Suit claims Boy Scouts overlooked leader’s alleged abuse

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The Boy Scouts of America is facing another lawsuit in a wave of litigation over decades-old allegations of sexual abuse.

The Arkansas Democrat Gazette reports that two men filed a federal suit in Little Rock Wednesday, accusing the organization of concealing “negligence and fraud.”

The men claim they were sexually abused on scouting trips in Arkansas in 1979 and 1980, when they were between 9 and 11, by a leader who the Boy Scouts had deemed “ineligible” to volunteer with boys following accusation of sexually abuse in Georgia two years earlier. The Associated Press does not generally identify people who say they were sexually assaulted.

The suit claims the Boy Scouts did not report the leader to police in either state. The leader is identified by name but is not a defendant in the suit.

The Boy Scouts apologized in a Saturday statement to “anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting” and said it’s outraged by people who “took advantage of our program to abuse innocentchildren.”

The youth group did not address the specific allegations made in the lawsuit but acknowledged “that there were some instances in our organization’s history when cases were not addressed in a manner consistent with our commitment to protect Scouts.”

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Information from: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, http://www.arkansasonline.com