'LARGEST PEDOPHILE RING ON EARTH' RUN BY POPULAR GROUP
WND Staff
Claiming to represent hundreds of sexual abuse victims, an organization called Abused in Scouting called on Congress to address what it calls the “largest pedophile ring on earth.”
At a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, AIS lawyers announced their first lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, the Daily Caller reported.
Filed in Pennsylvania, the suit alleges the anonymous plaintiff was assaulted hundreds of times by a scout leader in the 1970s.
Lawyer Stewart Eisenberg told reporters the team has a file of some 350 alleged predators from 48 states and the District of Columbia.
“Each one of these 350 abusers has probably dozens of other victims who have not come forward,” he said.
More than 800 people between the ages of 14 and 88 have reported to AIS they were sexually abused as scouts.
These men, said lawyer Andrew Arsdale, “can still smell the scent of the man who crawled into their sleeping bag.”
Lawyer Tim Kosnoff said the sheer volume of allegations to AIS makes the Boy Scouts “the largest pedophile ring on earth.”
Lifted ban on gay leaders
In 2015, the Scouts’ executive committee unanimously approved a resolution that ended the organization’s blanket ban on gay adult leaders, allowing individual scout troops to set their own policy.
That same year, the Scouts reached a settlement with the family of a California man molested by a Scout leader, squelching an opportunity for BSA files documenting suspected abuse to be made public.
In 2017, the Boy Scouts announced it would accept transgender members, biological girls who identify as boys.
This year, on Feb. 1, the iconic organization officially changed its name to Scouts BSA after announcing two years earlier that it intended to welcome girls in its ranks.
On Tuesday, the AIS lawyer Kosnoff said that despite rampant abuse in the Scouts for decades, Congress has provided no oversight.
He said the Scouts began keeping records of abuse at the time of its founding in 1910. But in the 1970s, employees began destroying evidence if the victim was 80 years old or older.
“This kind of abuse dwarves what we have seen in the Catholic Church cases,” Kosnoff said.
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