Child
Sex Abuse Claims Mount Against Boy Scouts
Four Oregon men sued the
Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday for $20 million over
childhood sexual abuse they say they suffered at the
hands of a pedophile knowingly appointed as their
scoutmaster in the 1970s. The four lawsuits,
filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland,
accuse the national Boy Scouts and its Cascade Pacific
Council of negligence, fraud and sexual battery of a
child in connection with the repeated molestation of
the men, then aged 12 to 15. The suits, each seeking
$5.2 million in damages, are the latest in a barrage
of such claims facing the Boy Scouts, headquartered in
Texas, since the group was found liable and ordered to
pay nearly $20 million last year for a pedophile case
from the 1980s. A separate case was filed against the
Boy Scouts last week by five women who say they were
sexually abused as girls by the leader of a coed
Scouting program in Montana during the 1970s.