A jury has ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay 18.5 million US dollars to a man who was sexually abused by a former assistant Scoutmaster in what is believed to be the largest such award against the organisation.
Lawyers for Kerry Lewis had asked the jury to award at least 25 million US dollars to punish the Boy Scouts for what the jury had agreed in the first phase of the trial was reckless and outrageous conduct.
The jury decided on April 13 that the Boy Scouts were negligent for allowing former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes to associate with Scouts, including Lewis, after Dykes admitted to an official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys.
The jury awarded Lewis 1.4 million US dollars in compensatory damages with that verdict and agreed the Boy Scouts of America were liable for punitive damages to be determined in the second phase of the trial, which ended on Thursday.
Boy Scouts officials said it could not comment on the details of the case because others are pending, but issued a statement saying it has a "rigorous" system to screen Scout leaders.
The case was the first of six filed against the Boy Scouts in the same court in Oregon, with at least one other separate case pending. If mediation fails to settle the next cases, they also could go to trial.
The amount of the damages surprised Patrick Boyle, editor of the Youth Today newspaper and author of a book about sex abuse in the Scouts.
"That’s a lot of money. This is by far the biggest award against the Scouts for sex abuse, probably by several times," Boyle said.
The award is also significant, he said, because it is only against the national Boy Scouts organization and is not divided among any of its local councils or other defendants.
Under Oregon law, 60% of the punitive damages awarded by the jury will go to the state crime victim compensation fund.
A sexually abused former US boy scout has been awarded punitive damages of $18.5m (£12m) at a trial which cast light on the organisation’s workings.
The order against the Boy Scouts of America for negligence was made by an Oregon jury. It is on top of an earlier award of $1.4m in compensatory damages.
Kerry Lewis, now 38, was abused by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.
The BSA was planning to appeal against the court verdict, insisting it had always stood against child abuse.
During the trial, lawyers won the right of access to the Boy Scouts’ secret files on suspected sexual predators.
These documents, formally known as "ineligible volunteer" files and nicknamed the "perversion files", have been compiled for nearly a century, since the organisation was formed.
They were kept under lock and key at BSA headquarters in Irving, Texas, and the organisation argued in court that its system was put to good use, quietly keeping out molesters for decades.
But Mr Lewis’s lawyers argued that the BSA should have brought the files out into the open decades ago, and the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that jurors should be allowed to see about 1,000 of the files, from 1965-85.
Allegation disputed
When he was aged 11 or 12, Mr Lewis was abused in Portland by a former assistant scoutmaster, Timur Dykes. Dykes, now 53, was later convicted three times of sexually abusing boys, and served time in prison.
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Timur Dykes has been convicted three times of abusing boys
The jury found that Dykes had been allowed to associate with scouts despite admitting to a BSA official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys.
However, the BSA strongly disputed the allegation that Dykes was allowed to continue associating with scouts, insisting he was ejected from scouting after the 1983 confession.
BSA officials declined to comment on details of the case to the Associated Press because other cases were pending but they issued a statement saying they had "always stood against child abuse of any kind".
Patrick Boyle, editor of the Youth Today newspaper and author of a book about sex abuse within the BSA, said he was surprised at the size of the damages.
"That’s a lot of money," he said. "This is by far the biggest award against the Scouts for sex abuse, probably by several times."
Between 1984 and 1992, the BSA were sued at least 60 times for alleged sex abuse with settlements and judgments totalling more than $16m, Mr Boyle said.
Mr Lewis will not receive the full damages awarded. Under Oregon state law, 60% of any punitive damages finally paid out must go to the state crime victims’ fund.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Boy Scouts of America were ordered Friday to pay $18.5 million in a lawsuit that has focused new attention on the secret files the Scouts keep to document claims of sexual abuse by troop leaders and volunteers.
Known variously as the “perversion files,” the “red flag files” and the “ineligible volunteer files,” the documents have been maintained for more than 70 years at the Scouts’ national office in Texas. Yet even after scores of abuse cases against the Scouts in recent decades, the case here is one of the few times that substantial portions of the files have been made accessible to a jury.
In Multnomah County Circuit Court on Friday, a jury found the Scouts liable for $18.5 million in punitive damages in a case brought by a man who was sexually abused by an assistant troop leader in the early 1980s, when the man was about 12. The verdict was by far the largest ever against the Scouts in a jury trial. The jury could have ordered the Scouts to pay up to $25 million. The same jury last week awarded the man, Kerry Lewis, $1.4 million in compensatory damages.
Most abuse cases involving the Scouts have ended in private settlements, and it is unknown how much the group has paid to victims.
In the Oregon case, about 1,000 files, from the years 1965 to 1984, were included as evidence, though the judge, John A. Wittmayer, allowed only the jury and lawyers involved to view them.
Lawyers for Mr. Lewis, who is now 37, said in court that the files detailed many instances across the country in which troop leaders or volunteers were allowed to continue working with children even after the Scouts had received complaints that they had committed sexual abuse.
“They hid the problem,” Paul Mones, a lawyer for Mr. Lewis, said in closing arguments on Thursday, “and by hiding the problem, more abuse happened.”
In the Oregon case, a former assistant troop leader, Timur Dykes, had admitted to molesting Mr. Lewis. Evidence has shown that Mr. Dykes, who has since been convicted in child-molesting cases, was allowed to interact with scouts even after leaders learned he had abused children.
Mr. Mones said in court that Mr. Lewis might not have been abused had the Scouts reported the information they collected. He said releasing the files would help deter abuse and show that the Scouts are confronting the issue at a national level.
Lawyers for the Scouts have argued that the files should be kept confidential to protect victims and wrongly accused adults. They also dispute the claim that the files have caused harm.
Chuck Smith, a lawyer for the Scouts, told jurors that the files proved that the Scouts were ahead of their time in tracking child sexual abuse, even if the system was “not foolproof.”
“Hopefully, if their name’s in this file and there’s a file on them, they can never be involved in the Boy Scouts again,” Mr. Smith told the jury. “I ask you folks, what is wrong with that? What’s wrong with trying to maintain that kind of control?”
Several news organizations, including The New York Times, have filed a motion to gain access to the files.
The Scouts, based in Irving, Tex., would not discuss the case.
“Access to the file is kept private to protect accusers from retaliation and to protect the privacy of victims,” Deron Smith, a spokesman for the Scouts, wrote in an e-mail message. “And, since B.S.A. acts on suspicion, not proof, to guard against liability to those who may have been accused in error.”
Patrick Boyle, whose 1994 book “Scout’s Honor” drew in part from access he gained to about 2,000 files kept by the Scouts, said releasing the files even in redacted form would benefit the public and the Scouts.
“The astonishing thing about this for the Scouts is how something that was so good turned out so bad for them,” said Mr. Boyle, who is editor of Youth Today, which covers the youth service industry. “This started out as a valuable system for child protection and it’s turned into a major headache, largely because of the way they’ve handled it.”
A jury in Portland Oregon has awarded former Boy Scout Kerry Lewis $18.5 million in punitive damages in a landmark sexual abuse case against the Boy Scouts of America.
The jury ruled on April 13, finding the organization negligent and subsequently awarded Lewis $1.4 million in compensatory damages for the repeated sexual abuse he suffered as a child during the 1980s.
Although former Scout leader Timur Dykes had been removed as a Scout master, he was permitted to continue contact with the boys as a volunteer.
During the trial, Lewis’ attorneys introduced more than 1,000 files that had been archived at the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas. The secret "perversion files" were kept from 1965 to 1984, documenting the names of suspected child molesters.
The files detailed many incidents throughout the country where scout leaders and volunteers were permitted to continue contact with the children, even after sexual abuse complaints had been filed, according to the New York Times.
"They hid the problem," Paul Mones, an attorney for the plaintiff, told the jury during closing arguments. "…and by hiding the problem, more abuse happened."
The punitive phase began Tuesday, and Lewis’ attorneys were seeking $25 million in punitive damages. The plaintiff’s lawyers told jurors that "the organization should be punished for failing to use those files to fashion an extensive program to educate parents, Scout leaders, volunteers and the Scouts themselves about the risk of sex abuse."
The New York Times, along with other news organizations, is taking legal action to gain access to the secret files. A spokesperson for Boys Scouts of America stated via an email message that the files are being kept private to protect accusers, to protect the privacy of the victims, and to guard against liability of those who may have been falsely accused.
Watch Kerry Lewis and his attorneys Kelly Clark and Paul Mones in the video below.
In the jury’s decision on April 13, it found the Boy Scouts of America 60% negligent, the Cascade Pacific Council, an organization that oversees troops in the area, 15% negligent; and the LDS Church, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, 25% negligent. The Church sponsors many scout troops including the one involved in this lawsuit.
LOS ANGELES — A jury in Portland, Oregon on Friday ordered the Boy Scouts of America to pay 18.5 million dollars in punitive damages to a man who was abused by a Scout leader in the 1980s, local media reported.
The verdict was part of the punitive damages segment of the trial, as the jury in the northwestern US city earlier awarded victim — which The Oregonian newspaper identified as Kerry Lewis, now 38 — one million dollars for the pain and suffering.
Lewis said during the trial that he was abused five times when he was between 11 and 12 years old by his then-scoutmaster in Portland, and that the experience led him to drug addiction and difficulty in establishing intimate relationships.
The alleged abuser, Timur Dykes, now 53, admitted after the incidents that he was a serial molester. He has been convicted three times for sex abuse against boys.
The trial is unique in that it has forced the Boy Scouts, which celebrates its centennial this year, to submit to the court for the first time in 20 years documents detailing sexual abuse recorded by the organization.
Although the group has been sued dozens of times over sex abuse, most cases settled out of court, which ensured the records were kept confidential.
Lewis’s lawyer, Kelly Clark, wrote on his website, www.boyscoutabuse.com, that victims may feel "an added sense of guilt about bringing legal action against an organization that many view in a positive light, one that no doubt has helped many boys, and, indeed, an organization that stresses ‘loyalty’ as one of its core values."
By Oregon law, 60 percent of the verdict goes to the state’s crime victim’s compensation fund, The Oregonian reported.
America’s Scouting movement is fighting to keep secret thousands of "perversion files" on suspected child molesters after it was ordered to pay record damages over the sexual abuse of a former Scout.
In a growing scandal threatening to rival the crisis hitting the Roman Catholic church, the Boy Scouts of America has been accused of covering up decades of child abuse in order to protect the reputation of what is now a billion-dollar organisation.
Last week, a jury in Oregon made the largest punitive damages award to a single plaintiff in a child abuse case in the US by ordering the Scouts to pay $18.5m (£12m) to Kerry Lewis, who was repeatedly assaulted by a former assistant scoutmaster, Timur Dykes, in the 1980s. Dykes had admitted to a superior in the Scouts that he had abused boys, but was allowed to remain in the organisation and is alleged to have sexually assaulted several other children who are also taking legal action.
The judge in the case overruled the Scouts’ attempts to keep the jury from seeing about 1,200 files kept by the organisation on suspected paedophiles. Kelly Clark, Lewis’s lawyer, told the jury that while the files were often used to remove child abusers from the Scouting movement, many were allowed to remain in the organisation. He said that the Scouts rarely alerted the police and when they did, the movement asked the authorities to avoid publicity.
Clark told the jury that the Scouting leadership had been "reckless and outrageous" in failing to warn parents and boys about the problem.
The files shown to the jury were not made public and are just a small part of what is believed to be a cache of as many as 6,000 held at the Scouts’ headquarters in Texas, dating back to the 1920s. Lawyers for alleged sexual abuse victims are suing to have all the files made public at a hearing next month.
If that happens, it is likely to prove a severe blow to an organisation that is already at the centre of controversy over a bar on atheists and gay people. Membership stands at about 3 million, but has been dropping for more than a decade, in part because of the controversies over discrimination.
Clark said the scale of the award to Lewis reflects a heightened awareness of sexual crimes against children because of the recent revelations about the Catholic church. But he also said that the jury was shocked by the existence of what in court were called the "perversion files".
"We said they had 75 years of secret files about paedophiles, and that’s the way the evidence came in. I think that fact in itself was just staggering to the jury," he said. "They had a regular practice of placing guys on probation and then they would allow them to continue to be active in Scouting, not unlike some of what you saw in the Catholic church."
Dykes confessed his abuse in 1983 to the local Scouts co-ordinator, who also happened to be a Mormon bishop, but was allowed to continue working with the Scouts. Lewis said he was molested by Dykes over the following two years. The Mormon church settled with Lewis and seven other victims of Dykes more than a year ago.
Clark said the Scouts shared information from the files when requested to do so by the police, but it almost never took the initiative in submitting a case to the authorities, even where there was credible evidence of abuse.
"The routine was that they would deal with it internally," said Clark. "They would place the paedophile on their list of ineligible volunteers and if it was dropable they would drop it, and it was done. There were numerous examples of Scouting executives saying ‘let’s keep this quiet, he’s out of Scouting now, so we don’t need to do any more about it.’ There was definitely a misguided sense of priorities."
Even where the police did become involved, the Scouts sought to minimise the damage to the organisation.
"We saw numerous examples of the Scouts writing to law enforcement saying ‘it would be best for the good of Scouting if this could avoid being made too public.’ Law enforcement was almost complicit in this saying ‘we’ll do our best to keep this quiet because we value the work of the Boy Scouts,’" said Clark.
The Scout leadership said it was seeking to keep the files secret to protect the privacy of the victims and to guard against being sued for false accusations. It said it was "deeply saddened" by the abuse of Lewis, but would not comment further on the case because of continuing litigation.
"The Boy Scouts of America has a rigorous, nationwide system of checks and balances, in accordance with local laws, which keeps out of the programme those individuals who should not be leading youth," it said.
But Patrick Boyle, author of Scout’s Honour: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution, said the Scout leadership lost sight of its real purpose in dealing with paedophiles.
"They’ve behaved like a corporation with an embarrassing product defect that they don’t want to acknowledge. The Scouts were minimising the extent of the problem within their organisation and in large part discrediting their own Boy Scout victims and trying to hide the product defect, so to speak, by not letting on how many cases they have, misleading people into thinking they didn’t really know how many cases they have, they didn’t have a file system. And then fighting tooth and nail in court to keep it secret," he said. "They have also been very heavy handed with the victims, not apologising."
Scouts’ dishonour
The Boy Scouts of America organisation has been at the centre of nearly three decades of controversy ranging from out-of-court settlements with victims of childhood sexual abuse to its bar on non-believers and gay people.
Although Kerry Lewis won the largest punitive damages to date ($18.5m) awarded over sexual molestation, the Scouts in the US have settled about 60 similar cases out of court over recent years.
Until last week’s judgment, the Texas-based Scout movement had previously fought off several court actions, including an attempt to overturn its policy that atheists and agnostics who were not prepared to swear allegiance to God could not join. It also beat off legal attempts to force it to drop an effective bar on openly gay members on the grounds that being homosexual is not consistent with the organisation’s requirement to be "morally straight". The Girl Scouts of America, a separate organisation, permits members to submit a word other than God when reciting its oath and has no restrictions based on sexual orientation.
Some critics have accused the Boy Scouts of losing touch with its original purpose as it has evolved into a an organisation which in some ways resembles a large corporation, with close to $900m in assets, including a $45m art collection and a large property portfolio.
A Multnomah County jury said the Boy Scouts of America must pay $18.5 million for the sexual abuse a former Scout suffered as a child — the largest such award levied against the organization.
Attorneys for the former Scout, 38-year-old Kerry Lewis, said the vast majority of sexual-abuse lawsuits against the Boy Scouts of America since the 1980s have settled quietly, and the issue largely has stayed out of the national spotlight. They said Friday’s verdict, however, exposed the organization’s dark history with pedophiles and its unwillingness to come to terms with the problem.
"What we saw here in Portland has really pulled back the covers on the Boy Scouts of America," said Paul Mones, one of Lewis’ attorneys, speaking to a crowd of local and national reporters. Mones said that although he considers the organization generally safe, it needs "to be open and honest" about pedophiles who are drawn to its volunteer ranks.
Attorneys for the Boy Scouts swiftly left the courthouse, saying they were not able to comment pending appeal. They also added that six other boys abused by the same Scout leader as Lewis have cases pending against the organization. However, the Boy Scouts posted a general statement on its website, which said in part: More
"The Boy Scouts of America has always stood against child abuse of any kind and is always looking for ways to improve its Youth Protection strategies."
Minutes after the verdict, a tearful Lewis hugged his mother. Flanked by attorneys Mones and Kelly Clark, Lewis described the decision to sue — and testify in open court — as "very scary." When he was 11 or 12 years old, Lewis was repeatedly molested by Timur Dykes, a Southeast Portland assistant Scoutmaster.
Lewis and his attorneys said they hoped the verdict would make Scouting safer.
"If I was able to help save one person, this was all worth it," Lewis said.
Oregon law requires that 60 percent — or $11.1 million of the $18.5 million punitive-damages verdict — goes to the state’s crime victim’s compensation fund.
Jamie Francis/The OregonianKerry Lewis embraces his mother, Helen Caldwell, Friday after a news conference in Portland. Just minutes earlier, a jury awarded $18.5 million in punitive damages in Lewis’ suit against the Boy Scouts.
The Lewis case could spur a flood of litigation by former Scouts who were allegedly abused in recent decades and whose abuse was documented by the Texas-based organization in thousands of so-called "perversion" files. Multnomah County Judge John Wittmayer ordered the Scouts to turn over more than 1,000 of the files, created from 1965 to 1985.
The Boy Scouts said they created the files to track suspected pedophiles and prevent them from ever volunteering again. But Lewis’ attorneys argued that the organization knew of its decadeslong problem of pedophiles but failed to warn parents and boys.
Expert on abuse
The only other case in which a jury got to view some of the files ended with a $45,000 verdict in the 1980s against a local council of the Boy Scouts in Virginia, said Patrick Boyle, author of "Scout’s Honor" and a leading national expert in sexual abuse in Scouting.Next month, Wittmayer will hear arguments from media organizations — including The Associated Press and The Oregonian — about whether he should make public the files used as evidence in the trial. The Boy Scouts are fighting to prevent that disclosure. Lewis’ attorneys also said they expect local and national organizations that advocate for victims of child abuse to join the fight to release the files.
Boyle said he’s waiting to see if Friday’s verdict prompts the nearly $1 billion organization to act.
"Will the BSA finally admit that it has a sex-abuse problem?" said Boyle, who is also editor of Youth Today, a publication base in Washington, D.C. "Are they going to apologize like the Catholic Church has done? Are they going to study their files like the Catholic Church has done?
" … The Boy Scouts for the first time are facing a financial threat," Boyle said. "They can’t afford to be paying out this kind of money to victims of abuse."
9-3 decision
Jurors deliberated for a full day before issuing their 9-3 decision, ending a six-week trial. Last week, during the first-phase of the trial, the same jury said the Boy Scouts of America and its Portland-based body, the Cascade Pacific Council, must pay the former Scout more than $1 million for pain and suffering he’s endured, including drug abuse and trouble forming relationships.
During the trial’s punitive phase, the jury was asked how much the Boy Scouts of America should have to pay to deter future lapses and to punish past "reprehensible" acts against Lewis. The Oregonian, which usually protects the identity of sexual-abuse victims, is identifying Lewis after he gave permission.
In closing arguments Thursday, Chuck Smith, an attorney for the Boy Scouts of America, discounted the importance of an apology.
"You’ve heard the argument we haven’t apologized to the plaintiff, we haven’t apologized to the parents, we haven’t apologized to the country," Smith said. "Had there been an apology, what would these lawyers be telling you?: ‘Why did it take so long?’"
Then, Smith added: "Is the only way to prevent child sexual abuse … to apologize?"
Child-protection training
Smith argued that the organization has been a leader in preventing child abuse. The organization asked child-abuse experts to help design child-protection training for volunteers starting in the late 1980s. The organization has 2.8 million boys and 1.1 million adult leaders.
Videos also are shown to parents and boys warning about situations that could lead to sexual abuse by adults, including actors playing the role of a sport coach or an uncle. The organization also created rules to prevent children from ever being alone with one adult.
Since 2003, the organization has run criminal background checks on volunteers.
Lewis’ attorneys argued that the organization has turned a blind eye to publicly addressing a core problem: None of the materials given to boys and their parents warns them that Scout leaders could be a threat.
"Not one mention," Mones said.
Lewis’ attorneys called upon the testimony of a Texas woman, who said her son was molested by an assistant Scoutmaster from 2003 to 2006. The man bought her son and another boy gifts and took her son on camping trips, where he molested him. She said she’d gone over warnings about child abuse in the Scouting handbook with her son, but it didn’t specifically warn her that a trusted Scout leader could pose a threat.
After last week’s verdict, the Boy Scouts said they plan to appeal.
A man who claims he was molested by a Boy Scouts’ camp ranger in the 1970s is suing the organization for $5.15 million.
The man, who is now in his late 40s, says he was in his early teens when the ranger of the former Camp Mallard in Oregon sexually abused him during visits on weekends and in the summer. The suit claims that Edward Elston sometimes gave his victim — identified only by the initials S.M. — money to keep quiet or threatened to hurt him if he told.
Elston was not charged with a crime. The plaintiff’s attorney, Kelly Clark, said he believes Elston is dead.
The suit was filed Friday in Multnomah County Circuit Court. It is one of 11 filed in Oregon against the Boy Scouts of America by Clark in the last few years, on behalf of clients who say they were molested as children. All the suits are still pending.
S.M.’s suit claims that the Boy Scouts organization knew at least by the 1960s that pedophiles were using their scouting positions to victimize children and that the problem was institution-wide. "Despite this knowledge, these defendants did not implement adequate child sex abuse policies" by the time S.M. joined the Scouts.
The man didn’t realize how deeply the abuse had affected him psychologically until 2008, after extensive therapy sessions, Clark said.
The Cascade Pacific Council, which is also named as a defendant in the suit, couldn’t be reached for immediate comment.
Over the past half-dozen years or so, a few parents of Boy Scouts in Burnsville learned things that bothered them about Peter Stibal II, the scoutmaster now jailed on charges that he molested three scouts.
They learned that he had been alone with individual scouts — at the movies, in his truck for private "driving lessons," at his cabin and in his home — all violations of scouting’s "two-deep" policy, which requires two adults to be present during scout activities.
John Nelson of Burnsville and other parents complained to local Troop 650 volunteer leaders. Nelson said those leaders admonished Stibal to stop violating the policy. But Kent York, an official for scouting’s regional umbrella organization, said the violations weren’t reported higher up the organizational chain, as they should have been.
"If any concerns had been shared with Northern Star Council, we have very specific procedures in place that we follow," York said. "No, none of the concerns had been shared with us."
After clearing the House, House Bill 2827 will go to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to be signed into law.
(SALEM, Ore.) – A bill that would raise the age of sex abuse victims in Oregon from 24 to 40 will likely become law. The future of House Bill 2827 appeared bleak when we wrote about it May 28th 2009. (see: Will Oregon Stand for Sex Abuse Victims? – Tim King Salem-News.com
Many of the cases originate from churches in Oregon and experts like Portland Attorney Kelly Clark, say it often takes several decades for a person to comprehend the magnitude of their experience and come forward.
Bill Crane from the group SNAP, (Survivors Network of people Abused by Priests) says it is a good day in Oregon and while cautious, he agrees that it is good news on a day that could use it.
Molly Woon with the Oregon State Legislature says H.B. 2827 passed through the Senate Floor today, after moving through the Oregon House unanimously.
Woon says there was an amendment and the bill has to now go back to the House for concurrence. The change, "removed definition of causable connections between injury and child abuse," according to Woon.
She says it amounts to a technical fix.
After clearing the House, House Bill 2827 will go to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to be signed into law.
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