Be Prepared: We've Got Pedophiles To Protect

The motto of the Boy Scouts of America [BSA] is "Be prepared" and they apparently take it quite seriously when it comes to protecting themselves from allegations of child sexual abuse. See, the BSA has taken a page from the playbook of the Catholic Church by denying allegations that there were child rapists in their midst, and by protecting those child rapists from prosecution in an effort to protect the reputation of the BSA.

The Los Angeles Times has uncovered some 1,600 confidential files—from 1970 to 1991—and discovered that BSA officials, when confronted with situations of child sexual abuse, often urged the predator to simply resign and go away’ and, at times, the BSA even helped the pedophiles cover their tracks.

And the BSA kept details of their “work” in something they dubbed the "perversion files." This is a list of alleged molesters and their crimes that the BSA lawyers have been trying to keep from public view.

Be prepared. The BSA “blacklist” of pedophiles didn’t always work because, like priests who were moved from parish to parish by the Catholic Church to hide their crimes, many of these scout leaders simply moved to another town and began abusing boys all over again.

Now, in most cases, the BSA learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities, but there are some 500 instances where they learned about the abuse from the boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips, and in about 80% of those cases, the BSA did nothing. There is no evidence of the molester being turned over the police, and no evidence of the molestation ever being reported. In some of those cases, BSA officials actually sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it.

Be prepared:

• In 1976, five Boy Scouts accused a Pennsylvania scoutmaster of two rapes and other sex crimes; the BSA allowed the man to simply resign, citing the need to travel for work. A troop representative accepted his resignation, with "extreme regret" and said, "Good luck to you in your new position."
• In 1982, when a Michigan Boy Scout camp director , who had discovered allegations of repeated abuse by a staff member, told police he didn't report them because his bosses wanted to protect the reputation of the Scouts and the accused staff member.
• That same year, the director of a Virginia Boy Scout camp wrote to the BSA's top lawyer, asking for help dealing with an employee suspected of a "lifelong pattern" of abuse that had not been reported to police: "When a problem has surfaced, he has been asked to leave a position 'of his own free will' rather than risk further investigation. The time has come for someone to make a stand and prevent further occurrences." The BSA did nothing.
• In Washington state, in 1987, a district executive wrote to BSA’s national office complaining that his boss had refused to put a former scoutmaster on the blacklist, despite a molestation conviction, "because he has done so much for camp and is a nice guy." The man said he's shown a newspaper clipping of the man’s conviction to his boss, who "crumpled it up, said he saw it already, and then said, 'Why don't you just put it up on a billboard for everyone to see?' Since that time, nothing has been done."
• A Maryland leader, who in 1990 "readily agreed" that abuse allegations against him were true, was given six weeks to resign and told he could give "his associates whatever reason that he chose." A BSA official wrote: "This gave him an opportunity to withdraw from Scouting in a graceful manner to be determined by him. We also reminded [him] that he had agreed to keep the whole matter confidential and we would not talk to anyone in order to give [him] complete ability to voluntarily withdraw."
• With 50 years in Scouting, Arthur Humphries was the model of a scout leader, winning two presidential citations and the Scouts' top award for distinguished service for his work with disabled boys. He was also a serial child molester, who was finally arrested in 1984. At that time, Jack Terwilliger, a local Scouting official, said here had never been any suspicions that Humphries was molesting boys, and yet Humphries own files show that Jack Terwilliger had ordered officials to interview a Scout who gave a detailed account of Humphries' repeated acts of oral sex on him. And Terwilliger, armed with the report that Humphries had molested at least one boy, went a step further to protect him by giving him a job reference two years later. Humphries kept working with the BSA after that, and molested at least five more boys before police, acting on a tip, arrested him in 1984. He was convicted of abusing 20 Boy Scouts, some as young as 8, and sentenced to 151 years in prison. 

While BSA officials refused to be interviewed by the LA Times, spokesman Deron Smith released a statement:  "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."

All well and good, I guess; but I have trouble with the idea that they cooperate when there's a "request" to do so. Why not cooperate, and report allegations of child sexual abuse, without being requested to do so? And the requirement that the BSA "report even suspicion of abuse directly to their local authorities” wasn't instituted until 2010. Before that the official BSA policy was to obey state laws, which didn't always require youth groups to report abuse.

The article suggests the BSA actually broke those laws in an effort to protect their image.Since the 70s, New Jersey law requires anyone who suspects child abuse to report it, yet in several cases of molestation by scouting officials in New Jersey, the BSA received firsthand reports of alleged abuse, but nothing to inform police.

Scouting officials say they kept allegations quiet as a way of sparing young 

victims embarrassment.

Yes, it was all done to protect the innocent children from being embarrassed that an adult had raped or sodomized them, oftentimes repeatedly. None of this was done to protect the image of the Boy Scouts of America; none of this was done to protect rapists.

Where, oh where, have we heard this before…..

via The LA Times