A few weeks ago, as the result of a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), files with names of people excluded from the Boy Scouts from 1965-1985 was released to the public. These “perversion files” list names and details of adults who were kicked out either because they abused the boys they were in charge of or were accused of abusing boys. The BSA attempted to keep these files hidden. One file for a man in my area illustrates why BSA and similar groups are on the wrong side of the child abuse reporting issue. Identifying abusers and protecting children is FAR more important than any bad public relations for doing so.
When the files were released I was interested in checking them out. I was a Boy Scout from the mid 70’s to 1985. Although I never experienced any abuse, I wanted to see if any leaders I might have known back then was on the list. Luckily there was no one from my area in the files.
