US Boy Scouts accused of failing to prevent child abuse

The lawyer for a US man who filed a $29m (€21.6m) sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America told a jury the Scouts knew they had a serious problem but failed to act.

During closing arguments, Kelly Clark said the organisation had been keeping a list of Scout leaders suspected of abuse since the 1920s but never came up with any system to improve screening, reporting or prevention.

Mr Clark compared it to food poisoning, arguing that if Scouts were getting sick on a regular basis, something would have been done to prevent it.

But a lawyer for the Scouts, Chuck Smith, told the jury the organisation relied on local volunteers to take action because they were supervising the boys – not the national organisation.

And the standard of care expected for dealing with abuse has changed over the years and the Scouts were no different than other organisations, he said.

Mr Smith had just begun his closing arguments to the jury before the lunch break.

Mr Clark also referred to six boxes of files stacked in the courtroom that became known during the three-week trial as the “perversion files” because they document suspected abuse by Scout leaders and volunteers.

He told jurors they will likely be the first jury in the country to look through the documents and see for themselves the extent of the sex abuse problem in the Boy Scouts.

The files requested for the trial cover 1965 through to mid-1984, a period that includes the abuse of the Portland man who filed the lawsuit.

Mr Clark told the jury the Scouts have files stretching back over nearly a century, and that alone should have told them they had a serious problem that needed to be addressed more effectively.