Dozens of cases reviewed by USA TODAY suggest the Boy Scouts of America overlooked signs of abuse.
A lawsuit filed late Monday against the Boy Scouts of America says hundreds of former Scouts have come forward in recent months with accounts of sexual abuse, allegations from across eight decades that reach nearly every state.
The law firm's client list, obtained by USA TODAY, alleges molestation ranging from fondling to sodomy. Some of the men accused by former Scouts ended up in court or were punished administratively for similar crimes, sometimes many years after their alleged assaults. About two dozen of the men were kicked out of Scouting for abuse. USA TODAY is naming only those who fit one or more of those categories.
“Looking at the hidden predators we’re uncovering, it sends chills down my spine,” said Tim Kosnoff, an attorney in the case who led abusedinscouting.com, a campaign to encourage victims to come forward before the lawsuit was filed late Monday in Pennsylvania state court. “It remains an open question of just how dangerous Scouting is today.”
A USA TODAY review of the law firm’s client list found only 28 of the alleged abusers were named in Boy Scouts’ files, known internally as the “perversion files.” In those cases, the incidents on the new client list allegedly happened either before or around the time the Scout leader was blacklisted.
“Some people never want to come forward,” Stewart said. “Some people have buried this chapter of their life deep inside of them. Some people don't want to relive the victimization. They don't want to go up against Big Brother in a court of law like I did.”Michael Robinson, a law firm client who agreed to speak publicly, waited more than 40 years to come forward to accuse his pediatrician, Alan Schwartz, of fondling him during campouts.
New allegations collected by the law firm include those made against Gary Stroup, a former troop leader and teacher. He was banned from Boy Scouts after being accused of groping 11-year-old boys in 1989. Yet he remained a member of the National Eagle Scout Association, according to a letter Boy Scouts sent to his council two years later, reminding them Stroup was ineligible as a Scout volunteer.
Another accuser, who is among the legal firm’s new clients, said that at the time the scoutmaster and camp director lobbied for Stroup to remain in the Scouts, Stroup was abusing him. From roughly 1988 to 1990, the former Scout said, he was molested at least 100 times while on camping trips, in Stroup's car, at home, at church and at school. He said Stroup threatened that his brother and sister would be put into foster care if he ever told anyone.
Frederick Gailor Jr. said he still lives two doors down from the house where Carmine Charles Robert Falco abused him in the mid- to late 1970s. Decades before Falco started serving a life sentence for sexually abusing boys, Gailor said, Falco sodomized him during sleepovers, beginning when he was a first-year Scout.
Three years later, police stopped Falco as he was casing the home of another Boy Scout who had been with the teen who died. Falco planned to abduct the boy, and police found Falco in the car with a third Boy Scout, a gun, silencer and a meat hook, the Palm Beach Post reported. Lawsuits depend on victims coming forward, but many never doMany survivors, such as Michael Robinson, said their old memories were triggered as sexual abuse in institutions such as the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church and USA Gymnastics made headlines.
Those who share their stories often don’t do so until adulthood. The average age of disclosure is 52, according to CHILD USA, an interdisciplinary think tank focused on preventing child abuse and neglect. A handful of those newly accused of molestation were cited in Boy Scouts’ own filesUSA TODAY was able to match more than two dozen of the men who answered the law firm’s call-out with the Boy Scouts' confidential records. Some of those internal files pinpoint where different levels of the Boy Scouts were slow to respond to abuse allegations, potentially exposing boys to more abuse.
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