Trial Brings Boy Scouts of America’s ‘Perversion Files’ to Light

The Catholic Church isn’t the only big organization facing trouble in the sexual abuse department this week. The Associated Press reported Friday that an Oregon man who says he was molested by a Scout leader in the 1980s plans to use some of a stash of around 1,000 “perversion files,” as officials from the Boy Scouts of America apparently call them, to bolster his own legal case.  —KA

AP via Gawker:

The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the Boy Scouts have responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are believed to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia.

At the start of the Oregon trial, attorney Kelly Clark recited the Boy Scout oath and the promise to obey Scout law to be “trustworthy.” Then he presented six boxes of documents that he said will show “how the Boy Scouts of America broke that oath.”

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