02-29-2020, 12:00 PM
The Boy Scouts have been dogged by sexual abuse lawsuits for decades. One of the earliest cases dates back to 1977, when four New Orleans scoutmasters either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of sexually assaulting young boys.
But it wasn’t until 2012 that the extent of the abuse — and BSA’s knowledge of it — became public.
That year, the Oregon Supreme Court ordered the release of 1,200 confidential files that BSA had kept on suspected child abusers from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Known within the organization as the “ineligible volunteer files,” the list included names of alleged abusers and what they were believed to have done. (Other files, dating back to the 1920s, have not been publicly released.)
The Boy Scouts of America did not respond to a request for comment, but in a 2018 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Michael Surbaugh, then the chief scout executive of the BSA, explained that the files were an ad hoc attempt to prevent pedophiles from moving from troop to troop.
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But it wasn’t until 2012 that the extent of the abuse — and BSA’s knowledge of it — became public.
That year, the Oregon Supreme Court ordered the release of 1,200 confidential files that BSA had kept on suspected child abusers from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Known within the organization as the “ineligible volunteer files,” the list included names of alleged abusers and what they were believed to have done. (Other files, dating back to the 1920s, have not been publicly released.)
The Boy Scouts of America did not respond to a request for comment, but in a 2018 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Michael Surbaugh, then the chief scout executive of the BSA, explained that the files were an ad hoc attempt to prevent pedophiles from moving from troop to troop.
(continued)