Attorney Kelly Clark filed a new Boy Scout sex abuse lawsuit in Iowa against a Boy Scout leader who abused the survivor in the late 1970′s.

Unlike other cases alleging abuse by volunteers, attorney Kelly Clark of Portland said the case was unusual because Bawden was "a big deal" who received two of the highest honors in scouting and served on the Boy Scouts’ national council.

Attorney Kelly Clark filed a new sexual abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America.  The abuse occurred in the 1980′s and the Boy Scout troop leader has spent time in prison for other abuse crimes. 

Clark has partnered up with Cheshire lawyer Frank Bartlett to file the suit against the Boy Scouts of America.
 

Once again, we see that mental health science is confirming what child sexual abuse survivors, and those who work with them, have been saying for over a decade now.  The skeptics should take note.  There is really no way to describe the inner turmoil, chaos and permanent damage done to a child’s inner world by the betrayal and emotional invasion of child sexual abuse.

When the Canadian story first came out and the Scouts Canada stated that they had reported all cases to the police, I was skeptical.   Especially was I skeptical since in the Portland trial of Kerry Lewis v BSA in Portland in 2010, the testimony was that the Scouts, rarely, if ever, reported abuse to the police, notwithstanding that they had received nearly 1200 reports of abuse within Scouting from 1965-85.  Given that the average pedophile has between 5-20 victims, that means that somewhere between 6,000-24,000 boys were abused in Scouting just in those two decades–and that just represents the reported cases, and experts tell us that no more than 5% of all child abuse is reported.  So the numbers were staggering– and yet, almost never did BSA report any of this to the police.  So it seemed odd, to say the least, that Scouts Canada claimed that it had reported all abuse to law enforcement.

Happily, last year–I believe in large part due to our win in 2010–the BSA has begun to require all adult volunteers to report any suspected abuse to police, even if not in a state where such reports would be mandatory under child abuse reporting laws.  Once again, we see the power of civil litigation to force changes in institutions of trust that deal with children.

Here is an issue we fight all the time. The last time it happened was right after the Archdiocese of Portland bankruptcy was over, when Portland Archbishop Vlazny had promised to treat survivors with compassion.  The next thing we knew is that his lawyers were challenging our use of pseudonyms on behalf of survivors.  So far as I could tell, the only purpose for the move was to try to intimidate victims to keep them from filing suit.  So much for the promises.  This is a good article.

Today’s news about the media reports concerning the Catholic Church in the Netherlands should not “shock or dismay,” despite what the Church PR people say..  As a sex abuse lawyer, I’ve seen similar scenarios play out in Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, not to mention the numerous occasions I’ve witnessed it with the Boy Scouts of America, the Mormon Church or the Seventh Day Adventist Church. 

An investigation has determined thousands (I’m talking tens of thousands) of children were sexually abused by priests, nuns, brothers, and sisters in the Dutch Catholic Church for the past sixty years.  Officials in the Dutch hierarchy knew about the abuse and turned a blind eye.  Now, they are “shocked, dismayed, and saddened” by the news.  That’s quite frankly a bunch of bull.

 The “sorry but” approach to dealing with this scandal by Church officials is way too little and woefully too late.  Certainly,  it’s what some PR spin firm told them to say, but supposedly these church officials are folks who are men and women of faith.  If they are, then they should remember the ancient prayer, wherein humble people of faith pray for “and for a good account before the fearful judgment seat of Christ, let us ask of the Lord."  Have they no holy fear?  Have they forgotten that, though they may escape our civil statutes of limitations, yet there is another, deeper and more eternal reckoning awaiting us all? 

Perhaps, I’m angry at this rote, mechanical response that shows no hint of belief or faith.  As a Christian struggling with my own defects of character and sinfulness, I am quite aware of Christ’s admonition that we take care the log in our own eyes before we point to the speck in our brother’s eye.  But I also recall that the Master also said:  “It were better for a man that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he be cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble,” referring, of course, to little children, always and especially beloved of God.”

We have for a decade now heard various expressions of regret from Church officials.  I have written about this before, in a series on apologies and forgiveness.  But what we have not seen or heard is anything like biblical repentance—metanoia: an about face, a turning around and a complete change.  When we witness that, the Church will begin to recover from this terrible scourge it has inflicted upon herself, and upon thousands and thousands of children.

Judge Teresa Sarmina has determined that 88-year old former Archbishop of Philadelphia, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua is fit to provide testimony in the criminal sex abuse trial involving one of his former top lieutenants, Monsignor William Lynn.  Bevilacqua will not be required to give the testimony in a courtroom, a concession sought by his lawyers and granted by the judge due to his advanced age and fragile health.  The deposition is expected to begin today and should last for a few days.

The decision to compel the Cardinal’s testimony was a hard-fought victory for prosecutors who’d argued that Bevilacqua’s testimony is crucial in their criminal case against Monsignor William Lynn who is the first Philadelphia priest ever to be criminally charged with failure to protect children.  Lynn had been in charge of all sexual abuse reports as well as the investigation of such allegations.  In prior grand jury deliberations, Monsignor Lynn was the target of much grand jury criticism for his handling of sexual abuse cases against Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests during Cardinal Bevilacqua’s tenure as archbishop of Philadelphia. 

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with child endangerment for allegedly transferring priests accused of sexual abuse of minors. Three priests and a former teacher are charged with raping boys.

Pope Benedict XVI has named 52-year old Monsignor Charles Brown as the Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland.  The somewhat surprising announcement comes in the wake of devastating Irish government investigations such as the Ferns Report that documented the corruption, cover-up, and institutional negligence that provided a fertile ground for sexually abusive Catholic priests to prey on minors, especially those attending boarding schools run by the Catholic Church but funded by the Irish government.

The scandal that ensued led to the closure of the Vatican Embassy in Ireland as well as a Rome-mandated apostolic visitation led by US Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston. 

Brown’s appointment has been characterized as “convention-shattering” by a leading Vatican watcher because the post is usually held by a senior Italian prelate as a reward for years of faithful diplomatic service on behalf of the Vatican.  However, in this instance, the Nuncio will be English-speaking (something that hasn’t happened in the last half century) and has no previous diplomatic experience.  Rather, Monsignor Brown is a close confidante of the Pope and is widely regarded as affable, orthodox, and intelligent.  He’ll need all of these skills if he is to right the Irish ecclesial ship.  The appointment comes a few days before more sexual abuse reports are due from Ireland.

The Irish Catholic sex abuse scandal has been significant and relevant to those of us in the United States for a few reasons:  1)the scope and severity of the abuse is unprecedented and involved at least the tacit compliance of the civil government, and 2)many Irish priests and bishops emigrated to the United States earlier last century and brought with them the same dysfunction of abuse from Ireland.  One need only think of such notorious cases as Oliver O’Grady, Brendan Smyth, and Bishop Anthony O’Connell to recognize the extent to which the Irish sex abuse scandal affected and spread to the United States.

While the appointment of Monsignor Brown (automatically made an archbishop due to his appointment as Apostolic Nuncio) to the important post of traditionally Catholic Ireland has been hailed as a fresh start by some insiders, actions always speak louder than words.  I’ll take a “wait and see” attitude before making a judgment as to the relative merits of this latest appointment.

One of the more remarkable, and as of yet largely unanalyzed, developments arising out of the Penn State/Sandusky child abuse scandal is how quickly similar allegations elsewhere surfaced:  at the Citadel, at Syracuse University, at a  national gymnastics program,  and even in Congress, where a Michigan Congressman was accused of past abuse.

This is not unlike what we have seen before in different contexts: 

–in 2002, when the Boston Globe broke the story of widespread abuse and cover up in the Boston Archdiocese, very quickly after that we saw abuse survivors stepping forward around the country:  Chicago, Milwaukie, Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, and other places.  Soon, so many victims—literally thousands of them—had come forward that, within two years, the bankruptcies started: Portland, Tucson, San Diego, and elsewhere, as Church officials struggled to comprehend and respond to the massive scope of the problem.  Representing survivors of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests all around the country, and then representing more than 40 claimants in the Archdiocese of Portland bankruptcy, I saw this first hand.

–last year, in Spring of 2010, when for nearly two months Paul Mones and I tried the Kerry Lewis case against the Boy Scouts of America in Portland—resulting in a nearly $20 million verdict against BSA for its decades-long practice of ignoring child abuse in its programs—my office received over 650 phone calls—yes, that’s right, 650 phone calls in about 10 weeks—from men abused as boys in Scouting, all over the country, from the 1960’s to the 2000’s.  And now, as we are handling cases against the Scouts in over a dozen states, I see the same thing happening elsewhere.

–any child abuse lawyer who does very much of this work will attest that as the scandal at Penn State broke over the last three weeks, more victims have come forward to tell their stories: abuse in the Mormon Church, the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, schools, athletic leagues and elsewhere. Indeed, so prominent has been this dynamic that Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR’s fine religion reporter, did a story on it (in which I, along with Mitch Garabedian, a fine Boston lawyer, was interviewed), pointing out that the Penn State story was prompting abuse survivors in other contexts to come forward.

All of this is what I call “the Avalanche Dynamic,” and it is something I have thought a lot about.  I’m sure the mental health professionals in the child abuse field can explain the psychological dynamic, but what I have seen is that, for most child abuse survivors to come forward and break their silence, to tell someone—their spouses or parents, their counselors, a lawyer—what happened to them as children, there has to be some sort of a triggering event.  It can be, and often is, a news story about abuse, it can be an unexpected (and often unwelcome) confrontation with some reminder of the abuse, it can be watching a child, often their own, at the same age as was the victim at the time of the abuse.  But most child abuse survivors need some trigger, some precipitating event, to embolden them to come forward.

Now, cynics, of course, often assume something else is going on: that the survivors are “jumping on the bandwagon” or “reaching for the money” or other ignorant ideas.  To see these in action, just scroll down to the “comments” section anytime you read a new story about “more victims” coming forward to name their abuser, or anytime a new civil lawsuit is filed for monetary restitution and justice.

But what is actually happening is that survivors are realizing, in a flash, in an explosive moment, several things at once, things they might have vaguely known but never allowed themselves to consider:  “maybe I wasn’t the only one”; “I guess it wasn’t really my fault”; “maybe they’ll believe me now”—and similar sentiments.  Remember that when a child is abused, there is a kind of “splitting” that goes on in his or her mind, and the trauma and shame of the abuse often gets “parked” or “shoved away” into the recesses of the conscious mind, and some part of the child “decides” that the safest way to handle the fear, trauma, guilt and shame, is simply not to think about it.  And they don’t.  For decades, often.  And then, some triggering event happens, like the child abuse scandals in the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, or, now, Penn State.

Which brings me to the other fascinating thing I have noticed in “the Avalanche Dynamic: the closer to home is the triggering event, the more likely it is that the victim will break silence.  So I have had survivors come see me when their own abuser was publicly named, but not before, even if there has been much publicity about abuse in general. The Kerry Lewis case was one of those, where eight men eventually came forward to name their Mormon Church ward and the Boy Scouts for their abuse, after the first two brothers broke the silence of how they were abused by a Boy Scout leader in their Mormon Church troop.  One man came to see me in the midst of the Catholic scandals, when he took a job in a building across the street from the parish where he had been abused, and every day he had to listen to the churchbells ringing. He had been reading about priests abusing kids in Boston, and Chicago, and elsewhere, and he was not triggered.  But setting up professional shop across the street from the scene of his abuse, and he was jolted into breaking out of his silence. I have had Mormons come see me only when a story broke about abuse in the Mormon Church—despite any amount of publicity about abuse in the Catholic Church, or in the Boy Scouts.  I have had Boy Scouts call me, not when some event about abuse in Boy Scouts broke open, but when they read a story about their own abuser.  For whatever psychological reason, the fact is, that the closer is the trigger to their own story, the more likely survivors are to come forward and break their silence.  And so the Penn State story brought forward first, other Sandusky victims, then the victims at the Citadel, Syracuse, and the gymnastics context: all either related to sports, to academia, or both.  The trigger was close to home.

So, next time you read about an “avalanche” of survivors coming forward in response to a breaking new story of abuse in some new context—for instance, a major American University’s football program—don’t be surprised.  That’s how it happens.

"When the family did not pursue the matter, we did not either. We should have. Regardless of whether the law said we were supposed to report or not, we should have reported this. We should have taken more action."

Sound familiar?  It should.  It’s basically the same excuse given by Catholic Bishop Robert Finn, the Boy Scouts of America officials, and Joe Paterno and others at Penn State.  Unfortunately, this is how institutional leaders explain their failures to report child sexual abuse. 

This latest report concerns a now closed summer camp at The Citadel.  It’s clear after more than a week of reporting on the Penn State scandal and now CNN’s report on The Citadel failure, our society’s institutions are experiencing a systemic failure when it comes to reporting child sexual abuse.  No one can claim that the tragedy is isolated to one institution or demographic.  It’s clear to this writer that the legal community has to step in and change reporting laws across the country.  The problem has become epidemic and the victims are our own children.

NPR Interview with Kelly Clark on Penn State Scandal

I came across a provocative article published by the BBC News that calls into question whether we would have acted differently than JoePa and other Penn State officials given the circumstances.  I would hope we all would do the right thing and act in the best interests of children who were in harm’s way.  Yet, the author, a Penn State grad herself, called this into question.  She writes in part, "We choose not to talk about it," says Jolie Logan, chief executive of Darkness to Light, a non-profit group that trains adults to prevent abuse. "Who wants to think about people having sex with children? Because it’s not comfortable to talk about, we don’t."

At Penn State, Mr Paterno’s actions have led to a lot of justifiable outrage, along with a lot of less-justifiable claims that anyone else in that position would have done things differently.

"All of us over-estimate our likelihood of being a hero, and the ease with which we would go ahead and do the right thing," says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Faced with the unbelievable consequences that the disclosure might have, their will collapses, and they are unable to do the right thing."

This is why society must have behavioral safeguards in place to ensure that when it comes to the protection of children we all act correctly.  That means our legislatures need to enact tougher laws and our community leaders need to talk about these issues and then support their talk with concrete action.  We can’t afford another Penn State.

Penn State University Administration officials on Tuesday abruptly cancelled the scheduled press conference by legendary football coach Joe Paterno, where he was scheduled to discuss his role in the unfolding sex abuse scandal engulfing Penn State.  Speculation is all over the media that Paterno will be forced to resign over allegations that he knew about, and failed to report, instances of child abuse at Penn State facilities by long time Assistant Coach, Jerry Sandusky.  Sandusky has now been charged with multiple counts of child abuse involving multiple boys, and two administrators at Penn State the  former athletic director and the former vice president have been indicted for perjury and failing to report child abuse.

Joe Paterno, affectionately called "JoePa" by his admirers–is, by all accounts, a good and decent man.  He has faithfully coached the Penn State University football team for 46 years and created a clean program in the midst of the cesspool of college football. To my knowledge, no one has ever questioned his integrity. Now, however, it appears he has made a terrible mistake, and it looks as if he will be rightly held accountable for it.

As an advocate for survivors of child abuse for two decades now–as well as a long time fan of Coach Paterno’s–here is what I wish JoePa would say:

"I come before you to admit that I have made a terrible mistake. I acknowledge that mistake and I apologize unconditionally to the boys abused by Jerry Sandusky as well as to my players and to Penn State fans. I humbly ask forgiveness from all these people.  I will do whatever I can do to try to account for my misconduct.  When I leave this press conference, I will tender my resignation as head coach of the Penn State football program and then I will walk over to the Police Department in State College, PA and turn myself in to the police for failing to report child abuse. Now, I have heard some pundits say that I had no legal obligation to report; but I will let law enforcement make that determination.  Certainly I had a moral obligation, and I failed miserably.  Once I do those two things, I will then make arrangements to pay for the counseling needs of every boy harmed by Jerry Sandusky for as long as each boy needs it.

For 46 years, I have tried to instill in my student-athletes a sense of integrity and morality.  That integrity includes acknowledging wrongdoing and accepting the consequences of one’s actions.  Consequences in a situation like this first and foremost mean making an unconditional apology, without excuse or explanation, and taking steps to right the wrong.  That is what I am trying to do now. I reiterate that I apologize unconditionally to the young men involved and to the community and I will do whatever I can to make this right. I offer no explanation or excuses.

Because I care about kids, however, and because I do not want other kids to be abused in other institutions of trust, I want the world to understand how something like this happens, with hope that other institutions like Penn State, respected by society and given its trust, might learn from and not repeat my mistakes.

I love Penn State University.  I love our football program.  I have poured 46 years of my life in trying to create a place where young men are well-formed, with high integrity and deep convictions about right and wrong, compassion and love.  I take great pride in the program that we have built here.  I believe in our mission, and I would do anything to protect it.  And that, my friends, is the problem.

I did not think about and I did not reflect upon what my failure to act could mean for youngsters who were under Coach Sandusky’s spell.  I instinctively reacted with the most short-sighted and narrowest of visons, to protect Penn State and our football program.  In this sense, I am no different than Cardinal Bernard Law, former archbishop of Boston, who chose to protect the institution of the Catholic Church over the safety of children when he transferred abusive priests over and over again.  I am no different than the top leadership of the Boy Scouts of America, who for decades ignored mounting evidence that their organization was being infiltrated by pedophiles, and did nothing to warn parents or Scouts. And I am no different than the leadership of numerous other churches, schools, or other institutions of trust who have a responsibility for young people.  I chose to protect my beloved organization rather than to protect children.

I was completely, totally, and unconditionally wrong.  For this, I am deeply sorry, and I apologize unconditionally. I will have nothing further to say on this matter, for I need now to go spend some time searching my conscience and asking my God for forgiveness."

That’s what I wish he would say.

——–
Kelly Clark is an attorney in Portland, Oregon, who represents survivors of child sexual abuse.

Frank Bruni of the NY Times has an excellent Op-Ed piece this morning that mirrors my most recent blog post concerning the Penn State sex abuse scandal.  The molester is not the person in the trench coat lurking behind the bushes.  Those who abuse children, whether the abuse occurs in the Boy Scouts, in the Catholic Church, or in a school setting, are adults who are perceived leaders in the community.  They gain access to children through their positions of trust and authority.  As scout leaders, priests, ministers, or coaches they are afforded easy access to vulnerable children.  Very often, the children upon whom they prey are in need of love, attention, and direction from an adult.  Many of these children are showered with gifts, praise, and attention.  The kids in turn become susceptible to the progressive advances of the molester until they are trapped in the vicious and tragic cycle of sexual violence.  The predator’s actions become confusing and disorienting to the child or teenager.  On the one hand, everyone (their parents included) think highly of the predator.  Yet, lurking behind the public façade of altruism and mentoring, is the deep, dark secret of sexual abuse.  So, they keep it to themselves thinking, “maybe that’s what love is” or “maybe I’m special because I’ve been selected to be his special friend”.  

The secretive nature of the abuse often leads to self-doubt and self-loathing.  In my many years as a sexual abuse lawyer, survivors have recounted to me how they feel lost and alone.  They tell me how they’ve tried to mask those feelings with drugs, alcohol, or unhealthy relationships.  Unfortunately, very often they blame themselves for the actions of the one who abused them.  Tragically, some have ended their lives rather than continue the dark struggle.

Yet, there is a way out.  Some courageous men and women have transformed what happened to them and have begun the long process of healing.  They tell their stories.  They report the abuse to civil authorities.  They demand change for the sake of future children.  They confront the institutions that protected these adult molesters.  

If there’s any good that can come out of the Penn State sex abuse case, I suspect it will be when the community rises up and demands accountability from those who knew and should have done the right thing and reported Coach Sandusky to law enforcement.  There is nothing more damaging to those who’ve survived such abuse as when institutions such as Penn State, the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church and many others hide behind lame excuses.  I’ve read too media reports trying to argue that the University officials, including Coach Joe Paterno, weren’t really required to call the police.  But this is the worst kind of denial.  Paterno and the other officials at Penn State who were told about Sandusky had a moral obligation to tell law enforcement.  Perhaps it wasn’t a legal requirement, but it’s surely an ethical requirement for men in such positions of trust and confidence.  As the head of the Pennsylvania State Police dryly remarked to the press, all of the administrators should have called the police; as he put it, “it isn’t a high standard.”   

At this point, no one should give a damn about the future of Penn State football, Coach Paterno’s legacy, or the next football game.   The fact is children were abused right under the noses of a prominent and respected institution, which sat idle, choosing to pretend the problem did not exist, so that its pristine reputation wouldn’t be sullied.   Well, now: that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Since my work for children who were sexually abused involves frequent cases against the Boy Scouts of America, recently, I was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper regarding the highly charged story of Richard Turley, the pedophile Boy Scout leader who sexually abused boys for decades in both the US and in Canada.  The crux of the story is that Turley was able to go from the US to Canada, and to have a second career of sexual abuse of Scouts there, despite that the American Scouts had repeated warnings of his sexual dangerousness to boys.  The CBC story and related news articles rightfully expressed outrage at these circumstances, and openly wondered how these things could happen.  In this blog, I will draw parallels between the Canadian and American experience with the sexual abuse of Boy Scouts.  In a follow up to this blog, I will note the similarities between Boy Scout sexual abuse and abuse in other “institutions of trust” such as the Catholic Church and Mormon Church sexual abuse cases.

First, about the Canadian story.  That a Scout leader would be able, after he was caught abusing boys, to go from troop to troop, whether in the US or in Canada, may be stunning, but, given what we know about sexual abuse in Scouting, should really not be surprising. (For a comprehensive look at the problem, albeit from 20 years ago, see Patrick Boyle’s Scouts Honor, click here.)  Last year, I was lead trial counsel in a major Boy Scout abuse trial in Portland—which resulted in a $20 million verdict against BSA—in which the perpetrator had admitted to abusing 17 boys within one Scout troop, and yet was not permanently removed as a Scout leader, such that he had access to and abused more boys, including the one we represented at trial. (For my past blogs on the general topic of abuse in Scouting, including the Portland trial, click here.)  Likewise, in other cases, we have seen similar warnings about Scout leaders go unheeded. So, really, the Canadian experience with Turley, while stunning, is not unique in Scouting.  How can this be?  Well, to answer that question, it is necessary to talk about the Scouts so-called “Perversion Files.”

For decades, up until around 1990, the Scouts main “system” for protecting boys against the risk of sexual abuse was these “Perversion Files” or “Confidential Files,” also sometimes called the “IV (ineligible volunteer) Files.”  The purpose of this system, according to the Boy Scouts, was to prevent a leader accused of misconduct from re-registering as a leader anywhere in Scouting.  The problem, as we proved in Portland,  is that the system didn’t work.  In Portland, for the first time ever in any courtroom, a jury saw in evidence an entire block of the Perversion Files—all files from 1965-1985—some  20,000 pages of records, representing over 1,200 documented instances of sexual abuse of Scouts. What those documents showed were thousands of stories of abuse in Scouting, by trusted leaders against trusting boys and their families. The Portland jury heard stories of Cub Scouts being forced to view pornography with their nude Cubmaster, of Scoutmasters who befriended, groomed, seduced, and then molested, sodomized or raped boys of all ages, from Cub Scouts, aged 7-10, to Boy Scouts aged 11-17. The files showed stories of devastated boys and outraged families and parents.  Too often, incredibly, some of these abusers were on “probation”—meaning there had been some complaint previously about their conduct, but BSA executives decided to leave the leader in positions of trust.  The Cubmaster who showed pornography to Cub Scouts was such an example.  As I said, the system often simply failed to keep out dangerous Scout leaders or to prevent the sexual abuse of Scouts.

The Portland trial also showed that the numbers are nearly beyond comprehension. Given that the average pedophile has somewhere between 5-25 victims, one could reasonably conclude from the 1200 files from 1965-85 that at least 6,000-30,000 boys were abused in Scouting during those two decades.  If you then consider that only a fraction of all abuse is ever reported—perhaps 5-10%, according to experts—the likely numbers of boys abused in Scouting becomes staggering.  Add to that the fact that BSA admitted that these files had been kept for decades before the 1965-85 timeframe, and we can begin to see the outlines of the tragedy that played out under the auspices of the Boy Scouts.  (For more stories and articles about these Perversion Files, click here). 

Now, in the Canadian story of Richard Turley, the question the reporters wanted to know was whether the Canadian Boy Scouts had a similar system as did the US Scouts.  I do not know the answer to that question: but I did have for the reporters two questions in reply: If they did not have such a system, then what system did they have for screening potential leaders?  And, second, if they did have a system of IV/Perversion Files, how do the Scouts explain the ease with which Turley was able to go from troop to troop, region to region, nation to nation, abusing boys, despite the knowledge within the Scouting hierarchy that he had abused boys?

These questions about the Canadian experience also highlight what I believe to be the main lesson from the Portland trial about the sexual abuse of boys in Scouting: that for decades, despite knowledge of the rate at which Scoutmasters and other Scout leaders were abusing boys, despite knowing how it was happening—for example, lots of one on one time, time spent with the Scoutmaster outside of official Scout activities, sleepovers at a Scout leader’s home, etc—the BSA did not fundamentally alter their program to put more effective safeguards in place, they did not train leaders and parents in child abuse prevention, and they did not warn Scouts, parents or local Scout leaders about the documented and clear danger of sexual abuse by Scout leaders of Scouts.  That failure to act was, we argued to the Portland jury, the reason that so many boys were sexually abused in Scouting.  And that failure, as the CBC story showed, was one of international proportions.

Kristian Foden-Vencil | July 6, 2011 | Portland, OR OPB News

Nine former students of a boarding school near Prineville, filed suit in Multnomah County Wednesday.They claim physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their teachers.

Mt. Bachelor Academy was a school for teenagers who had either tangled with the law or had behavior problems at home.Parents paid more than $6000 a month to give their kids a ‘tough love’ education. But the school was closed by the state in 2009 — after the Department of Human Services found what it called "nine substantiated claims of abuse."

The school quickly fired back with a lawsuit.

That case was settled last year. The state withdrew its findings, but still claimed it had a "reasonable cause" to investigate.

The school has not reopened.

Now Kelly Clark, a lawyer for nine students, is going to court for $14 million dollars in damages. The lawsuit lists numerous abuses.

"Unnecessary physical restraint, denial of meals, sleep deprivation, light deprivation, sound torture. They would play the same song, over and over again. Strip searches, forced marches. Forcing the plaintiffs to beat on inanimate objects until their hands bled," Clark said.

Clark concedes that the military may use some similar techniques to break down and then build up new soldiers.

But he argues, these were children, not adults.

"There’s no 15-year-old marines. You at least theoretically signed your own name on the dotted line. And you’re there of your own volition. And I would suggest that even the most aggressive boot camp out there does not have some of the things that we’re alleging here," Clark said.

Clark says he doesn’t plan to rely on the state’s investigation for his lawsuit. He says he’ll build his own case, using the testimony of the students who are now in their 20s and 30s. The state chose not to comment on Wednesday’s lawsuit.

Mt. Bachelor Academy’s attorney issued a statement (see the complete statement below) saying the school never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students.

It also says the program was specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. The statement says the program aimed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them. The school says its approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing — and, in some cases, life-saving — results.

While we have not yet had the opportunity to evaluate the allegations in the complaint filed today, we would like to go on record that Mount Bachelor Academy was successful in resolving the dispute with the Oregon Department of Human Services last fall after abundant evidence was collected that showed the allegations of abuse made to the Department were unfounded. DHS initially took action based on students’ allegations, but withdrew its orders, including the suspension of Mount Bachelor Academy’s license, after further information became available. Given the favorable terms of the settlement agreement, we agreed to dismiss our various legal proceedings against the state. We also independently decided to leave Mount Bachelor Academy closed due to the fact that the sudden and erroneous closure of the campus effectively shut the program down the year prior.

For over two decades, Mount Bachelor Academy (MBA) positively changed the lives of over 1,000 troubled young people. MBA was a program specifically designed for troubled students who had failed to progress in other settings. It was designed to help kids confront the worst of their behaviors and take ownership of them, whether that be substance abuse, sexual acting out or other issues. This approach proved successful at producing positive, life-changing – and, in some cases, life-saving – results. The numerous positive testimonials provided by families and students over the years further attest to the success of MBA.

MBA and its parent companies never condoned or participated in the mistreatment or deprivation of any students. As we understand, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit attended MBA prior to its acquisition by a nationally recognized network of therapeutic schools and programs that espouse comprehensive best practices and safety protocols. While we cannot comment on specific allegations from individual students due to HIPAA privacy regulations, we vigorously deny any and all charges of mistreatment. Greg Chaimov