SEATTLE (WA)
The Seattle Times

November 16, 2020

By Lewis Kamb

Before a Monday deadline, tens of thousands of men — including scores from Washington — already have filed sexual-abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in a federal bankruptcy case the national organization hopes will help it emerge from the cloud of a decades-old scandal.

But the sheer flood of claims that already have rolled in has revealed the hidden horrors of pedophilia perpetuated in scouting programs at a level vastly more widespread than previously known, some claimants’ lawyers said.

Not only does the far-reaching bankruptcy case now jeopardize the national BSA’s existence, but it throws into question whether hundreds of local scouting councils in Washington and around the nation can survive unscathed, according to two Seattle attorneys involved in the case.

“It was a disastrous decision,” Michael Pfau, a Seattle attorney who co-represents more than…