© Atlanta Blackstar
The Boy Scouts of America may have been tacitly complicit in the sexual assaults of hundreds of boys by failing to report the predators to police and hiding the allegations from parents and the public.
A
Los Angeles Times study of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 found that scouting officials often urged admitted offenders to quietly resign and helped many of them cover their tracks.
Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to cite bogus reasons for their departures such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and even duties at a Shakespeare festival.
The paper
discovered the details in the organization's confidential "perversion files," a blacklist of alleged molesters that the Scouts have used internally since 1919.
BSA lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view.
The blacklist often didn't work as men expelled for alleged abuses sometimes slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again, the paper reported.
A more extensive review by the newspaper has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.
In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from victims, parents, staff members or anonymous tips.
In about 400 of those cases - 80 percent - there is no record of BSA officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.
BSA officials declined to be interviewed for the Times article. In a prepared statement, spokesman Deron Smith said, "We have always cooperated fully with any request from law enforcement and today require our members to report even suspicion of abuse directly to their local authorities."
The files reveal a culture in which even known molesters were shown extraordinary deference.