim.


“I can say with absolute certainty that there is sooo much more to this story. Finally the truth…,” she wrote in the Facebook comment just hours after Hastert was indicted on charges he illegally structured cash withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements and lied to the FBI.

Burdge told ABC News Friday that her late brother Stephen Reinboldt, who died in 1995 of AIDS, claimed to have had sex with Hastert while he was a student at Yorkville High School in Illinois. Hastert was a longtime football and wrestling coach, teacher and Explorer Scout leader known as a father-figure by some former team members.

Burdge told ABC that her brother, who graduated in 1971 and served as equipment manager for the Hastert-led wrestling team, confided the secret back in 1979 when he told her he was gay.

“I asked him, when was your first same-sex experience. He looked at me and said, ‘It was with Dennis Hastert,’” Burdge said. “I was stunned.”

Burdge said when she asked her brother why he’d kept quiet about the relationship, he replied: “Who is ever going to believe me?”

Many graduates of the Yorkville, Ill., high school where Hastert taught and coached expressed support for Hastert as the story of his indictment broke and said they never saw him do anything inappropriate. Several said they were mystified by the claims of sexual misconduct and cover-up.

However, one friend of Burdge seemed to have known of the allegations for some time.

“I immediately thought of you when I saw this!!!” Chris Mesko-Holzer wrote in a comment on Burdge’s Facebook post. “You must be doing a happy dance!”

Hastert, who was the longest serving Republican House speaker, has been in hiding since his indictment last week. In advance of the charges, he denied to POLITICO that he was under federal investigation. Lawyers for Hastert have not responded to messages seeking comment on the latest allegations.

The indictment a grand jury returned against Hastert last week refers to “prior misconduct” and “past misconduct” with an unnamed person referred to as “Individual A.” Press reports have said the inappropriate behavior was sexual and involved a former student of Hastert. The indictment does not detail the alleged misconduct, but suggests it was related to his employment as a coach and teacher from 1965 to 1981.

Burdge and Mesko-Holzer did not respond Friday to calls and email messages from POLITICO.

However, she shared a yearbook with ABC that includes an inscription signed “Mr. Hastert,” which refers to a trip Hastert took to the Bahamas with an Explorers’ troop that included Reinboldt.

“Steve-To a great, right hand man who gets that neglected feeling once in a while…I hope you make another go this year at wrestling manager - even though you’re a V.I.P. now. It would seem kind of funny not having you around, keeping things under control,” Hastert apparently wrote. “We had a great time in the Bahamas even though that one plane-ride did kind of get to you. You were really a good diver.”

Burdge said in the interview that she was contacted by the FBI a few weeks ago, shortly before the indictment. She added that her brother’s role with the wrestling team would have left him alone with Hastert on a regular basis.

Hastert, pictured top left in this 1975 photo, was a longtime football and wrestling coach, teacher and Explorer Scout leader known as a father-figure by some former team members. | AP Photo

“Mr. Hastert had plenty of opportunities to be alone with Steve, because he was there before the meets,” she told ABC. “He was there after everything because he did the laundry, the uniforms. So he was there by himself with him.”

Hastert started at Yorkville High school in 1964 as a history and economics teacher, just after his graduation from Christian-oriented Wheaton College. He did not have his teaching certificate at the time, but Yorkville allowed him to teach his first two years at with only a provisional teaching certificate, according to Hastert’s 2004 autobiography, “Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years in Coaching and Politics.” The school district has said it had no knowledge of alleged misconduct by Hastert during his years at the school.

Hastert coached both football and wrestling for a few years. He spent summers working for the international YMCA traveling to Japan, Colombia, Venezuela, and other exotic locations.

During his third year as a teacher, he moved into a farm house with three other young men, one of whom was a Yorkville High School football coach Bob Evans, the book recounts.

Hastert said he met his wife Jean Kahl in mid-1970. They married in 1973.

Hastert concentrated on building up the Yorkville wrestling program, which won a state championship in 1976, and taking his athletes on adventures.

“Another program attraction was the trips we took. I piled some kids into the van and drove nine hundred miles to a Granby clinic in Hampton Roads, Virginia. My kids, flatlanders all, had never seen a coast or an ocean or Navy ships before,” Hastert wrote.

The future speaker also drove the teens up to the Rocky Mountain Wrestling Camp in Gunnison, Colorado.

“We carried ten or twelve kids in the van each time and everyone chipped in fifteen dollars for gas. We removed the seats so they could pack their sleeping bags and gear and then sit on them. The more kids you had in the van, the less trouble they’d get into,” Hastert wrote.

Hastert even took the wrestlers to Washington, D.C., where they happened to see President Richard Nixon leaving the White House grounds by helicopter after his resignation.

“I felt a special bond with our wrestlers, and I think they felt one with me,” he said.

Burdge said she believed her brother’s relationship with Hastert ended after Reinboldt graduated in 1971.

She said Hastert showed up at Reinboldt’s funeral viewing in 1995 and was silent when she confronted him with her brother’s story.

Former Yorkville High School building where Hastert coached wrestling from 1965-1981 in Yorkville, Illinois. | AP Photo

“I was just there just trying to bite my tongue thinking that blood was coming out because I was just… So after he had gone through the line I followed him out into the parking lot of the funeral home,” Burdge said. “I said, ‘I want to know why you did what you did to my brother.’ And he just stood there and stared at me.”

“Then I just continued to say, ‘I want you to know your secret didn’t die in there with my brother. And I want you to remember that I’m out here and that I know.’ And again, he just stood there and he did not say a word,” she added.

Burdge had previously written to ABC News about the alleged abuse around the time that Hastert was caught up in a scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley and inappropriate contacts with House pages. ABC stated it couldn’t corroborate the accusations at the time and Hastert had denied the abuse allegations.

Reinboldt’s sister added that she never asked for money from Hastert but said that although she does not know the identity of “Individual A,” she thinks the person in the current case against Hastert knows about what allegedly happened with her brother.

When asked why she wanted to come forward with this information now, she said “now there’s people that are going to believe them” about their allegations against Hastert, who will make his first court appearance next week.

Hastert makes his first court appearance Tuesday.

Nick Gass contributed to this report.

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