May 02--Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert has been stripped of all honors from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame after admitting in court that he sexually abused several boys he coached on the Yorkville (Illinois) High wrestling team in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Board of Governors' ethics committee determined Hastert conducted himself in a manner "detrimental to the ideals and objectives" of the organization.
Hastert had been honored with the Hall of Fame's Order of Merit in 1995 and its Outstanding American award in 2000.
Those awards, along with those given by the Illinois Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa, were revoked Monday.
On Wednesday, Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison for paying $1.7 million in an attempt to cover up his crimes. That day, the Hall of Fame stated it would review Hastert's inclusion.
"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," executive director Lee Roy Smith said in a statement Monday.
