The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
How Hearst built a nationwide accounting of sex abuse connected to Boys & Girls Clubs
When Hearst Connecticut Media wrote about a freshly filed lawsuit alleging past sexual abuse at the Boys & Girls Club in Greenwich earlier this year, reporter Hannah Dellinger asked what seemed like a simple question: Were there similar problems at other Boys & Girls Clubs, or had the nation’s largest youth development organization avoided the sexual abuse plague that had rocked other institutions serving children?
It took seven journalists from Hearst’s Connecticut newspapers six months and more than 3,000 hours of work to answer that question and produce the first comprehensive national accounting of the scope of sexual abuse claims connected to Boys & Girls Clubs across the country.
Our “At Risk” reporting project found 95 cases of alleged child sexual abuse connected to Boys & Girls Clubs in 30 states, including criminal, civil and pending cases with various outcomes.
It uncovered incidents where volunteers or employees with documented criminal histories assaulted club members, or where alleged abusers assaulted victims from more than one club. Sometimes, a lack of supervision or adherence to safety practices fostered opportunity for predators. While some cases were resolved years ago, many are still pending in court, and several new criminal charges were filed against club employees or volunteers during the six months journalists searched archives.
Boys & Girls Club of America does not publicly keep track of perpetrators or abuse allegations against staff or volunteers. Until now, there was no comprehensive list of accused abusers, dates and affiliate clubs.
Our project created that public database.
National club leaders say the organization’s more than 4,000 affilliate agencies are required to report sex abuse allegations to law enforcement, making such an allegation a public record. Background check requirements for staff and volunteers should suffice without a “master list” of allegations or convicted abusers within the clubs, leaders contend.
Obtaining those public records for civil and criminal cases alleging sexual abuse connected to clubs across the country was not a simple undertaking.
We freed up a group of reporters and editors who focused on reviewing more than 130 cases related to allegations of child sexual abuse connected to clubs. Some documents were available at low or no cost on the internet; others required a fee for each name or phrase searched in a court system, regardless of result. In addition to staff time, Hearst Connecticut Media spent more than $3,000 to obtain public records associated with the project, and more on travel for reporters to visit outofstate courthouses where records had to be examined in person.
The effort uncovered cases that spanned more than 70 years across 33 states. There is no uniform national system for state court records. Police departments, courthouses and municipal offices in every town, county or state have independent policies, cost structures and accessibility to public information.
To vet those cases, journalists read more than 1,600 documents, filed 100 Freedom of Information Act requests, and made countless phone calls to clerks along with inperson visits and thousands of emails. Friends, family members and reporters across the country offered help.
In Florida, where the Sunshine Law is the oldest state open government statute in the nation, records were often online and available at little to no cost.
Connecticut’s more recent court records are often found online, and experience paid off for journalists already navigating a “home state” system.
On the other side of the country, in California, access varied. The right case, the right phone call to a friendly clerk yielded quick, inexpensive results. In other instances, hourly fees for research and a perpage copying charge for dozens of files that contained hundreds of unknown documents were prohibitive. Flying a reporter from the East Coast to the west to dig through California court archives for three days was less expensive.
In Texas, access to records was as broad as the state is large. Some courts required checks or money orders in the mail before any work could be done, while others emailed documents within moments of a request.
For each incident that met the investigative team’s parameters, we wrote a story and added it to our public database. For some, it’s the only news account of the case on the internet. Additionally several traditional news stories highlight overall issues, patterns or themes uncovered and add context to our project.
Those stories adhere to a standard designed to convey the seriousness of the incidents while not revictimizing survivors of abuse.
Except in cases where permission was granted, no victim names are used, and details were removed that might identify a person who is a victim or was a minor at the time of arrest. While there are thousands of documents, they are not available to readers through this project to protect victim identities.
Special care was given to language, avoiding terms like “nonconsensual sex,” “sex with a child,” “sex scandal,” “sodomy,” “affair” and “fondle.” The goal was to describe the abuse allegations as abuse, and in clinical terms.
Compiling from scratch a comprehensive account of allegations connected to clubs across the country was about more than establishing a public database where none existed. It revealed potential pitfalls for agencies that serve vulnerable youth at a time when statutes of limitations on criminally or civily pursuing sexual abuse allegations are expanding in many states. Lisa Yanick Litwiller is investigative systems editor at Hearst Connecticut Media and was editor of the “At Risk” reporting project on sexual abuse connected to Boys & Girls Clubs across the country. Journalists working on the project included lead reporter Hannah Dellinger, a Hearst reporting fellow at Greenwich Time; Viktoria Sundqvist, assistant managing editor of the New Haven Register; Meghan Friedmann, a reporter at the New Haven Register; Peter Yankowski, a reporter at the Ridgefield Press; Tatiana Flowers, a Hearst reporting fellow at the Norwalk Hour and Greenwich Time; and Humberto J. Rocha, a reporter at the Stamford Advocate.