Part Two: The Boy Scouts are a Bastard

Robert is joined again by Matt Lieb to continue to discuss the Boy Scouts of America.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
And we're all of that, Chris, every little bit of
that goes into the episode. I'm Robert Evans, are you hi?
This is Behind the Bastards with Matt Leeby I I'm back.
How are you feeling learning all this fun stuff about

(00:23):
the Boy Scouts of America? All, I'm you know, remember
earlier when I was saying I always felt like I
missed out and not being a Boy Scout. Yeah, I'm
I'm a feeling that that was that was God just
looking out for me, because that's gonna get dark. It
is it's so fucked up. Like again, not to like
center my own experience like in this, but it is

(00:45):
weird to me that, Like, again, I know, I've spent
all of this time writing twenty pages on how fucked
up the Boy Scouts are. I personally have like nothing
but positive memories of my time in the Scouts um,
and it was it was weird, like I didn't start
to recognize because there was We're not talking about a
lot of the other stuff that's fucked up about the
Boys scaust like everyone knows like they for decades would

(01:07):
not let you be gay or trains or whatnot. In
the Boys Kicked out. If you came out, you couldn't
be an atheist. You had you didn't have to be
a specific religion, but you had to you had to
acknowledge the existence of a higher power. There's like other
stuff that they've been attacked for. And part of the
reason why I'm not really focusing on that is that, like,
that's bad. That is not something that would render an

(01:28):
organization founded in nineteen ten fundamentally unsalvageable. Right, A lot
of organizations that old had weird attitudes, bad attitudes towards
gay people, even racist attitudes, and can change over time.
Be like, well, yeah, the people who founded us believe
these things. The fundamentals of our organization are good. Teaching
people how to camp. We're we we've we've grown that all.

(01:50):
I think that the Boy Scouts could have grown past,
you know, the anti LGBT thing, and they have started
accepting kids who are gay and trans. I think they
could have grown past the restriction to just boys because
now they do accept girls. They could have grown past
a number of the problematic things. But you cannot grow
past is enabling the rape of tens of thousands of boys.
That that cannot be redeemed. That's the thing that seems systemic.

(02:14):
It's one of it's it's one of those things like, yeah,
an organization found in nineteen ten. People who made it
probably had some weird beliefs on race and gender, and like, yeah,
you can, you can. The organization I think can move
past that as long as it acknowledges the flaws of
its past and it confronts them head on, which I'm
not saying the Boy Scouts did, like they delayed way
too long performing on that stuff. But I think that

(02:37):
we're like the thing that makes them unsalvageable. The reason
I think the Boy Scats just needs to be destroyed
as an organization is the mass rape of children. Like
that's you can't, there's no no getting past that, moving
on a fair that's a fair problem, Yeah, it's Yeah.
If not for the mass rape of children, I feel

(02:59):
like would be you know, an organization that could make
do some reform, move past it's past. Yeah, But it's
that little thing where there was a master of children,
the tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of boys raped. Yeah. Yeah,
and and thus also creating a cycle of abuse and
predation due to the nature of you know, early childhood

(03:23):
sexual violence like that alone probably grounds. Yeah, they should
destroy the organization. I don't feel differently about the Catholic
Church in fairness, Um it is weird, like I can say,
because then I grew up very conservative. As I said,
I said a number of times if I had been
like sixteen in two fourteen, I might have wound up

(03:44):
like a right for a while. Um, I was really
right wing. Um one of like the first cracks in
the armors. When I was I'm not sure if I
was seventeen or eighteen. I think it was my senior
year of high school. It was an academic to Cathalon,
which is like a nerd thing, and we had our
own little like classroom. If you were on the team,
you could hang out in that classroom in between classes
or during lunch, which as a nerdy kid who just

(04:05):
wanted to read his Warhammer books, that was nice to do.
And so I'm in there one day with another kid
on the team, um, who was in the Boy Scouts.
We were in different troops, but he was, he was,
and he was. I think I actually quit the because
I quit the Boy Scouts at like sixteen, fifteen or sixteen,
he was still in the Boy Scouts and was like
either eighteen or almost eighteen. It was very close to
getting his eagle. And you know, he and I were friends.

(04:27):
We were sitting in the classroom one day and kind
of in the middle of just sort of like we're
both reading separate books quietly alone in this room, he
just looks up at me and tells me that he's gay.
And this is the first person I ever met who
like I knew was gay, who would like that I
had talked to me about it. Um and um. I said, oh, okay.
And and he immediately after that because it just like

(04:47):
I think he just had to tell somebody just burst
out of him immediately after they said, please don't tell anybody,
Like the most important thing in the world to me
is finishing my eagle Scout, is like getting my eagle Scout,
like and they won't let me. And that was that
was like for me a moment of left like that's
really fucked up, actually that this kid's this kid who
clearly loves the Boy Scouts, is dedicated to like what

(05:08):
this organization stands for, is terrified of being kicked out
for just like something like it was just very obvious
in that moment, like, oh, yeah, that's clearly not a choice.
Like the way he told me about it was just
like this he had to let somebody know, is this
thing that was? I don't know. That was a moment
for me. Um, and like, uh, just a, I know that.

(05:29):
That's when I first started to think really critically about
the Boy Scouts as an organization. Um, because again, I
grew up in this right wing you know bubble um,
And I guess I think it's it's like that one
way or another for a lot of people, like you
live in this kind of ideological bubble until you like
meet someone who's you care about, whose life experience contradicts
the things that you just never thought about before. Oh

(05:49):
I'm wrong about some really important ship. Yeah. Sometimes it
just takes that, you know, having an actual one on
one or just a human experience to get you outside
of like kind of the the strict dogmatism of your
like inherited ideology where you're just like, you know, of
course I'm a libertarian. My dad's a libertarian and he

(06:12):
raised me to be libertarian, you know. And then uh,
and then you you know, you live life and you
meet people who you know, in which the government was
actually uh a necessary entity in their life, and you're
like a ship. Like you know, people who just grow
up in a bubble. I think as soon as they
have that you know, bubble bursts a little bit, then

(06:34):
they can kind of move past whatever you know, do
ye ideology they have Yep. It is that thing where
like the Republican politicians who have like a life experience
that doesn't fit in with conservatism are like the ones
who have these very public like John McCain arch Republican
and everything but torture because he was tortured. It was
very consistently like, no, we can't, this is not okay. Uh,

(06:56):
Dick Cheney arch Republican and everything but gay rights because
the daughters gay, and he's like yeah, um, it's just yeah,
I mean that's just how people are, I guess. So
the Boy Scouts of America began operating what they called
an ineligible volunteer file system in nineteen nineteen, so they
did impel still alive when they this is like they

(07:16):
and this is not just even primary, this is not
primarily about sexual assault. This is obviously You've got this
growing organization, a bunch of men join it, and for
one reason or another, they do not meet the standards
that the b s A does have for adult volunteers.
And they're not screening people, but people who do the
job and are bad at it. And I think most
of these people again, are not molesting kids. They're like
they get some kids killed on a hike or some ship. Right,

(07:38):
Like they're they're irresponsible, you know, like there's a lot
of ways to be bad at being a scat past.
You know, you're taking kids into the woods, a number
of things can go awry. Um usually pedophilia isn't the
first problem when you're stranging alone in the woods with
an adult, but you would think, yeah, and most of
the men in the ineligible volunteer files had not purposefully
harmed a child. They had just like funked up in

(07:59):
some way, probably some way that's like still deplorable, but
like not they're not trying to harm anybody. A subset, though,
of the ineligible volunteer list are men who had been
caught or at least accused of molesting the children in
their care. This subset of the Ineligible Volunteer system were
dubbed the p files or perversion files. Yeah. Yeah. I

(08:21):
thought they would go with yeah yeah, not pedophile, pederist.
I mean it's a lot of rape. Yeah yeah. So
this starts in like the twin problematic files, Yeah, the
problematic So when Maiden peals alive, they do like attempt
to and again they don't attempt to by screening people beforehand,

(08:42):
but they do attempt to be like, oh, we should
if a guy gets kicked out for raping a kid,
we should probably put his name in a file somewhere.
We should we should probably write this down. Which is
the minimum, the barest minimum. I just want to remember
his name. You have a list of the guy, as
you who sucked the kids in our care? If I

(09:02):
can also get their phone numbers, just so we can
talk and just see if they have photos exactly? Do
you want to go to the lake? Oh, Biden pal So.
In nineteen the list was computerized, but there's still existed
a hard copy, and there is still one today, which
reportedly fills fifteen file cabinets at the b s A

(09:24):
headquarters in Irving, Texas. Only a handful of men at
the very top of the organization can access them. In
the b S as the Boy Scouts of America. So
I should know when we talk about this, this is
all focused on the b s A, which is not
technically the organization Biden Pal founded, because it's very decentralized.
There's like the different countries, they're different like organizations right
effectively kind of corporations almost um. And they're all kind

(09:46):
of like linked and related to each other, and they
do gamberally people get together from different countries. But in
the b s A is made in the image of
what Biden Pal talks about. I'm sure there is a
lot on like abuses in like England and great in
the UK and in like other countries. The vast majority
of the the the documentation on abuse within the Boy

(10:06):
Scouts is within the b s A. And so that's
what we're focusing on here today. Um. So, for decades
the files were either entirely unknown or at most a
rumor to those outside the organization. They would occasionally make appearances,
though by the time Lord Biden Powell died in nineteen
forty one, there had already been multiple cases of child
molesters who had been caught and convicted for what they've

(10:26):
done as Boy Scout leaders. This pattern continued up to
the present day, and when those cases would end in
criminal charges and trials, files on the perpetrator would often
be admitted into evidence, usually under seal. This most frequently
happened in the latter half of the twentieth and early
twenty first century, when boys and groups of boys began
to allege that what had happened to them, the abuse
they had suffered, was not an isolated incident, but was

(10:49):
instead the result of a pattern of abuse within the organization.
The files contain often harrowing firsthand accounts from victims, like
this interview with a ten year old scout in nineteen
seventy to the victim of a sexual assault by Georgia
troop leader Samuel Max Deboa Jr. Quote, I was crying
and I reached around and hit Max in the face

(11:09):
and said I was going to quit the troop and
tell my daddy. Then we heard the others coming back
and Max said, put your pants back on. Yeah, that's
like one of the less harrowing ones. I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna read in detail, but we will discuss
what happened, like read detailed accounts of kids getting molested here,

(11:30):
but you do need to know like what broadly occurred,
you know cases that is important. Um, the p files
at least were something. Um, so it's better than certainly
doing nothing at all. But as a barrier to the
assault of boys in care of the Boy Scouts of America,
they were incredibly porous. To illustrate this, let's start with
an illustrative case of abuse among the Boy Scouts from

(11:51):
a little more than a generation after Baden Powell's death.
Stephen Field was a troop leader in southern California. The
B s A started investigating him in nineteen seventy one
after a scout in Santa Monica reported that he had
been sexually abused by Field. A troop committee which included parents,
B s A officials, and a psychiatrist. So that's good, right,
You're bringing like, not just parents but a professional in Um,

(12:14):
that's a positive way to look at things, right. Uh
this I feel this feels like the doctor thing for
last episode. I don't trust that. I'm quite so this
this committee is convened and they look at the evidence
and they conclude that the story was truth. This kid
had been abused. What Field had done with sexual abuse.
Their investigation, in fact, found not only to abuse this kid,
but he had a pattern of what could credibly be

(12:35):
called criminally sexual behavior, including forcing his boy scouts to
play strip poker and run around naked after losing games,
which is not ever like there's there's that's not even
like a gray air. Yeah, strip poker is not really
inside the boy scouts milieu, you know. And also like
running around naked is not part of it. That's never

(12:57):
you know, you can play well, I mean it kind
of is from the start actually, but it shouldn't have been.
We're just finding new and clever ways to get kids
to run around naked. Yeah, And it's what it is
when we talked about like naked swimming, running around naked,
Like I believe very strongly that like nudities, there's nothing
wrong or inherently sexual about nudity. It be like this

(13:20):
thing where the idea that like people are doing things
naked is like lascivious. Clearly Baden Powell and a number
like the men and like found it lascivious, and so
that's a problem. Like, yeah, it ended up being one
of their favorite things. Yeah, that's an issue. That's going
to be an issue, you know. Um yeah, Um, So

(13:41):
they find out. This guy not only molests this kid,
but he has a history of very like criminal. I
suspect it as illegal to make children play strip poker.
Like I think that is a crime. Not a law knower,
but that seems crimy. It's I don't know the exact number, shoot,
but like that seems not legal. It seems like like

(14:04):
a thing you would use. That seems like a thing
we don't allow. Like I happen to think that's against
some law. It's got to be in there somewhere, probably
the delinquency of a miner or something. I don't know,
um whatever, some something not right about that, um. But
the Boy Scouts don't report him to the police. They
don't report him to anyone. In fact, they remove him,

(14:25):
they kick him out of the Boy Scouts. But the
only report they make about this is from a regional
Boy Scouts employee who fills out a form on Field
and sends it to headquarters, and that form is placed
in the p files. So that's all that happens. National
officials told the regional official that this meant that Fields
would never be able to work in or volunteer for

(14:46):
the Boy Scouts again. And yet from a report in
the Los Angeles Times quote. He was involved with several
Southern California troops over the next seventeen years. According to
his file. Contacted recently by The Times, Field explained that
he failed a light detector test required by the Santa
Monica Troop committee. He was encouraged to transfer to another
troop in the city, where he served as scout master

(15:08):
for four years. They sent him he fails a light
detector and they're like, you just gotta go to another troupe. Bro,
Oh my god, what the fuck? Just do what they
do at the corner liquor store when someone has fucking
put a picture of him up on the wall. What
a picture on the wall? Just say not that guy.

(15:29):
That's It's so easy, dude, Oh my god, your job
is protecting children. Show at least as much care as
a liquor store clerk over a bounced check. Like fuck,
So the fucking Field tells the Los Angeles Times. They
said it had all been cleared up with the scouts,
Like I don't how do you clear this out? In Valencia,

(15:50):
he joined his brother in law's troop, but left after
a parent intercepted a love letter he had written to
a Scout. The file shows. At one point, the file
says Field was caught watching pornography with naked scouts in
his jacuzzi. Jesus, fuck one. Seventeen years of this, come on,

(16:12):
seventeen years. This isn't like, you know. Twenty years later
he changed his name and his identity and moved across
the country and he just stuck his way into it. No,
he just shows up. One group is like, yeah, you
failed the I promise not to molest kids part of
the light detector. Here, go to this other group. Bring
your jackuzy with you. You're out of the Silmar chapter

(16:34):
of the Scouts. And you know what Glendale's recruiting. Yeah,
oh my god, super fucked up. Like again, there were
in it's height, like seven million boys in the Boy Scouts.
Some of them were always and I'm not being callous here,
it is inevitable in any population of seven million boys,

(16:56):
some of them will get molested by adults. Right. The
fact that this is a thing that happens is not
inherently the fall of the Boy Scouts, But as this
example shows, they are criminally irresponsible in taking any attempts
to stop it. That's the problem. It's not that like
there are some bad apples. It's that they're kind of
like the cops. They just like they enable the bad apples. Yeah,
it's like they literally have a basket of like with

(17:18):
a with a foundation of poison and they're going on,
some of these apples are bad. It's like you're poisoned
the best you poured cyanide into an apple basket and
then you're pissed in it. This is directly your fault. Yeah. Now,
among other things, that story is why I think Jacuzi
ownership should require a license. Um. But besides, that's another

(17:41):
two part. Now, despite the fact that this guy had
repeatedly engaged I think we can agree it's pretty outrageous
and public abuse of children. The s A National office
didn't realize he'd snuck back into the organization until nine again,
almost twenty years, and they only realized this because another
local scouting official reported that Steve Field, who was at

(18:02):
that point chairman of a local troop committee, had been
arrested for masturbating in front of a child. So he
doesn't get kicked out by the boy Scouts, he gets
arrested by the cops, and a local scout is like Hey,
you guys should know this guy. Turns out he was
a child molester. This local official doesn't know this guy
as a record, but he sends this in to report
this guy. And the people who run the PEA files

(18:23):
are like, oh, Steve Field, it's the same as Stephen Field.
How could we have known? Because ingenious criminal mind. They're
just like the cop comes and goes like, oh, this
you know this guy he's got arrested, you know, for masturbation,
and they're like, oh, you mean creepy Steve. Steve the rapist.

(18:45):
Steve the rapist is yeah, he's been doing that. He's
been doing that for a while. Why we call him
creepy Steve? Yeah, wacky Steve don't leave alone with your
kids anyway, is in charge of the kids. So, for

(19:05):
what it's worth. Once the Sheriff's department actually got involved
with Steve's case, which should have fallen into their lap
around twenty years earlier, they launch a serious investigation. Um
and again all of the police aside. One of the
things they have a better record of taking seriously, although
not a perfect one, because a lot of cops are
child molesters, generally detectives who find out the kids are
being raped, are like, well, this is probably important. It's like,

(19:30):
it's just the thing. Even if you're a fucking cop.
Most people you hear a child as being abused and
you're like, well, yeah, we gotta about this. Yeah, most cops, uh,
you know, obviously a cab, but not a you know,
can all cops students deliberately enabled child molestation whatever that

(19:51):
they hear about this guy And generally this is the
case like twenty years in like with these abusive adults.
And that's when finally ship happens. This guy gets arrested,
and it's because like the b s A can't hide
it anymore. Um. Child pornography was found in fields as
home of photos he'd taken of nude boys. Nude boy
scouts as far back as fifteen years ago are found.

(20:11):
And when the cops realize this guy has been praying
on boy scouts for more than a decade, they asked
the National Office, you can have a file on this guy,
and the B s A sends the p file for
for Fields to or for Field to them, but they
send it along with a request. And here's the a
cab part. Because the cops abide by this request. We
hope you will use this information with discretion. Since we
have tried to maintain our files, they cannot be subpoenaed

(20:33):
in any legal action. Wow. If again, if you're of
cops are better people than they are, if you're a
decent person, my first question would be, this guy raped kids.
Why don't you want this subpoena? Like why why why? Why? Why? Why?
And any why are you not like throwing your doors
open to to this, Like why why not let this be?
He's raping kids? Like God, I mean, so the cops

(20:58):
they abided by just an arbitrary like, oh, if you
could do us a favor, and like they're probably all
boy scouts, a lot of cops, Like fucking half of
congress people were boy Scouts, Like have congressmen or whatever,
like a huge percentage, Like all almost all of our
recent presidents have been either boy Scouts or equal Scouts.
Like it actually does mean a lot to a lot

(21:19):
of it. So like there's a story that could have
gone badly from my childhood. When I was a kid,
I think like thirteen or fourteen, I would go every Saturday,
I would go with my friends to a hobby story
and we would play Warhammer, and then we at one
point started wanting to play D and D, which I
started playing in the Scouts, and like the people who
we found to play with us were this guy was
like nineteen at the time, he just graduated high school
and was in college. And a dude who was almost thirty, um,

(21:41):
who's like an engineer, and that dude invites us all like, well,
on Saturday night since the hobby shop closes like five,
just come over to my house, um, and we'll all
play D and D until like midnight. And like my
parents here this and they're like, okay, well that's a
little quite. He's like almost thirty, like this concerns us.
And this other guys in a old too, but both
of them were Eagle Scouts. So my parents were like okay,

(22:03):
and it was like they were like there was fine,
like nothing, like these people were huge positive influences on me.
Like I don't want to like I'm trying. They were
both very positive parts. But you like that's why my
parents trusted them as they were right. There's an intrinsic
intrinsic trust and like, oh, these people are part of
this organization that I have nothing but my dad was
an Eagle Scout you know. Um. Yeah. So anyway, just

(22:26):
culturally this, I think this is part of why the
cops play ball with the B s A for so
long and don't make more of an issue about this,
is that like a lot of them were probably boys
get someone. They were probably trip leaders, you know. You know,
there were a bunch of like cop kids and stuff
in Boy Scouts when I was in the Scouts. Um, obviously,
but I mean it's it's kids getting fucked. It's like

(22:48):
that's why. Yes, yeah, But I think from the cops
pursuit was like, well, we're getting this guy, and we
don't like to we don't want to tarnish because their
cops like they protect organizations from shitty They're like cops
are often horrified at things other cops do. They just
cover it up because they believe in the institution. I think.
So I think they're they're they're willing to do that
for the Boy Scouts, but they have so much room

(23:09):
for It's just it's like it's one of things. It's
like not just sending it, like I'm just explaining the
thought process, and I think it's just thinking about it.
It's like if I'm a cop, and I'm like, Okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna back up. All these cops don't
matter fucking what. And then someone throws out another organization like,
oh yeah, this is like the rape organization, Like al right,
I have room in my Laurel compass for one more

(23:30):
organization to defend. It is worth noting that at this
point they're not thinking about this is the rape organization.
This is the seventies, this is the Boy Scouts. This
we don't want to let another this is already terrible.
We don't want to also defame this beautiful organization. And
you know it does a lot of good at the
same time. Um, it is not until I think the
first really big academic quality work on sexual abuse within

(23:53):
the Boy Scouts is that book we've been quoting from
Scouts on it, which we'll have LinkedIn. The whole book
is available online right now. Is published in nineteen ninety
four by guy named Patrick boyle Um. And it was,
I mean it was. I don't think it did super
well at the time. Obviously, I think he got a
lot of ship for publishing it, but it's not a
fun read of the heroes in this story one of

(24:13):
them has to be Patrick Boyle for being in like,
people need to know that this is a systemic problem,
and it was not until three or four years ago
that it became mainstream knowledge how systemic the problem was.
He's well the curve, yeah, because I I started hearing
about this stuff with the Yeah yeah, and the fact

(24:34):
that this book came out ye is crazy to me.
Yeah yeah. And you know what else is ahead of
the curve is the products, the products and services that
support this podcast, way ahead of the curve. The Patrick
Boils of their day. Good say, Okay, we're back. So

(24:57):
Fields or Field gets arrested for abusing two thirteen year
old boys and sentence to twelve years in prison when
the l A. Times found him. Because he's out of
prison by the time, these l. A Times articles are
very recent, we'll talk about why. And I'm reading from
a bunch of different l. A. Times articles because they
have done as far as I can find, the best
journalistic reporting on on abuse within the boy scouts. Um So,

(25:18):
when they find this guy, right, because he's he's out
of prison now he's working, I think he's a fucking
lawyer or something. Um No, might have been in finance.
I forget exactly, but they find him. He's like out
in free and like working, and they interviewed him and
he admitted to abusing the kids he'd been convicted of abusing,
but the night allegations that he'd abused any other kids,
even though absolutely of course, but the kids. Yeah, The

(25:39):
Times informed him that he'd been on a blacklist since
nineteen seventy one in the Boy Scouts. And when they said, like,
did you know the Boy Scouts had a file blacklisting you?
He told them like, no, I had no idea. That's
surprising because I was able to stay in the Boy
Scouts for years. Yeah, the Boy Scouts. The child molester
told them it's like a no fly list. If your

(25:59):
name is on the no fly list, you shouldn't be
able to get on a plane. Like the pedophile is
baffled by how easy it was for him to get
back into the Boy Scouts, Like, yeah, they really shouldn't
have allowed this. You're not wrong, pedophile, But like, yeah,
you're not wrong. This was like a miscarriage of justice

(26:20):
to me. Yeah, as the guy who raped those kids,
you have adequately accurately identified the issue or molested, Like
I don't know, like so yeah, and it is that
really Like that goes to show how fucked up the
B s A is because when the pedophile your organization
allowed you repeatedly harmed children in your care, throw shade
on you for your irresponsibility and letting him in. That's

(26:41):
a that's a that's an epic funk up like you
have failed so comprehensively. I don't have a word for it. Yeah,
that's a. There's a signal there. Yeah. Yeah. That Times
article goes on to tell the story of Scout Master
Allan C. Dunlap of Fresno, California, who was arrest to
in nineteen seventy three on suspicion of having abused several children.

(27:03):
Done Lap pled guilty to four counts of molestation and
was committed to a psychiatric hospital. The Scouts created yet
another P file on him. Thirteen years later, in nineteen
eighties six, Dunlap was out of the hospital and registered
is a Scout volunteer in Brian, Texas. It isn't yeah,
you're gonna be saying that a lot, my friend. It
does not appear that anyone even checked the blacklist before

(27:26):
registering him, which gets at the chief problem with the
whole system. The B s A actually did a pretty
good job of documenting guys who had been caught or
accused of sexual assault. Right, they're very thorough in like
when stuff gets in they do put it all on
this file. But there's still no I can remember Baden
Powell doesn't want there to be a big barrier to entry.
There's for most of this period, the sixties, seventies, eighties,

(27:47):
there's no real screening process. Most again, as we said,
like that one Scout troop had like they chose to
do like a polygraph test, which polygraphs are problematic, and
obviously they just sent him to another troops. So like
it there there are there are though it's worth it
an individual because it's a very decentralized organization. Some troops
do have really good, like you know, uh policies in

(28:10):
order to screen people, but nationally there's nothing, and this
blacklist only a handful of people at the top have
access to it, and they don't run every name through
it like there's now when a guy joins a Scout
troop and fucking Texas they don't, or in fucking like
I don't know, Maine, they don't send his name into
the national file to scan it. They do nothing. They
only find out afterwards, so it's useless. It's fucking other

(28:32):
than like as documentation that a lot of guys are
repeatedly molesting kids in the Boy Scouts. It's it's just
a fun way to get a nice list going, but
there's nothing. It does nothing to protect children are very close.
The boys goes, well, no, there's actually this X number
of men that we stopped because they were in the
blacklist and someone recognized it. Not to say it never happened,
but like clearly it was not an effective protecting system

(28:56):
and they knew it at the time. UM so yeah,
of course. Uh So after this guy gets you know this,
this dude is arrested and kicked out of the Scouts
and seventy three after abusing some children. Thirteen years later,
he becomes a Scout volunteer in Bryan, Texas, um and
he immediately gets back to sexually assaulting children. He was
eventually caught and pled guilty to abusing a nine year

(29:16):
old cub Scout. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
A local official learned this and called the National bs
A office to report Dunlap so he could be added
to the p files. And the National Office realized already
had a file on the guy. They added, here's what
they do. Actually, it's even worse than that. They just
add a note to his file for words convicted again, Dad,

(29:41):
child molestation, Jesus Christ. Come on, guys, attendum he done
it again, He done it again. We might have a problem.
D This is all pretty bad, but it gets worst worse.

(30:04):
Both of those actually the l A Times rites quote.
In some instances, the Boy Scouts of America chose to
give alleged molesters a second chance. In deposition, Ernst, then
keeper of the national file, testified that alleged abusers were
given probation, which required periodic updates on the person's behavior,
only if evidence of molestation was quote extremely weak. An

(30:27):
individual's confidential file was generally destroyed after probation was completed,
but the file sometimes survived when the men went on
to abuse again. Several of those cases suggests the initial
evidence of abuse was strong. Again. The b s A
policy is air on the side of believing the child
molester when he denies having molests a kid. Oh my god, God, yeah,

(30:48):
and I'm sure that you could find there's there have
to be statistically millions of people a couple of cases
of kids who lied because they were angry at it,
and I'm sure it happened. Umatistically, we have thousands, like hundred,
minimum hundreds and hundreds and and probably like by some accounts,
thousands of cases of people molesting kids repeatedly within the

(31:08):
Boy Scouts like there, but again they are on the
side of protecting the adult, not children. In their entire
job should be to protect these children, right, I mean,
that's literally what their their job is. It's like teaching
them how to fend for themselves. I mean, my my
scout master, who was I mean, he was a great
Scout master. He did something horrible for Raytheon that we

(31:31):
don't know entirely what, Like a bunch of the guys
who taught me at a camp were all Raytheon engineers.
It's like plain oh like that's but anyway, he, like
his attitude was, my only job is to stop kids
from dying. So like, you go out there, he'll teach
you to He would teach us anything we wanted to learn.
He would help us learn, but he didn't do anything
for you. So if you were miserable for days, if
you funked up, if your ship got soaked, if you
like lit your tent on fire, like you can camp

(31:53):
out under the stars or whatever, Like, my only job
is to stop you from dying, because it's about self reliance. Um,
but it's still very He took safety, like our physical health,
very seriously, and that's not what the Boy Scouts are,
protecting the adults above the children, like the organization nationally.
And again, I had a lot of great Scout leaders who,

(32:14):
while they may have been war criminals, UM, always put
the safety of the kids in the in the Boy
Scout American kids. I didn't know what raytheon was at
the time, not the Iraqi kids. I mean, good, God
only knows what they were actually like working on. UM.
But yeah, you can only care about so many kids, Robert,
Yeah you can look um so uh. For an example

(32:38):
of how the Boy Scouts would protect and give second
chances to child molesters, let's talk about Mark F. Bum Garner.
He was a twenty one year old assistant Scout master
in North Carolina. In September nine, he was at Camp
Shield helping to manage a camp with several other adult leaders.
Late one night, after most scouts and adults had went
to bed, he struck up a conversation with another boy.

(32:58):
I think they're just like sitting around a camp fire
and they talk for a while. Everybody else goes to sleep,
and quite suddenly, when they're alone, bum Gardner sticks his
hand into the boy's pants and fondles his genitals. The
boy tells him to stop, so bum Garner says, the
cartilage in your penis is similar to your nose, and
I can break it Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, So I mean,

(33:22):
like I try not to get on the whole, like
you know, vengeance side of things. But just shoot that guy. Yeah,
just just shoot that guy. We don't need that guy.
Kill that Yeah, just kill that It's just like, you know,
sometimes you fantasize about a righteous kill, you know, yeah
that would yeah, just just a little little little shallow

(33:45):
grave in the woods, you know, just like just the
planet benefits a little bit this one murder. I think
when you threaten to break a child's penis when your hand,
if he tells about you molesting him, you don't deserve
to live that anymore. That's that's the that's the end
of your right to exist, I argue it is my opinion.

(34:06):
It's funny because, like before this podcast, I never thought
there were levels of pedophilia in which I would that.
That's a high one, right, yeah, that's one. I was like, Oh,
he's like, I mean, yeah, pedophilia is evil, but he's
like evil and evil. Yeah, he's I think the pedophiles
are disgusted by that. Like he could not Yeah anyway
like that. He that's like the worst level probably of

(34:27):
pedophilia that I can imagine, is that's that kind of thing. Yeah,
that's that's the top of the pedophile pyramid. Um. So,
after this horrifying experience, the kid went to his father,
who reported this to the Boy Scouts rather than to
the police. The b s A investigated the matter, and,
after what the National Office described as a considerable discussion,

(34:48):
decided that bum Garner deserved a second chance. Of all
would be it would be still bad, but different if
was like, well he was caught, um, you know, massaging
a boy in his jacuzzi and the boy's shirt was off,
and like whatever, like that's bad to to let that

(35:11):
go on. He threatened to break a child's penis. Give
a second chance, to that. Jesus. Fuck. Yeah. The reason
why is because bum Garner was an Eagle Scout and
the son of the pastor whose church sponsored the troop.
Yeah there it is, Yeah, there it is. So he

(35:32):
kept working for the Boy Scouts, spending time in close
proximity with children absolutely unmonitored. He was arrested several months
later for sexually abusing two Scouts during a camp out.
He pled guilty and was expelled by the National Office,
who added yet another name to the p files six
years later. Oh yeah, you thought this was done. You
thought we were done with bum Garner. Come on. Six

(35:55):
years later, bum Garner gets out of jail and back
into the Boy Scouts. He moves from North Carolina to
Virginia and he becomes assistant District commissioner to the Fairfax
Boy Scouts. This was nineteen eighty four. It was two
years later, nineteen six before the National organization realized that
this peedoophile had gotten back in. They didn't find it
out on their own. They was convicted, convicted pedophile. Yeah,

(36:18):
and they only find out that he's gotten back in
because he gets convicted again. He gets caught sexually battering
two boys and sentenced to six years in prison. Just like,
just how could we have known? What? How could we
have known? Every single time? This is the Los Angeles
Times continues. Probation was also given to Floyd David Slusher,

(36:42):
a nineteen year old stafford a Boy Scout camp in
Germany who was caught up using a scout in nineteen
seventy two and sent home to the United States. Even
after he was caught, they had to physically restrain him
from attempting to visit the scout he was molesting, A
scout's official wrote to headquarters. A file was opened, but
Slusher was allowed to continue working with scouts again. Another
voy Scout leaders like this guy is such fucking pedophile

(37:05):
that we had to physically stop him from going after
this kid after we caught him. Like it's like a
cartoon of a pedophile. Yeah yeah, family, boy scouts are like,
this guy deserves a second chance. When did the second
chance program started? Because you hear that, like, oh, they
gave a second chance, you assume it's something like, oh,

(37:26):
he like showed them some weird pictures and they decided
there was plausible, which again is not okay. But no,
these guys are like this is hardcore shitvicted fu rapists. Yeah,
and they're just like, yeah, I feel like we give
him a second chance. We had to see we had
to physically restrain the guy from doing formalistation. Yeah, like
come on, let me go. There was romantic So Slusher

(37:52):
also shouldn't let a guy named Slush or do damn
near anything. Thatsolutely okay name. That's not an okay name. Um,
So he's allowed to keep working with the scouts, and
he goes on to molest at least eight boys in
a Boulder, Colorado troop, threatening to kill them if they
told anybody. According to the Boulder County Sheriff's apartment, Yeah yeah, yeah, um.
The detective in Boulder County wrote, quote, almost every boy

(38:13):
scout in Troops seventy five and Troops seventy three has
been approached sexually by Slusher on one time or another,
adding that the victims are too numerous to interview the
things like I can't interview all the kids he molested
because like, I don't have that kind of time. The
Boulder police don't have the time to top to all
of this. We're not authorizing any ot right now, so

(38:36):
we can investige single person. I mean, in fairness, they
probably had plenty to put him away, and he pleads
guilty to one account of sexually assaulting a child. Um.
The Boy Scouts continued the practice of offering probation and
suspension to prominent men accused of abuse until as the
result of a high profile abuse case in San Mateo, California.

(38:57):
Richard Stengler was the adult head of a Sea Scout
It's unit, which is kind of like a for older
boys closer to adulthood, like elite, Like you're doing like
boat shit right, like it's doing cool stuff. It actually
was the thing I wanted to do, but Texas is
not as easy to do that kind of Um So
like the Boy Scout Navy, Yeah, the Boy Scout Navy. Yeah,

(39:17):
um you gotta. So that's always a red flag where
your organization starts and they have a Navy. It's especially
a red flag for the Navy. Yeah. I think all
the Marines in the audience would agree with that. Um So,
like you know, there's the goop cruise like that. You know,
it's like the boys. When you take to see probably
an issue. You know, someone says, you know, good people

(39:40):
don't take to see by the way, I'm crowdfunding to
buy a yacht for all of my followers to live on.
We're gonna sail around the ocean. We're gonna look for gold. Um.
It's international waters anything, international waters, baby any there's no
laws in international water. Our own society are civilization, Sophie,
come on, come no hub Um alright, well, here's some ads.

(40:19):
We're back. I'm just sad, Symphie won't let me, won't
let me. Hubbard alright, well okay, so um. This guy,
Richard Steingler Uh in seventy one is the head of
a sea Scouts unit, and in seventy one he gets
charged with tying up and groping three boys. This was

(40:39):
the thing I alluded to in the first episode with
the restraints. Um, is that like a not do you
get a merit badge for? Yeah? I mean it's unfortunate
to say this, but a boy Scout troop leaders probably
in the most able to tie up a boy because
he's probably pretty good at knots. That really makes that
merit badge a lot darker, does it does? It's not great?

(41:01):
It's not great. Um. So he gets convicted and sent
in seventy one and sentenced to three years of probation,
which I might argue the court system failed there too,
because I think tying up and groping boys probably more
than three years probation, longer for like smoke hot for
like pot. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, the Scouts suspended him during

(41:22):
this period, but they didn't kick him out. When his
probation ended, a local Scout executive and a number of
parents lobbied for his suspension to be lifted. So clearly
this guy had some sort of charism was good at
like convincing parents. I don't know what he fucking told them,
maybe like it was a merit badge thing gone wrong. Um,
but parents lobby for this guy, which is settling. I mean,

(41:44):
this is not again, we this is not an unheard
of kind of situation like this. This occurs in other
organizations and whatnot. Um sure, it's just like I mean, yeah,
actually to me, the Catholic Church, you know, not Yeah,
but but I understand a little bit more having like
basically the guy who talks to God being an important

(42:07):
figure in your life, and yeah, and like like standing
up for the organization and the church and maybe even
a specific priest in the church who's been accused of
something because you're like that dude talks to God. Who
am I to question that guy? These are fucking volunteer
Scout master. These are doing like cosplay and teaching know
how to whittle, and they're just like no, But he's

(42:29):
a good dude. Yeah, he's he's good like it. I mean,
there's actually just a tremendous amount in common with like
the Boy Scouts and how this works and like, um
in the Catholic Church. Yeah, um, yeah, okay, um, all right,
Jesus Christ, let's get back into this. So, so this guy,

(42:49):
after tying up and molesting several boys, just three years
probation and when it ends, he gets successfully reinstituted to
the Boy Scouts. The local Scout officer who lobbied for
him being brought back again, wrote quote, I feel quite
confident that no further problems will arise. Just fucking just
an organization of marks. Everyone is a fucking mark. Yeah.

(43:10):
Fourteen years later, in nine nine, a parent reported that
Stinger had padlocked her eleven year old boy in a
harness and watched as he hung in the air during
a boat trip. So that's good, that's fine. The b
s a called the police, and the police go to
Stinger's home and they search it and they find dozens

(43:30):
of restraints and an enormous cash of child pornography, naked
photos that he took of boys that he had blindfolded,
um and like tied to things. At least one is
a picture of a naked six year old boy that
he blindfolded and tied to a bed um like profound
child abuse on a Yeah, and again they catch him

(43:51):
fourteen years later. He's doing this the whole time. That's
what the photos show that he'd been the whole time.
He gets back and he's just tying up in the lasting.
They call. They called the cops when he what did
he do to the kid? He like tied him up?
He yeah, he I don't even know if this was sexual,
if he was just like being a dick. Probably both.
But he'd like padlocked an eleven year old boy in
a harness and hung him in the air during a

(44:12):
boat trip. So his mom is just like, that's physical.
Be I don't think she called it in a sexual
but she was just like, that's assault. That's when they
called the cos. Yeah, I mean, his mom calls the cops,
like her credit. This is probably the first she's a
wearing anything's wrong and she I mean he was like, yeah,
we need to deal with this ship. And the cops
search his house and find out that he has been
tying up and restraining and molesting kids for fourteen years

(44:33):
and has tons of pictures of it. So this guy's
like both like a sexual abuser and just a literal
fucking psychopath. Yeah yeah, this guy's not that there's bets
of both, but dangerous, dangerous person. Yeah fucking ship. So
when all this dropped, more than twenty four former and
current Scouts came forward to report that they had been
abused by Stinger. Some had been victimized as early as

(44:56):
nineteen fifty eight. Up until two thousand fifteen, the Chief
Scout Executive, effectively the head of Boy Scouts, was a
guy named Wayne Brock. Wayne got that August position in
two thousand twelve after a four year stint as the
Deputy Chief Scout Executive. Before he held this national position
in seven, Wayne was the local Boy Scouts executive for
the state of Georgia. That year, a Scout master at

(45:18):
a camp in his domain was accused of molesting a
boy in a sleeping bag. Wayne followed procedure, which at
the time meant documenting the allegation and sending that documentation
onto Texas. The leader's name and crimes were added to
the confidential files. The scout master was expelled, but the
police were not informed. He left town, Rock was promoted
again and again, and eventually wound up running the Boy

(45:40):
Scouts as a different Los Angeles Times article notes quote.
As he and his recent predecessors rose through the ranks
of Scouting, they handled at least a hundred and twenty
cases of suspected sexual abuse dating from the mid nineteen seventies,
according to a Times analysis of constant confidential Boy Scout files.
As district executives, it was their job to gather evidence
and witness statement, determined whether to recommend a leader's expulsion,

(46:02):
and report their findings to headquarters, which made the final decision.
In the process, the officials had a front row seat
on cases in which scoutings abuse prevention policies failed. Although
the officials may have followed Scout policy and violated no laws,
the files in several cases indicate that they did not
inform authorities or their communities of suspected child molesters who
were expelled from the organization. So this is the guy

(46:26):
who runs the Boy Scouts, right, his history, which is,
you know, he's not a molester himself, but he has a,
shall we say, imperfect history of dealing with cases where
kids are molested and they all all of their last
names are just read we got Stinger, we got Brack,
we got Slusher. Yeah. Yeah, like problems, I mean, just
like they sound like a really scary a team. Yeah.

(46:50):
So this is the guy who runs the Boy Scouts
um and his predecessor, the guy who had headed the
b s A before him, was a guy named Robert Mazuka.
And before Robert Scary I know, I know, and before
he ran the Boy Scouts, Mazuka spent twenty years as
a regional Scout executive in California. In Pennsylvania, he dealt
with numerous cases of child sexual abuse by adults and scouting.

(47:11):
One of these was the case of David Cooley, an
assistant Scout master in Pittsburgh who was expelled in nineteen
nine seven after police found videos that he'd made of
himself having sex with children. Cooley was eventually sentenced to
fifty four years in prison. When the case broke, it
came out that Mazuka had earlier been arrested and convicted
in nineteen eighties seven from molesting a boy in South Carolina.

(47:33):
He'd been allowed to volunteer and scouting and molest kids
after that because the Boy Scouts did not require background
checks at that point. And this brings us to a
particularly dark part of the story. Oh are we going
to get dark now? We're finally gonna get dark man. Yeah. So,
if you'll remember, back at the very start of this story,

(47:54):
back at the very start of Scouting, Robert Baden Powell
had rejected the idea that scouting volunteers should be filtered
under the stification that this would reduce the number of
adults who volunteered and slow expansion. Now, at that time,
even though kids were being molested, child sexual abuse was
not a widely understood phenomenon. By the nineteen eighties, this
had changed. A number of high profile cases of abuse

(48:15):
of children had led several other leading youth groups to
institute criminal background checks for their adult volunteers. Criminal background
checks first became widely possible in nineteen eight five UM
and in nineteen eighties six, the Big Brothers Big Sisters
organization made this a requirement for volunteers, and the Boys
and Girls Club did the same thing in the same year.
As soon as this becomes possible, responsible organizations who take

(48:39):
care kids are like, well, of course we should do
criminal background checks and our adult volunteers obviously, Um, that
just makes sense. The Boy Scouts don't do this. Scouting
officials claimed that background checks would be too expensive and
would scare away volunteers too expensive. Again, it's it would
have cost tens of millions. They made hundreds of millions. Yeah,
I was gonna say the Boy Scouts they don't have

(48:59):
the money hash during period. Yeah, everyone's a volunteer or pays,
so they said that. They also argued that doing so
would it best to provide a false sense of security.
Just read how many stories of guys with criminal records
getting back in the Boy Scouts. Um, they're like, listen,

(49:19):
it's gonna happen one way or another. Let me let
me promise you. Even with criminal background checks were not
kind of stop kids from adults from lasting. Kids don't
like that's just gonna do it. It's still got to happen.
But our job is to help Pedophile Scout for Boys. Yeah,
that's the name of the organization. Oh man, oh god.

(49:43):
Be prepared as a model. That means be prepared to
get most Yeah, you be prepared for what the adults
and this organization are going to do to you. So
the Boy Scouts didn't just refuse to require criminal background
checks for their volunteers. They board huge amounts of money
into lobbying local governments because states start to be like, well,

(50:05):
we as a state want to require FBI background checks
for youth volunteers for organizations anywhere in the state, and
the b s A lobbies local elected leaders to stop
these laws. It's it's I don't I don't understand like
at that, but at that point you're just you're delened
directly enabling it. This is at all like is this

(50:26):
like an Epstein thing? Like yes, Like what is going
on purpose? At this point? It sounds on purpose. I
can't even logical reason. Yeah, I think someone just because
like this is the way it's always been. I think
some of it might some of it is probably that
there are pedophiles in the organization who are want this,
and some of it might be well, shit, if we

(50:47):
do this, people will find out how many adults have
been molesting kids in the Boy Scouts. Yeah, and that
that that's not gonna be good for us, burn the
p file or whatever. What the fuck I mean? God damn.
So the b s A did not ultimately start requiring
criminal background checks for volunteers, and you want to guess
what year two thousand three, two eight. By this point,

(51:18):
hundreds and possibly thousands of men with criminal histories of
child molestation were allowed into the Boy Scouts. Most of
these men went on to abuse more children from the
very earliest days after the decision not to require background checks.
This was recognized as a problem from yet another Los
Angeles Times article. In n Scout committee chairman in St. Paul,
Minnesota decried the organization's half hearted screening in a letter

(51:39):
to headquarters, b s A is only creating an illusion
of performing what they claim. K Russell Sias wrote to
Scout chief executive Been Love. It becomes quite clear that
b s A is more concerned with passing the buck
than an accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders.
That same year, a Las Vegas Scout master with a
criminal history of exposing himself to boys with arrested for

(52:00):
sexually abusing a twelve year old scout. One parent said
casinos did a better job of screening workers. Honestly, yeah,
the parent wrote to Scouting officials. The black eye which
Scouting has suffered in this could easily have been avoided
if the council had taken the simple expedient of doing
a background investigation. I'm mean, yep, yeah, yeah, I mean,

(52:24):
I don't. I just don't. I don't understand it at
this point. It wasn't the money. They don't want to
pay the money at that time. Some that has to
be some of it because of what we're about to
talk about, because it gets worse. We have not hit
bottom yet, Matt, Are you excited? I'm just like, if
my blood pressure goes any higher, mo fucking die. Yes
we have we have, oh boy. So, while the boy

(52:49):
Scouts are giving child molester's probation, covering up abused, refusing
background checks, YadA, YadA, YadA, children keep coming forward to
tell their stories, and by the nineties again this book
comes out. It's getting more known, right that this is
a problem the organization has, and as a result, once
it becomes clear to people used to pay attention that
like this might be a systemic issue. Some parents of
kids who get molested try to soothe the organization, claiming

(53:11):
a pattern of abuse enabled by the very structure of
the B s A itself. Confronted with these threats in
the form of children entrusted to the B s A
and abused by men that organization had refused to properly vet,
the boy Scouts viciously attacked the victims and their families.
In one case, two boys in Michigan alleged that they
had been molested quote, hundreds of times by a troop leader.

(53:33):
The B s A denied any responsibility, and instead, in
court blamed their widowed mother. They claimed she had failed
quote to provide adequate supervision over the volunteer they had approved. Wow, yeah,
your fault, your kids got molested if you weren't watching
hard enough over the guy. That his whole job, according
to the ethos of our organization, is to help, like

(53:55):
single moms raised their kids. You didn't. It's your fault that. Yeah,
you should have done a background check. Yeah, you should
have done a background check. Why did you do that? Yeah,
don't you scream? Come on, And it gets worse from
the l A Times quote. In two thousand two, Gerald Schwartz,
a forty two year old former Scout master in New York,
admitted to abusing a boy in his troop in the

(54:16):
nineteen nineties after being secretly recorded saying he did something very,
very wrong and apologizing to the boy. Schwartz pleaded guilty
to four counts of sodomy and was sent to prison.
Despite the conviction and the victim's testimony that Schwartz raped
me and forced me to perform oral sex on him,
the Scouts, in emotion to dismiss the subsequent lawsuit, contended
that the sex was consensual. What the fuck? Yep, wow, yeah,

(54:42):
we gotta burn it down. This is yeah, we gotta
burn this ship down. This is not this is not salvageable.
This is not salvageable. Holy fuck. Yeah. Yeah, that's bad.
That's the worst these guys are. You know, it's so
much worse than I thought it was. Yeah, really is.

(55:02):
I'm not I'm not pro scout no more. No, no,
this has definitely turned me around in the night. Yeah. Sorry.
In the nineteen eighties in Oregon, one man alleged that
Scouting troop leader Timurd Dikes was allowed to continue his
leadership position after he admitted to molesting seventeen boys, and
this kid had been molested him after that. Yeah, it

(55:25):
took decades for one of the boys victimized by Dikes
to seek legal recourse, But when he did, at a
trial in two thousand ten, regional bs A official, Eugene
Grant blamed his parents for letting their children go to
Dike's apartment to work on merit badges and attend to
Scouting sleepover. Which maybe there's some questionable parenting calls being
made here, but you led him into your organization and

(55:47):
let him stay after he molested seventeen boys. And also,
like you know, it's like you're you were saying, it's
like you trust, you trust him he scout right, Yeah,
but the boy Scouts representatives at in court his parents
should have known better. I think it's criminal. You let
him stay in the Scouts after he admitted to molesting

(56:08):
seventeen boys, and the parents are the criminals. The funk
is wrong with you, these guys we gotta Yeah, I
don't understand. I'm not going to say say that in
a court of law and not immediately into fire. Yeah,
I mean, just like murder is wrong, right, yeah, kind

(56:34):
of in some kind. I'm not trying to say publicly
right now anything that's gonna get me in trouble, but
I feel like sometimes murder is good. Yeah, that's a
reasonable thing to feel. Hearing this story, like they said
these words out loud, and the fact that no one

(56:57):
was just like, yeah, I got to kill this guy
out like the value of brickings. That's a brick in
That's like somebody should just be like, Okay, I gotta
hit this guy with a brick. The brick. Yeah, you
don't get to say that and not get hit in
the face with the brick. That's that's brick in words. Thankfully,

(57:18):
the Oregon jury rejected his line of argument and found
the Scouts liable for almost twenty million dollars in damages.
This is the case. This is why we all like
no in mass about the problem. Now. This case breaks
open the floodgates of abuse claims against the boy Scouts
um And it's during this case part of the discovery
and this like the p files are revealed and and

(57:39):
put into the public record because they're trying to show
like there's a pattern of abuse. Right, These guys keep
getting in and abused in the boy Scouts let them
in again. Um, this is what led to all of
the Los Angeles Times articles we've quoted so far, because
once these things are made public, because if it's introduced
into like a legal case in that way, it's like
anyone can see that. So they start combing through this stuff,
and it other they start doing, like other stuff gets released. Um,

(58:03):
it's it's the this is the blood in the water,
you know. Um. Journalists start finding out other details of
sorted voy Scout sexual abuse history, and more victims start
coming forward. An avalanche begins. One issue that confronted many
victims is the fact that some states had very strict
laws regarding the statute of limitation for sex crimes. So
like a lot of these guys they were abused in
like the fifties, you know, and like now as an

(58:25):
adult who's like, these stories are heartbreaking. Some of these
men are like I was never I was abused in
like the fifties the sixties. I was never able to
like have a relationship that I was I've never been
able to feel intimate with anybody like this is there's
cases of people who commit suicide one volt whether were molested,
and he's like, yeah, my brother became addicted to drugs
and died of an overdose and like that he never
recovered from this. You know. It's I mean, anyone who

(58:47):
knows a victim of childhood sexual abuse knows how deep,
like uniquely evil an act it is to inflict upon somebody. Yeah,
and how yeah the stories are just so when these
guys start realizing I'm not alone, people will believe me now,

(59:08):
and also maybe if I speak up, this will help
to protect other kids, you know. Um, So they start
to come forward, but on a lot of states they
can't bring charges against the people who victimize them or
the Boy Scouts because of the statute of limitations. So
many states, when they realize how many these kids are
out there, to their credit, a bunch of state lawmakers
put forward bills to expand the statute of limitations and
allow charges to be pressed further away from the time

(59:30):
of the abuse. To be like, well, ship, maybe we
didn't really, we didn't make these laws considering everything that
was happening, and like it's we need to we need
to allow these people a chance to get justice. The
Boy Scouts spend a fortune and lawyers and lobbying fighting
these bills wherever they crop up, once again, devoting for
huge financial resources which they said we're not worth spending
on background checks to try and make it harder for
boys victimized by BSA officials to seek justice. From the

(59:53):
Washington Post quote, the group retained lobbyists in Georgia and
New York, where lawmakers say such action helped to all
proposals that included look back windows allowing adults to take
legal action over decades old claims. It is hired lobbyists
in Michigan, where similar proposals are being debated. The bills
would give adults who were abused as children a second
chance to file suit if they missed their first opportunity

(01:00:14):
under state law. Opponents of the state proposals, including the
Boy Scouts and Catholic arch Diocese, argued that open ended
look back periods violate due process and would put groups
in the tough position of defending themselves in cases from
the distant past. I love like the people the Scouts
in the Catholic Church coming together, coming together, just like

(01:00:36):
a fucking rape. E Voltron trying to be like, well,
this is just wrong and this is I want to
belabor a bit on the argument they're making, which is
that this is unfair because it puts us in the
position of defending our organization from actions that other We
weren't in charge of the Boy Scouts on this app
this was fifty years ago, completely different group of men

(01:00:57):
who were in charge. Like, how can we be held
responsible today for the actions of two generations leaders from
two generations ago. Yeah, I don't think this is a
good argument. For one thing, as we have discussed, the
historical records shows that the b s a's attitude towards
sex abusers and the ways in which you enable them
and defend them has not wavered since the days of
Robert Baden Powell. From Baden Powell's time to the fucking

(01:01:19):
two thousands, the Boy Scouts are doing basically the same ship.
For another, the same officials who led the b s
A in the late OTTs had been the ones in
the seventies and eighties furthering the height and ignored policies
that enabled sexual abuse of children. In April of two
thousand nineteen, an expert who had been working with the
b s A estimated that as many as seven thousand,

(01:01:40):
eight hundred and nineteen adult volunteers and staff members had
sexually abused boys over the course of the b s
AS history. He suggested they were responsible for harming as
many as twelve thousand, two hundred and fifty four victims.
That's the b s AS expert right now. If that
were it, if that were the extent of the problem,
this would be a huge problem. But it turns out
that was a drastic underestimation. A little over a year later,

(01:02:03):
in November, after a series of lawsuits and settlements, more
than a hundred thousand alleged victims had come forward to
claim they had been sexually assaulted as children in the
Boy Scouts. So that's a hundred thousand who have said
I was a victim in the Scots. Yeah, and this
is in the last year. Fuck yes. The Boy Scouts

(01:02:26):
have filed for bankruptcy, claiming to be devastated by the allegations. Um,
there's a number of fucked up things in the fall
out of this. One of the most the worst things. So,
the Boy Scouts were stewards of a huge amount of
wild lands right for campgrounds and stuff, and they were
that they would take care of They've sold a bunch
of that to developers, a lot of that ship these
like this, like Pristine Wild they have been turned into

(01:02:47):
like housing developments and ship because the Boy Scouts went
broke trying to defending themselves from all the rape that
their members did. It's, um, it's just like a comprehensively
bleak story. Oh my god. They can't even redeem themselves
and make them like public lands. There is just to
sell it, to pay for lawyers to attack these kids.

(01:03:09):
If I can't touch kids on this land, then I'm
gonna fucking build condos on it. Yeah. Well, the story
of the Boy Scouts, I hate it. Yeah, oh my
good god, dude. I mean it's like usually when I
you know the name of the show behind the Bastards,

(01:03:30):
It's like usually it's like the plural is because you
have many episodes covering specific bastards. This is one. It
was just like one bastard at the beginning, and then
just an endless slew of bastards and and it's too
many bad. I think I'm on bastard overload. And yeah,
I wanna I want to do some righteous murder. Let's

(01:03:52):
do a righteous kill together, dude. Yeah, yeah, let's go, Um, Sophie,
can you uh can we can we like a get
get come right off some some money for murder tools?
Probably not? Well what about a boat so that we
can go to international waters? Yeah? In international waters it's legal,
so stop trying, come on, right, it'll be like sea

(01:04:19):
org but like but yeah, but good a good sea
org done it right? Good? There could not yet, So
you have a very closed mind towards sea orgs. And
I don't think that's fair to all the good org
Yeah yeah, like uh like the I don't know the surfers. Yeah,

(01:04:41):
they've probably a chill. Yeah, come on, m No, I
don't think it's going to happen. Um, I mean, you
know we can. We can do it on land, I guess.
But the point is that I'm currently furious and uh,
I'm this is so eating. So I've had a good time. Yeah,

(01:05:02):
so you had a good time on my show. Well
I'm sure everyone's dissociating now, so, um, have a good
time staring into the distance and uh yeah and just
kind of like thinking, yeah, yeah, I have a good
time losing touch with your corporeal body as the rage

(01:05:24):
within you becomes transcendent. Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's a.
It's a type of drug rages. It is a type
of drugge hall. Yeah, I'm just gonna get some ragel
hall on right now. I need a xan X. Yeah,
rage out with your page out. I don't know. I
don't know. Boy, Matt, you got any plugables to plug? Um? Yeah,

(01:05:50):
I do sopromos podcast. Pot yourself a gun check it out.
We're about to start season six by the time this
comes out, well, season six, episode one will be out.
It's a it's a great show, film drunk broadcast, that's us,
but the same guys talking about movies. I wanted I
wanted to dedicate this to my my childhood friend Johnny Aaron.
Uh you know you listen to this show, Johnny are

(01:06:12):
and you're a you're a good you're a good man.
Sorry it was the molestation one. Yeah, this is a
rough episode to get a shout out here, but you know,
fucking hey, you can't all be winners, you know, man. Yeah,
thanks thanks for having me back. Yep, thanks for coming back.

(01:06:33):
And also sorry, oh