Boy Scouts of America faces large-scale suit over sex abuse

About 800 men have come forward this year alleging they were sexually abused as boys by Boy Scouts of America leaders, a group of lawyers said Tuesday.

Their announcement at a news conference in Washington, D.C., came a day after two Philadelphia lawyers in the group filed a lawsuit on behalf of a 57-year-old Luzerne County man who says he was sexually abused starting around age 12 by a troop leader in the 1970s.

“There is a crisis in the Boy Scouts,” Philadelphia attorney Stewart Eisenberg said during the news conference at the National Press Club, which was livestreamed on Facebook. About 800 men across the country have contacted the group, Eisenberg said.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Monday does not want to be identified beyond his initials, S.D. his age, and his hometown area, Eisenberg said. S.D. was a member of Boy Scout Troop 100 in Plains Township, near Wilkes-Barre. Starting when he was 12 or 13 years old around 1975, he was sexually abused for about five years by an assistant scoutmaster in his troop, Eisenberg said.

For nearly a century, the Boy Scouts of America has kept a list of thousands of leaders suspected of preying on young boys — called “perversion files” or “ineligible volunteers files” — and were kicked out of scouting, Scout officials acknowledged in April.

The attorneys have identified about 350 alleged predators who were Boy Scout leaders who have previously not been identified in the Scout’s “perversion files.”