Hastert, Seungri, Singhal, Raniere, Liddy, in Perverted Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Episode XII

Dennis Hastert didn't want lawyers involved in hush-money pact, abuse victim says in deposition

Christy Gutowski

Chicago Tribune

Nearly three years after a man sexually abused as a teen by Dennis Hastert sued the retired U.S. House speaker for allegedly reneging on a hush-money pact, excerpts from the disgraced politician’s deposition have been made public in the ongoing court battle.

Answering questions under oath late last year, Hastert acknowledged that he agreed to pay $3.5 million to the now middle-aged man as part of a confidential agreement regarding sexual abuse that took place decades earlier.

Hastert began making cash payments in mid-2010 in exchange for the man not disclosing that Hastert once molested him while the two stayed overnight in a hotel room at a wrestling camp in the 1970s, according to the lawsuit and documents filed by federal prosecutors. The victim was 14 at the time.

The payments, however, stopped in late 2014 after banking officials alerted federal authorities about Hastert’s suspicious withdrawals. The recipient, a standout high school wrestler whose parents had been close friends with Hastert, is suing for the remaining $1.8 million plus interest on a breach-of-contract claim.

Filed this month in Kendall County court, Hastert’s deposition is heavily redacted and limited to about a half-dozen pages. Still, it offers a rare response to the lawsuit from Hastert, 77, who has kept a low profile in recent years. Neither Hastert nor the man who filed the suit in April 2016 have appeared in Kendall County court regarding the litigation.

In the victim’s deposition, also filed this month, he contends that Hastert did not want to consult with lawyers when the two reached their verbal agreement.

The man’s lawyer asked Hastert: “Were you concerned about being sued for what happened in the hotel room?”

“That was not part of our — my thought at the time,” Hastert said, according to the deposition.

Hastert said they both agreed “the whole issue would be held in confidence.” When pressed further about what details the man was not supposed to reveal, Hastert was careful with his response. “The issue of any allegations, any agreement, anything that was in that sphere,” he said.

The man said he did not want to sue Hastert over the abuse and instead suggested that they consult a lawyer to make sure their unwritten pact was legal.

“He did not want to go that route,” the man said of Hastert. “(Hastert) wanted this to remain completely between he and I.”

When asked how he responded, the man said: “I agreed, to a great extent, because I didn’t want this information out or I didn’t want my children or my family exposed to any ramifications that might occur.”

Hastert’s attorney, John Ellis, has argued the $3.5 million pact is unenforceable because, among other legal issues, the man failed to keep up his end of the bargain when he disclosed the allegations to his therapist, his wife, his father, a brother, a brother-in-law and a friend, as well as to federal authorities once they questioned him.

In his deposition, the man admitted disclosing the hush-money pact in general terms but said his understanding of his obligation was “not to go to a lawyer, not to go to law, police and not to go to media of any kind.”

According to his deposition, the man gave $5,000 to a down-on-his-luck friend in late 2012 after telling the friend that “something had happened between Hastert and I and I sort of motioned toward my crotch. And I said, so we have an agreement and I know you can use some financial help and I can help you.”

Once one of the most powerful politicians in the country, Hastert said in his deposition that he had to make multiple payments to the man because he did not have $3.5 million on hand.

“I didn’t have it,” Hastert said of the money.

“Could you have gotten it?” the man’s attorney asked. Hastert responded: “I doubt it.”

“Did you try?” the lawyer followed up. Hastert: “No, not really. I didn’t have any place to go.”

According to federal prosecutors, a total of five former students accused Hastert of having inappropriate sexual contact with them, typically during post-workout massages, during the 1960s and 1970s when Hastert was a wrestling coach at Yorkville High School, before entering politics.

Hastert was never charged criminally with child sexual abuse because of the statute of limitations. He was charged instead with violating banking regulations and pleaded guilty in October 2015 to one count of illegally structuring bank withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements. Hastert served 13 months in a Minnesota federal prison and was released in July 2017.

Hastert admitted in the plea deal with federal prosecutors that he was making the withdrawals to pay the man, identified in court records as Individual A, to hide wrongdoing. Authorities did not reveal the motive behind Hastert's hush-money payments until long after the 2015 indictment.

Tribune reporters learned the identity of the man and other victims in early 2016 after contacting scores of former wrestlers and students and filing two dozen open-records requests. The man has repeatedly declined to comment publicly.

According to his lawsuit, he suffered panic attacks for years that led to “periods of unemployment, career changes, bouts of depression, hospitalization and long-term psychiatric treatment.”

The man’s attorney, Kristi Browne, said Monday that his comments to family and close acquaintances were immaterial and did not violate the agreement.

“The purpose of the confidentiality agreement was to keep the information from becoming public,” she said. “(The victim) fulfilled this obligation and his allegations of Hastert’s sexual abuse did not become public knowledge until the FBI’s investigation, which was triggered by Hastert’s violation of federal banking laws. It was in fact Hastert who first disclosed (the) allegations of abuse to the FBI.”

Big Bang's Seungri offers to retire amid snowballing allegations of sex trafficking

By Yonhap News Agency

SEOUL, (UPI) -- Amid snowballing criminal allegations that Seungri of globally popular K-pop boy band BIGBANG was behind a sex-for-business favor deal, the singer on Monday offered to retire entirely from the entertainment scene.

"It would be better for me to retire from the entertainment scene at this point," Seungri said in a post on his Instagram account.

"As this social scandal is too big, I decided on my retirement. As for the ongoing probe, I will take the investigation seriously to clear all the allegations," he said.

The 29-year-old singer and businessman was officially booked over the weekend on suspicions that he procured sex services for potential investors.

A media report previously claimed that Seungri, whose real name is Lee Seung-hyun, used multiple nightclubs in Seoul's posh Gangnam area as places for lobbying using sexual favors.

The police have also been investigating Burning Sun, a nightclub where he was a public relations director, over suspicions about illegal narcotics use, sexual assaults and corrupt deals with police officials at the club.

As the allegations grew, Seungri suspended his entertainment career in late February and canceled concerts originally set for mid-March.

"I give my heartfelt, sincere thanks to fans at home and abroad who gave their love for the past 10 years, and I think this should be it for the sake of the reputation of YG (Entertainment) and BIGBANG," Seungri said in the Instagram post.

Google’s VP Singhal left with $45 million golden parachute despite sexual misconduct case – report

So much for taking sexual abuse seriously!

Amit Singhal when he joined Google in 2000 © Twitter / theamitsinghal

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, agreed to pay up to $45 million to retiring senior executive Amit Singhal, after its own probe ruled that sexual misconduct claims against him were “credible,” a new lawsuit shows.

The exuberant amount of money paid to Singhal was revealed on Monday in an amended lawsuit, filed by shareholders against Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in which it was accused of “disregarding, covering up, and rewarding the malfeasance” of its senior executives while handling sexual misconduct cases.

Amit Singhal, 50, retired from his position as Google’s senior vice president for its search operations in 2016. But last year the media reported that he was due to get “millions of dollars” as part of a golden parachute deal, despite having quit the company following misconduct claims levelled against him.

According to the document, a year before that, he grabbed an employee at a “boozy off-site event.” An internal investigation found that the VP was drunk during the accident (accident?), and the allegations against him were “credible.” Nevertheless, Alphabet’s leadership greenlit a generous separation agreement: Singhal was awarded payments of $30 million in the two years after leaving Google. On top of that, the former VP would later get from $5 to $15 million during the third year after his exit, if not employed by a competitor. 

Upon his retirement, Amit Singhal was described as an “incredibly powerful figure” within Google. The failure to disclose the allegations of misconduct later jeopardized his career in Uber, where he was sacked from a senior position in engineering. Citing sources, Recode reported that Uber did an “extensive” background check on Singhal when it initially hired him but failed to uncover the circumstances of him leaving Google.

Singhal was not immediately available for comment to the media on Monday, but previously he has denied the claims against him.

Despite promoting itself as a ‘woke’ and forward-thinking company, Google has been repeatedly accused of a ‘toxic’ workplace environment with sexual harassment prevalent within the company. In one instance, the tech giant reportedly signed off on a $90 million exit package for the head of its Android division, Andy Rubin, also accused of sexual misconduct (which he denied).

The company said that it is stepping up the fight against workplace harassment and has taken “an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority.”

It's just not very obvious yet!

NXIVM sex cult leader Keith Raniere faces child pornography charges in new indictment

FILE PHOTO: Legal Council representing Keith Raniere and the group NXIVM

©  AFP / Jemal Countess / Getty Images

Founder of the ‘self-help’ group NXIVM, which has been unmasked as a bizarre slave-master sex cult, has been hit with a barrage of new charges, which include production of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a child.

Keith Raniere, leader of NXIVM (pronounced 'Nexium'), an Albany-based cult that styled itself as a self-improvement group, is facing two more charges in a superseding indictment unsealed by the attorney for New York's Eastern District on Wednesday

It is now alleged that Raniere, better known as 'Vanguard' or 'Master' within the secretive group, coerced underage girls to participate in porn photoshoots for more than 10 years. He then kept files with sexually explicit images and stored them on a hard drive.

The memorandum issued by the district attorney's office stated that other high-ranking members of NXIVM that were put on trial along with Raniere were well aware of their leader's sexual relationships with minors. One of the underage victims was identified as "a fifteen-year-old girl" who was working for the group's co-founder, Nancy Salzman.

The same day new charges against Raniere were filed, Salzman pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge. The teen became "Raniere's first-line slave" in the clandestine sorority group within NXIVM known as DOS, which stands for 'dominant over submissive' in Latin.

Another victim was described only as "a child" whose sexual relationship with the 'guru' was "known" and "facilitated" by other members.

Raniere was arrested in his luxury hideout in Mexico in March last year and flown to the US, where he, along with other prominent members, including Hollywood actress Allison Mack and liquor heiress Clare Bronfman, were indicted on a number of charges. Apart from the new child porn allegation, Raniere has already been charged with forced labor conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit identity theft.

The court papers described DOS as a pyramid structure with Raniere, who was the only man in the sorority, solely at the top. New members, or "slaves," who were recruited into NXIVM were forced to give collateral to ensure that they would keep mum about the group. The collateral was sexually explicit images or videos, as well as true or untrue allegations made against themselves or their family which were filmed. The "slaves" were blackmailed into providing new collateral, sometimes as often as every month, which saw them signing over their assets or doing things that might kill their careers if made public.

Raniere is accused of subjecting members of DOS to physical and psychological torture such as self-induced sleep-deprivation. Raniere also instructed his female followers to have their genital areas branded with his initials and told them to survive on a 800-calorie diet, all under the guise of women's empowerment.

NXIVM was funded by wealthy donors and through personal development courses. A five-day workshop cost as much as $5,000.

Apart from Salzman, who was removed from the list of defendants after her guilty plea, all other senior member of the group, including mastermind Raniere, are still fighting the charges.  

Raniere was denied bail and is awaiting trial in custody, while Mack has been released on $5-million bond and placed under house arrest.

California deputy A/G, son of Watergate burglar,

charged with possession of child porn

By KRISTINA DAVIS
LA Times
 
A California deputy attorney general has been charged in San Diego federal court with possessing child pornography at his Coronado home.

Raymond Joseph Liddy, 53, was arrested Tuesday and has pleaded not guilty. He was granted release in lieu of $100,000 bond during an arraignment the same day and placed on home detention with GPS monitoring.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune - Liddy is the son of G. Gordon Liddy, who helped direct the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate scandal. He served prison for his role.

He seems to be following in his father's footsteps of becoming famous for all the wrong reasons.

For some reason, the LA Times decided to leave that rather important fact out of their story.

The attorney general's office said in a statement Wednesday that it was "aware of the matter" and that Liddy has been placed on administrative leave.

The investigation began after an electronic service provider sent a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in January that a user had uploaded an image that appeared to be child porn, according to the complaint. About a month later, another service provider sent a similar tip to the organization reporting that a user had uploaded 10 such images via a messaging program.

The tips were then forwarded to the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children task force, which traced the activity to a home in Coronado. Investigators dug deeper into the user's emails and chat logs and found the person portrayed himself as a 48-year-old married man with children, although his user profile also indicated he was 52, the complaint says.

When two FBI agents and a task force officer interviewed Liddy at his home on Tuesday, he admitted to using Internet services by the first provider and the screen name associated with the second provider, as well as other linked email addresses, according to the complaint.

He said he used the screen name and other aliases to share sexual fantasies online, saying he often downloaded sexual images but deleted them shortly after, the complaint states. He said he might have forwarded some of the images before deleting them, the document says.

He further explained that most of the images were of adults, but that it is possible some may have been of children, the complaint states.

Investigators then served a search warrant on his home and found numerous photographs on a computer and thumbdrive of minors engaged in sexual conduct, the complaint states. One image was of a nude girl blindfolded with her hands bound together, the document says.

According to his LinkedIn page, Liddy has been a state prosecutor since 2008. He received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law and his master of strategic studies at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.

A 2010 Top Attorneys online profile on San Diego Source said Liddy was a reserve Marine colonel.

His focus as a prosecutor has been on healthcare, including cases about drug pricing, Medi-Cal fraud, elder abuse, kickbacks and off-label drug marketing, according to the profile and other court records.

Good. At least he wasn't involved in prosecuting child sex abusers.

Exposés Explore Child Sex Abuse by Celebs

and Complicit Family Members

“Leaving Neverland” is the heart-wrenching story of two now-adult men

who claim they were victims of sexual and psychological abuse as teens by

Michael Jackson. Sadly, it’s only one of two such exposés out now.

By Howard M. Talenfeld  
Howard Talenfeld, founder and partner of Talenfeld Law in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

“Leaving Neverland” is the heart-wrenching story of two now-adult men who claim they were victims of sexual and psychological abuse as teens by Michael Jackson. Sadly, it’s only one of two such exposés out now. “Surviving R. Kelly” explores similar allegations against former R&B superstar Robert Sylvester Kelly, or R. Kelly. Together, they shed light on a horrible modern reality: children allegedly groomed by their star-struck parents, then handed over to sexual predators.

This story is astonishing for a number of reasons. One, of course, is how Jackson’s two victims reveal in such astonishing detail the abuse and the true magnitude of the emotional injury they suffered at the hands of a man who at the time was a global superstar. People whispered—some even spoke aloud—of Jackson’s odd behavior with young boys. Luring them and their families into his world, then having the parents so willingly release the boys into his inner sanctum.

The second cause for astonishment is that Jackson’s story isn’t the only one. Unlike Jackson, who died in 2009, Kelly is angrily denying accusations by then under-aged girls who claim to have suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse. He has been charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, at least nine involving minors.

The similarities are striking. Here were two global celebrities whose fame and money apparently blinded parents, who refused to ask obvious—even any—questions. What’s worse, idol-worshipping parents, family members and other supposed friends allegedly groomed these children for these pedophiles.

We know such sexual abuse occurs far too regularly. Beyond Jackson and Kelly, countless predators, including children and adults, are abusing children whose tales may never be told or heard. What’s worse is that when the children are in foster care, they have already been traumatized, first by the horrific abuse from their parents sufficient to justify removal then second, by removal from their parents, and finally, by the sexual abuse that indelibly impacts their lives as these children grow into adults. They suffer appalling and unspeakable effects of abuse while they are at the most vulnerable point in their lives. The two men in Jackson’s story both claim ongoing emotional trauma that pales next to what foster children endure. Studies show that many children abused by adult predators grow to repeat the behavior while others suffer relentless dreams as part of their post-traumatic stress disorder. Jackson’s and Kelly’s acts from a generation ago remain a modern pox on society.

The positive side to Jackson’s and Kelly’s public spectacles is once-unspeakable truths are being told. This may encourage other survivors to shed their shame and guilt, emerge from hiding and come forward to share their tales.

“Leaving Neverland” has been called “relentless.” Once-mighty untouchables “are falling fast,” wrote one reviewer. The hope is their fall pulls back the curtain that hid these abuses from public view and encourages other survivors to step into the light and seek heeling for themselves and others. However, most foster children did not have a Neverland, and experienced original abuse that was so horrible that the traumas that followed remain unspeakable.

Howard M. Talenfeld, is the president of Florida’s Children First and the founder of Talenfeld Law, the first law firm in Florida to focus exclusively on protecting the rights of physically and sexually abused, medically fragile, foster and other at-risk children. He may be reached at 754-888-5437 or howard@justiceforkids.us.