Boy Scouts face hundreds of new claims of sex abuse
More than 200 people have come forward with new allegations of sexual abuse by members of the Boy Scouts of America in recent weeks as a trio of law firms seek to uncover unidentified child abusers.
Advised by Tim Kosnoff, an attorney who has litigated more than 1,000 cases of sexual misconduct against organizations such as the Scouts and the Mormon church, the group said it identified 150 suspected pedophiles who had never before been publicly accused.
The law firms ran TV and Google ads encouraging accusers to sign on as clients for a potential lawsuit after a report in December that Boy Scouts of America – rebranded as Scouts BSA – prepared for a possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. A bankruptcy would automatically halt litigation, the attorneys told USA TODAY.
In a statement about the new allegations, Scouts BSA said, “Any incident of child abuse is one too many, and nothing is more important than the safety and protection of children in our Scouting programs.” The organization asked anyone who has been harmed to call the Scouts First Helpline (1-844-726-8871) or email scouts1st@scouting.org.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface,” Kosnoff said. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of victims out there when you consider the FBI in their research says a perpetrator has over 100 victims over a lifetime of offending.”
Kenneth Rothweiler, a partner at Eisenberg Rothweiler, one of the firms working with Kosnoff, said that over the past six weeks only a handful of the allegations have been related to previously identified perpetrators. The remaining 90% are new.
A few of the accusers are young, still underage or in their 20s, but many have held their secrets close for decades.
James Kretschmer and Kendall Kimber are among those going public for the first time. The two men, in their 50s and 60s, said they experienced abuse by their Scout leaders in the 1970s. They described a culture of shame and secrecy that kept them silent.
Kimber said he was abused by a leader who offered to help him prepare for the Order of the Arrow, an honor society within Scouts. At the leader’s house, Kimber said, the man forced him to perform oral sex.
“He did that while he was talking to his mother on the phone,” Kimber said. “He had nothing about the Boy Scouts or about what I was doing on his mind.”
Kimber said he never went back to the man’s house and eventually quit the Scouts. He said he didn’t tell anyone about his experience until much later, when he learned his brothers were abused by the same man. One committed suicide, which Kimber said was tied in part to the abuse.
“I probably would have gotten kicked out” for coming forward at the time, Kimber said, adding that he couldn’t turn to the senior Scout leader any more than the assistant who was abusing him. “I didn’t trust him either, so I figured there was a lot of that going on.”
Kretschmer said he was abused by a Scout leader who was his psychologist through the Air Force base where his father was stationed. He was a kid with attention deficit problems, he said, which were less understood at the time.
“Nobody would have listened to me,” Kretschmer said. “The problem is, then you think: ‘Is it something I did? What was I doing, was it my fault? If I hadn’t done whatever, he wouldn’t have done that.’ It took me years and years to realize it wasn’t that little child’s fault. It was the adult who had control.”
Both said they were speaking out to help prevent abuse.
“There are thousands of kids who may not have ever had this happen to them if people would have stood up and said: ‘No, no, no, we’re not tolerating this, we’re not allowing this to happen. There may be a little bit of mud on our face right now, but it’s the children that are important,’ ” Kretschmer said. “What about the next group of kids?”
The Boy Scouts have been dogged by abuse allegations since a case in 2010 that ended with an award of $18.5 million in damages and led to the release of more than 20,000 confidential documents. The records revealed that the 100-year-old organization kept track of suspected and known abusers, banning more than 1,000 leaders and volunteers from 1965 to 1985, but had rarely, if ever, reported suspects to police.
Among the responses the law firms received through their hotline and website, abusedinscouting.com, were two minors, one alleging an incident in 2018.
Samuel – whose name was changed to protect his identity, because he is a minor and an alleged victim – said he was assaulted by an assistant Scout leader around 2008, when he was 7 or 8. After a move across the state, he joined the Scouts to meet new people, at his mother’s urging. One of the assistant leaders positioned himself as a mentor, he said, frequently driving him to and from meetings. On one such occasion, Samuel said, the man followed him to his door. He asked Samuel’s mother if he could invite Samuel to his home to introduce him to his extensive technology collection. She said yes.
“She trusted the guy because he was always there,” said Samuel, 17.
Once they got to the house, Samuel said, the leader began touching him inappropriately. “I remember it graphically; the one thing I don’t want to remember,” he said. “When he took me home, I remember he said three little words: ‘Don’t say anything.’ For a while, I lived with those three words. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Samuel dropped out of Scouts. He eventually confided in his grandmother but didn’t go any further until he saw the law firms’ TV ads.
The attorneys probably will share their list with child protective service agencies, Kosnoff said, and may file a large suit. They’ve considered sharing the list directly with Scouts BSA but remain skeptical the organization would take action.
“It’s striking to me that we’ve had this kind of response in such a short period of time with such limited outreach,” Kosnoff said. “If we could do this with our limited resources, why couldn’t the Boy Scouts of America have done this?”
“We’re talking about tens of thousands of victims out there when you consider the FBI in their research says a perpetrator has over 100 victims over a lifetime of offending.” Attorney Tim Kosnoff