The sexual abuse scandal roiling the bankrupt Boy Scouts of America is on track to dwarf a similar scandal that rocked the Catholic Church.
Men and boys who were abused as Scouts face a deadline: They must file claims with the court by 2 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, Nov. 16, to be eligible for redress through a victims’ compensation fund. But while the BSA was expecting some 12,000 men to step forward, the number is many, many times that, casting a darker cloud over the resolution of its bankruptcy proceedings.
“It’s going to easily reach 40,000, maybe even 50,000,” said Los Angeles attorney Paul Mones, who sued the Boy Scouts on behalf of an Oregon man a decade ago — leading to the release of the “Perversion Files,” details of alleged sexual abuse secretly kept by the Boy Scouts for decades, as well as a $19.9 million verdict for the former Scout.
Those files revealed two things that will be the organization’s legacy, Mones said: That the Boy Scouts of America knew about sexual abuse in its ranks for decades, and that it didn’t alert the people who most desperately needed to know — parents and their children.
View news article Opens in a new window