Boy Scout ‘Perversion Files’ Detail Years of Sexual Abuse

Posted on Oct 18, 2012

AP File/ Brent Wojahn, Pool

Plaintiff’s attorney Kelly Clark during closing arguments of a 2010 abuse trial in Portland, Ore., that resulted in a multimillion-dollar judgment against the Boy Scouts.

The Boy Scouts of America has been forced to release more than 20 years of secret “perversion files” that reveal numerous child sex abuse allegations within the organization. According to the records, there were reportedly more than 1,200 cases of young boys being victimized by Scout leaders or adult volunteers between 1965 and 1985.

Attorneys are working to procure the release of files after 1985.

Los Angeles Times:

The files offer the public an unprecedented look at how suspected molestations were handled by one of the nation’s leading youth organizations from the early 1960s through 1985, a time when awareness of sexual abuse was evolving rapidly.

“The secrets are out,” said Kelly Clark, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers in an Oregon lawsuit that resulted in a nearly $20-million judgment against the Scouts in 2010. “Child abuse thrives in secrecy and secret systems are where it breeds. And these secrets are out.”

Clark’s office made the files public—minus the names of victims and others who reported suspected abuse—after the Oregon Supreme Court ordered their release in June at the request of news organizations including the Oregonian newspaper of Portland, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the New York Times and the Associated Press.

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The release of the files comes at a time when the Boy Scouts was already mired in controversy for its discriminatory practice of excluding homosexuals from its organization. The group affirmed its anti-gay policy this year.

—Posted by Tracy Bloom.

 

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