Wed, December 5th, 2012 - 11:45 am - By Gordon Basichis
The Boy Scouts didn’t want to conduct background checks on their staff or their volunteers. Now that they have embraced such a foolish policy, it is reported that pedophiles are now part of the Boy Scouts organization. Simply lovely.
Since the 1980′s when sexual predator scandals broke out among different youth organizations a good many of these organizations started conducting background checks. But not the Boy Scouts. Why? The Boy Scouts cited money, the discouragement of volunteers, and providing a false sense of security as the main reasons for not conducting background searches. The basic tool for protecting children did not seems sensible or cost effective to the Boy Scout Hierarchy.”
The Boy Scouts claim they have an excellent screening program in place. Evidence and the number of sexual predators working with the Boy Scouts seems to make that claim less than credible.
I will leave it to the reader to decide.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times..”From the time national background checks became widely available in 1985 until 1991 — when the detailed files obtained by The Times end — the Boy Scouts admitted more than 230 men with previous arrests or convictions for sex crimes against children, the analysis found.
The men were accused of molesting nearly 400 boys while in Scouting. They accounted for one in six of those expelled for alleged abuse during those years.
Scouting officials declined to be interviewed but said in a prepared statement that they have enhanced their policies over the years and tried “to ensure we are in line with and, where possible, ahead of society’s knowledge of abuse and best practices for prevention.”
“Numerous independent experts have recognized that our programs for protecting Scouts from abuse are among the best in the youth-serving community,” it said.
The Scouts’ past handling of child sexual abuse has come under increased scrutiny since October, after the court-ordered release of hundreds of confidential files dating back decades. The Times earlier obtained and analyzed a larger and more recent set of files — about 1,900 dossiers opened from 1970 to 1991.