Boy Scouts sued over alleged sex abuse in Conn.

CONNECTICUT
Miami Herald

By DAVE COLLINS
Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. — Two men in their early 40s sued the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday, claiming scouting officials failed to protect them from a sexually abusive scoutmaster in Connecticut when they were children in the mid-1980s.

The plaintiffs, identified only as John Roe 1 and John Roe 2, filed a negligence lawsuit in state court in New Haven against the national organization and its Connecticut Yankee Council chapter. They say they were sexually abused on several occasions by David “Dirk” Davenport when he was the leader of Troop 490 in Madison.

The men allege scouting officials knew or should have known that before Davenport came to Connecticut in 1983, he had been accused of molesting boys in Montana, Nebraska and Minnesota in the 1970s and early 1980s, sometimes when he was a scoutmaster in those states.

The lawsuit also claims the Boy Scouts officials kept confidential “perversion files” dating back to the 1920s that contained information on alleged pedophiles. The plaintiffs allege Boy Scouts officials knew scouting programs were being targeted by pedophiles, but they took no steps to protect boys or warn local troops, scouts or their families about the dangers.

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