By Aimee Green
The Oregonian
April 8, 2010
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/04/a_29_million_sex_abuse_suit_ag_1.html
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| Kerry Lewis is suing the Boy Scouts, claiming he turned to drugs and has had life-long problems after an assistant Scoutmaster molested him in 1983 and 1984. He began to tear up during closing arguments Thursday as his attorney described what his life could have been like if he hadn't been abused. Photo by Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian |
A Portland attorney compared the Boy Scouts of America to the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, arguing that the organization reacted in much the same way to cover up decades of child abuse instead of taking steps to protect children.
Attorneys for the Boy Scouts vigorously rejected any comparison with the Catholic Church in closing arguments in a four-week trial over a $29 million suit that has drawn national attention. They argued that the organization did its best to ban suspected pedophiles and was ahead of its time in recognizing the problem.
Kelly Clark, who also represented many abuse victims against the Catholic Church, asked a Multnomah County jury to hold the Boy Scouts responsible for failing to protect one child in particular: a Southeast Portland boy molested by an assistant Scout leader in the early 1980s. Clark said the Scouting organization has known it had a problem with pedophiles as far back as 1925, when it reportedly started compiling secret files on suspected child molesters, yet the Scouts kept the information from parents.
"You need to speak to them in the language that they will understand," Clark told jurors. "You take those secrets, and you shout them from the rooftop of this courthouse."
Chuck Smith, an attorney for the Boy Scouts of America, said it's unfair to compare the Boy Scouts to the Catholic Church, which for decades transferred priests accused of abuse into new parishes. Smith said the Boy Scouts kept files on suspected child molesters solely to ban them from the organization. It's just that the system didn't always work flawlessly, Smith said.
"Some mistakes were made," Smith said. "There's no question about it. We're not perfect. There's some questionable judgments."
Jurors will begin deliberating today whether the Texas-based Boy Scouts of America and the Portland-based Cascade Pacific Council were negligent in failing to protect Kerry Lewis from Assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes in 1983 and 1984. Jurors have been asked to award Lewis, now 38 and living in Klamath Falls, up to $4 million.
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| Attorney Chuck Smith Photo by Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian |
Lewis, who originally filed suit under a pseudonym, has agreed to be named by The Oregonian, which usually does not identify victims of sexual crimes.
If at least nine jurors decide the Boy Scouts are at fault, they will be asked to determine whether the Boy Scouts should pay up to $25 million in punitive damages for allegedly recklessly allowing Dykes -- who had admitted to a bishop and Scouting coordinator that he'd molested 17 Boy Scouts -- to continue to associate with the troop.
The jury will be able to refer to more than 1,000 files of suspected pedophiles compiled by the Boy Scouts from 1965 to 1985 across the nation. The Boy Scouts fought to keep the files out of the public eye, arguing they would be damaging to victims.
Judge John Wittmayer ordered the Boy Scouts to hand over the files, and the Oregon Supreme Court upheld his decision.
In January 1983, when Lewis was 10, Dykes confessed to Gordon McEwen, the bishop of a Southeast Portland ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In a videotaped deposition, McEwen said he individually met with parents of the 17 Scouts whom Dykes said he molested. Lewis was not one of them, and Clark and attorney Paul Mones claim that Dykes went on to molest Lewis.
Dykes was allowed to continue associating with boys through the Scouting program, the attorneys said. They pointed to Scouting rosters that list Dykes' name in 1983 and early 1984. A file that the Boy Scouts eventually created banning him from Scouting states that he was registered as a volunteer until 1985.
But Smith and Paul Xochihua, an attorney for the Cascade Pacific Council, said Dykes was booted out of the Scouting program almost immediately after his confession to McEwen in 1983. The attorneys said the troop rosters are inaccurate. Smith said the file that showed Dykes left Scouting in 1985 was clearly a clerical error.
Smith and Xochihua said McEwen was acting in his role as a bishop, not also as a Scouting coordinator, as Lewis' attorneys contend.
Smith said it was "inappropriate" to suggest that Boy Scouts volunteers didn't have the best interests of boys in mind and that they would allow pedophiles to hurt children in the name of protecting membership and money flowing into the organization.
"For 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America have been entrusted with the safety of millions of boys and young men," Smith said. "They are the most precious asset we have."
Many of those volunteers, Smith said, were parents.
"We rely on the knowledge of volunteers," he said. "That's what we count on. ... That's kind of our first line of defense."
Clark faulted the organization for failing to train volunteers about sexually abusive Scoutmasters and other volunteers, even though it knew it had long had a problem. Clark said the organization warned volunteers, parents and boys about all sorts of other potential dangers, including those posed by campfires and axes.
Clark said the organization was worried that if news of its pedophile problem got out, it would hurt the organization's public image. During the trial, Lewis' attorneys pointed to a 1984 memo circulated to Scouting administrators that described heavy media coverage of an Ohio Scoutmaster's indictment in the rape of an 11-year-old Scout. The memo contained a hand-drawn illustration of a firefighter dousing a fire.
Xochihua, the attorney for the Cascade Pacific Council, said the number of volunteers suspected of molesting children was minuscule. Of more than 1 million volunteers, perhaps 0.003 percent were believed to be pedophiles, he said.
Lewis' attorneys said the impact of pedophile volunteers was much greater than defense attorneys want jurors to believe. They said each child molester had potentially abused at least several victims, and that maybe 6 percent of child molesters are reported. That means tens of thousands of Scouts were potentially abused by Scouting volunteers, they said.
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