More bad news for the Boy Scouts of America.
The embattled group has just been slapped with even more sex abuse lawsuits after a New York state law allowing victims to bring new legal claims on old abuses went into effect earlier this month.
The New York Post reports:
The nine new suits were filed late Monday in both Manhattan Supreme Court and Nassau County Supreme Court by lawyers on behalf of victims who charge that they were sexually abused as children by scout leaders in the late 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
The suits bring negligence claims made possible by the Child Victims Act, which took effect last week and opened a one-year window allowing victims to bring civil claims regardless of when the alleged abuse occurred.
For a century, BSA banned gay scouts and scout leaders, calling them “immoral, unclean and irreverent towards God.” They also forbade transgender scouts from joining until 2017.
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On top of that, the organization didn’t incorporate any rules to prevent child molestation until their Youth Protection Program of 1988 which opened meetings to parent observers and forbade adults from ever being alone with or undressing around kids. It also didn’t require criminal background checks, something that could have weeded out convicted child molesters, until 2008.
“Defendants have known for decades that sexual predators had infiltrated scouting, desiring positions around children, due in part to their sexual interest in children,” the suits filed on Monday allege.
“Defendants knew or should have known of the danger that pedophiles presented to children participating in scouting before [plaintiffs were] abused.”
Last year, BSA announced it was considering bankruptcy due to the hundreds of millions of dollars it owed in legal fees surrounding over 2,000 allegations of sex abuse by former BSA scout leaders.
Ironically, when the group began allowing gay members a few years ago, homophobes warned there would a mass exodus of outraged parents that would end the organization. Instead, it looks as though the organization’s downfall may come at the child molesting hands of straight, cisgender men.
Related: Boy Scouts of America considering bankruptcy due to thousands of child molestation cases
Jaroslaw
I think you would find any organization with multiple chapters in every state guilty of something over a 60 or 70 year period. While I personally was never a Boy Scout, I knew lots of schoolmates who were. Kids talk. I never heard a bad word about any scouts or scoutmasters and our family moved several times while I was growing up. No doubt there were some bad people, bad policies that needed changing. And like all of life change is slow and the Scouts are changing. In allowing lawsuits from 60 years ago I wonder if the officials or Scoutmasters who are guilty are even alive?
iron
under the spell of ignorance in of what you believe to be the truth. who you give yourself to
Cam
I’m not sure what the point of the comment is. Molestation has been proven, new cases have been filed. Nobody is saying every boyscout was molested, but there have been problems.
TroyCollins1457
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BStewart27
Still trying to find the name of the scoutmaster of the Cape Cod Explorer post in 1969. Raping a naive 14-year-old is just never good.
msfrost
~95% of child molesters are straight white men. (FBI Stats)
Juanjo
The Mormon Church has paid out a lot of money for this little time period. They sponsored many scout troops and a large number of Mormons volunteered to work in these local troops with some people ultimately caught molesting the scouts.
djmcgamester
I’m starting to think psyche evaluations should be required to be a Scout Master. I know it’s like 1 in 1000 who do this but they’re the ones who get the attention. Regardless, it should never happen. Kids deserve better than that.