What are the BSA perversion files?

The Boy Scouts of America was founded in the United States around 1910. Within ten years, the Boy Scouts knew they had a problem with adult leaders joining Scouts to molest them. That was their sole purpose, and they started maintaining files on these Scouts. The files were called at first the “Red Flag Files,” then they became called the “Confidential Files,” then the “Ineligible Volunteer Files,” also known by the phrase “IV”. And what these files contained were reports to the main Scout office – at first it was in New Jersey, and then it was where it is now in Irving, Texas- of Scout leaders who committed sexual misconduct, who raped and otherwise sexually abused and molested boys who were entrusted to their care. And these files gave the Boy Scouts of America a total picture of what was happening around the United States with regard to Scout leaders who molested Scouts. The Boy Scouts, based upon these documents, knew that most of the Scout leaders who molested Scouts were single males with no kids in the troop. Yes, are there a few cases where there are Scout leaders who molested who had children? Yes, but most of them were single males. Most of the boys were molested, as the files show, in the context of Scouting activities. The Scout leaders would gain their trust , gain the support of these young boys by conducting – by doing – merit badge exercises and other scouting exercises where they bring, where they draw the boys in and then they would molest them. We know that the abuse occurred when the Scout leaders tended to be alone with the boys. We know that these Scout leaders also showed a great interest, and this is one of the most difficult things to identify, but showed a great interest in the boys outside of Scouting, so they befriended the parents. They would take the kids to school. They would babysit sometimes for these boys. The whole body of knowledge that the Boy Scouts of America developed over this time let them understand how pervasive the problem was, and unlike the Catholic Church which only knew based upon the diocese where the priests who were molesting were residing, the Boy Scouts knew it was happening in Montana, in Florida, in New Mexico, in New Jersey, in New York, big towns, small towns, wherever they were, they knew the way Scout leaders were molesting Scouts, and they had that information, and that information allowed them to know the scope of their problem, which was at least in the period of 1965 to 1985 was about 50 Scouts a year. And so the perversion files, in essence, we understand to be the largest repository of knowledge pedophiles that any one youth organization has ever maintained.