LOS ANGELES — The Boy Scouts of America says it will conduct a comprehensive review of files on suspected sexual predators, marking the first time it will thoroughly study its own confidential blacklist meant to keep predators out of scouting.
The review will examine allegations of abuse in the last 47 years to ensure all have been reported to law enforcement, the organization said.
The announcement comes nine days after the Los Angeles Times published an investigation that found officials did not report hundreds of cases of alleged sexual abuse between 1970 and 1991 to law enforcement. The findings were based on a review of 1,600 files entered into evidence in a 1992 court case.
For decades, the Boy Scouts have argued the confidential files contain no information of value to the public or for protecting youth in general against pedophiles.
Asked to explain why the Scouts were now analyzing their files, a Scout spokesman said in an email: “While we believe the files are an inconclusive record, the BSA will undertake a new review and analysis to ensure that all good-faith suspicion of abuse (from 1965-present) have been reported to law enforcement.”
In announcing the review Tuesday, the Boy Scouts also released a summary of a more limited study it commissioned that suggested the confidential files had helped protect Scouts from abuse. The analysis covered 1,200 files dating from 1960 to 1995 and was conducted for the Scouts by Janet Warren, a University of Virginia psychiatrist.
Warren concluded the blacklist “functioned well in helping to keep unfit adults out of Scouting.”
Warren testified as an expert witness for the organization in a 2010 civil lawsuit brought by a victim of abuse. Now an adult, he ultimately was awarded nearly $20 million in a jury verdict against the Scouts.
The Scouts did not respond to a Times request to review the Warren study, but the newspaper obtained a copy of a preliminary 2011 study by Warren from another source. The study looked at Boy Scout files on 829 men who were expelled after they allegedly abused about 1,300 children between 1965 and 1985.
That study found that the number of men expelled from scouting for alleged sexual abuse each year represented a tiny fraction of the more than 1 million adults who volunteered for the Scouts. Warren did not address alleged abuse that may not have been reported to the Scouts’ national office during those years.
The Times analysis of an overlapping period found that Scout officials routinely failed to report detailed allegations to law enforcement and worked with suspected molesters to keep the information from parents and the media.
In 80 percent of the cases in which the Scouts learned of alleged abuse directly from parents or victims, the files contained no indication that police were notified, the Times found. In more than 100 cases, there was evidence that officials actively sought to conceal alleged abuse.
In an open letter to the Boy Scout community Tuesday, senior Scout officials said in part: “In certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate and wrong.”
