UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times
[with video]
The veil was lifted Thursday on decades of confidential sexual abuse allegations in the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America with the court-ordered release of more than 1,200 of the organization’s “perversion files.”
The files offer the public an unprecedented look at how suspected molestations were handled by one of the nation’s leading youth organizations from the early 1960s through 1985, a time when awareness of sexual abuse was evolving rapidly.
“The secrets are out,” said Kelly Clark, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers in an Oregon lawsuit that resulted in a nearly $20-million judgment against the Scouts in 2010. “Child abuse thrives in secrecy and secret systems are where it breeds. And these secrets are out.” …
In recent months, The Times has published an investigation of those files and thousands of case summaries from 1940 to 2005. The files and summaries were obtained from Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has sued the Scouts on behalf of dozens of abuse victims.
The Times investigation has revealed a broad range of patterns in the Scouts’ handling of abuse allegations that echo similar revelations about the Catholic Church and, more recently, the Penn State scandal involving assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
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