Ironically enough, the institution that vowed to teach young boys good manners, outdoor survival skills, and a sense of right wrong is now facing an alarmingly high number of sex abuse allegations. The Boy Scouts of America are being accused of conspiring to keep incidents of sexual assault a secret and protecting pedophiles.
The organization not only failed the boys and men who were taken advantage of, but also the country. Because the Boys Scouts are a federally chartered non-profit, they are required to provide annual reports to Congress. Yet, the organization failed to include information about abuse accusations despite being busy kicking out child molesters left and right.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a recent epidemic. In 2010, a judge ordered the Boy Scouts to produce a list of men accused of molesting boys in Boy Scouts, which the Boy Scouts called the Perversion Files. From that list, a child expert hired by the Boy Scouts grossly estimated that 12,254 boys had reported sexual abuse by at least 7,800 suspected assailants between 1944 and 2016. In fact, because of the rise in reports of sexual abuse, men who have come forward so far have named more than 300 “hidden predators” who did not appear in the Perversion Files.
Abused in Scouting, a group of law firms that collaborate on bringing such cases to light, have made it their focus to spearhead previously unreported cases of child sexual abuse in one of the country’s most prominent youth organizations. The group ran television ads throughout the United States asking people who had not previously reported to “protect tomorrow’s children, identify your abuser, and help put a stop to the cover-up” in the Boy Scouts by contacting the lawyers from Abused in Scouting. The ad helped the group collect countless allegations from men around the country—as old as 88 and as young as 14—who claim they were assaulted during their time in the Scouts.
If you or a loved one were a victim of sexual abuse while serving as a Boy Scout, contact Forester Haynie here or give us a call at 214-210-2100.
