US Scouts face bill for millions over abuse case

The US Boy Scouts organisation has been ordered to pay $1.4m (€1m) to a man who claimed he was sexually abused by a leader as a child.

There could be more financial damage to come, with jurors set to go back to court next week to decide whether the Scouts must pay up to another $25m (€18.4m) in punitive damages.

A jury in Portland, Oregon, ruled the group had failed to protect the youngster. Its decision was based partly on the introduction as evidence of more than 1,000 so-called “perversion files” secretly kept by the Boy Scouts of America at the group’s national headquarters from 1965 to mid-1984.

The Scouts plan to appeal and argue that the files are outdated and do not reflect current prevention efforts or even past policy.

“The safety of the young people currently in the Scouting program has never been in question during these legal proceedings,” said a spokesman for the Scouts.

The court was told the practice of keeping secret files on scoutmasters and volunteers dates back to shortly after the Scouts were founded in 1910.

The documents were first revealed in 1935 when The New York Times reported a speech by James West, the first chief scout executive, who said the Boy Scouts kept a “red flag list” of leaders who had been removed for various causes.

The files were later nicknamed “perversion files” but were mostly forgotten and eventually labelled “ineligible volunteer” or “IV” files, held under lock and key at headquarters.

Lawyers for the Scouts argued the files helped weed out suspected child molesters.

But lawyers for Kerry Lewis, who filed the lawsuit, argued that keeping them secret meant that parents, children and volunteers were not warned about the risk of sexual abuse.

They added there was also a failure to set up a system to prevent and report abuse, and make it a priority among all its members – despite decades of files.

The lawyers focused on the files from 1965 to mid-1984 in their case, calling them the “tip of the iceberg” because sex abuse is considered to be greatly underreported, especially in that era.

They said the abuse that Lewis, 38, endured as a boy in the early 1980s was an illustration of the scope of the problem.

A former assistant Scoutmaster, Timur Dykes, admitted in 1983 that he had abused 17 Boy Scouts.

But despite the admission to a bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsored the Scout troop, Dykes continued to associate with Lewis and other Scouts.

Lewis’ parents did not learn the truth about Dykes until a police officer made a routine traffic stop during a camping trip and discovered that Dykes had a record, and arrested him in front of Lewis and other boys.

Dykes was later convicted three times of various abuse charges involving boys and served time in prison. Shortly before the Portland trial, he acknowledged in a deposition to abusing Mr Lewis.

The jury yesterday found the Boy Scouts negligent, which the organisation had denied, pointing the finger instead at Dykes and suggesting at times that parents and the Mormon church shared some blame. It was the charter organisation for an estimated third to half of the Boy Scout troops in the nation in the 1980s.

One witness for the Scouts even called parents “criminal” for allowing them to repeatedly sleep over at the man’s house.

The church settled its portion of the Portland case before trial. Its $350,000 (€257,000) of the $1.4m (€1m) award, or 25%, was considered to be part of the settlement, so that money has already been paid, said church lawyer Steve English.

“We settled these claims well over a year ago and were able to give the victims compensation to start their healing process,” he said, adding that “the LDS church absolutely condemns any kind of child abuse.”

Lawyers for the Scouts had argued the abuse problem was tiny compared to the size of the organisation – which currently has about 2.7 million Scouts and 1.1 million volunteers spread around about 300 councils across America.

But that small fraction of victims may cost the organisation millions of dollars with at least five similar cases pending in Oregon alone.