{"id":1849,"date":"2010-04-14T11:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/14\/do-the-boy-scouts-have-their-own-sex-abuse-crisis-brewing\/"},"modified":"2010-04-14T11:18:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T15:18:00","slug":"do-the-boy-scouts-have-their-own-sex-abuse-crisis-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/14\/do-the-boy-scouts-have-their-own-sex-abuse-crisis-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the Boy Scouts have their own sex abuse crisis brewing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man in Oregon was just compensated $1.4 million dollars for sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a Scoutmaster in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>The troubling part of the case was the introduction of what has been described by the Associated Press as &#8220;so-called perversion files.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5gpjeTQaNRDPhl23bgYW4RTlWLfmQD9F2OVQG1\">press coverage<\/a>, the Scouts kept semi-secret files on misbehavior by scoutmasters for decades, apparently without revealing the information to police or other authorities. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lawyers for the Scouts argued the files helped weed out suspected child molesters.<\/p>\n<p>But the attorneys for Kerry Lewis, the man who filed the lawsuit, argued that keeping them secret meant that parents, children and volunteers were not warned about the risk of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n<p>Worse, said attorneys Kelly Clark and Paul Mones, was the failure of the Scouts to set up a system to prevent and report abuse, and make it a top priority among all its members \u2014 despite decades of files.<\/p>\n<p>The lawyers focused on the files from 1965 to mid-1984 in their case, calling them the &#8220;tip of the iceberg&#8221; because sex abuse is considered to be greatly underreported, especially in that era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Scout officials argue that the number of assaults is minor, given the organization&#8217;s size.<\/p>\n<p>But a continuing mystery here is why so many organizations felt it necessary to entangle themselves in these decisions.<\/p>\n<p>Why not simply call the legal authorities &#8212; police, prosecutors &#8212; who have the expertise to deal with and resolve alleged or suspected sexual assaults?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man in Oregon was just compensated $1.4 million dollars for sexual abuse he suffered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}