Vilnius City Council unanimously decided to strip Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the US House of Representatives who has admitted to child molestation, of his honorary Vilnius citizen title.
“Let’s hope we’ll never have any more cases where someone disgraces their name,” Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius said during the council meeting on Wednesday.
Hastert was named an honorary citizen of the Lithuanian capital in 2001 for supporting Lithuania’s bid to join NATO.
However, in 2016 Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison as part of a bank fraud case involving hush money to conceal his past sexual misconduct. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives admitted to sexually abusing boys as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville School in Illinois in the 1960s and early 1980s.
Hastert was also ordered to pay a fine of 250,000 US dollars into a victims’ fund and was obliged to participate in a rehabilitation program for sex offenders. Hastert was imprisoned in 2016 and was released 13 months later.
Hastert served as speaker of the House of Representatives between 1999-2007 and resigned amid suspicions that he had overlooked a scandal involving another former member of the House of Representatives, Mark Foley, who sent sexually explicit or ambiguous messages to teenagers.
Lithuania’s presidential office and Vilnius authorities initiated procedures for stripping Hastert of his awards after receiving inquiries from BNS.
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