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Boy Scout files reveal disturbing instances of abuse
After a lengthy internal investigation, the Georgia Boy Scout official concluded that the Athens scoutmaster may have molested as many as a dozen boys over more than 15 years. So the official took what he thought was serious action.
Without confronting the scoutmaster with the allegations, he asked him to resign.
The case of the Athens man, who submitted a resignation letter claiming that he needed to devote more time to his business, is among dozens of Georgia incidents described in the so-called “perversion files.” The files, many of which became public last week, were compiled by the Boy Scouts of America as a kind of blacklist to prevent accused molesters from participating again in Scouting.
Even in that limited aim, the system sometimes failed; the files of Georgia cases reveal instances in which the accused men were able to start anew with different troops.
In more than a dozen Georgia cases reviewed in detail by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there’s no indication that Scouts officials turned over the allegations to police.
Earlier this month, the Scouts national office apologized for any lapses and said it will forward the names of suspected abusers listed in their files to police.
A review of online court records did not reveal any prosecutions or convictions stemming from the incidents described in this story. For that reason, the AJC is withholding the names of the accused men.
“The fact that they did not hand them over to authorities — it’s mind-boggling,” said Daniel Fasy, a Washington attorney whose firm obtained many of the files as part of a civil suit against the Boy Scouts.
Noting that some molesters went on to sexually abuse other Scouts, Fasy said that reporting those allegations to authorities could have saved many children from attacks that devastated them for the rest of their lives.
Jeff Fulcher, spokesman for the Boy Scouts’ Atlanta Area Council, said after looking at some of the files, it appeared that Boy Scouts officials acted appropriately. “As far as I can tell, these files show that the safety of children was paramount,” he said.
About 1,200 files were released this week in connection with a court case in Oregon. Thousands of other documents were given to the Los Angeles Times last year by the Washing-ton firm Fasy works for.
The Times is publishing documents from those and other legal cases via an online database. The incidents covered by the database took place from 1947 to the early 2000s; the Georgia cases the AJC was able to review are from the 1970s and ’80s.
An abbreviated synopsis created by Fasy’s firm shows that in some Georgia cases, the accused men were prosecuted. It’s unclear from the synopsis whether the Scouts alerted police to the crimes.
In metro Atlanta, a Mableton Scout leader was arrested and charged with molesting his stepchild, according to the synopsis. A Lithonia leader was charged with molestation and sentenced to five years in prison.
Delving into the underlying documents, the children’s accounts are heartbreaking. In one Savannah case from the early 1970s, four boys gave statements describing how their scoutmaster lured them into his home, bed or tent.
One boy, 13, said the abuse began after the man asked him to help move items from the attic. He said the Scout leader molested him several more times at his home and on trips.
Another child said the man repeatedly asked him to sleep in his tent. The abuse started after the leader asked the boy whether he had ever massaged his father’s shoulders and requested the same.
The most gut-wrenching account came from a 10-year-old boy who described how the man sodomized him over the course of weeks in the 1970s. The abuse ended when the boy lashed out at the leader during an attack on a camping trip.
“I kept saying I wanted to go back swimming, but he said just a minute,” the boy told officials, according to the account. “I was crying and I reached around and hit (him) in the face, and said I was going to quit the troop and tell my daddy. (He) got up and just looked at me.”
The files indicate that Scout officials attempted to prevent the leader, who was also a teacher, from joining another troop in Alabama. It’s unclear whether they succeeded. No criminal charges were brought, according to the law firm’s synopsis.
The Boy Scouts of America, responding to this week’s release of documents, issued a statement Thursday saying “in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.”
The release continued: “Where those involved with Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest and sincere apologies to victims and their families.” The organization said its efforts to protect children have improved significantly. Boy Scouts policy is that a child is never to be left alone with an adult who is not his parent.
Many of the files reviewed by the AJC depict a time before child abuse became a well-publicized issue. Few if any children’s rights groups existed, and many public institutions that dealt with children — the Boy Scouts, schools and religious institutions — often were ill-equipped, if not unwilling, to address the issue.
“They swept it under the rug,” said Chris Newlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville, Ala. “But that doesn’t take away the pain and the hurt and the missteps that were made.”
Although the Boy Scouts wanted the men out of their ranks, Newlin said, they did not want to create a public scandal and stain the reputation of an institution swathed in the soft glow of Norman Rockwell paintings.
In consequence, he said, “they missed opportunities to protect children.”
The files also show a reluctance on the part of some parents to report the attacks to police. In addition to protecting their sons from further trauma, some expressed concern about damaging the good name of the Boy Scouts.
In a 1986 case, a Calhoun area man was removed from his position as scoutmaster after parents notified Scouts officials that their son had been molested on a camping trip.
The boy’s mother discovered the abuse because the child later became “very agitated and worried when he had to attend Scouts,” the family’s lawyer wrote to Scouts officials.
The letter continued: “It is not the intention of the [parents] to injure or harm anyone’s character or reputation. [The father] is a past Eagle Scout and he is worried ... that an incident like this could do great harm to his child and to an organization for which he has a great deal of respect.”
It was also a time when the issue of child sexual abuse was conflated with homosexuality.
A Fort Gordon Army soldier and Boy Scout volunteer was placed on the list in the early 1970s after he was accused of molesting three Scouts. He fought the accusations before both the military and Scout officials.
Defending himself in a letter included in the file, he said several psychiatrists had examined him, “all of whom stated that I did not possess any homosexual tendencies either active or latent.”
The man resigned from the Boy Scouts in 1971 but, according to the file, later registered as a scoutmaster with the Great Salt Lake Council. In 1976, he applied to work with a troop in Germany but was turned away after the national office reviewed his file.
Many of the accused men were in professions that brought them into contact with children: school teachers, a bus driver, pastors, a firefighter who worked with children’s programs. Although the files suggest that some of those institutions also were aware of the men’s misdeeds, there’s little indication that they, any more than the Scouts, passed the information to police.
Perhaps the most sensational and disturbing Georgia case is that of the Athens scoutmaster, who, according to the file was a prominent member of the community.
That investigation stretched over a period of years, during which an executive of the Northeast Georgia Council later wrote that he tried unsuccessfully to discourage the man from participating in Scouting.
“There was strong evidence that (he) had been involved with several Scouts, however, in all cases, it was his word against another individual,” he wrote in his report. Church officials queried by the Scout executive supplied even more lurid details: They had evidence that the man had kept an apartment away from his home without the knowledge of his family where he took boys. He had also provided airline tickets for two Scouts to spend a week with him in a hotel in another state.
The Scout official said he sought advice on how to proceed from two attorneys as well as a higher Scouts official. “There was still concern that we could place charges that would hold up in a court of law,” he said in his report.
In the end, he asked the man to resign. In his resignation letter, the man wrote, “I will always do what I can for Scouting.”
At this point, there’s no way for most of the victims whose cases are described in the files to bring criminal or civil actions, said B.J. Bernstein, an Atlanta defense lawyer and former prosecutor who has handled sex abuse cases.
She said the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution in Georgia is seven years. In civil cases involving child sexual abuse, it’s five years after the victim reaches 18. Bernstein said sex abuse cases can be hard to prove in any case, and the more time elapses, the more challenging they often become.
“It’s really hard to convict when the facts go back 10 or 20 years. So much has intervened in the life of the victim, and things like believability and credibility become more difficult,” Bernstein said.
In recent days, the Boy Scouts Atlanta Area Council has sent out emails to Scout leaders and parents, acknowledging the release of the confidential files. In the emails, Tracy Techau, the council’s scout executive, notes that today volunteers must provide references and undergo a national criminal background check.
Mitch Leff, whose two sons are involved in both Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in the Decatur area, said while the release of the files is upsetting, he is confident that the organization has the appropriate safety measures in place now.
“As a parent, obviously I am not happy that anything like this ever happened in Scouting and I wish it hadn’t happened,” he said. Nevertheless, he said, “we are committed to remaining in it and I hope my boys continue benefiting from what it offers them.”
Within the past year, Georgia adopted a law that includes Scout leaders among the people who are legally bound to report child abuse to the authorities. Next month in Atlanta, the BSA is hosting a Youth Protection Symposium in cooperation with other youth-serving organizations where nationally recognized experts will discuss the group’s policies and training.
But Fasy said more needs to be done, because attacks continue to occur. He said his firm has represented more than 100 children who were sexually abused while in the Boy Scouts, and few of the men involved even appeared in the “perversion files.”
“It has not by any means stopped,” Fasy said. “These policies — it’s not enough.”
