Scouts sued for ‘discrimination’ over autistic boy
A BRANCH of the Scouts has agreed to pay a family £42,000 plus legal costs after it was accused of discriminating against an 11-year-old boy with autism.
Ben Gleeson joined the 10th Harpenden Scout Group, in Herts, in 2015, but was later told he could not go to camps or take part in athletics without supervision.
His family sued the group under the Equality Act, saying that what it proposed was effectively a ban. They settled the dispute out of court last year.
The dispute stemmed from a short episode Ben had at a cub Scout camp in 2016, in which he became distressed after being asked to change into a pair of shoes he couldn’t find, and later said he did not want to join an egg-and-spoon race because of a phobia of spoons.
Beverly Gleeson, his mother, told the BBC: “Pretty much every event had to be supervised on a one-to-one basis, which I felt wasn’t inclusive. He didn’t have this level of supervision at school.” She said that the actions would “single Ben out”. Ben said: “It was quite upsetting, my friends were there and I quite enjoyed it. I don’t like the idea of someone following me all the time.”
The Scout group disputed a number of the family’s claims, but the Scout Association told the BBC the handling of the case was “completely unacceptable”.
In a statement, it said: “While cases like this are very unusual, we know that action must be taken. We have established an inquiry to investigate what went wrong in this case.”