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Kris: I got mad and I punched a wall
in my, like -- my freshman or eighth-grade year.
I used to have really bad outbursts.
It´s just a natural impulse for me
just to get mad and smack something because,
like, punching a pillow or punching a bed
isn´t the same as punching something solid.
´Cause when you punch something solid,
you feel your anger just kind of leave
when you punch something because you relieve it
by hitting something.
And it causes damage.
And it´s really annoying that I do it.
And I hate that I do it.
I hate it a lot.
And I still have my mer--
Ugh. My merit badge.
You do, like, special things in the Scouts,
and you get a special patch for it.
That´s from fishing.
That´s leatherworking, I think. Archery.
Archery was really fun for me because I was the only one
out of my group that made a bull´s-eye.
So, this is what our troop was
before we had to change it.
"420" kind of stands for marijuana stuff.
And having that in a Boy Scout organization
is not kind of the best thing you want to have.
Getting in fights almost every day
with my parents is kind of exhausting.
And getting somewhere that´s not exactly a better environment,
but a place with less fights.
You´re kind of just trading one --
You´re trading one evil for another.
And I traded fighting for what happened,
which I would take fighting over any day.
[ Melodic piano music ]
♫♫
[ Piano and strings, music building ]
♫♫
[ Strings become more prominent with piano, music building ]
♫♫
[ Music becomes more dramatic, strings, piano speed increase ]
♫♫
[ Strings reach climax and drop off, while piano fades out ]
On my honor, I will do my best
to do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law,
to help other people at all times,
to keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.
[ Band playing patriotic march, horns most prominent]
[ Applause ]
Sit down, boys. [ Laughter ]
Scouting has worked.
It´s based on cooperation.
You know what that means.
It´s based on the spirit of service.
And it´s going to work.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Strahan: Now to that breaking news involving the Boy Scouts.
Male reporter: ...a program whose stated mission
is to teach young people ethical and moral values.
Female reporter: It´s been an American institution
for more than a hundred years.
Male reporter: ...its assets of $1.4 billion,
including land for camping and hiking.
The Boy Scouts of America facing a crisis tonight.
The 110-year-old organization filing for bankruptcy.
Their bankruptcy filing early today
is the only way they can deal
with a growing number of sexual-abuse lawsuits.
[ Up-tempo music plays, fades ]
Rosenblatt: Hi, Nigel. My name is Rachel Rosenblatt.
I work with the Boy Scouts of America.
I understand you´re doing research about the organization
and just wanted to see how we can be helpful, et cetera.
So if you could give me a call back at your convenience,
that would be great.
[ Line ringing ]
Hello. This is Rachel.
Hey, Rachel. This is Nigel Jaquiss.
Hey. How are you?
I´m alright. Thanks. How about you? I´m good. Thanks.
Just wanted to hear what you´re working on
so we can see how we can be helpful.
Sure. First of all, the Boy Scouts
have touched almost every household in this country.
And there´s a tremendous interest in this organization.
It´s -- It is apple pie.
You know, it´s -- it´s baseball.
It´s Mom. It´s 4th of July. It´s the American flag.
It´s Norman Rockwell. It´s everything.
And what we want to do is make sure
you have the information right. Yeah.
That is in everybody´s best interest. Absolutely.
Look, I´m aware that there have been 130 million Boy Scouts
over the course of the institution´s history,
and the vast majority of those Boy Scouts
were not sexually abused.
But, you know, I´m not gonna sugarcoat it.
There´s a lot of damage that´s been done.
We really want a candid explanation, from the people
who were involved in the decision-making,
how this happened.
So that´s my ask.
I don´t think you are, like, a "gotcha" guy,
but I don´t want to set somebody up
where they´re being asked like, "Well, why didn´t you do more?"
It´s like, well, nobody was doing more,
but there was just not awareness
of the issues at that time.
Look. I-I totally get the ask.
Jaquiss: The Boy Scouts said
that these alleged cases of abuse happened decades ago
and that Scouting was safe.
Throughout my career as a reporter,
I´ve tried to come at stories by asking,
well, is the narrative that we´re being presented true?
Might there be another narrative?
♫♫
I grew up in a very small town in Southern Indiana
called New Harmony.
And in the town park was this cool, old log cabin.
And I really looked forward to when I would be old enough
to go to Boy Scout meetings in that log cabin.
My parents were British.
They were older than other people´s parents,
so we didn´t really fit in.
Well, one way we fit in was being Boy Scouts.
I have three brothers. All four of us were Scouts.
And I think I did absorb the values that the Scouts teach,
to help other people at all times, leave no trace,
always leaves things better than you found them.
As corny as it sounds, I did absorb that,
and I´ve tried to live my life that way.
♫♫
Parents gave the Boy Scouts
the most valuable thing they had -- their children.
And the Boy Scouts told parents, "You can trust us.
We know how to make your son a man.
We will be good for your son."
This is an important message
for all current and former Boy Scouts.
The Boy Scouts of America has declared bankruptcy.
If you were sexually abused in Scouting,
you could receive compensation.
You may file a sexual abuse claim regardless of your...
Jaquiss: When the Boy Scouts
declared bankruptcy in February 2020,
the bankruptcy court judge essentially said
anybody who has a sexual abuse claim against the Boy Scouts
should now step forward.
And the numbers just kept going up and up and up.
And it has been overwhelming for everybody involved in the case.
Limpens: I mean, is this -- is this --
Have you talked about this before?
I mean, is this one of the first times
you´ve talked about this?
[ Keyboard clacking ]
Okay.
So can you -- Are you --
I know this is uncomfortable to talk about,
but can you tell me a little bit about what he was doing?
That -- That -- That -- And was --
Mm-hmm.
I will get in touch with you
as soon as I get some feedback from the attorneys.
Okay. Yeah, I will. Alright. Thank you.
[ Printer whirring ]
I thought it was gonna take at least four large notebooks.
And by mid-2017,
fewer letters of the alphabet fit in one notebook.
And so, for example,
this is just "E" through "G," 2018.
And if I were to go back to do 2019,
I imagine that this would be probably eight
of these very large three-ring binders
just to fit everybody that contacted us from that year.
♫♫
Crew: The Catholic Church didn´t change
their child-protection policies
because they got the Holy Spirit.
They changed their child-protection policies
because they got sued.
And I believe the same for the Boy Scouts.
I did commercial litigation for probably 25 years
until I started working on the Boy Scout cases.
Good girl. There you go.
I know lots of Boy Scout executives hate me
and hate my firm.
They were expecting about 7,500 claimants,
but the volume is much higher.
The money that they´ve put on the table,
it amounts to about $6,000 for each survivor.
So each one of our client has to make a decision
what this plan means for them.
[ Insects chirping ]
Humphrey: Looks like you´re ready to go, sis.
Okay. Move over. Move over.
I know. Here we go.
You ready?
[ Engine starts ]
It wasn´t like we were
chained in some dungeon somewhere being abused.
We were coaxed into different situations
and, you know...
out-thought, taken advantage of.
I mean, a predator who´s a grown man.
And a bunch of 12-year-olds?
We didn´t have a chance. [ Engine shuts off ]
[ Duck call clicking ]
It was happening on every campout.
It was happening after chapter meetings.
It was happening in schools and churches.
So, you know, it´s this contrast between what everybody wants
to believe about the world that we see...
And now looking in this lens back through time, we see
that, well, maybe it wasn´t as perfect
as we all thought it was.
[ Geese honking ]
A Scout is trustworthy, loyal,
courteous, kind, obedient,
helpful, thrifty, brave,
clean, and reverent.
I´m pretty sure I missed something in there, but...
"Obedient."
I think that´s the one that got a lot of Scouts in trouble.
♫♫
This is probably me
in fifth, sixth, and seventh grades.
♫♫
I spent those three years
being abused by my teacher Ted Alton.
♫♫
I think back at all of the times
that I was abused two, three, four times a week...
at troop meetings, in the car after troop meetings,
in the jug-band practice room,
on the foam mats in the locker room,
on camping trips, winter trips, summer trips.
I mean, the first time I ever ejaculated
was at the hands of this Scoutmaster.
You know, it slowly became clear to me
as I got older and a little more mature
that something was wrong, something wasn´t right.
I wanted to run away from it as fast and as hard as I could.
My hair fell out when I was 13,
and I´ve been bald ever since.
Honestly, I´ve never put that together
until probably the last two or three years.
Which -- Which seems, like, really silly
that, oh, you´ve been through three years of abuse.
I mean, my abuse was over 200 times in that three years.
So, you know, the psyche is an amazing thing.
We can bury thoughts and actions and activities
that make us uncomfortable as a preservation --
self-preservation kind of a thing.
I think that´s what happened to me.
And I locked it away,
never talked to anybody for 50 years.
♫♫
I shut that door.
I never let that door open, ever.
[ Birds calling ]
I had no idea how rampant and pervasive
and how uncorrected it was.
You know, I thought this was something that happened to me
and a few guys when we were young.
Until I read an article
that had one of my classmates in it.
I looked him up on LinkedIn, sent him a message.
He called me like 15 minutes later,
and we spent three hours on the phone.
And that´s how I -- And then I, you know --
I decided at that point that I needed to get involved.
♫♫
Where´s our team?
Man: Hey, Rich.
There he is. Man #2: Hey, guys.
Chris, how you doing, brother?
Chris: Hey, I´m good, everyone. How y´all doing?
Awesome. Good, good.
Jaquiss: The people who are the victims
and who are suing the Scouts come from all 50 states.
They don´t all have the same lawyer.
Many of their lawyers
are completely at odds with each other.
Jaquiss: So they speak with one voice
through something called the Tort Claimants´ Committee.
John Humphrey, the Dallas businessman,
was elected to be their leader.
Who would have imagined
28,000 of them would have been penetration?
I mean, it just -- Who would have imagined
there was $431 billion of insurance?
I mean...nobody.
Jaquiss: What this case boils down to
is the Boy Scouts negotiating with victims,
trying to arrive at some kind of negotiated settlement.
"How much are we going to pay you and when?"
Man: I keep hearing that the insurance companies
won´t back the Boy Scouts if they knew about the problem.
Man #2: Those insurance companies
that don´t want any part of this
are just going to litigate the living fuck out of this...
Yeah. That could happen.
You think so? Yeah. Yeah.
Hey. Get some rest. Alright, buddy.
Appreciate you. Have a good evening. Take care.
♫♫
[ Exhales deeply ]
[ Bell clanging ]
Kris: ♫ O, say, can you see ♫
♫ By the dawn´s early light ♫
I know I can hear myself being flat.
And that´s what I don´t like.
I´ve been singing the bass part
because there´s four different parts to the song,
which when you hear it all together,
it makes it sound good.
♫ Whose broad stripes and bright stars ♫
♫ Through the perilous fight ♫
Yeah, I´m shaking, how nervous I am singing in front of people.
[ Breathes deeply ]
Director: Was Doug your Scoutmaster?
Kris: He was everyone´s Scoutmaster.
Right after he was arrested,
they started asking me stuff about it.
I´ve blocked out so much of him
that I cannot really remember what he´s like.
I can barely remember what he looks like,
´cause I blocked him out so much.
Part of me loves that. I love that I blocked him out.
A lot that -- I don´t remember what he looks like.
I don´t remember how he acted.
I remember his smell, and his smell was disgusting.
But I don´t really remember a lot of other stuff about him.
Carolyn: You know something is wrong or off, but...
You know, he´s just not saying anything.
He keeps everything to himself. He´s always been that way.
Um, couldn´t do anything to help him,
but I knew something was wrong.
[ Breathes deeply ]
[ Wheels rolling ]
[ Somber piano music plays ]
♫♫
He wanted to be a police officer.
And he was told that
going through the Scouts and everything
would be the best way to do it.
So that was his goal.
Matthew: She heard stories, me telling her
about what it was like when I was a Scout. Yeah. Yeah.
I had a blast, and I thrived in it.
And they let Nathan join in every now and then. Um...
Matthew: Nathan was their mascot until he was old enough to join.
Carolyn: Yeah. Yeah.
♫♫
Carolyn: Kris had been going through such a hard time.
And Doug kept trying to -- "Kris can stay with me."
We thought that was normal. How are we supposed to know?
We didn´t know.
We have a child molester telling us what the rules are,
which, according to him, there are none.
Reporter: In early January, 46-year-old Douglas Young
entered a plea of no contest to the sexual abuse
and exploitation of 10 young boys.
Young was the boy´s Scoutmaster who he met at a...
Matthew: Kris was still very adamant
that that never happened with them.
The boys won´t -- They don´t want to talk about it at all.
Yeah.
Carolyn: He would just go right to his room when he came home.
I didn´t want to believe that it was true.
I-I really didn´t.
Matthew: Doug is actually at Snake River Penitentiary
for the next -- now 20 years.
You know, we got manipulated.
We got groomed.
We got -- We got played hard.
Kris: I mean, I´m 18.
I hate kind of, like, saying like,
"Oh, I´m a little slow in life
because a lot of stuff has happened to me."
But I don´t know.
I have -- I´ve not been doing a lot of good in school...
I guess.
Uh...okay.
But...I´m living --
I´m okay, I guess. I don´t know.
[ Sighs ]
Kris: At first, he was just a nice guy.
I was living there.
And, like...
it wasn´t even like a week into me living there,
and he started doing stuff.
It was the night I got there, he started doing stuff.
The first thing that happened
is he stuck his hand down behind...
in my pants, like...
Uh, and...
First thing that was going through my head is,
"What the fuck..." Crap. I´m sorry.
"What the hell is happening? Why --
Like, what is going on?"
And, "Is this normal?"
Because -- I don´t know.
That´s kind of what went through my head.
Apologies for cussing.
[ Sighs ]
It just -- It got much worse from that.
It progressed, like, really fast.
[ Groans ]
I´d wake up with him doing stuff.
I know he used to take pictures, as well.
I don´t know if every Boy Scout member
is, like, what Doug was, but...
Uh...
I don´t really know how to explain it, I guess.
Director: When you say "what Doug was," what was Doug?
What do you mean? Pedophile.
I mean pedophile.
It´s just kind of hard to say, I guess,
´cause it´s just -- It´s just that.
[ somber music starts playing]
♫♫
You guys did nothing wrong. Alright? Love you guys.
I love you. Love you too.
♫♫
[ light piano playing over strings droning ]
♫♫
[ music intensifies ]
I didn´t hear...
This is the first time I´ve heard any of it.
This is the most he´s opened up. Yeah.
And it´s really hard right now. Sorry.
♫♫
I don´t have any more compassion.
I really don´t.
♫♫
[Crying] I can´t believe that he did those things to my son.
♫♫
And the Boy Scouts, they don´t care.
I mean, they´ve known for so long
the stuff that happens,
and they haven´t done a damn thing.
♫♫
I am so much more mad than I was before.
Oh, God.
♫♫
[ Exhales shakily ]
Crew: The data is clear. The data is unmistakable.
Nobody in the field disputes now
the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse.
And they´re profound.
And many of them go through all of these issues,
all of these problems,
all of these struggles as an adult.
And they don´t really know that there´s a connection
between that and something that happened to them
as a 10- or an 11-year-old child.
Every time they talk about what happened,
it presents the possibility of being retraumatized.
It´s a delicate process
that has to be handled with sensitivity.
But we need to know what happened,
because the sexual abuse of a child is a crime.
It´s always been a serious crime.
It´s been a crime since the existence of the Boy Scouts.
♫♫
Jaquiss: The Boy Scouts of America started in 1910.
Because the United States was rapidly urbanizing,
there were people who feared
that boys were losing touch with the out-of-doors,
that they weren´t hardy enough, they weren´t robust enough.
♫♫
In the early days, Teddy Roosevelt
was an enormous supporter of the Boy Scouts.
He, of course, was essentially the founder
of the National Park System.
He was a great outdoorsman.
And in 1916, he helped the Boy Scouts of America
get a federal congressional charter.
What the charter did for the Boy Scouts
was basically give them a monopoly,
both on the name and on the uniform.
So it essentially cleared the playing field of competition.
And the Boy Scouts over time kind of created
their own private National Park System.
[ mysterious orchestra music plays into a patriotic march ]
♫♫
Jaquiss: The Boy Scouts of America
made their name synonymous with integrity and with service.
Announcer: Today, the Boy Scout Manual
is the handbook for democratic youth the world over.
More than 10 million copies have already been sold.
♫♫
The year 1935 marks the 25th birthday celebration
of the Boy Scouts of America,
a vital factor in American life.
♫♫
Janci: By 1935, the leadership of the Boy Scouts
knew that pedophiles were using the Scouting program
to abuse, you know, sometimes
dozens of boys in a troop
starting back in the 1920s.
They had identified over a thousand men.
♫♫
Jaquiss: The name of the list was a little bit misleading.
It might have led people to believe
that they were trying to root out communists from their ranks.
But the issue that they really were trying
to wrap their arms around was pedophiles.
Crew: The red flag list was only available
to a very small, select group of Boy Scout executives,
and they protected the confidentiality of those files
very, very strictly.
Janci: When the Boy Scouts put these names in their file,
they refused to make those public.
And the Boy Scouts intentionally did not share
this information with law enforcement.
♫♫
The secrecy and the concealment of the problem, I think,
went directly to their concern about damage to the reputation,
damage to the Scouting brand, damage to their image.
♫♫
Boy: Will there be fossils in here?
Man: Fossils? No. I´m a fossil.
[ Laughter ]
Alright, Scouts. Signs up.
Most importantly, do not touch the paintings.
This is an extremely valuable collection.
All of the Norman Rockwell Scout paintings
that are owned by the Boy Scouts of America are displayed here.
About 65 of them. Thank you. Alright.
And this is the first time
they´ve ever been shown in one place.
Just remember, act like Scouts.
♫♫
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Electric guitar slightly picking strings ]
♫♫
Now, I want to tell you about the Scoutmaster painting.
This Scoutmaster posed, and these kids in the tent
made sure that their faces were turned out.
Jaquiss: Rockwell worked for the Boy Scouts from 1913,
when he was 19 years old, until the mid-1970s.
♫♫
I think one of the reasons he was so successful is his art
is very accessible to people, even to young children.
The collection is on display in Warren, Ohio,
and small-town America was the backbone of Scouting.
♫♫
When I was young,
my family lived near Norman Rockwell´s studio,
and a family friend was his photographer,
so I was actually invited to pose for Rockwell.
He was a kind, nice person.
And, you know, I was clean-cut and smiley
and sort of the all-American kind of boy
that Rockwell used in so many of his Scout paintings.
♫♫
In a lot of ways, going to see these paintings
feels like a return to my experience, to my youth.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Man: Any other questions?
Child: Isn´t that Norman Rockwell --
Oh, I´m sorry. I should have told you that.
That is Norman Rockwell in his Scout uniform
painting himself, a self-portrait,
into the painting.
Thank you for pointing it out.
Solomon: He was a great storyteller,
but instead of making movies,
he told his story
in a single frame.
Rockwell early on became known
for his illustrations of boys,
especially boys getting in trouble.
They would go swimming
in places where they weren´t supposed to swim.
They would play hooky from school.
They would get in trouble.
But when Rockwell worked for the Scouts,
the boys no longer got in trouble.
His Scouts were very obedient.
They never misbehaved.
You never see Scouts without their shoes.
They´re always following the rules.
Basically, the Scouts micromanaged him.
They kept a very close watch on what he was painting,
and they rejected many of his subjects.
In one painting, for instance,
Rockwell wanted to paint raindrops
on the Scout´s uniform,
and the Scouts said, "We can´t have a wet uniform."
In the Scout paintings,
Rockwell created a very sanitized version of boyhood,
in which boyhood is robbed of its roughed edges
and presented as a very neat and patriotic package.
♫♫
President Kennedy: I strongly believe in Scouting.
I think it´s a source of great strength to us.
I´m very appreciative to all the adults who give leadership.
I would recommend it to the sons and daughters
of every American family
as a important ingredient of our national strength.
Jaquiss: The first president who actually was a scout
was John F. Kennedy.
He was young. He was handsome.
He was bold. He was a war hero.
So he was really a marketing coup
for the Boy Scouts.
Glenn: On my honor, I will do my best
to do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law.
I´m John Glenn.
Most of the time, I am learning more about
how to explore outer space.
In my spare time, though,
I explore the outdoors with the Boy Scouts.
Jaquiss: The Boy Scouts really had
their greatest decade in the ´60s.
They had become
part of the fabric of America.
President Nixon: Scouts give leadership to the whole nation,
to leave every place he goes a little bit better
for the people that follow him.
Armstrong: That´s one small step for a man...
one giant leap for mankind.
Jaquiss: Neil Armstrong was an Eagle Scout,
and he actually called out from space
to the National Jamboree.
Armstrong: I´d like to say hello
to all my fellow Scouts and Scouters
at Farragut State Park in Idaho.
They´re having the National Jamboree.
Jaquiss: I began to see that this was an archetypal story,
not just about the Boy Scouts,
but it was really a story about America.
♫♫
The Boy Scouts were just this extraordinary institution
that had run up on the rocks,
and I really wanted to know why.
How´d they wreck this ship
that seemed like it was sailing
in -- in calm waters
for most of its history?
And all of a sudden, it´s got a
big hole beneath the waterline.
How´d that happen?
Brokaw: Tonight, our continued report
is on a story that came out
of the Boy Scouts of America headquarters earlier this week.
Of all things, it involved cheating by Scout officials.
Scout membership figures were padded
to qualify for additional federal funds.
Until the scandal broke, it was not widely known
that the Boy Scouts were receiving federal aid,
and certainly the idea of cheating
was totally inconsistent with the Boy Scout image.
So Fred Briggs looked further into the situation.
The membership rolls show that Chicago still has
the largest single Scout Council in the country.
However, critics say those membership rolls
tend to lie once in a while,
especially when it comes to Scout troops in the inner city.
Briggs: This is one example,
a housing project on the South Side.
In 1971, the books listed 800 boys
as members of a Scout troop here.
But when meetings were held, as few as 30 showed up.
Inner-city Scout groups are subsidized
by federal poverty funds.
The Chicago Council now admits registration figures
were inflated by as much as 40%.
We constantly are auditing our membership,
trying to watch for membership that is not active,
where the leader may have moved out of the community and so on.
Briggs: The Chicago Council admitted this week
that five staff members
have been fired for padding registrations.
Similar crackdowns occurred in Tulsa, Detroit, and Fort Worth.
♫♫
In 1968, the Scouts launched a massive registration drive
to sign up 2 million new members by 1976.
That may have been the cause of the padding --
sheer pressure for numbers.
Vice President Gerald Ford, who was in Chicago yesterday
for a Scout fundraiser, said the misdeeds of a few
can´t affect the overall success of Scouting.
Officials of the Scouts are cleaning house now,
hoping to avoid any future misdeeds.
♫♫
Jaquiss: Boys are the lifeblood of the Boy Scouts of America.
The Scouts depend on dues from those boys
and from volunteer leaders.
That´s where their revenue comes from.
They sell them uniforms. They sell them handbooks.
They send them to summer camp. That all brings in money.
If your numbers are declining and your revenue is dependent
on recruiting new members, you´ve got a problem.
[ Ball bouncing ]
♫♫
[ Man shouts indistinctly, metal clanking ]
Lord: Developing my body and my athleticism,
it´s another way of protecting myself,
to make sure that no one is going to harm me.
I get to own that.
[ Metal clangs ]
When I was in elementary school, Scouting was --
You know, they recruited.
I was involved in Scouting from 11 until 19, 20.
And during the summers, I went to Boy Scout camp.
Some people would get homesick, and they´d want to leave camp.
I´d get camp-sick. I wanted to be in camp every summer.
♫♫
A Boy Scout is trustworthy. And so I trusted everyone.
♫♫
I trusted people would do the right thing.
And I trusted that people would...
know that something was wrong.
And I trusted people that they would intervene.
Why didn´t someone take up for me?
They knew Lonnie Barnes.
Jaquiss: Who´s Lonnie Barnes?
Lonnie Barnes was, uh...
the Scout leader...
who...I trusted, right?
Who was the assistant Scoutmaster
of the troop I participated in.
Lonnie Barnes was never at camp, so camp was a safe place for me.
But one year, he... he was hired at camp.
And I knew what -- I knew what he was doing to me.
And I knew -- I could see the signs
what he was doing to other boys.
And, uh...
He didn´t last at camp more than a week.
And he got fired.
And it was, like, one of the best days of my life.
He was rushed out of camp.
They said they found a liquor bottle outside of his tent.
And I´m thinking to myself, "Hell no.
Hell no."
Lonnie Barnes went and touched one of those boys.
♫♫
And they decided,
"We can just get this out of here,
end of story, end of the case."
He left camp, but he was still in Scouting
the rest of my whole Scouting career.
It did not affect his participation at all
in the program.
And he was the one who told me that...
if I told anyone, then he would kill me.
♫♫
But there´s one person I trusted that I could tell.
And I got the courage. And I rehearsed it. I rehearsed.
"Mom, Mr. Barnes is not a good guy,
and he´s doing these bad things to me."
And my mom woke up that morning,
and she was stumbling around and she had a stroke.
My mom died, and the person that I got
the courage to tell... I couldn´t tell.
I went back into deeper silence and promised to tell no one.
I´m 40 years old before I -- I tell someone.
♫♫
I had all this anger built up in my life,
and I needed to do something with it.
And so I went down to New Rochelle Police Station.
And when the detective contacted me -- And he says,
"Lonnie Barnes has confessed to abusing you."
I must have read that e-mail a hundred times.
Because I no longer had to prove to people that I was abused.
I was free!
But do we just stop with the truth...
or do we move toward restoration, restoring justice?
♫♫
With the settlement and everything,
it´s the full circle.
[ Bells tolling ]
Eternal God and whose mercy is endless...
and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible,
look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us,
that in difficult moments we might not despair,
nor become despondent, but with great confidence
submit ourselves to Your holy will,
which is love and mercy itself. Amen.
We bind all these victims to this chaplet.
In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Amen.
[ Haunting music plays ]
[ Music continues, bell chimes ]
♫♫
[ Music continues, bell chimes ]
♫♫
[ Music continues, bell chimes ]
♫♫
It´s funny because I have the camera that took that movie.
[ Music continues, bells chiming ]
♫♫
And you can still hear the noise.
[ Camera whirring ]
♫♫
I grew up in Brooklyn,
and my father died when I was 2.
I was a tough kid.
At 7 or 8 years old, I started smoking.
I started hanging out on the street.
♫♫
I could get on a subway and go into the city.
My mother, she didn´t know where I was.
♫♫
So she took a Boy Scout leader off to the side and said,
"My son doesn´t have a father.
If you could just pay a little attention to him."
Um...
♫♫
I buried my face in a -- in a pillow
and thought, "Please, God. Let this be over.
Let this be over."
♫♫
Why didn´t I say something? Why didn´t I go to somebody?
Why didn´t I tell my mother?
Why didn´t I -- I don´t know -- go to the police?
Go to the Boy Scouts?
Fear.
Um, embarrassment.
Shame.
I allowed myself to be charmed
by this young man...
...and as a friend, as a mentor, as a big brother...
♫♫
...and gave him reason to think
that he could get away with it, I guess,
´cause, again, it wasn´t violent.
He didn´t -- He didn´t threaten to kill me.
He was just telling me, "Be quiet. Be quiet."
♫♫
I didn´t do what I should have done as a normal...
human being.
♫♫
Hamilton: What is the problem here?
The problem is the model.
If you have children that are going into the wilderness
and you have very few adults, it´s really easy to abuse them.
♫♫
The opportunities for pedophiles
in the Boy Scout model are rampant,
and so, um, no one should be surprised.
And what they needed to start thinking about decades ago
was what to do about the model.
So, this is the sign at the entrance
of Camp Meriwether,
Cascade Pacific Council´s summer camp for boys.
It´s kind of the crown jewel
of the Cascade Pacific Council´s properties,
an 800-acre Boy Scout camp founded in 1926.
It runs along two miles
of beautiful, unobstructed beach.
♫♫
The Scouts and the Scout program on its face
and on paper is really what every boy, you know, wants.
It´s adventure. It´s being out in the woods.
It´s self-reliance. It´s learning skills.
But often you´re in a remote place
where there´s no one you can go to for help.
And so the Boy Scouts program really had built into it
this very attractive system
for pedophiles to get close to boys.
♫♫
The Cascade Pacific Council has had numerous cases
brought against them for sexual abuse of Scouts.
And a number of those cases
happened at Camp Meriwether itself.
♫♫
There´s no question that the core activities of Scouting
involved secluding boys
and isolating them away from their parents,
away from the adults that would otherwise protect them
and using that opportunity to sexually abuse them.
♫♫
The Boy Scouts had to know that pattern.
We know they knew about that pattern
because they had created secret internal files
documenting everything that was known
about these pedophile Scout leaders.
Dr. Warren: If you´re going to predict
what somebody´s likely to do,
you can simply look at what they´ve done previously,
and the pattern, it will emerge.
I began working with BSA 12 or 13 years ago.
They said, "Oh, we have some files."
They were referred to as "the perversion files."
♫♫
I´m used to studying forms of violent crime
where I have police records
and FBI interviews and crime-scene photos.
What arrived was somewhat disorganized materials.
So I began picking them out at random and looking through them.
And they had started being collected in about 1922.
The smallest file is one page long.
The longest file is 917 pages long.
♫♫
It was not sophisticated, scientific information
that you would generate or collect to do research.
A lot of it was like, how tall is a person?
What color is their eyes?
What do they like to do? What is their job?
Do they have a wife and children?
Because the purpose of the file
was not to accomplish any kind of research goal,
but really be able to identify the person
if they tried to get back into the Boy Scouts.
Lawyer: Do you remember the names of any of the kids
that were involved in Troop 719
when you were assistant Scoutmaster?
[ Speaks indistinctly, laughs ]
Mind just went blank. Lawyer: Okay.
Um, I could probably name all the ones that were there.
The names that you gave me, I don´t know.
Lawyer: Let me give you some of their names
and see if these ring any bells.
My mind just went blank. It just shut down.
Lawyer: Kerry Lewis?
Yes, I remember the name.
Crew: I´ve deposed lots of pedophiles
who were Scoutmasters, who abused Scouts,
who have admitted it and said,
"That´s why I joined.
I joined the troop because I wanted to have sex with boys,
and that´s where the boys were."
Reporter: In a Portland, Oregon, courtroom,
the witness, identified as Jack Doe Number 4,
testifies uneasily
about being an 11-year-old Boy Scout
alone with his troop leader In 1983.
Crew: Kerry Lewis was sexually abused
by his Scoutmaster, Timur Dykes.
I think there were 20 or 21 members of that troop.
18 of them were sexually abused by Timur Dykes.
Lawyer: Let me give you some other names
and tell me the kids you remember.
[Bleep]
Yes.
[Bleep]
Mm, yes.
[Bleep]
Yes.
♫♫
Jaquiss: Over the years, there have been a number of lawsuits
against the Scouts alleging sexual abuse.
In the late 1980s,
the Boy Scouts were sued regularly,
but the Boy Scouts never went to trial.
They always settled.
But in this case, they decided to go to trial.
The lawyers for Kerry Lewis said,
"Hey, we hear there are these files.
We want them to be brought into evidence."
Janci: There was some information
in certain dark, you know, corners that,
"Oh, these files may exist."
But almost no one
had ever been able to obtain the files in litigation,
and no one had ever been able to make them public.
We knew we had a huge battle on our hands.
The Scouts have almost never been willing
to turn anything over.
♫♫
Jaquiss: The judge in this case was a very experienced judge.
They threw every argument they could think of at this judge,
and he wasn´t really cowed by that.
Of course, the defense objected
to the admission of these files into evidence.
The Boy Scouts knew they had a problem.
Crew: The judge ordered the Boy Scouts
to turn over to us 20 years of I. V. files --
"perversion files."
♫♫
Less than two weeks before we were supposed to start trial,
they finally produced the files.
Crew: We got 1,200 I. V. files, the Ineligible Volunteer files.
Not all of the I. V. files that the Boy Scouts had,
but the ones that the judge deemed relevant.
When I realized that he was going to let in
20 years´ worth of files,
I was pretty sure... game over for the Boy Scouts.
Janci: There´s not a lot of moments in life
where you know that you´re doing something
that very few people have ever done before,
but we did have that sense when the files got delivered.
And when you started to go through these records,
you felt the weight of what we were doing.
♫♫
Malarkey: We were in our jury room,
and they brought a bunch of those cardboard file boxes.
And then the bailiff leaves, and it´s just the jurors.
Then we started just opening them and thumbing through them.
We all sat, and there was a lot of sitting in silence
and reading for a long time.
And then we started saying, "Oh, my God."
I was trying to just be a good juror
and take in the information
and not get too carried away emotionally.
And then it just, honestly, became horrifying.
Because each one of these names
was a real person, was a real child,
and there was box after box after box.
There was just a lot of silence in the jury room
in reverence for what those documents held
and the actual acts that they represented.
♫♫
I read lots, and I read lots in detail.
And knowing that there were thousands more,
it was really...
Yeah. Uh...disgusting.
♫♫
Janci: One of the documents we found in a number of files
was a memo cover page.
And the graphic on that memo was a little cartoon picture
of a firefighter putting out a fire.
And that told us everything we needed to know
about the way that they viewed
how reports of child sexual abuse should be dealt with.
They viewed this as a fire to be put out,
a secret to be kept.
♫♫
Crew: It´s right there on the files.
They wouldn´t tell the police. They didn´t tell the police.
I mean, it wasn´t just a practice.
It was a policy. It was a written policy.
Don´t tell the police.
Don´t tell the school that the Scoutmaster works at.
Don´t tell anybody.
They were as much intent on protecting
the confidentiality of the perpetrator
as they were of any of the victims.
Janci: The Boy Scouts created a program internally
that they called "probation."
♫♫
Probation was not ordered by the court or the police.
In fact, the police or the courts weren´t aware
when the Boy Scouts decided to put somebody on "probation."
But essentially, probation was
they knew about a particular pedophile.
They knew that that person had been alleged
to have abused kids.
And they decided, instead of kicking the person out
and instead of warning anybody,
they would give him a second chance.
Malarkey: What we saw was troop leaders
being found to have abused children at one troop
and then, you know, here they are popping up a year later
at another troop in a different state.
And again and again.
So it was just really clear physical evidence
that they had known for decades and decades
that these men were assaulting these boys.
♫♫
On this one level, they did a phenomenal job of tracking them.
♫♫
And then, on the other hand, completely dropped the ball
on making sure that they couldn´t and wouldn´t abuse
other children in the program.
Like, what the hell else would those files be for?
♫♫
Janci: These pedophiles knew the soft spots, the weak points,
and the Boy Scouts chose not to do anything about it,
and they chose to allow more kids to come in unknowingly
into a program that was dangerous.
Crew: At the Kerry Lewis trial, I think it´s the first time
that a jury was able to see with their own eyes
what´s in the I. V. files.
And the jury verdict spoke volumes.
Judge Wittmayer: "We, the jury find our verdict as follows --
We assess punitive damages
against the Boy Scouts of America.
Amount -- $18.5 million."
And it´s signed today, dated today...
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
Judge Wittmayer: Almost nothing that happens
in a courtroom in Oregon is confidential.
and if you want to maintain confidences,
you settle the case.
Jaquiss: It was a huge mistake by the Scouts to go to trial
because after the verdicts, The New York Times,
The Oregonian, and The Associated Press,
who had all petitioned to make the documents public,
began putting these files up on their websites.
Janci: When you can hold the document that shows
that the Scoutmaster that abused me wasn´t just a bad apple,
this wasn´t a one-off, this wasn´t unavoidable,
this was a pattern and a systemic problem.
And they documented the problem, file after file,
week after week, year after year for decades.
Dr. Warren: We could see people living normal lives.
And this was not a static location,
but it was a porous, interactive reality.
I realized that this was going to be the largest database
of community-dwelling child molesters.
For victims to be able to go on their own
and look at the documents that were obtained
and released in the Kerry Lewis case,
it was a tipping point.
Newscaster: Boy Scout president Wayne Perry
apologized to the victims
but made no apologies for keeping the files.
Our ineligible volunteer file
is a big element of our keeping track
and making sure that nobody gets in.
People should be happy we have these files.
You want us to keep these files.
Ron: It was pretty easy to find.
I had to go through the names,
and there it was, Edward Rodriguez --
Edward A. Rodriguez, Brooklyn, New York.
And I said, "I think this is the guy."
Okay.
This is a letter from July 24, 1964.
"Dear Howard,
Reverend Blank of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
has requested that we place Mr. Rodriguez
on the confidential file.
Through personal admission,
Mr. Rodriguez has had immoral relations
with at least three boys in Troop 739.
These incidents occurred more than once,
and in the case of the blank boy, over a long period of time.
There does not seem to be any doubt
as to the validity of these charges."
This is July 28, 1964.
"Dear Mr. Wallace, this letter is to inform you
that the Committee of Troop 739, Manhattan,
has asked for and received the resignation
of its Scoutmaster, Edward A. Rodriguez.
It was requested as a safeguard for the boys in our troop
on the grounds of moral turpitude.
He didn´t give any reason
why he had chosen those boys in particular.
But as a matter of fact, these boys are small in stature.
Ed Rodriguez also indicated
that this is the first time that this had happened.
But those present were of the opinion that his actions
definitely were repeated previously with others.
Before ending, though, he was requested
not to divulge any information connected with the affair,
and we have even gone so far as to concoct a reason
why Ed Rodriguez has left the troop."
Okay.
Well, come on. It´s a bunch of bullshit.
You´re admitting to me that you concocted a story
for him to resign,
and this is some letting him off the fucking hook?
Excuse my language.
But I definitely don´t mind it being taped.
Sorry. This is just bullshit.
It´s just reading bullshit.
And for someone to actually sign their name to it,
what an asshole this person is.
Let´s put this guy in jail.
Forget about Eddie Rodriguez. They´re all bad guys.
You´re such a good guy. Come here.
Stewart: When I first was thinking about
joining the Boy Scouts,
I went to a pastor friend of mine in Dallas
for some counsel.
He said, "What´s your biggest fear about joining?"
I said, "Honestly, if I join the Boy Scouts,
they can´t compensate me the same way
I´m being compensated" -- That was my belief.
He goes, "What are you talking about?
The guy across the street works for the Boy Scouts.
He´s got a limo that picks him up every week."
And he said, "And that guy drives a company car
down to get his trash each day."
Hi.
My brother is an Eagle Scout,
but earning that rank was not ever on my radar.
I went into Scouting because I love to camp
and I love to hike and I love to do adventures
and have a great time with other people.
And that´s what I did.
Oh, you´ll love this. These are my saddles.
All my cowboy gear is really done
in honor to my love for Scouting.
You´ll see that my colors are typically olive,
like the uniform, and tan.
I also had some silver conchos made that has the fleur de lis,
which is the emblem for the millions
and millions of Scouts around the world.
One thing about Scouting, once you´re in,
you don´t leave if you love Scouting.
I started out as a Scout.
Once my kids became Scout age, I was their Cubmaster.
Now I´m the father of two Eagle Scouts.
I mean, Scouting is all about giving back.
Scouting is about helping the next generation.
I would have thought nobody joins Scouting
to make a lot of money.
What´s funny about that is you look at some
of the salaries of the senior executives over the years,
and you see this absolutely absurd high salary
for a senior executive.
There have been a number of people
who I think came to the Boy Scouts of America
to take advantage of the Boy Scouts of America.
I joined as a consultant in 2010,
and then I resigned in 2019.
When I joined the National Council,
there were people who had worked at BSA National
for 20 and 30 years.
They were very safe in their job,
very safe in their retirement program,
and the lease cars were just part of the entitlement.
But if you ask, "Who is responsible
for the decline over the years?" nobody took ownership for it.
I mean, if you´re going out of business,
you´re not leaving at 4:30 in the afternoon.
You´re staying until 10:00 at night, 11:00 at night.
You´re there first thing in the morning.
But if you were at the national office at 4:30
in the afternoon, you better watch out,
because you´re about to get run over by a stampede
leaving the office.
Morones: I was asked to analyze
the Boy Scouts´ public financial information.
And I have to say, I was
surprised by the size and scope
of the organization financially.
The assets were over a billion dollars,
and I had no idea.
That´s large for a nonprofit.
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
Since the 2010 trial, the Boy Scouts has generated
a substantial operating loss every year.
I added up a loss of over $500 million.
Their legal fees have substantially increased
during that time.
Membership has been declining,
and it appears to be getting worse.
Still, in 2019, the Boy Scout top executive
makes over a million dollars a year,
higher than any other CEO in that category of nonprofits.
And the organization has promised to pay
certain amounts of money to executives
in their retirement years.
It´s risky because the pension payments
are promised regardless of economic conditions.
So to have that coincide with taking on additional debt --
extremely unfortunate timing.
I can´t really speculate any intention beyond that.
Jaquiss: Absolutely.
Lord: You can die without being killed,
because some of those experiences I had
when I was being abused, I felt like I was dying,
or maybe death was the answer.
So I had died many times,
but I had to wake up in the morning and face another day.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
And not only did he abuse me,
but Lonnie introduced me to other Scout leaders,
and he introduced me to a Scout executive
from New York Council named Gary Rivers.
And Gary was, like, in his 20s, just graduated from college,
and he was an executive in finance.
I looked up to him, and so I said,
"Here´s a guy who is a Black, African-American male leader."
And so I got introduced to him, and then, that turned out to...
he wanted more than just me looking up to him as a leader,
that Lonnie Barnes introduced him, and...
and so Gary abused me, too.
And...
And Gary´s story...
I guess I´m almost 16 when I -- when I meet Gary.
And, uh...
Wow.
So I had to call Gary one day...
...and tell him that I had gonorrhea.
And...
And that was -- I didn´t know what gonorrhea was.
I was in pain, and I called him.
And he told me, you know, to meet him in New York City.
And I´m in New Rochelle.
And I had to get on a train by myself.
I couldn´t tell anybody what was going on.
And I was fearful of what --
´cause I´m in pain, what´s going to happen.
So I met him at Grand Central Station,
and we went to a doctor.
And Gary was talking to the doctor,
and then, all of a sudden, I get called into this room.
I´m given a shot.
♫♫
He introduced me to a lot of bad people.
You know, I had to perform or whatever.
It was over 15 people.
♫♫
I had to live two lives.
And so you numb yourself, and you protect yourself.
And so for abuse victims,
you may not have to wait to be pronounced dead
because you can die inside.
♫♫
Sawyer: We begin tonight with a story
that could touch nearly every family in America
and anyone who´s ever put on a Scout uniform.
First, listen to this letter the Boy Scouts of America
wrote to us.
It says, "The Boy Scouts has been the catalyst
for much of the awareness and discussion of child abuse
that has emerged in recent years."
Sawyer: Your critics say, to put it bluntly,
that you were dragged kicking and screaming
into dealing with the child abuse problem
and that what you wanted to do,
until you were forced to do it,
was just hush it up.
There are people that want a silver-bullet answer
to everything,
and we´re not gonna please people
who expect an absolute silver- bullet solution to this problem.
Were there no significant problems
inside the Boy Scouts before 1985?
Not that we´re aware of, no.
None at all? Not that we´re aware of.
Sawyer: Day one´s review of hundreds of Boy Scout files
shows an average of 99 reports of child abuse
in the organization every year.
Isn´t that a problem?
99 out of 6, 7, 800 local councils.
I don´t think that you can say that´s a problem.
You can´t say that´s a problem?
Again, one case is one too many.
Well, then you´ve got almost 100 on average a year.
That´s 100 times worse problem.
And you work forward
developing and enhancing programs as you go.
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
Narrator: The Boy Scouts of America is an organization
dedicated to developing healthy young men and women.
But we´re not immune to problems,
one of which is the problem of child abuse,
a problem that affects...
Jaquiss: Beginning in the late ´80s,
the Boy Scouts put in place
what they call the youth protection protocols.
Jaquiss: These were new policies
designed to train adult leaders and establish new guidelines.
Narrator: One-on-one activities between adults and Scouts
are not authorized.
Jaquiss: They advertised to the public aggressively
that they were making Scouting safer.
Narrator: Any time that you suspect child abuse
in the Boy Scout program,
you must contact the Scout executive.
The Scout executive in each council
has contact with the proper authorities
and has established procedures.
Rep. Don Edwards: The purpose of this subcommittee meeting today
is to establish procedures for national criminal
background checks for child care providers.
Nemecek: Let me first state unequivocally
that the administration strongly supports
the goals of this act.
Swann: We require a criminal background check
of all potential volunteers.
We have endured the cost and the burden of getting this done.
Rep. Don Edwards: Well, thank you, Mr. Swann.
We´re pleased to have the support
of your great organization.
We´ll now hear from Lawrence F. Potts,
director of administration for Boy Scouts of America.
Mr. Potts.
While we applaud your efforts to attack
a very serious societal problem,
it is undoubtedly true that many worthy volunteers
would simply not wish to subject themselves
to being fingerprinted.
To combat child abuse, BSA, with the help of experts,
has designed a special five-point plan.
Rep. Pat Schroeder: So you´d like to have a profile
of what you think is a trustworthy volunteer?
That has worked for you and has not caused any problems?
I mean, you can figure this out without any help.
Unfortunately, experts have told us
that there is no profile.
There is no way in advance that you can you can be assured --
Rep. Pat Schroeder That´s what they told us, too.
That´s why I thought maybe you had found the key
to unlocking all of this.
Potts: We know the leaders that we´re selecting.
You know, they come out of the community,
would be known in the community,
would have roots in the community,
would be married, would be fathers of kids in the program.
Roberts: A former executive with the Boy Scouts
has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.
Douglas Smith worked with the Scouts for nearly 40 years,
even ran a task force to protect kids from sexual abuse.
Smith now faces up to 20 years in prison.
Lawyer: Which criminal statute were you convicted of?
I was convicted of receipt and distribution
of child pornography.
Lawyer: Did you ever hold a position
at the Boy Scouts of America
with respect to the Youth Protection guidelines?
Yes, sir.
Lawyer: What were the circumstances
under which you ceased working for the BSA?
Um...I, uh...
I submitted my letter of retirement
after the police had come to my house.
Lawyer: Are you presently employed
in any capacity whatsoever by the Boy Scouts of America?
No, sir. Lawyer: Okay.
What is your current state of employment status
with the Boy Scouts of America?
Retired.
Lawyer: And so when you are
completing your term of incarceration,
you will be then eligible to receive medical benefits
and you will also receive your retirement?
Is that correct? Yes.
Lawyer: I believe that is it for me, sir.
Um, at this point, I have no further questions.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
Jaquiss: For decades, all the letters sent to the Boy Scouts
alleging sexual abuse in Scouting
were sent to a man named Paul Ernst.
He was the keeper of the secrets.
Ernst would later be deposed for a sexual abuse case
against the Scouts.
Lawyer: You kept this information confidential.
True.
Lawyer: You didn´t share this information
with law enforcement?
Yes, that´s true.
♫♫
Lawyer: And you didn´t share it
with other parents in the troop?
No.
Lawyer: Okay. But...
As I was saying, you don´t give it out to the public.
You don´t tell people that this person has done something
that will affect his job
or his relationship with others and so forth.
Because we didn´t want to do that.
We weren´t the type of person
that wanted to do that to an individual.
♫♫
Jaquiss: James, how did you learn you were being excluded
from the Boy Scouts, and when did you learn that?
Sure. It was two years after I´d received my Eagle Scout award.
It was the summer of 1990, and I get a call from my mother
who said that I received certified mail.
"Dear Mr. Dale, the grounds for your membership revocation
are the standards for leadership established
by the Boy Scouts of America,
which specifically forbid membership to homosexuals."
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
I was in the Scouts from the age of 8 to the age of 20.
I was in it my entire childhood.
It was the singular, most formative part of my youth.
I was not out when I was younger.
And even if in the back of my mind as a gay kid,
I had that doubt or fear
or, you know, self-hatred, you could even say,
the Boy Scouts really helped me
not feel so bad about myself as a gay kid,
even if I didn´t have the words at the time.
I was really caught off guard,
but it wasn´t something I could also walk away from.
I´m really happy with who I am today,
and I´m really happy with where I´ve come
and what I´ve stood for.
All that is because of the Boy Scouts.
It´s a great program with a policy
that´s just simply wrong and harmful.
Jaquiss: James Dale sued the Scouts
and ended up going all the way
to the United States Supreme Court.
And even though their membership was in long-term decline,
they spent millions of dollars just fighting to keep him out.
Cooper: On a divisive issue,
the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts
can bar homosexuals from serving as troop leaders.
♫♫
Dale: The saddest irony in all of this
is that you´re taught to be honest,
to be trustworthy, to be a leader.
Everything I´m doing now
is because of what the Boy Scouts taught me.
If we no longer in America
can discriminate on the basis of what we believe,
then we are no longer a free people.
Jaquiss: For Scouting, it seemed to be more important
to exclude gay Scouts and Scout leaders
than it was to fix the pedophile problem.
The Boy Scouts knew they were harboring pedophiles
and they didn´t do anything about it.
My name is Michael Johnson.
I´m a father, a son, and former director of youth protection
with the Boy Scouts of America.
And truth be told,
I have got to share something
that´s been on my heart
and a major concern of mine
in my final years
at the Boy Scouts of America as well as after my departure,
and is more clearly true.
When I ask the question,
"Is the Boy Scouts of America safe for kids?"
the truth of the matter and the truth
that I said at the time was, "It´s not.
The Boy Scouts of America is not safe for kids."
It is safer, but it´s not safe for kids.
[ Discordant music begins ]
[ Keyboard clacking ]
♫♫
Carolyn: He had no fear. Doug had no fear.
[ Keyboard clacking ]
♫♫
Matthew: There was a blog that came out
that said how he liked to spoon with the boys.
♫♫
Carolyn: Made me sick.
I mean, we didn´t know the details,
and now I feel like an idiot because...
[ Chuckles ]
God.
[ Keyboard clacking ]
♫♫
Matthew: The Boy Scouts, if you have the problem fixed,
how come our case is here?
Carolyn: A year or two before Boy Scouts,
Doug was accused of something.
They wouldn´t say what.
Newscaster: The Cascade Pacific Council
continued to allow Young to serve as a Scoutmaster,
despite Young writing in a blog post
that he was investigated for abuse back in 2010.
If there was allegations --
I don´t care if they were unfounded or not --
that should be a red flag
on letting someone be in charge of young boys.
I´m just -- How can this happen?
Carolyn: I want everybody to know,
you know, the Boy Scouts are not what they say they are.
They´re just not.
[ Sniffles, sighs ]
I feel like a fool.
And...
[ Voice breaking ] ...I just feel so guilty
for putting him in that situation.
[ Sighs ]
Director: Did you and your brother ever talk about
what was happening when you were in Boy Scouts? No.
Never.
We really don´t talk about it now either.
We just kind of avoid it with each other
´cause I find it --
Like, I think me and him would be uncomfortable
telling each other about stuff.
Do you have anything fragile on your bed, bro?
Kris: I don´t think so. Just step over there or something.
Kris: I tell him a lot that I´m very sorry
that I didn´t tell him to stop doing that to my younger brother
because I didn´t want him to have
the same traumatic experience I did.
He was only in fourth grade, I think,
and I hate that I didn´t fricking tell him
to stop anything.
That´s the part that really makes me mad,
that he did that to my younger brother.
I don´t know if you can actually see them or not.
I know the reason why people cut.
You trade your emotional pain for physical pain
´cause you´re dealing with mental pain so...
so much, you just want a break from it,
´cause you can´t distract from it.
And you cut yourself, and you have,
I guess, just physical damages that you can focus on, I guess.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
If somebody saw that I was getting molested by a pedophile,
he´s fucking doing -- sorry --
he´s doing stuff to you, and it´s not normal,
and it´s not okay.
You need to get out or, "Hey, I´m gonna call the police
and they´re gonna deal with this," but nobody said anything.
♫♫
So I kind of just thought I was on my own
and nobody would really hear me.
♫♫
Kris: Having this happen to you and then having, you know,
someone talk about you maybe getting a payout for it,
it doesn´t feel real to me.
It´s just kind of unbelievable that something good
can actually come out of something bad.
My lawyer´s office called me
and told me that "the Boy Scouts had been court ordered
to pay for therapy for you and for your family
who may have been affected by what you went through."
And so, um...
...I immediately said, "Yes. I´ll take advantage of that."
If for nothing else, then to punish the Boy Scouts.
I also figured that may be the only thing
I ever get out of this.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
I know I´m not alone out there as a victim.
Ron: Hi, honey.
And I don´t know how it...
how it is manifested in other people´s lives,
but it´s manifested itself as rage inside of me
that comes out at the most inopportune times
and to the most... most undeserving people.
My wife doesn´t deserve to be treated
the way I´ve treated her sometimes.
♫♫
Mary: At one point,
I called the main headquarters of the Boy Scouts
because I was so frustrated in my marriage.
And I just said, "You know what?
I just want you to know how this has affected our family."
And, you know, I don´t remember the phone call verbatim,
but, um... "There´s nothing we can do."
♫♫
Ron: I´ve lost jobs
because sometimes people got in my face
and their authority became obnoxious to me.
And rather than be able to play the game...
I let my rage break through.
"Eh. Bye."
Said, "There goes that job."
Many victims have learned how to deal with that
so that they can get on with their lives
and still accomplish what they want to.
I´m in a group that just doesn´t seem
to be able to do that, so...
[ Sighs ]
Humphrey: You know, living is difficult.
Think of all the stress that comes when, you know,
you´re working and you start raising a family.
And it´s these stresses in life that accentuate that loneliness
and that emptiness and bring all those memories back.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
It´s not just about a financial settlement.
It´s about Boy Scouts admitting that they did wrong
and they allowed wrong to happen on their watch.
♫♫
So it´s important that we get a settlement.
I mean, it´s the closest thing to justice any of these people
will ever get.
And if we fail to do that, then there´s no closure.
It has to happen.
Humphrey: Alright. Here we go.
-Ready? -Ready.
Humphrey: Hey, good evening, everybody.
Welcome to another TCC town hall update.
We´re excited that you´re with us.
I´m very excited to announce a guest that we have.
Michael Johnson.
He served for 10 years with the Boy Scouts
trying to improve and fix that program.
Well, listen, Michael, we just really appreciate
you being here tonight. Johnson: Thank you very much.
You know, silence is complicity for me, and I stood on that
and other moral and ethical principles.
Humphrey: We certainly appreciate it.
You know, we asked you to sort of take a look
at the plan that survivors are voting on.
And in your opinion, will the non-monetary portions
do anything to roll back sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts
the way it´s written today? No.
No, no. Absolutely not.
The Boy Scouts have been at this what, 100-plus years.
You can´t trust them to do it themselves.
They´re incapable of doing it.
Culturally, they´re stuck.
They´ve got too much cultural inbreeding
and nobody willing to risk their neck to make a change.
So thank you once again for attending.
Thank you for your courage in coming out.
We really appreciate your support.
Johnson: Thank you very much for everything
that you guys are doing. Good luck.
Humphrey: And just a general message
for everybody to hang in there.
You know,
the BSA and the insurers
and the local councils are struggling
just to get their mind around the magnitude of these numbers
because there´s so many of you.
Humphrey: So we´re working through that.
We have a plan, and just hang in there.
And one day at a time. That´s what we´re trying to do.
So thanks, everybody. Have a great evening.
Good night.
[ Sighs ]
You know, our joke in the TCC is,
you know, what we´ll end up with is a Starbucks card.
A friend of mine used to joke with me.
He says, "You know, money´s not the most important thing.
But when you need it, it´s kind of up there with oxygen."
And so I guess that´s what I would say.
It´s not the most important thing,
but there´s a lot of these guys that need it.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
Crew: At this point, we´re at an impasse.
For decades, both the local councils
and BSA National every year bought insurance policies.
The fact of the matter is...
it´s the Scouts and their parents
who bought those policies.
They´re the ones that paid those premiums because they paid dues.
They took a portion of those dues,
and they bought insurance policies
starting back in the 1930s.
And so Scouts -- victims, survivors --
are the ones that have paid for that insurance.
The insurance companies are not engaging.
The insurance companies are basically saying...
"We´re not gonna be left holding the bag."
GPS: In 1,000 feet, turn left onto Corporate Drive.
Jaquiss: We got an e-mail from the Boy Scouts saying, "Okay.
We´re finally ready to talk."
GPS: Turn right onto Executive Drive.
[ Turn signal clicking ]
[ Bell chiming ]
Jaquiss: This is the national headquarters
of the Boy Scouts of America.
They actually built this in 1979.
And the bankruptcy has caused the Boy Scouts to lay off
more than half of their staff.
So inside are a couple of floors of empty cubicles.
Hi, Jim. I´m Nigel Jaquiss.
Nigel. Jim Turley. Pleasure to meet you.
Jaquiss: Thanks for coming all the way down to see us.
Turley: It´s my pleasure.
Alright. Let´s get started.
How involved were you in the decision
to declare bankruptcy in 2020?
I was involved, very involved.
I was the chair at the time.
Jaquiss: What did it feel like?
Well, as you´d expect, it felt horrible.
But we knew we were doing the right thing
because we were doing it for the right reason.
We wanted to ensure
that we could equitably compensate our survivors,
and we also wanted to make sure
we could deliver the mission of Scouting
for the next 100 years.
And going through this bankruptcy filing,
as painful as it is, was a way to accomplish both of those.
Jaquiss: People said, "Hey, the Scouts
pay their executives very generously,
even though we´ve seen since 2010
basically an annual operating deficit or loss each year."
Yeah, our compensation committee looks every year
at the compensation of our executives,
actually does market assessments,
and is quite confident
that they´re being appropriately compensated
for the complexity of their responsibility
compared to other youth-serving organizations.
And so we feel very positive about that.
Jaquiss: So, how is it gonna be different
when you come out of Chapter 11?
How is it culturally
and operationally gonna be different?
I think the cultural changes around youth protection
have already been made.
We´re not going to be more focused on this
because of going through bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy is a process to compensate victims.
It´s not a process of changing
the characteristic of Scouting.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
Dr. Warren: I can assure you that there are many,
many, many ways to sexually abuse a child,
and you don´t need to have them out in the woods
to bring that about.
♫♫
These men don´t go away.
They don´t dissolve out of the universe.
They just go somewhere else.
♫♫
How do we find the origins of this pathology
that makes people want to have sex with children?
We need to develop a broader perspective
on how to protect children
as they move through their lives.
Stewart: Scouting is about preparing a young person
for life.
And fortunately or unfortunately,
part of my Scouting experience prepared me for life
in a different way.
♫♫
My brother is 11 years older than I am,
so we didn´t do Scouting together.
But, you know, I heard stories
that they had an associate Scoutmaster in his troop
in the ´70s in Dallas
that, you know, had relationships with youth
that just weren´t proper.
♫♫
My brother was an all-state football player
and, you know, big guy.
And I remember him telling me the story about his Scoutmaster
coming in to his tent one night
and he just basically said, you know, "Get off me,"
and, you know, "I don´t want you to do that."
Kind of like, you know, bullied him in a way
to, you know, get him off.
And that was kind of -- It was funny
´cause that was always in my mind.
And then we moved here in eighth grade,
and Camp Kikthawenund up the road,
I had an experience where --
It´s funny, ´cause I can still smell him.
I can still think about his image
and who that person was at that point in time.
An adult volunteer,
you know, did a very similar thing to me.
And unlike my brother, I didn´t necessarily have the strength
or the ability as an eighth grader to,
you know, kind of just push him off
and say, you know, "Stop. What are you doing?"
You know, I stopped participating in Scouting
every single week and things of that nature.
I know it stopped me from going to certain events,
and I never told my parents what happened.
I assumed they knew.
But thankfully, my father kept pushing forward.
I mean, I´m glad that Scouting
was not ripped away from me because of my own experience.
That individual, you know,
doesn´t represent Scouting to me.
When you start hearing that people at 52 years of age,
that was the average age that most men who have been abused
will come to terms with that,
and I was right around 50 years of age.
So when I say that Scouting prepares you for life,
I think the silver lining in all of this is,
yeah, I was abused,
but I also was able to receive healing through that.
I was also, you know, available to understand the victims
and what they´re going through right now,
anxiety and depression and suicide.
I know those feelings.
♫♫
Our courts are going to figure this out --
you know, how to fairly compensate the victims.
The Scouts are going to end up paying, you know,
billions of dollars to settle these claims.
And they´re gonna have to sell properties.
They´re gonna have to liquidate things
like the Norman Rockwell collection,
whatever those things are.
But I´m confident Scouting will survive.
I´m hopeful Scouting will survive.
[ Voice breaking ] Sorry.
♫♫
Crew: I´m grateful for the survivors
that trust us with their stories,
their unbelievably heartbreaking stories.
I can´t tell you how many have told me how...
they kind of divide their life between before the abuse
and after the abuse and how it changed
and how everything changed at that moment in their life
and how so many of them are haunted by...
They´re haunted by who they would have become
if this never happened to them.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
Turley: I think it´s my opportunity and obligation
to help make sure that Scouting is the safest place for youth.
♫♫
I feel that is the place today.
We are incredibly safe.
I am so sorry for what happened decades ago,
but I feel so good about where we are today
and I know how committed the organization is
to even continuing to improve from here.
Jaquiss: And I remember the Scout law that I learned,
you know, 45 years ago.
It changed my life in many ways for the better.
But I wonder how you weigh this.
So the benefit that you and I got and millions of other people
got from Scouting and the devastation
that it has wrought on a significant number of men,
the good that it did and the damage it did.
I´m glad these 82,000 came forward.
I´m glad we´re at a point in time in our society
where people will talk about abuse.
50 years ago, people didn´t talk about abuse very often.
It was taboo.
And so I actually look at the opportunities
to make places better.
Jaquiss: Reporters are all about hindsight.
In hindsight, do you wish that,
from a sort of financial structure point of view,
that you had declared bankruptcy earlier,
or did you do it the right time?
You know, reporters might be all around hindsight,
but I´m not, you know?
So I like to live my life out the windshield,
not the rearview mirror.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
Jaquiss: Before I was a reporter,
I was a commodity trader.
And if you buy a cargo full of, say, wheat,
most of it´s gonna be good.
But some of the wheat´s gonna be bad.
So there´s a cost of doing business.
There´s collateral damage, if you will.
What I began to understand
is that the Boy Scouts are in a commodity business,
and the commodity is boys.
And the Scouts looked at some boys as collateral damage.
♫♫
[ Birds chirping ]
Humphrey: You really can´t go back
and think about reconstructing circumstances
for a different outcome.
Some people have the fortitude to power through,
and some don´t.
And it´s not strength or weakness.
That´s the way abuse is.
But I have witnessed
at least 30 men give their testimony
to a small group of people.
And every time, it makes me cry.
It´s just so sad.
[ Sniffles ]
That this innocence...
...this innocence in these beautiful places,
in these wonderful camps,
in these architectures of God in the wilderness
were turned into horrific hellholes for young boys.
And you hear this guttural...
...sobbing when a 75-year-old man
recounts something that happened to him when he was 13,
as it was yesterday.
You...
When you hear that, you understand alcoholism...
and drug abuse,
uh, because they´re just trying to dull it down.
They got this little record player in their head.
That never turns off, ever... no matter what they´re doing.
[ Down-tempo music plays ]
♫♫
Humphrey: This is about figuring out
how to move from victim to survivor.
And that´s a very profound process.
[ Birds chirping ]
♫♫
And I don´t think you can put a price on that.
♫♫
Pretty spectacular out here, isn´t it?
Director: It is.
Calms my soul.
[ Geese honking ]
[ The Old Joe Clarks´ "Passers By" plays ]
♫♫
♫ I laid down ♫
♫ And I went to sleep ♫
♫ I guess the rain ♫
♫ Kind of pulled me deep ♫
♫ I don´t know ♫
♫ And I don´t ask ♫
♫ Just like the sound ♫
♫ Splashin´ on the glass ♫
♫ And I have walked ♫
♫ Through a world of sin ♫
♫ Where I was born ♫
♫ Born again ♫
♫ Ain´t no saint ♫
♫ But I ain´t no worse ♫
♫ You´ll be the last ♫
♫ But you weren´t the first ♫
♫♫
♫ Passers by ♫
♫ On the road of life ♫
♫ Are we going somewhere ♫
♫ Or just passing time? ♫
♫ ´Cause I don´t know ♫