{"id":22340,"date":"2012-10-22T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=22340"},"modified":"2012-10-21T17:12:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T16:12:22","slug":"boy-scout-files-give-glimpse-into-20-years-of-sex-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/10\/boy-scout-files-give-glimpse-into-20-years-of-sex-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy Scout Files Give Glimpse into 20 Years of Sex Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Details of decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America<\/a>, and what child welfare experts say was a corrosive culture of secrecy that compounded the damage, were cast into full public view for the first time on Thursday [18 Oct 2012] with the release of thousands of pages of documents describing abuse accusations across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe secrets are out,\u201d said Kelly Clark, a lawyer whose firm obtained the files as evidence in an $18.5 million civil judgment against the Scouts in 2010. The legal effort to make the files public, by a group of national and local media outlets, including The New York Times \u2014 and represented by another lawyer, Charles F. Hinkle \u2014 resulted in an Oregon Supreme Court decision in June ordering full release. Mr. Clark said in a news conference that the database would be sortable by state, year and name.<\/p>\n

Officials with the Boy Scouts fought in the courts for years to prevent the release<\/a> of the documents \u2014 more than 15,000 pages detailing accusations of sexual abuse against 1,247 scout leaders between 1965 and 1985, with thousands of victims involved, perhaps many thousands \u2014 contending that fear of breached confidentiality could inhibit victims from reporting other instances of abuse.<\/p>\n

But even as the court fight proceeded, scouting officials were also restructuring the organization\u2019s system of reporting abuse and promised to look back through other old files not released publicly. If evidence is found of past criminal wrongdoing by scout leaders, they say, it will be presented to law enforcement agencies. Thursday\u2019s release followed several stories in The Los Angeles Times involving a separate cache of files that also revealed failures to protect scouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely fell short; for that we just have to apologize to the victims and the parents and say that we\u2019re profoundly sorry,\u201d Wayne Perry, the president of the Boy Scouts of America, said this week in a telephone interview. \u201cWe are sorry for any kid who suffered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Child protection experts say that the efforts in recent years by the Boy Scouts to better track, report and train youth leaders, and its humility in admitting failure, are all laudable steps, but that much more is needed by an organization that built its name and reputation on trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt steps in the right direction,\u201d said Christopher Anderson, the executive director of Male Survivor<\/a>, a nonprofit organization for victims of sexual abuse. \u201cThe next step is that the Boy Scouts should provide support and help for all those victims and survivors who have been harmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

An effort to look back could be long and tortuous, if the files themselves are a measure. In their often chaotic babble of memos, lists and smudgy, photocopied newspaper clippings, often as not there is a lack of clarity about whether an accused scout leader was exonerated, convicted or neither.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example, a letter sent in August 1981 by a father of three scouts<\/a> in western Colorado and placed in one of the \u201cperversion files,\u201d as they were called, or \u201cineligible volunteer\u201d folders, as they were officially known. The man wrote in despair to scouting supervisors: a local scout leader, referred to in the letter as Joe, had sexually abused boys in his troop, including the writer\u2019s own sons, and yet was still being allowed to have contact with other scouts.<\/p>\n

Joe had been spotted at a big scout gathering called a jamboree, the letter said, wearing a leather name tag like all other scoutmasters. \u201cYour assurances that Joe was out of scouting and would have no further contact with scouting have just become meaningless,\u201d he wrote. \u201cDo you care about my distress over watching Joe insidiously get back?\u201d<\/p>\n

Other file entries suggest a guarded, institutional caution from scout leaders who seemed to be protecting the organization or were suffused with the belief \u2014 others might call it na\u00efvet\u00e9 \u2014 that a man who had admitted wrongdoing with young boys should be given a second chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe recognizes that he has had a problem, and he is personally taking steps to resolve this situation,\u201d a scout executive wrote in a memo in August 1972 about a leader who, a week earlier, had acknowledged \u201cacts of perversion with several troop members.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to let this case drop,\u201d the executive continued. \u201cMy personal opinion in this particular case is, \u2018If it don\u2019t stink, don\u2019t stir it.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

Identifying a sexual offender in advance, before any damage is done, has never been easy. There is no set profile for serial molesters except for their willingness to use positions of trust and power to manipulate their victims, said a professor of psychiatry who examined the group\u2019s internal files in a report<\/a> last month for the Boy Scouts of America.<\/p>\n

But human nature \u2014 in a mostly volunteer institution that millions of Americans have revered \u2014 also led again and again to dire results, senior scout officials now say. The file system was started in the 1920s in an effort to keep out inappropriate leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a different time,\u201d said Mr. Perry, the president. \u201cThat was a time when people thought \u2014 the medical community thought \u2014 there was a potential for rehabilitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The files do not suggest that scouting was \u2014 or is now \u2014 riddled with sexual stalkers. Some internal memos discuss the struggles<\/a> to be fair when proof was hard to come by or when the accusers would not talk to the authorities or press charges. Mr. Clark, the defense lawyer, said that some innocent men, wrongly accused, could have ended up in a file as well.<\/p>\n

Other sections are horrific, like the description of the scoutmaster who, according to a 10-year-old boy\u2019s account given to the police, talked about the virtues of the scouting life even as he slid his hand down the boy\u2019s pants.<\/p>\n

Sometimes incriminating information flowed into the file system \u2014 then apparently got lost or ignored.<\/p>\n

That is apparently what happened with Floyd David Slusher. In 1972, Mr. Slusher, then an assistant scoutmaster in Troop 48 in Boulder, Colo., was fired from his job at a summer camp after a pattern was uncovered of \u201covert homosexual activity\u201d with underage boys. His name was duly filed as \u201cineligible\u201d although no criminal charges appear to have been filed.<\/p>\n

Five years later, still in the Scouts but now in a different troop, Mr. Slusher was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault of a child. A Boulder County Sheriff\u2019s Department report, sent to scout headquarters, quoted boys who said Mr. Slusher, later convicted, had threatened to kill them if they revealed what he did with them, telling one scout that he would poison his food.<\/p>\n

Parents of scouts, the files say, were sometimes left in the dark. One memo in 1982 discussed the case of a man who had been confronted with accusations by troop members and parents. He had admitted everything, the memo said \u2014 \u201ctaking liberties\u201d was how it was phrased \u2014 and resigned, promising to undergo treatment.<\/p>\n

Yet the parents were not told that the man had been on the ineligible list in the early 1970s after previous episodes of abuse. \u201cOn the advice of the psychiatrist treating him and his minister, he was allegedly \u2018cured,\u2019\u00a0\u201d the memo said. \u201cHis service in the intervening period and his conduct appeared to be exemplary. This history was not shared with the parents,\u201d the memo continued, with the word \u201cnot,\u201d underlined in the text.<\/p>\n

But even some parents who felt betrayed held true. The father who in 1981 was so outraged by Joe the scoutmaster was also deeply saddened that one of his sons had become estranged from the Scouts. The father still held out hope that his son could become an Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in scouting.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt age 18 it is hard for him to understand that scouting is not at fault,\u201d he wrote, \u201conly misjudgment on the part of individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:<\/p>\n

Correction: October 19, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this article misstated the role played by Kelly Clark, a lawyer involved in the case. Mr. Clark represented a plaintiff in an abuse case and won a judgement against the Scouts; he did not lead the court fight to seek public access to the files. (That was led by another lawyer, Charles F. Hinkle.)<\/p>\n

A version of this article appeared in print on October 19, 2012, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Newly Released Boy Scout Files Give Glimpse Into 20 Years of Sexual Abuse.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Details of decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America, and what child welfare experts say was a corrosive culture of secrecy that compounded the damage, were cast into full public view for the first time on Thursday [18 Oct 2012] with the release of thousands of pages of documents describing abuse accusations across the country. \u201cThe secrets are out,\u201d said Kelly Clark, a lawyer whose firm obtained the files as evidence in an $18.5 million civil judgment against the Scouts in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}