LOS ANGELES (AP) – The Boy Scouts of America settled a sex abuse case Thursday involving a 20-year-old California man who was molested by a Scout volunteer in 2007 – a decision that will keep years’ worth of “perversion” files detailing sex abuse allegations secret from the public.
The announcement of the settlement in the Santa Barbara case came after three days of trial. The terms were confidential at the Boy Scouts’ request, said Tim Hale, the plaintiff’s attorney.
“I can’t go into details about the number, but it was a great result,” Hale said.
Hale had won the right to use the “perversion” files as trial evidence to try to show the Boys Scouts were negligent by not properly training, educating and warning parents, Scouts and volunteers about the dangers of sexual abuse.
He told jurors in his opening statement that they would receive a CD with 100,000 pages of internal documents from 1971 to 2007 during their deliberations. Many of the files have not been seen outside the Scouts.