What's worse? RC priests or Boy Scouts?

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Boy Scouts' ‘perversion files’ released: ‘The secrets are out’

By JASON FELCH and KIM CHRISTENSEN | 12:47PM - Thursday, October 18, 2012



THE VEIL was lifted Thursday on decades of confidential sexual abuse allegations in the ranks of the Boy Scouts of America with the court-ordered release of more than 1,200 of the organization’s “perversion files.”

The files offer the public an unprecedented look at how suspected molestations were handled by one of the nation’s leading youth organizations from the early 1960s through 1985, a time when awareness of sexual abuse was evolving rapidly.

“The secrets are out,” said Kelly Clark, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers in an Oregon lawsuit that resulted in a nearly $20-million judgment against the Scouts in 2010. “Child abuse thrives in secrecy and secret systems are where it breeds. And these secrets are out.”

• ON THE MAP: Names, locations of alleged sex abuse

Clark’s office made the files public — minus the names of victims and others who reported suspected abuse — after the Oregon Supreme Court ordered their release in June at the request of news organizations including the Oregonian newspaper of Portland, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the New York Times and the Associated Press.

The Los Angeles Times is incorporating the files into its own online database, which contains information on nearly 5,000 such cases spanning 1947 to January 2005. The database offers a complete record of files during that period except for an unknown number of files that have been purged by the Scouts over the years. In more than 300 cases, the allegations involve someone with ties to a troop or unit in California.

In a statement Thursday, the Boy Scouts' national president, Wayne Perry, underscored the organization’s enhanced child-protection efforts in recent years, including beefed-up background checks and training of leaders and mandatory reporting of all suspected abuse.

• FULL COVERAGE: Inside the ‘perversion files’

He also acknowledged that incidents of abuse have occurred, some mishandled by the Scouts.

“There have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong,” Perry said. “Where those involved in Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest and sincere apologies to victims and their families.”

In recent months, The Times has published an investigation of those files and thousands of case summaries from 1940 to 2005. The files and summaries were obtained from Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has sued the Scouts on behalf of dozens of abuse victims.

• DOCUMENTS: A paper trail of abuse

The Times investigation has revealed a broad range of patterns in the Scouts’ handling of abuse allegations that echo similar revelations about the Catholic Church and, more recently, the Penn State scandal involving assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

On Wednesday, The Times reported that the files revealed a clear pattern of grooming behavior, in which men seduced their young victims.

In September, The Times reported that the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign and helped many cover their tracks, allowing the molesters to cite bogus reasons for their departure.

In 80% of the 500 cases where the Scouts were the first to learn about abuse, there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

Nine days later, the Boy Scouts announced it would conduct a comprehensive review of some 5,000 files going back to the 1940s and would report to law enforcement any cases it had not previously disclosed.

In August, The Times reported that the blacklist, for years the primary line of defense against child molesters, was repeatedly breached. In more than 125 cases, men allegedly continued to molest Scouts after the organization was first presented with detailed allegations of abusive behavior.

Predators slipped back into the program by falsifying personal information or skirting the registration process. Others were able to jump from troop to troop around the country thanks to clerical errors, computer glitches or the Scouts' failure to check the blacklist.

In some cases, officials documented abuse but allowed the abuser to continue working with boys while on “probation.” In at least 50 cases, the Boy Scouts expelled suspected abusers, only to discover later that they had reentered the program and were accused of molesting again.

Media organizations from across the country are expected to mine the files released Thursday, and legal experts say that some of the revelations in the files could lead to lawsuits against the Boy Scouts over their handling of alleged abuse.

The Scouts have warned that the release of the files could have a chilling effect on the reporting of alleged abuse. For nearly a century, the Scouts have maintained the national archive, known inside the organization as the “perversion files,” as a way of preventing men suspected of abuse from reentering Scouting.

Although never intended for public review, hundreds of files have been submitted as evidence in lawsuits over the years, generally under seal.

The files contain detailed — though often incomplete — accounts of alleged abuse, including handwritten accounts by young victims, court records, police reports and correspondence between local and national Scout officials. Many of the alleged incidents were never reported to the police so the allegations have not been heard in court.

Related news stories...

• In Scouting reports, a pattern of molestation

• Boy Scouts helped molesters cover tracks, records show

• Boy Scouts apologize to victims as ‘perversion files’ released

latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/10/boy-scouts-perversion-files-released-the-secrets-are-out.html

[jody]

These deviates wind up working and volunteering where young boys are in abundance....sick bastards.

[Deleted]

It makes you wonder though. The outing of Roman Catholic priests (and clergy from other religions too) began in the USA, then it turned out the problem was world-wide.

Now that leaders in the Boy Scouts movement in the USA have been outed, one has to wonder if this is also going to turn out to be a world-wide problem?

I guess time will tell.

[matt]

Oct 20, 2012 19:22:32 GMT 10 jody said:

These deviates wind up working and volunteering where young boys are in abundance....sick bastards.

It is a cycle, they themselves were probably boy scouts who were molested, influenced while their brain was still plastic believing it is the right thing to do.

I think psychiatrists need to develop a system which can take the brain back to a state where it is plastic again, therefore able to be rewired.

[matt]

Oct 20, 2012 19:35:50 GMT 10 kiwithrottlejockey said:

It makes you wonder though. The outing of Roman Catholic priests (and clergy from other religions too) began in the USA, then it turned out the problem was world-wide.

Now that leaders in the Boy Scouts movement in the USA have been outed, one has to wonder if this is also going to turn out to be a world-wide problem?

I guess time will tell.

Australia does not have boy scouts, we have the scout movement which includes both boys and girls.

The leaders are both male and female and sometimes husband and wife teams.

[Deleted]

Perhaps now the Scout Movement is unisex (it also is in NZ), but Scouts and Guides used to be separate in both countries. It's just that America (as usual) is still living in the dark-ages (it's that high percentage of the population needing the crutch of religion because they cannot stand on their own two feet) which has resulted in American still being backwards in many other areas, such as the Scouts (& Guides) movements.

However, if you dig back far enough to when Scouts & Guides were separate in Oz & NZ, I bet you'll find heaps of sickos were preying on young boys back then. I bet a lot of them went to church every Sunday too!

[matt]

Oct 20, 2012 19:49:34 GMT 10 kiwithrottlejockey said:

Perhaps now the Scout Movement is unisex (it also is in NZ), but Scouts and Guides used to be separate in both countries. It's just that America (as usual) is still living in the dark-ages (it's that high percentage of the population needing the crutch of religion because they cannot stand on their own two feet) which has resulted in American still being backwards in many other areas, such as the Scouts (& Guides) movements.

However, if you dig back far enough to when Scouts & Guides were separate in Oz & NZ, I bet you'll find heaps of sickos were preying on young boys back then. I bet a lot of them went to church every Sunday too!

And most of them would have also been molested as children.

We need a way of reprogramming the brain.

Perhaps instead of sentencing pedophiles to jail, we could sentence them to a term in an experimental hospital where psychiatrists and neurologists can conduct experiments on them against their will in an attempt to find a cure.

[jody]

Matt, being molested doesn't always make you a molester. These people have this kind of deviation in them. It isn't something you can reprogram. They are what they are.

[matt]

Oct 20, 2012 20:34:26 GMT 10 jody said:

Matt, being molested doesn't always make you a molester. These people have this kind of deviation in them. It isn't something you can reprogram. They are what they are.

You can reprogram anything, you just need to find a way.

We need humans to be experimental lab animals.

[jody]

It is hard wired in them Matt. They can't be repaired.

[matt]

Oct 20, 2012 23:09:16 GMT 10 jody said:

It is hard wired in them Matt. They can't be repaired.

I believe in science, I believe what is wired can be unwired, we just need to develop the technology.

If someone can be knocked out and get amnesia, it must be possible!

[spindrift]

Boy Scouts or scouting for boys...sick minded people out there...and 28% of molested children go on to molest, 72%....born perverts.

[jody]

So what do you think Matt? Maybe show them pictures of young boys and have them given an electric shock?
How about this for a cure.....de-ball them.

[Deleted]

Oct 20, 2012 22:56:42 GMT 10 @matt said:

You can reprogram anything, you just need to find a way.

WHAT??

In the same way you were reprogrammed from being a Mormon retard to being a Hillsong retard?

[Deleted]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Men tell of sexual abuse by scoutmaster decades ago

Memories of spending the night at Rodger L. Beatty's home in Pennsylvania
are still fresh. Five boys reported their leader's actions to Scout officials
and he was expelled, but the police weren't called.

By KIM CHRISTENSEN | 6:09PM - Saturday, October 20, 2012


Carl Maxwell Jr., reviews the Boy Scouts of America's confidential file detailing the alleged abuse
he and four other members of Troop 222 were subjected to by Scoutmaster Rodger L. Beatty.
— Photo: Kim Christensen/Los Angeles Times/September 04, 2012.

NEWPORT, Pennsylvania — Even after 36 years, Carl Maxwell Jr.'s thoughts leap to the rustic house at the edge of the golf course, and what happened there.

"It is so old, but it is so fresh," Maxwell said, recalling the many nights that members of Troop 222 spent at the home of their scoutmaster, Rodger L. Beatty.

He remembers the mattresses that covered the floor in the front room, the queasy anticipation that would set in among the five boys after Beatty said good night and went to his room.

"I remember the first time for me," he said. "The lights were turned off and the moon was out, and I could see it shining through a crack in the blinds. Then all of a sudden it got dark and then it got light again, and you could tell someone passed through the light."

It was Beatty, he said.

"He started at one end of the room and worked his way right down," Maxwell said.

Mike Kunkel also remembers being sexually abused at Beatty's place, and had long kept it to himself.

"I have been married for 20-something years and never said a word about this to my wife until tonight," he said, an hour after a reporter called and asked to stop by to talk about Beatty. "It was a big bomb to drop on her."

All five boys, ages 13 and 14, came forward in July 1976 to accuse Beatty in detailed written statements to local Scout officials. He was expelled from Scouting, but no one called the police. Beatty abruptly left town.

"It's like he ceased to exist after that day," Kunkel said. "Now I'm wondering: Where the hell is he? Is he in jail? Is he dead?"

Beatty, 66, is neither dead nor in jail.

The longtime University of Pittsburgh social worker, educator and AIDS researcher has been in a hospital intensive care unit since Sept. 28, when he suffered a massive stroke. His family asked David Korman, a Pitt colleague and friend of 20 years, to answer questions on his behalf.

"I'm just shocked by this," Korman said. "His reputation on the campus is truly outstanding.... I think everyone here will be stunned."

Korman said Beatty is unable to communicate.

"The only person able to answer the allegations is unable to answer," he said.

Boy Scout files

The accusations that bind the Pennsylvania men's lives are detailed in the Boy Scouts of America's confidential files, a blacklist the organization has used for nearly a century to keep suspected molesters out of its ranks.

Beatty's is among nearly 1,900 such files the Los Angeles Times has reviewed in recent months. Hundred of suspected molesters, many of them respected members of their communities, were never reported to authorities, the records show.

Much of their long-buried history was cast into public view Thursday, when 1,247 of the files, including Beatty's, were unsealed by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, two years after a jury considered them as evidence in a landmark sex-abuse lawsuit against the Scouts.

The Times first attempted to contact Beatty in early September, more than two weeks before he fell ill. He did not respond to repeated email and phone messages.

The newspaper also sought out the former Scouts he was alleged to have abused. Of the five, two have since died and one could not be reached.

Like many other incidents of alleged abuse described in the files, those involving Beatty played out in a small town, where Scouting was a big part of boys' lives.

Maxwell, now 50, said Newport was a great place to "swim in the cricks" and fish in the Juniata River, a few blocks down the hill from the small duplex where he and his sister grew up and where he still lives much of the year. It is about 25 miles from the capital, Harrisburg, and many of its 1,500 residents are state employees. His late father, Carl Sr., worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

"I wouldn't have wanted to grow up any other place," Maxwell said, sitting at the kitchen table. "You know how you hear people say you can leave the doors unlocked? Well, this was that kind of neighborhood."

Sponsored by a local church, Troop 222 was led for three years in the mid-1970s by Beatty, then a county drug-and-alcohol counselor in his late 20s. He met some of the boys, including Mike Kunkel and his stepbrother, J.P. Culhane, while helping their parents with alcohol abuse or other problems.

"My mom and dad were having problems, and they started seeking therapy through the county," Kunkel said.

Kunkel said he and Culhane were "loose cannons" at that age and Beatty suggested that they'd benefit from Scouting's structured environment. So they joined his troop.

Beatty took a special interest in some of the boys, Kunkel said. He'd take them on camping trips and to events such as the Klondike Derby, where Scouts test their skills. They always had plenty to eat and lots of fun.

"He taught us how to drive a car," Kunkel said. "He drove a stick ... so we drove a stick."

Beatty eventually began inviting Kunkel, his stepbrother and three other boys, including Maxwell, to group sleepovers at his house "out in the middle of nowhere," near a quarry.

"That's where we would stay on a Friday night, say, if we were going to a Klondike Derby or something the next day," said Kunkel, now 50.

Much of the alleged abuse occurred at the house, but it happened on camp-outs too.

"I woke up and found Rodger in the tent," one of the boys wrote in his statement. "He already had my pants unbuckled, so I tried to get away and he got my pants down and he had sexual intercourse again."

In retrospect, Maxwell and Kunkel said, it's hard to explain why the abuse went on for so long. It probably had to do with being 13 and naive, they said, and with Beatty's position as their trusted leader.

"I look back at it and say, ‘You're a victim’, but back then it was like, hey, he was my scoutmaster," Kunkel said.

Maxwell said the repeated abuse took its toll. His good grades fell. He spent more and more time alone in his room.

"I started to close down," he said. "My parents didn't know what was going on. In fact, there toward the end they were ready to send me to a shrink.... I thought, ‘I need to come clean with my mom and dad here’."

Maxwell said that the boys seldom spoke among themselves about the abuse, but that he and his best friend, now deceased, decided they could not put up with it any longer. All five then decided to come forward, he said, and he told his parents.

"My father wanted to kill him," Maxwell said.

Local Scout officials sat the boys down, one by one, to write out what happened. Their accounts, which left little to the imagination, were given to the top local Scout official and the Boy Scouts' national office.

Beatty resigned immediately, citing increasing job demands in a July 01, 1976, letter to Scouting officials. Aware that the five boys had accused Beatty of molesting them repeatedly, Arthur Lesh, the church's troop representative, wrote back.

"Thank you for the time and effort you have expended for us as Scoutmaster," he said, noting he accepted the resignation with "extreme regret."

In his 70s and living in the same town, Lesh said in a recent interview that "a lot of what happened and who it happened to" eludes his memory. But he did recall Beatty and the allegations against him. And he said he believed the boys who made them, in part because "there were so many of them."

He and others affiliated with the troop were shocked and embarrassed by what happened, Lesh said, and no one considered calling the police.

"Nobody wanted to discuss it publicly," he said. "Nobody was too proud that it even happened, or was allowed to happen."

Lesh never heard from Beatty again.

Building a career

Beatty went on to earn a graduate degree in community psychology from Pennsylvania State University and a doctorate in social work from the University of Pittsburgh, according to a 2011 resume and his Pitt biography.

He has worked for more than three decades in public health programs, some geared to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. He had several jobs with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and since 1998 has been an assistant professor at Pitt, in the Graduate School of Public Health's Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology.

"Dr. Beatty's research focuses on HIV prevention, particularly as it relates to substance abuse and sexual minorities," his Pitt bio states.

Beatty's friends and colleagues say they can't reconcile the man they know with the serial molester portrayed in the Boy Scouts' file.

"I have done lots of work with Rodger," said Michael Shankle, a friend and research associate who has known him for 15 years. "I have never seen anything that would lead me to believe anything that would even come close to that. I am so flabbergasted."

Shankle described Beatty as "a well loved community activist and leader." Beatty's resume lists more than half a dozen honors beginning with the National Jaycees' "Outstanding Young Man of the Year" in 1981 and ending with the 2009 "Red Ribbon Award" from an AIDS-prevention organization.

Beatty has been on a ventilator, according to recorded updates by his family, and he has opened his eyes and moved his arms, legs, fingers and toes. Since his stroke, scores of people have wished him well on Facebook.

"Rodger, you mean so much to me and to many other people whose lives you have touched," one wrote. "I am praying for you and thinking a lot of you every day."

Kunkel, one of the five boys Beatty allegedly abused, has been thinking of him, too.

"My first thought is ... I hope he dies and rots in hell," Kunkel said.

‘It was vile’

After high school, Kunkel spent eight years in the Marines and then 19 in the Army National Guard, including a tour in Iraq. He married a hometown girl, Shawn, had two daughters now in their late teens and works as a produce merchandiser for an independent grocer.

After he and the others reported Beatty to the Scouts, he never again talked about it with his stepbrother J.P., who died in a traffic accident years later.

"I wasn't proud of it. In fact, I was embarrassed about it," Kunkel said. "It was something that happened. It was vile, it was foul, but it was something you don't talk about. You move on."

He decided to talk to a reporter, he said, because it might help someone else.

Kunkel said he does not think the experience has had "debilitating effects" on him.

"But in the back of my mind it's always there that people like that are out there," he said.

He recalled his reaction when a man thought to be a child molester kept riding past on a bicycle to "eyeball" his young daughters years ago.

"I told him, ‘If you stop in front of my house one more time and look at my kids, I will take you out’," he said.

In a recent interview, Maxwell's retelling of an abuse incident was nearly identical to the statement he'd written 36 years ago — and hadn't seen since. He also had a vivid recollection of Beatty.

"I can still see his face like it was yesterday," he said.

Like Kunkel, Maxwell rarely talked about what happened once Beatty was gone.

"I wasn't going to let something like that hold me down," he said.

After high school he attended photography school in Philadelphia, then moved to New York City and worked as a bartender until about 10 years ago. He is retired now, with a heart condition, and spends part of the year in a camper on the Delaware shore.

He had coped well with his memories, Maxwell said, until the child sex abuse scandal involving a former assistant football coach at Penn State broke last year.

"With this Jerry Sandusky thing, all of it just came flooding back — terribly, actually," he said.

His own childhood experience affected his ability to trust people, and for that he blames his scoutmaster. Looking back, Beatty "should have been led out in handcuffs," he said.

"All of us boys — two of them's dead now — but all of us were scarred, and scarred for life by that. I'm sorry, but that's not something a 13-year-old boy puts out of his mind," he said. "And he got away with that."

• LA Times researchers Maloy Moore and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-10-21-scouts-beatty-20121022,0,6851396,full.story

[matt]

Oct 21, 2012 10:34:03 GMT 10 kiwithrottlejockey said:

Oct 20, 2012 22:56:42 GMT 10 @matt said:

You can reprogram anything, you just need to find a way.

WHAT??

In the same way you were reprogrammed from being a Mormon retard to being a Hillsong retard?

You're so insensitive.

You know the R word is deeply offensive to Jody.

[jody]

I'm trying hard to not let it bother me Matt. I have to just try and see it as just a word and not offensive to my son or those who are disabled, physically or mentally.

[Salem]

I'm beginning to really worry about KTJ. Has an unhealthy fixation and obsession with masturbation and now talking about sexual abuse. Join the dots.........?

[matt]

Yes he has an obsession about wanking, he is always talking about it.

I admit, I talk about mine and my girlfriend's sexual issues, but they are normal.

[jody]

Masturbation is as normal as homosexuality, oral sex etc. In fact it probably more so.

[jody]

In the past Buzz

[pim]

Oct 20, 2012 19:51:16 GMT 10 @matt said:

We need a way of reprogramming the brain.

Matt get a hold of the DVD of this movie:



Yeah it's dated! In fact the movie came out in the early 1970s and quickly achieved a cult status. I think it was one of the original "R" rated movies. I doubt it would be classified that way today. But it remains a very unique movie and not many have treated the subject of aversion therapy.

See it!

[slartibartfast]

And then watch Soylent Green!