Huh?
‘Perversion files' show locals helped cover up for Boy Scouts
Newsday, 18 October 2012
Local Boy Scout leaders, police officials, prosecutors and mayors helped hush up numerous child sex abuse allegations against scoutmasters and other volunteers, according to details in a trove of nearly 15,000 pages of so-called “perversion files” compiled by the Scouts from 1959 to the mid-1980s.
Portland attorney Kelly Clark released the files on Thursday.
The Associated Press obtained copies of the files weeks in advance and conducted an extensive review of them.
The files document allegations of sex abuse by Scouting volunteers across the country. The Scouts have been collecting the documents since the early 1900s, and continue to do so.
At the news conference, Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.
“You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children,” said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.
Clark's colleague, Paul Mones, said the files in the Portland case represent “the pain and anguish of thousands of Scouts” who were abused by Scout leaders.
Phi Beta Iota: Across America, we have become a cheating culture, a culture lacking in both intelligence and integrity across most organizations. Good people trapped in bad systems where the common fault is to conceal crimes and misbehavior. As Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York) states so well: When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.
See Also:
Boy Scout Files Give Glimpse Into 20 Years of Sex Abuse (NYT, 18 Oct 2012)
Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Broadway, 2008)
David Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Mariner Books, 2004)
Paradigms of Failure [ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig]
