Thursday, August 09, 2012
After decades of covering up the identities and accounts of pedophiles in their organization, the Boy Scouts of America is being forced to disclose thousands of older files detailing abuses of young boys by scoutmasters.
The organization insisted it had the problem under control by maintaining a blacklist of confidential names belonging to sexual predators who had joined the Boy Scouts. Leaders claimed the list was used to keep the men from ever joining troops again.
But The Los Angeles Times found more than 125 cases stemming from 1970 to 1991 in which men continued to molest Scouts even after the organization first learned of allegations of abusive behavior.
Now, the Boy Scouts must release 20,000 pages from its secret files held at its headquarters in Irving, Texas, per a ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court. The decision came after the Oregonian, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and other media organizations sued to have the documents made public. The Scouts are continuing to fight in court to keep more recent files from being released.
Many of the files reveal that predators managed to reenter the Boy Scouts by changing their names, or because officials made clerical errors, or just failed to check the blacklist.
In some instances, leaders disregarded reports of abuse, which allowed offenders to remain in their troops and rape or molest more young boys.
One scoutmaster in the 1970s was expelled and convicted on charges of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in Indiana. Still, the Boy Scouts let him back into the organization, where he ended up molesting more than 100 boys over two decades. He is now serving a 100-year sentence in prison.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Boy Scout Files Reveal Repeat Child Abuse by Sexual Predators (by Jason Felch and Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times)
Boy Scouts’ ‘Perversion Files’ Didn’t Stop Some Sex Offenders from Preying on Kids Again (by Anthony Bartkewicz, New York Daily News)
Ore. Court: Scouts ‘Perversion Files’ to be Public (by Nigel Duara, Associated Press)
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