The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.” Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.
This is an update of a report that first aired in March 2021.
The group that made its name teaching survival skills to boys – is now struggling for its own survival. This month the Boy Scouts reached a settlement to pay $850 million to 60,000 sex abuse victims. Today’s cover story: How a bankruptcy case turned into the biggest sexual abuse lawsuit in history. A caution – some of the accounts are graphic.
In the 1980s, Philip Clark was a 12-year-old, growing up in Bossier City, Louisiana and doing what all his classmates were doing – signing up for the Boy Scouts.
Philip Clark: Yeah, school offered it, friends were in it. My mom was single, three boys and things of that nature. I wanted to kind of be a man and this offered that
The reality proved far different. Soon, Clark says, he was among the boys handpicked to report alone to a scout leader’s tent on a campout. This is the first time he’s spoken publicly about it.
Philip Clark: Well then, you got to take off your shirt so he can put the badge on it. That’s how it starts, right?
Sharyl: Did it just seemed normal at first?
Philip Clark: Well, I mean, you got trust or whatever in these people, you know what I mean? You’ve done things with them before and it was okay.
Sharyl: Only as explicit as you want to be, but was there sexual abuse after the man told you to take your shirt off?
Philip Clark: Yeah, pants came next, and then he pulled his penis out, and he played with himself. And then showed you a certain way to do things. Yeah.
After he left that troop, he says more abuse came at a troop he joined in his neighborhood at the hands of the cub scout den mother and her friends.
Sharyl: And so, would the male friends come to the meetings when you were there?
Philip Clark: Yeah. And never really paid any attention to that until she put my head between her legs, basically where I couldn’t breathe. And while he’s fondling me from the back.
Sharyl: How has that impacted just maybe-
Philip Clark: Everything in my daily life, yeah. From intimacy, from trust, communication, withdrawn from school, withdrawn from friends. Something was stolen from me.
Stories like Clark’s are being repeated thousands of times as a result of a court action that’s put a horrifying asterisk on the Boy Scouts’ decades-old legacy.
Since its founding shortly after 1900, the Boy Scouts have helped shape the lives of 130-million youngsters with help from 35-million adult volunteers.
“America’s manpower begins with boy power, let’s not waste it. be a volunteer worker with the boy scouts.”
Now a wave of sexual abuse claims has emerged through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case filed early last year.
Attorney Steve Babin represents Clark and thousands of other alleged victims.
Sharyl: I think, for decades, a lot of people have heard stories about abuse within the Boy Scouts. How did this lawsuit finally come about?
Steven Babin: I mean, it was essentially started by the Boy Scouts themselves. There were a number of lawsuits that had been filed across the country. I think the Boy Scouts did some internal audits and investigations and determined that the amount of liability is tremendous here. So, the option would be to continue to litigate in regular court, or to go into bankruptcy and see if some type of resolution can be gained through reorganization.
Nobody denies there’s been egregious abuse.
Former scout leader David Kress was accused of giving boys as young as age 10 liquor and showing them pornography before raping them and threatening them if they told. He’s serving 15 years in prison.
Former boy scout Catholic chaplain James Glawson is serving 40 years for sexually assaulting six boys, one developmentally disabled.
Former scout leader Matthew Baker got life in prison after molesting boys as young as age 8, and allegedly trying to have some of them killed.
Former scout leader Ronald Rowcliffe pleaded guilty after boys said he grabbed their genitals while adjusting their shooting stance.
Former scout leader Carlos Acevedo is also serving life after raping a 12-year old and selling him for sex with other men.
Ex-Boy Scout volunteer Thomas Daleske was found dead in prison last year where he was serving 45 years for abusing six boys.
Former scout leader Darrell Fisher – an 18 year sentence after sexually assaulting boys and forcing them to change a soiled diaper he wore.
David Watkins — 30 years on 36 counts; he defended the sex with boys as “consensual.”
Arthur Sorensen Jr. —15 years in prison after charges involving child porn and rape.
Scott Wortman, Bruce Quick, Michael Kelsey… all ex-scout leaders convicted of criminal charges
Steven Babin: So, I know that there are abusers that have been convicted. I don’t know how many. I do know that the Boy Scouts kept files – they called them the “Pervert Files”— on hand, that were files of known abusers
Sharyl: Tell me about the “Pervert Files.”
Steven Babin: So, what they are, are lists of individuals who have been accused of child abuse, child sex abuse in this case, and what the Boy Scouts did with those lists, which is essentially nothing. Oftentimes, they were simply moved to another troop, or quietly moved out of the Boy Scouts.
The Boy Scouts organization has admitted to maintaining extensive confidential files, but says the goal was to keep sexual abusers out of scouting.
Within those files was the case of Douglas Nail. Accused of molestation at a boy scout sleepover in 1984, he was allowed to quietly resign. He spent the next two decades coaching youth hockey, eventually accused of molesting an eight-year-old. In 2004, 20 years after the scouts first flagged him, he was convicted on federal child porn charges.
The Boy Scouts of America declined our interview request. The group has said: “Nothing is more important than the safety and protection of children. New policies include a multi-layered process of safeguards, a ban against one-on-one encounters between adults and children, criminal background checks, and mandatory reporting of suspected abuse to police.”
Meantime, with financial terms for victims being negotiated, the Boy Scouts’ insurance provider has argued that opportunist lawyers are drumming up cases.
For decades the Boy Scouts of America admitted thousands of child molesters into their scouting ranks enabling countless acts of sexual abuse to occur against innocent children:
After all the ad campaigns, the number of claims jumped from under 2,000 to 95,000 by the November 16 deadline last year.
Some suspects claim they’re wrongly accused.
“It simply did not happen.”
In February, attorney and former scout leader Barry Rozas was arrested on a rape charge. His name among 28 complaints the local Boy Scouts council turned over to police. They received the names through the bankruptcy case
“And there are no circumstances that can ever be misconstrued as inappropriate in all of my years as being a scout leader.”
Amid the scandal is an overriding question: Will the Boy Scouts of America survive the financial hit from compensating confirmed victims, and will it survive the damage to their brand name?
Former Eagle scout— and former scout leader— Chuck Pezeshki says it would be a mistake to shut them down.
Chuck Pezeshki: The problem with zero tolerance is it’s easy to take apart an organization like Scouts and it’s potential, Sharyl, that scouting won’t survive this series of lawsuits. Basically, we’re all into deconstructing and tearing apart these institutions without feeling any obligation to think of how we’re going to replace them. So, scouting right now is one of the venues that both girls and boys can use to get out and have those experiential educational experiences that mostly you cannot get inside grade school and high school.
Philip Clark: It came out where finally, it’s not just me alone. That it wasn’t my fault. So, whoever’s fault it is needs to pay for that. And I’m not talking about money. I’m just talking about be held, not, “Okay, let’s go ahead and put this under the rug with everything else like they always do, like they’re still doing.”
A court hearing on the proposed $850 million settlement is set for later this week (July 29).
Watch below:
https://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/the-boy-scouts-07-22-2021
The abuse in the Boy Scouts is quite old. One of my adult leaders was arrested and charged with scores of crimes back in the 1970s. It is too difficult to find information on those cases so I don’t know his ultimate fate. But this abuse is not new and the Boy Scouts seemed to have avoided dealing with this issue for decades.
Sharyl and Full Measure Team,
Re: Boy Scouts—victims of Hollywood and PORN industry.
Shut down that porn industry!, as it is key to grooming
kids and adults for mental/emotional illness (( mostly in
men and boys, but women and girls are increasingly at
risk )).
Consider how Porn had had a very
EVIL impact on Ted Bundy—and the
women he enjoyed hunting and
torturing and murdering :
His childhood traumas aside, TED BUNDY self-analyzed!
—and had reported how his deadly sexual habit was groomed
into existence by pornography (( Bondage / S & M / Murder )).
Media, Hollywood, psychologists, and sociologists had responded
to his truth-telling by mocking him, and coming to the defense of
pornography (( one such defender, in my radio market, still argues
a defense of it : as being “harmless” )) !
After the defenders’ initial comments, nothing more was said
of it.
Get a clue, folks!—as porn destroys family formations; ergo,
wrecks civilized society.
Always mention Bundy’s self-analysis—and psychologists’
own addiction-related defense of that corrupting influence.
-Rick
Re the RAMSEY case, members of her parents’ coven had
come into the house, that very morning, and wiped down
the kitchen!—to SCRUB any evidence; and keep in mind,
his first daughter had claimed sexual abuse by him. Then,
she was killed in an odd traffic accident (( study Satanic
Ritual Abuse, and learn how traffic accidents are a routine
way of keeping any RITUAL abusers protected from harm ! )).
The
Psychology
Driving
the
Above-Described
Madness :
– Forwarded Message –
David, Radical Feminism is an expression
of our Reptilian Brain ( drugs, sex, violence ).
Here’s the organic
relationship of brain
matter to behavior—
Leftism vs. Rightism :
— Psychology Driving the MADNESS, Explained — :
G_d = left-logical side of your brain : Left Hemisphere ( gateway to ”heaven,”
—study the dichotomous nature of the brain ).
VS.
Sodom & Gomorrah = Right-EMOTIONAL side of the brain : Right Hemisphere ( gateway to “hell,” as gateway to the EMOTION-Directed REPTILIAN — or “ old “ — brain ).
======================================================
======================================================
The EMOTIONAL Left-wing Democrats and YOUR oppositional ( LOGICAL ) Rightism are products of an evolving (brain) division/separation—evolving towards greater and greater DISTINCTION between, say, the LET’S have a PARTY (( those Dionysus/Bacchanalian gods’ excesses )) and the LET’S Stay Sober (( let’s reject the risks to body and mind—and raise up gentlemen and ladies, not lechers and wh_res, as America does today )) .
From my 4,000-plus records of my “Paleo-Conservative Thoughts to Ponder” :
#2078. “The longer the TRUTH is denied
by its cover-up LIE, the more violent is
their inevitable meeting.”
Think of a cheating husband getting
closer and closer to being caught
by his devoted wife : “Hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned!“
In other words, the nation — the West — is divided by its ORGANIC BRAIN-Hemisphericity, as libertine Hollywood and libertine MSM have slowly ( incrementally, over 60 years! ) deadened our ability to T H I N K—to reason; to embrace and express virtue and morality, as our pre-1960s generations had done.
The left-logical side builds HIGH-CULTURE civilization while the REPTILIAN ( “ old “ ) brain destroys it—destroys by serving Man’s vulgar appetites, seen everywhere today.
KEEP in mind Cross-Lateralization, where the logical left-hemisphere controls the right side of the body ( politic ) and the right-hemisphere controls the left side of the body (politic)—to overcome the apparent confusion.
-Rick
P.S.
The try-and-be-moral Trump was set up by a complicit and IMMORAL Democrat Party and Department of Justice, as police and SPY Agencies knew Trump’s supporters were going to the capitol—so, as had happened all summer, police had been ordered to stand-down/-back for those BLM-AntifaComs hidden in the MAGA crowd—heading for the capitol (( there exists one second of video showing that small group of (FBI/Soros) Agents-Provocateur leading that larger crowd of Trump supporters, waving them forward )).
As one of the victims in the bankruptcy hearing, I’d like to say that the BSA and it’s insurers do not care at all about what we went through. A lifetime of ruin thanks to their inaction and direct criminality in covering up the abuses for so long. My whole life, ruined. Can you imagine being 9 or 10 years old and abused by three of your scouting leaders in the 1960s and the shame loss of self-esteem, not to mention the dysfunctionality of trying to carry on with life after that happening to YOU personally?
Anon,
Your abuser is innocent—because they, too, suffered grooming and assault, to inevitably become abusers (( it would take several pages to persuade you )).
I had escaped my own 20-something abuser at 7 (1953). He had put up a tent in his backyard, and had lured me and my neighborhood friend into his any-boy-would-go shelter—then, he quickly pulled down my friend’s shorts and began fondling his genitals.
Having no clue of what he was doing, but being very afraid of the scene, I bolted out and told nobody!,
Some days later, I saw my boyhood friend rushing at me — blindsided by his angry approach! — violently tackling me to the ground, taking a powerful bite at my right-side abdomen, which, to this day, marching (( shuffling )) toward my Eighties, I carry the scar from his angry, revenge-taking, why-did-you-leave-me-with-him bite.
Oddly, I never saw my friend again.
The abuser was a second cousin, living in the neighborhood.
To emphasize an abuser’s sexual psychosis: While at my father’s funeral, in 1997, and while talking with a high-school friend, I heard a voice near my right ear behind me. “Hello, Richard!”
I turned and looked into that face – just inches away! – of my would-have-been sexual abuser. I replied, “Hi, Gary!”—and quickly walked away. He seemed to have regretted my escape from him.
As for your healing—get really, really philosophical. Ask your internal guide(s) to bring you to understanding and healing. I use Jesus/Jeshua, as that name is very powerful.
You needn’t become a goody-two-shoes, but simply to be open to His Power to heal, which power I present in here:
UFO Abduction Experience
https://ufoabductionexperience.blogspot.com/
-Rick
At ten years of age, the hideous things that were done to me by a BSA District Supervisor, are too embarrass[ng and shameful to put in print, if I have to use my name and other identifications that would identify me personally. This perverted supervisor would visit some of our BSA meetings at my elementary school , and watch our scout leader teach his class on BSA projects. The supervisor would be waiting for me at the school bicycle rack behind the school. He pulled me out of school 52 times in one year, causing me to fall behind so far in my studies, that the school officials made me repeat the third grade because I could not keep up with the other class students. I lost a full year of my life by having to repeat the third grade due to psychological and extreme stress issues! I was sexually abused many times, fondled, stripped naked and he once even penetrated my rectum with his tongue and pleaded with me to force a bowel movement into his face and mouth.. I could not handle that demand and threatened to scream if he did not let me go home. He would take me to a duplex apartment that was shared with another couple. It was not where he lived, just a daily play-house to abuse his victims , He would show me porno films trying to excite me. He had a serious fetish of licking and sucking on my small breasts. He once said; “I believe if I could suck on those pretty buds long enough, you would get so hot, you might lactate. (I did not even know what lactate meant)! He would hold me down, bruising my arms and ribs while he penetrated my rectum with his tongue. When he pulled me from school the 52 times that one year, he would take me to a downtown theatre called the’ “Imperial Theatre”! He insisted in setting in the balcony, because during the day, few if any other customers would choose to sit in the balcony. He would use that private time to fondle and perform oral sex on me. He rewarded me by buying me candy, pop-corn and soft drinks. I was from a very poor (poverty stricken) family. A child who lived in poverty, serious undernourished and extremely vulnerable suffering from malnutrition. He had many fantasies that he wanted to try on me. There is so much left untold and when I denied him, he would destroy my bicycle, by slamming it into a tree and stomping the spokes, breaking the forks on my bike! He was a very sick man who not only sexually abused me, but actually bruised me by squeezing my arms and ribs, to hold me so he could do things that no ten-year old ever heard of. My school officials called my mother to the school when they put me back a grade, advising her that I had some serious emotional and psychological issues. That I needed professional help. I never got the help, because my family was too poor to consider that type of professional help! I am 84 years of age and still have nightmares thinking back on things that happened to me!