DOVER, Del. — Insurance company The Hartford has agreed to pay $650 million into a proposed trust fund for victims of child sexual abuse as part of the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case.

In exchange for the payment, the Boy Scouts and its local councils would release The Hartford from any obligation under policies it issued to the BSA and the councils dating back to 1971.

The settlement agreement and release was submitted to the court on Friday by a panel of mediators that is working with the BSA, abuse victims and other parties in the bankruptcy to try to fashion a global resolution of more than 80,000 sexual abuse claims.

Nearly 90,000 sexual abuse claims were submitted against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) ahead of a Monday deadline in the organization’s bankruptcy case.

Why it matters: The number of sex abuse cases is still likely underreported. Paul Mones, a lawyer who has been working on Boy Scouts cases for nearly two decades, told Axios he expects the total number of reported cases to be “closer” to 100,000. He’s calling for a congressional inquiry into the scandal.

• The record number of new claims reveals the unknown scope of abuse.
• The organization filed for bankruptcy in February after facing a slew of sex abuse reports. Claims had to be submitted by Monday at 5 p.m. ET.
• Andrew Van Arsdale, one of the lead attorneys, called sex abuse an “unspoken norm” in BSA, per CNN. Claims include reports of forced sex, fondling and exposure to pornography.

For the record: Mones said more people came forward following the BSA’s bankruptcy filing.

• “Most of the people coming forward were not molested by people that the Boy Scouts even acknowledged they knew about, which shows that the problem was much more deeply ingrained in the fabric of the scouts and the scouts for decades and decades,” he said.
• Mones said the scale of abuse was much larger than the cases that emerged involving the Catholic Church in the U.S.

For decades, Gill Gayle thought his story of being sexually abused in Boy Scouts was unique.

Two Scout leaders abused him in the 1970s, Gayle said. The incidents were unrelated: The men lived in different cities in Alabama and didn’t know each other.

Gayle was in sixth grade when the first scoutmaster fondled him while on a camping trip. He repeated the abuse over months. After Gayle’s family moved during his eighth-grade year, he said he woke up at the second scoutmaster’s house to the man “violently raping” him.

Years later, after therapy helped him deal with depression, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts and attempts, Gayle, now 58, knows his story is all too common.

On Monday, Gayle’s claims were among the nearly 90,000 filed by the deadline in the Boy Scouts’ federal bankruptcy case – the largest-ever child sex abuse case involving a single national organization.