83 THOUSAND LAWSUITS FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT WERE FILED AGAINST "BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA"

The largest children's organization in the United States, Boy Scouts of America (BSA), filed for bankruptcy in mid-February 2020. Then the huge number of lawsuits from victims of sexual harassment forced the organization to seek salvation by turning to Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.

Nine months later, the BSA was literally inundated with claims - 82,663 applications were filed against the organization. Lawyer Paul Mons, who has worked in the Boy Scouts case for many years, said he never expected the number of lawsuits to be so huge.

In May, the Delaware bankruptcy court ruled that the deadline for filing claims from the victims would be November 16. At the same time, experts note that the organization knew about some of the cases of sexual abuse of children.

BSA proprietary documents have reported at least 12,000 cases of boy abuse from the 1920s to the present days.

It is known that the organization had a special "file of perversions", which documented accusations of abuse committed by leaders and teachers.

Paul Mons notes that for many decades, the unspoken inner politics meant that such cases were kept silent. Like many youth communities, BSA has failed to avoid scandals. Back in the 1980s, the head of BSA James Tarr stated that the problem of physical bullying and sexual assault was as old as the organization itself.

Then, in the wake of the first scandals, the programs were introduced to help teenagers, camp counselors and parents and were aimed at the minimization of the harm caused by the violence.

In particular, an adult scout could not be alone with a child. Since 2003, the organization has introduced a check of all new camp counselors for a criminal record or criminal history. Experienced scout leaders with have been subject to this procedure since 2008.

The worst blow to the reputation of the scout movement was the lawsuit in Oregon, in which Kerry Lewis who became a victim of leader Timur Dykes in the 1980s, received $ 18.5 million. In 1983, Dykes confessed to his superiors about the abuse of 17 boys, but even after that he was not removed from the post of counselor, and after that Lewis became his victim. According to experts, it was this high-profile process that became a turning point, when all the Americans knew about the problem of pedophilia that affected the scout movement.