Boy Scouts of America Sexual Abuse Perversion Files

The Boy Scouts of America has been aware of its history of sexual abuse for decades. In fact, the organization created a 14,500-page master list referring to instances of sexual abuse that occurred in the Scouts between 1959 and 1985. These so-called “perversion files” identify thousands of “ineligible volunteers” who had been employed by the organization and were suspected or accused of child sexual abuse or child molestation. And while the BSA claims that its goal was to keep children safe by maintaining this list of alleged child sexual abusers, many of the known abusers on the list were permitted to return to or remain working with children in the Scouts. In some cases, Scout leaders accused of sexually assaulting boys in one state were permitted to relocate and continue their abuse of young Scouts in other states.

Since its inception more than 100 years ago, the Boy Scouts of America has marketed itself to the American public as a safe and wholesome organization for young children, while concealing from Scouts and their parents the fact that pedophiles had been infiltrating the BSA in large numbers for years. Unfettered access to young, vulnerable children made the BSA attractive to pedophiles and child molesters, and by 1935, the organization had already removed more than 1,000 adult Scout leaders for sexually abusing young Scouts. In 2012, the BSA was ordered by a judge in a civil suit to make its perversion files available to the public. Those files were proof, one sexual abuse lawsuit stated, that the BSA “was continuously attracting pedophiles across time and geography.”

According to the Associated Press, “The files, [collected between 1959 and 1985], are a window on a much larger collection of documents the Boy Scouts of America began collecting soon after their founding in 1910. The files, kept at Boy Scout headquarters in Texas, consist of memos from local and national Scout executives, handwritten letters from victims and their parents and newspaper clippings about legal cases.” The BSA went to great lengths to keep the existence of the perversion files a secret, and in the early 1970s, thousands of the files were allegedly destroyed. To date, the exact number of sexual abuse incidents reported to the Boy Scouts of America is unknown.

BSA Covered Up Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse

One sex abuse lawsuit filed against the Boy Scouts of America in 2015 details “a long and sordid history of child sexual abuse committed against young Scouts” that has been documented internally by the organization since just after their founding in 1910, but kept from the public. Says the Associated Press, “At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting, a pillar of twentieth-century America. But, as detailed in the documents, their maneuvers allowed sexual predators to go free while victims suffered in silence.”

Not only did the Boy Scouts of America fail to report the ongoing sexual abuse or put a stop to it by making it public, the organization actually took steps to cover up accusations of sexual abuse by scouts against Scoutmasters, Scout leaders, volunteers and employees. “Again and again, decade after decade, an array of authorities – police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors, and local Boy Scout leaders among them – quietly shielded scoutmasters and others accused of molesting children,” the Associated Press reports. In doing so, the BSA and others allowed the abuse to continue for decades, endangering the safety of thousands of innocent Scouts over the course of nearly a century. 

BSA Facilitated Continued Child Sexual Abuse

One Scoutmaster accused of abusing Scouts in Georgia, named Samuel Otts, allegedly received a severance from the BSA and was placed on an internal probation program while the organizations conducted a secret internal investigation. The BSA determined that Otts was “ineligible” to work with Scouts, but when the Scoutmaster moved to Arkansas, the organization failed to report his history of child sexual abuse to the authorities or inform parents there about the allegations against him. As a result of the BSA’s failure to report Otts’ child sexual abuse to the authorities or make his history of abuse known to the public, former Boy Scout William Stevens says Otts was allowed to move to Arkansas, become a Scout leader there and abuse him at least eight times between 1979 and 1980.