Boy Scouts consider bankruptcy amid sex abuse lawsuits, declining membership
The Boy Scouts of America are considering filing for bankruptcy in the wake of sexual abuse lawsuits and declining membership.
The Wall Street Journal reported Boy Scout leaders have hired Chicago law firm Sidley Austin for help in a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
The Scouts, which are based in Irving, have faced numerous sexual abuse lawsuits in the past few years.
In the group’s 2017 annual report, officials said the Scouts’ future will partly depend on the outcome of sex-abuse-related litigation. The group’s finances could depend on damages awarded in those cases, the report stated.
Officials wrote in the report the National Council had been named as a defendant in several lawsuits alleging inappropriate conduct by council employees or Scout volunteers.
The report also said officials were “aware of threatened and expanding litigation of a similar nature.”
“Most of the cases claim specific amounts of compensatory damages and, in a few cases, unspecified amounts of punitive damages,” the report said. “There continues to be additional lawsuits filed alleging sexual abuse, including claims for punitive damages.”
On a national level, a lawsuit filed in Stamford, Connecticut, said the organization should have done more to stop a former scoutmaster from allegedly molesting boys in the 1970s. Another lawsuit filed on Dec. 4 in Muncie, Indiana, says a volunteer engaged in sex acts with a 15-year-old Scout, the Star Press reported.
Locally, a former employee sued the Boy Scouts in 2016, saying she was sexually harassed during her employment before being wrongfully terminated.
In the suit, Jolynn Kuser accused manager Ken Moran of trying to push his way into her hotel room and kiss her while they were on a business trip in Florida.
In 2017, the parents of a Fort Worth teenager who died on a Boy Scouts backpacking trip in West Texas sued the organization, saying a lack of supervision and safety training led to their son’s death.
The Boy Scouts has also reportedly lost two-thirds of its members — about 4 million boys — since the 1970s, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In other struggles, the Mormon church recently denounced the Scouts and pulled its 400,000 boys from the program, AP reported.
The Girl Scouts of America are also suing the Boy Scouts over trademark infringement after the Boy Scouts announced they would begin accepting girls into the program, the New York Times reported.
This story was originally published December 12, 2018 at 9:45 PM.
