From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our superproducer, Paul Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Tonight, fellow conspiracy realist, we are exploring the story of the Boy Scouts. It's an international youth organization originally founded ostensibly to teach morality, ethics, and preparedness to young males in the United Kingdom, and then it expanded to the US and now it exists in
multiple other countries. Two caveats before we dive in. We have our own individual backgrounds of involvement with Scouting to one degree or another, and as such we may have some biases here. We were just talking off air a little bit about some of our respective backgrounds. I think we got some we belows some former Cub Scouts in the crowd. Is that correct?
Yeah, I'm kind of losing track of the I guess the hierarchy, but I think I may have been a cub Scout. Is we below even still a thing? That is?
That?
Is that real?
I think I threw that term out because I remember seeing it on Leave It to beaver or something.
Okay, Yeah, it's also a very memorable word, you know, like when Jacovia was a thing. You know, that was an easy bank to remember because it sounded like a sneeze in a foreign language. And Matt, you were a cub scout, you were saying for a time, Yeah, I was.
For quite a while. I did a lot of stuff with my dad and with just a local troupe. It was really good. The levels, by the way, are tenderfoot, ah huh, second class, first class, star life, and eagle. That's it.
Well, where's we below fall into it? I'm sorry I didn't hear.
That's when you get down to like the cub Scouts.
Yeah, scouts who or cub Scouts in fourth grade have to get we blows like a rank get you get we blow, and then you get to arrow of light. And already we see the nomenclature and jaragon so farm into cultic organizations.
Yeah, this culturally appropriative as well, very much so.
And we're going we're about to learn about some of that history before we dive into tonight's unfortunate, completely true and ongoing conspiracy. The second caveat tonight's episode contains depictions and descriptions of abuse. As such, this may not be suitable for all audiences. Here are the facts. The Boy Scout movement is founded back in Great Britain Street named the United Kingdom in nineteen oh eight by a guy named Robert Stephenson Smith Baden Powell. Baden Powell would later
become Lord Baden Powell. That's how he's known in Scouting in their origin stories. He was a British Army officer and author. In nineteen oh eight, inspired by a conversation with an American, he wrote a book called Scouting for Boys, a handbook for instruction and good citizenship. I hold in my hand here one of the many iterations or descendants of that, the Boy Scout Handbook.
And for listeners out there, since you can't see, I would describe this as a dog eared copy, ye Warren.
Yeah, Yeah, it's been through a lot, It's been in many places. And this this guy Baden Powell beat me here, Paul, He's kind of a piece of Check out the Behind the Bastard's series on him from our good friend Robert Evans. We're not going to go too much into Baden Powell's history, but we will tell you how the Scouts, the BSA Boy Scouts of American particularly came to be to that
point about appropriation. Yes, this book and the Scouting movement overall was inspired by interactions Baden Powell had with an artist, illustrator author named Ernest Thompson Satan Seto n lest we fall into wordplay. Ernest, by the way, his original name was something like Ernest Evans Thompson, something like that. Anyway, this guy in Connecticut, he had created a similar group called the Woodcraft Indians, a predecessor to Boy Scouts of America.
The Woodcraft Indians spoiler alert, did not include Native American children. It was for the kids of this one town in Connecticut.
Yikes. Yeah, cos Cobb, Connecticut. Isn't that the whitest sounding town name you've ever heard? I don't know why it hits me that way, but cost Cob.
Yeah, it sounds sounds very I don't know, it sounds it sounds kind of made up. It sounds like one of those things Stephen King does in the Dark Tower when he events his own language. Percent.
And you know, there were some skills, some outdoors y kind of survivalist kind of skills for foraging and finding water and you know, things that you would need out in the wilderness. And also I believe a little bit of woodworking, carving things.
Like that, right, yeah, whittling.
Well, yeah, it's it's survival skills, right. I mean we're talking about early nineteen hundreds, and at the time, identity for specifically males often went back to or was associated with these kinds of skills, these kinds of self determination, right, being able to accomplish tasks on your own. If you're
in trouble, you can get out of it. If someone else is in trouble, you can provide aid for that person, Right, I think self reliance, Yeah, I think so this organization goes back to a lot of those fundamentals.
Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. And those fundamentals, those skills remain valuable today and they can make a difference between life and death if you find yourself in the wild. One of my favorite examples, one of My favorite examples, which I mentioned on air in the past, is I had had a tremendously wonderful, very strange, eccentric Scout master.
My Scout troop was all ex military law enforcement. And one of the first things that they one time they told us, they said, Okay, you wake up, you find yourself lost in the woods. You don't have anything but what you have on you. Now, what's the first thing
you do? And we add all these answers, right, like, build a shelter, try to build a fire, try to orient ourselves, you know, figure out where north south, closest civilization is, find water, of course, And he said, no, idiots, the first thing you ask yourself is what did you do wrong to end up in the woods like this. That's a that's a pretty hard, hardcore question to ask some eleven year olds, But yeah, they were. They were about me.
You mean, why is God punishing me?
Like exactly? And this woodcraft Indians thing, this movement that sits on makes it's a bit of a different vibe from the Scouts, partially because it becomes co ed, but also because it advertised itself as while it was oriented towards children, it was open to quote children between the ages of four and ninety four. So anybody in this town, in this neighborhood of Greenwich could come hang out.
It's like legos for everybody, you know.
But if you're ninety five, you.
Get so this, say the ninety three year old's right, yeah, exactly so this uh, this guy. He meets Baden Powell over in the United Kingdom and their conversations later he gives Powell one of his books, and their conversations inspired Baden Powell to create this Scout movement to write his book, and Satan, for a time merges the two organizations Woodcraft Indians Scouting. They merged to create the Boy Scouts of
America Satan. Actually I think they had a falling out later, but Satan wrote the first Boy Scouts of America handbook, the you know, the early version of this copy I held up earlier, the Woodcraft thread though, you guys, it's fascinating because I was digging somewhere into it. Once you get to the more adult side, the grown up side, it gets into esoteric magic and neopaganism.
Like directly.
The Red Lodge, what is that?
That's some Twin Peaks stuff right, rights Like for sure. You know you mentioned Ben, I think maybe it was off, Mike, just that some of your scout training felt a little on the militaristic side. And it is interesting that some of the early ideas for this kind of training and these type of skills and the merging that you just mentioned did come from like drills for training cavalry soldiers, right, Like, It's an interesting component that I was not personally aware of.
Yeah, And that logic makes sense for LBP. Baden Powell because this guy, like mentioned, he used to train cavalry in his time as a British military officer, and one of the big components of training those guys was the woodcraft, forest craft, the survival skills. Right. This book takes off in the military stick environment of Great Britain at the time, because the boys want to be heroes, right, The little kids want to grow up and fight for God and
country and so on. And that's a that's a tendency that continues to some degree in the modern day. So Baden Powell says, all right, I've got this idea where I can teach these kids skills they will need later when they inevitably join the army. Because it's just a given that they will unless they have some sort of physical or moral failing.
Well. But it's also very strange because the US has no compulsory military service. Right, you don't have to go in to the military at all in this country unless you get drafted during the time during a time of war when a draft gets instituted. Right, So during the Vietnam War, you know, as you got into a World War, was there there was a World War too, draft, right, there were.
It's it's interesting with the world wars, both in the Kingdom and in the US, because even if there was not a draft, or even if a draft did not apply to you a conscription, it was considered a id yeah, deep moral failing to not contribute to the larger effort.
And so well, I guess what I mean is if you didn't join the ROTC, right, or some other youth organization where you're going to be prepared for battle or to learn those skills that you would learn in one of these other organizations, you're not going to know that stuff unless you've got you know, a family like a family friend or a father or somebody who was teaching
you that stuff one on one. So the BSA, and you know these other organizations we're talking about right here, they it's almost a stand in for exactly what you're talking about, Ben, the preparation prior to either military service or the need to fight or you know, help people during a time of conflict.
Yeah, and to answer your question directly, Yeah, the US did have military conscription during World War Two. The most recent military conscription from the US was, of course, as we remember, the Vietnam War. That hasn't occurred since. And one of the reasons that, well, one of the hot take reasons that the draft has not occurred after that is in some degrees due to accelerating economic inequality, which makes the military increasingly the only viable option for a lot of American citizens.
Precisely, I think it's worth noting in many of the successful democracies across the world, children as they become adults are required to join some kind of military training and you know, become certified in a bunch of different levels before they get to become adults basically.
And I'm not against it. I'm gonna be honest with you, I'm not against compulsory service. I would actually I would extend that. I mean in theory. I'm not opposed to it. I would extend that to say, if you were a member of Congress, if you were a political leader, member of parliament or whatever, and you vote for a war, you should have to go too. Yeah, no doubt.
Something was bouncing around in my head when you were talking about this. The Selective Service, that is the closes to that is basically a database that the government keeps here in the US of names of quote unquote able bodied you know, humans that that could be called up were a draft to be reinstated, the old SS.
I just remember, and I looked it up.
If you don't register with it, it's a felony pub punishable by finds up the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and or five years in prison. I just remember that in high school that you have to like register for the Selective Service.
Yeah. It gets kind of kind of spooky real quick. But the h so Baden Powell has this, the way he thinks through this stuff seems like he doesn't necessarily understand children, because maybe he just thinks of the people who are under his command as somewhat childlike his ideas, like naturally the children will organize themselves into small subgroups I imagine six or seven, and they shall choose a leader.
The boy will be the patrol leader, and they will train in tracking and reconnaissance, and so they.
Will pass the conkshell around.
There shall be no note of the flies, right, Like, he's clearly underestimating the inherent savagery of human beings because you know, I don't know people are crabs in the bucket.
Oh, I like that, It's true. I mean, okay, So we can already see the premise here is ideological, it is militaristic, and there is a logic to it. There's a strong argument that Baden Powell is ultimately see he sees himself as saving time for future military commanders. It's kind of like how you see English teachers in college saying, I wish these kids had been taught the fundamentals of language and syntax and grammar before they came to my class.
So he's thinking, if these kids grow up already knowing these basic survival traits once they enter the military, which again they inevitably will, then they'll be that much more capable, that much more quickly. That's the origin story. It's brief it's high level. A lot of it's accurate, but it doesn't tell the whole truth. Because if we fast forward through the origin of Scouting, through the decades to the modern day, we see the Boy Scouts of America becomes
a runaway success. It's one of the largest youth organizations in the country. As recently as twenty seventeen it had two point three million kids, almost almost a million, like
nine hundred thousand something adult volunteers. And if you are doubtlessly so of our fellow conspiracy realists listening now, you have been in scouting, so you understand that it doesn't necessarily end when people age out, whether or not you get or when you get the Eagle Scout rank, then you can continue on to other related things Explorers Club, order, the Arrow, et cetera.
Didn't that Baden Powell character like even like form like a like a training camp or something.
He did to practice his ideas to make sure it would work. He's set up what you could call the first Boy Scout summer camp, and he said, okay, it's It was on an island, Brownsea Island, and the.
Most British sounding place I think I've had sued by the way if cost Cobb.
Is the I think this is the most British guys. I want to just quickly go beyond what the skills are taught in boy Scouting, because I think it's more than skills, like actual physical things. I think it is mental training. At least that's what it was for me. It was when I was in Boy Scouts. I remember it was like it reminded me a lot of the martial arts training that I was taking again as a child.
It was about discipline, It was about how to act around other people, how to think about other people, how to treat other people right. It was it was almost a mindset training since doctrination in doctrination. But at the same time, I well, I mean it was in doctrination, I guess, but I hold dear the things that I learned in boy Scouting about how to treat other people and how to I don't know. I wanted to just
really quickly. I was thinking about I was watching this documentary that we're going to talk about in a minute. I mean, it had a clip of George H. W. Bush speaking to I guess it was a large It was probably one of the national Boy Scout events that occurred back in probably the early nineties. Yeah, it's probably jam Bree, It's exactly right. I'm just gonna read this quote because it it reverberated with me so much listening to him say it on my tiny little iPhone screen
that I got emotional because I remember hearing this. Right, It's like I remember these things being told to me kind of over and over again. This is what you are, this is how you should be. This is how boy Scouts are, this is how we are. I'm just gonna read really quickly quote. Your Scout law commands you to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
And it's like Golden rule type stuff. It's got a it smacks of almost like a religion, I mean, very interesting.
The recitation of the of the Scout oath code. Stuff you have to say all the time.
You know, yeah, but it but it's like, I guess it's what you're saying and like being indoctrinated. But at the same time, and.
It's good, it feels good.
It's all good things. This is a good idea. I mean, I I inherently don't have any problem with any of this.
But in there the words obedient, right are in there. That's true, reverent, helpful, courteous. I don't know that some of it. As we get into the story, like I start to see the cracks in the vision I had of it, right.
The language of submitting to authority. Yeah, that's what it is, that's part of it. Yes, Uh, you can be physically self reliant, but you must consider yourself morally and ideologically reliant upon a hierarchical organization. So the that's I mean, that's the truth of it. And you know, for decades this organization was plagued by rumors of physical and sexual abuse in full transparency, probably due to the unique and somewhat militaristic nature of the organization I was part of.
Physical abuse was not uncommon or what would be called physical abuse today. What's more, the survivors of different troops and survivors of time in the BSA alleged for years and years and years that the Boy Scouts of America was aware of a huge, ongoing intergenerational problem with abuse. And yes, folks, the worst kind, the kind you're thinking of. And further that the Boy Scouts of America conspired successfully to cover it all up. What do we make of this?
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. These allegations, both of abuse and of conspiracy are true. They are inarguably true. They are a fact. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy, which.
Is crazy considering that it was almost like I not almost, I just remember growing up and just hearing off color jokes, really tasteless jokes about like boy Scout troop leaders, you know, molesting children, like haha, it's something creepy about a grown adult men being in command of all these young boys.
See also youth pastors, yeah.
One hundred percent, and you know, priests, and we're kind of see this. There's some pretty striking parallels there in terms of, like, you know, abuse by figures of authority and absolute betrayal of trust.
And in recent decades, multiple individual cases of abuse have reached US courts. The vast majority of these allegations of abuse involved abuse of a sexual nature. More So, what I'm saying is more so than just smacking kids upside the head sexually abusing them. In nineteen eighty eight, the organization had already attempted to respond to some of this. They created something called the Youth Protection Program to address
this systemic issue. And if you look at the Youth Protection Program, you can learn a lot about this online. You'll see that it had some basic rules. So in scouting there's always this thing with exploring the wild called the buddy system. Right, summer camps, non scouting summer camps do this as well. You always want to have someone with you. So the Youth Leadership Program create some requirements. They have a buddy system for leadership. They say, okay,
no one on one adult child stuff. You have to have a minimum of two adults present during all activities. It can be a parent, it can be an adult leader, but there have to be two adults. No one on one contact. You have to respect privacy of youth members, you know, taking showers, changing clothing, stuff like that. You can only intrude if there's a threat to health or safety.
Separate accommodations, you know what I mean. The adults are sleeping in a different tent, to different camp, a different cabin. You have to prepare for high adventure activities, so make sure all the kids have you know the stuff they need to not die rock climbing. That's pretty basic. Why wasn't that a rule earlier? No secret organizations, that's a really interesting one. They said, you can't. Basically, it's kind
of like squirreling in scientology. You can't create a splinter faction because that could aid and a bet you in the commission of evil, evil things, and it goes on. But you know one thing they don't have in there, guys, they don't have something about not allowing previously convicted sex offenders into the organization. Missed that one?
Well, yeah, because theoretically, this is after someone has been vetted to become a Scout leader or a volunteer, even right to be an adult person there, even if it is the parent of one of the adults right during that too deep leadership. It's like it's a Scout leader and another Scout leader or another parent of one of the kids that's there. So theoretically, anybody that can go on a Scouting trip as an adult supervisor, you'd think
would be trained. Right, But this thing, this youth protection program comes out what I don't even know, sixty eighty years after the after boy Scouts of America is formed.
Yeah, more than half a century.
Yeah, it's like, okay, so don't have one on one contact with kids and make sure there are at least two adults there. Huh. I wonder why that is after eighty years this thing gets created.
And then also why is it created in reaction too?
Right?
Yeah, you know it's a reactive it's a reactive declaration. Fast forward. You know, just a few years later this stuff, by the way, spoiler didn't work. We'll talk about it in a minute. But in nineteen ninety one, the Washington Times, particularly lead investigative journalist Patrick Boyle, they publish a major, multipart investigation into sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America. You can read this online. It's called Scouts Honor. They
spent two years looking into everything they could find. They looked into personnel records from the Boy Scouts themselves, internal documents that were purposely kept from the public, court records from twenty states, probably more newspaper articles, hundreds of interviews, including convicted child abusers, families of victims, victims themselves, Scout leaders,
et cetera. And they even narrowed their scope. The scope of this investigation is only cases of male Scout leaders abusing Boy Scouts prior to the nineteen eighty eight introduction of the Youth Protection Program, and in summation in the report, they wrote the following, It's going to be very difficult for a lot of us to hear quote the Boy Scouts are a magnet for men who want to have sexual relations with children. Pedophiles join the Scouts for a
simple reason. It's where the boys are. Jesus yests.
This guy Michael Johnson that we're going to talk about in just a moment, who worked with the Boy Scouts of America for quite a while, as you know, someone trying to protect kids. He said, quote, Boy Scouts is exceptional in the opportunities that it presents to perpetrators to access children in no to very low supervised situations. That was like the same point. I think a similar point. It's because they're not other adults around, and you've got where the boys are, right.
And predators seek opportunities, you know what I mean. Regardless of what specific sort of animal they are, predators are all opportunistic. That's how predation works. And this documentary we're talking about Scouts Honor the Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America is available now. Watch it on Netflix, maybe a couple of other platforms to r maybe sadly, Like you said, Noel, it is difficult not to make comparisons between this ongoing tragedy and the conspiracy of the
Catholic Church abuse scandals. The BSA had a history of covering things up, even to the point of allowing knowing sex offenders back into the organization. Just like the priest getting relocated, they might change troops, they might move to a different state, wait a few years, let the heat die down. And this was very easy. This is a very easy environment for these predators to operate in for quite some time because this was well before the age
of the internet. You know what I mean. If you wanted to research someone, you needed help from authorities, or you needed a lot of time, you know, to dedicate to physically going out hitting the bricks and doing some research. The files that these reporters found date back to the beginning of the Scout movement in England, well before the
organization reached American shores. And this is where we want to pull another quote Patrick Boyle, the lead journalists for the Time's investigation put it this way.
Soon after the Scouts were found that in England in nineteen oh eight, the Scouts there realized they had a problem because scouting has always attracted men who were attracted to boys.
Yeah, according to that documentary, the first doctor that was present on the first Boy Scout camping trip, the first official one, had to be removed from the organization because of his interest in the boys.
That was inappropriate, And of course Baden Powell himself turns out some of his high faluting statements may have also been a cover for unclean interest and things. We know, this youth protection plan did not seem to work. Prior to nineteen ninety four, there were an estimated two thousand
separate reported incidents of abuse. And if you have ever had the misfortune of being familiar with abusive situations in institutions, you know that this unfortunately means that many, many, many other cases likely went unreported or got reported and were squashed. And this problem, this genre of conspiracy, aiding and abetting predators,
it's unfortunately not uncommon in youth organizations. Yet, even admitting that problem, the Boy Scouts of America set several historical records in terms of legal proceedings.
So from nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety one, the Boy Scouts of America and local councils agreed to pay more than fifteen million dollars in damages, and according to this investigation from Washington Times, the actual payment is likely a whole lot more. And that's because the BSA sometimes agreed to pay individual damages only if the payments were kept under wraps, which doesn't Is that a thing you can do?
I guess it is. It's kind of common. And these sort of settlements of confidentiality, guess would be required by insurers. Wow, it happens in It happens in companies as well. Outside of child abuse. They might say they had.
Meant no wrongdoing, right like they pay they had been no wrongdoing, and there's a gag order essentially.
Yeah, yeah, of course exactly. And continuing on, in twenty ten, and jury ordered the BSA to pay eighteen point five million dollars to a former Scout who was abused in the nineteen eighties. This was the largest punitive damages award to a single person in a child abuse case in the entirety of US history up to that point.
Let's talk about a little bit about how in the heck does an individual who ends up abusing a kid that gets involved, they get to the Boy Scouts of America involved in a lawsuit like that, what happens to that individual person? Like generally there are going to be criminal charges against somebody if it actually goes that far right, that.
Would be That would be more the case now, But previously there was a statute of limitations in term for abuse cases as well as for sexual assault cases, and changing those laws has been a tremendous benefit to survivors, and I would argue to American society as a whole, But it still doesn't fix things. And these are just a few data points. It would be an entire series beyond even what the Washington Times did to name every single case here. There are countless other incidents. And we're
not being hyperbolic. We say countless, we mean you cannot count them literally, because a lot of these went unreported or they were reported and then covered up by local authorities, many of whom were in some way affiliated with scouting. Because you know, you're the police chief, right, you know, the scout master. Heck, he's you know, he's a Scout master on the weekend. He works for you during the week Oh, you're.
In like the Elks club together or something, you know, I mean, especially in these smaller commune unities, there would be some real cross pollination.
You know, with absolutely these types of folks. Power structures can be ven diagrams, especially in small towns. And so the question then becomes similar to the question posed about the Catholic Church. How did this happen? How did such a large, enormous organization with such a storied history go so far off the rails into the realm of the evil and the unclean. I mean, think about it. Politicians, senators, congress,
folk athletes, astronauts. Some of the most prominent members of American society and indeed global society grew up in the Boy Scouts. Congress has had official authority over the organization since nineteen sixteen, when the Boy Scouts got congressionally chartered, so the most powerful people in the nation ostensibly were able to keep an eye on it. Yet Congress never investigated thousands and thousands of claims. That's that's just the ones who made it to the attention of Congress. Local
municipalities never investigated far, far more claims. You know what, it's similar to, it's got true Detective Season one vibes right, We're not saying murder, but we are saying horrific abuse. And you know, to your point, old people who are who all know each other, who hang out in the same back rooms, say we don't want to make this
a problem. It's not necessarily. The sense you can get from looking at all the research that has come out is less that the Boy Scouts were, you know, steepling their fingers and saying, yes, let's ruin the lives of children. And it was more like they were saying, we've got a brand, We've got a brand that is profitable, and we need to protect that brand, so let's airbrush some
of the inconvenient history. And it seems they miscalculated just how much of that evil history they're Zessimov bass, I don't want to overdramatize this.
No, I don't think it's possible. Frankly, I think the drama of the reality of it is bigger than anything one's imagination could conjure.
Thanks man, I mean we should also really think again. The folks at the Washington Times and Michael Johnson who you mentioned earlier, Matt for speaking out. This guy wrote a letter in twenty twenty one who he was the leader of the organization that was supposed to investigate and prevent this stuff. And in twenty twenty one he writes directly to Congress and he says, the Scouts are unsafe for children, Please please do something.
Yeah, he's literally the guy that's supposed to write the rules. He was hired as a Plano Texas officer who specifically specialized in child sex abuse, and they, the Boy Scouts America, brought him in to basically run their youth protection program to hone this whole thing, and they kind of held him back the whole time, and they said, hey, we don't have any kind of, you know, guidelines for how
to protect youth or anything like that. Only for him then to find out that some Boy Scouts of America person did help create the official national youth protection guidelines like for the for the United States government. And found out that the person who was part of the Boy Scouts who was officially cited on that document was his boss who told him they don't have any kind of
youth protection document. But then his boss goes on to tell him, oh, no, well they put my name on it because the actual guy who helped write it from the Boy Scouts of America, he got picked up on child sexual abuse materials, right that stuff, and his name was Douglas Smith and he ended up going to prison for child sexual abuse material And there's an article you can read. Here's the title. You can look it up. Boy Scouts executive surrenders in Fort Worth on a child pornography charge.
And Michael Johnson was serving. He was not a spring chicken at this He had been serving as the youth protection director for a decade, right, and he was begging Congress to act. Congress left this on red and the more people investigated, the more unclean things they found Scout records. This came out in a court case where an abuse survivor his lawyers were able to have the courts compel the Boy Scouts to share records that had not made
it to the public previously. And as people were looking into these records, they discovered something called alternatively it's been called the red Flag files, the confidential files, the later
it was called the Ineligible Volunteer Files. Had very disturbing details on hundreds of Scout leaders banned from the organization and sometimes let back in banned for sexual misconduct from nineteen seventy five through nineteen eighty four, and then another list came out from the BSA with more than three hundred and fifty adult males banned for sexual misconduct from nineteen seventy one to nineteen eighty six. They're called the Secret Files. To be fully transparent here, I want to
thank the LA Times. They have compiled a searchable database which is available online for free. You can look state by state, city by city, often but not always, troop by troop. You will see that the names of the perpetrators are not always present. Sometimes it's like person number blah.
And you know, the scary thing about it is if you were in Scouts and you were not, you were not subjected to this abuse, You're probably going to be surprised and chilled by the fact that this database will likely show a Scout troop near where you grew up where something like this happened.
Yeah, it's that widespread. And what's the word foundational? Almost well, it was the word like when something was like yeah, well yeah, but even more so almost like it's oh god, it's this culture, this climb, you know what I mean. It's like something that's ubiquitous and within the organization itself, like at the very root of it.
It's wild and it's mission critical to note this organization went to pretty extreme lengths to prevent parent law enforcement, literally any other outside authority from seeing these files. They were under lock and key in the national headquarters because they were bad for business. And that leads us to another disturbing wrinkle of this conspiracy. I propose we pause for a word from our sponsor and return to dive deeper. And we have returned, this culture of secrecy and abuse
becomes increasingly disturbing. We realize something that I, like I, as an Eagle Scout, was not aware of. For quite some time, the Boy Scouts of America actively lobbied against child sexual abuse laws. A youth organization opposed laws protecting children. In twenty eighteen, even the House of Representatives wrote in to the Boy Scouts of Americans said why are you against this?
What were they lobbying against?
They were opposed to mandated reporting requirements, a detailed account of safety procedures and reporting mechanisms that they have in place, I'm quoting the letter here from Jackie Spear, and this was since in twenty eighteen. You can read the letter in full. They were basically opposed to Congress looking for what they call a look back window, a short period of time where victims of child abuse can file suit despite a state statute of limitations.
Wow.
So they were anti reporting requirements and anti extension of statute of limitations.
And so essentially the Scouts are attempting to or at least it's the allegation years of the Scouts are attempting to shield like as an org organization individual abusers. And you have to wonder why would they do that, And it's probably a pr thing, right the Boy Scouts doesn't want anybody to think about it as an organization as the iconography that is the Boy Scouts as child sexual abusers.
Right right, there's this idea of protecting the business of the brand. And you know, it's for a pained, cliche analogy. It's like, imagine there's a fox in Congress that is fighting hen House legislation, you know what I mean, like a fact saying well, this rule about fences around chicken chicken huts is Unamerican when you think about it, that's
like that ulterior that ulterior motive is damning. And we have a quote from Michael Serbock, who was the Scout's chief executive at the time, and he said, quote, at new time in our history we ever knowingly allowed a sexual predator to work with youth. It turned out to be entirely not the case. It would have been more accurate to say, at pretty much every time in our history we have knowingly allowed sexual predators to work with youth.
So, you know, this kind of hushing up of the whole thing, this inner generational silencing of these abuse victims. I mean, you know, you're right, Ben, the true detective analogy. Well, it's not murder per se. It is murder of innocence. It is murder of trust, you know, and it is essentially what amounts to a child abuse ring, you know. And when with this finally coming out, it impacted the organization, the Boy Scouts of America significantly, and they actually filed
It took a while. It took a long time for it to really hit home. Nearly a decade. In twenty twenty, the BSA finally filed for bankruptcy likely you know, because of a lot of these hush hush, you know settlements, right.
And they were looking at two hundred plus pending lawsuits at that time in the federal and district courts of the US, with almost two thousand claimants involved in those already. And then May of that same year you mentioned the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware because you know, where are you going to headquarter as a company if you're shady.
We're in Delaware.
We're in Delaware. They set they set a deadline in this settlement, and they said you have until you if you are a survivor of this abuse, the system of abuse, then you have till November sixteenth, twenty twenty to file your claim. And all told, more than ninety two thousand separate claims were filed with the bankruptcy court by that deadline. This breaks another record for the BSA. It's the single largest instance of child sexual abuse claims in a single
organization in United States history. And we know that might sound crazy because you always hear about the Catholic church scandals, right the Scout, the boy Scout tragedy and scandal eclipsed that. The BSA published an open letter ostensibly encouraging victims of abuse to step forward. The bankruptcy settlement continues today, and you know, we can say thankfully, at least the conspiracy is unraveling, but the story is not over, you know, and for people who survive this abuse, it will never
It'll never really be over. And Matt, I want to go back to a point that you had made earlier. What were the consequences for these predators? Many of them now have died. They were al at the time they were abusing children. They have aged, they became elderly, infirm, they passed away, quite possibly continuing to be career predators throughout the rest of their life and quite possibly never seen justice for the consequences of their actions.
Oh. Absolutely. Oh. If you watch that The Scout's Owner documentary on Netflix, you can see a couple examples of people who were brought to justice, but people who were brought to justice after five, eight, ten years of getting away with abusing kids through the organization, because the opportunities that were there just quickly. Just to give an example, this guy named Thomas J. Hacker who was in Illinois.
He was a Scout master and he was a deacon at his church and in February of nineteen eighty eight, he was arrested. He was charge of five counts of aggravated criminal sexual assas. Again these are at the time, it's against miners kids. He received over one hundred years in prison for what he had done, but he had molested hundreds of boys over eight years. And when he got caught, when he was interviewed in prison, they said,
why did you choose the Scouts to do this? And his quote is literally quote they made it so easy, unquote, that is what he said. And just knowing that, like,
who knows how many people are out there? Who knows how many people, even if they're involved in a lawsuit right like this, aren't actually going to see justice because they're they're gonna there's gonna be some kind of settlement at some point, and they signed some agreement like you were talking about, Ben where everybody walks away, nobody did anything wrong, but here's some money.
I don't think that should be allowed. No, that seems crooked to me. That's just like a failing of the legal system, where like, you know, money is more important than.
Justice, But those are also out of court settlements pretty often, you.
Know, I get it. And I guess it's up to the victims to decide whether this restitution is worth you know, is to them a form of justice, But it just doesn't feel like that to me, you know, I mean, I don't know.
Well, let's talk about over the years, like why somebody wouldn't get called out for abusing right that the power dynamic that we've talked about so often on this show that exists between somebody who's functioning as a Scout leader in let's say, a deacon at their church, and then when a child is accusing this person who is to everybody else a leader in their organ in their community.
Dude, I think I think what I'm trying to I'm not articulating well enough what I'm trying to say about settlements. To me, the problem here is these settlements and the hushing up of all of this legally, I guess is a pattern. And you're thinking that happened enough times it could be like, I think we're doing a disservice to future potential victims.
You know.
Yeah, that's what I mean when I think when I say I shouldn't be allowed and this type of it's just.
God dang, one would think, Yeah, and we'll provide resources toward the end of the show here tonight. In December of twenty twenty one, the BSA and their insurer, the BSA Insurance Reserve, agreed to pay eight hundred million dollars into a survivor fund created to give settlements and financial
compensation and hopefully closure to survivors. The very next year, in twenty twenty two, the BSA up to the price, agreeing to pay two point four billion dollars into the same fund, with payments set to roll out in September of twenty twenty three this year. As we record this, the total estimated settlement piers round out to about two point four to six billion dollars. Eighty six percent of the survivors in the claims approved of this, and just
last month payouts began. Reuter's has a good summation of it. The initial payments were sent to seven thousand claimants who this kind of bothers me, who chose something called the quick pay option under the BSA bankruptcy Plan. These seven thousand folks who chose the quick pay option receive three thousand, five hundred dollars without going through the lengthier evaluation process.
That awaits the majority of people who filed claims. So you heard that, right, folks, Three thousand, five hundred dollars, That is the price put on the.
Trauma doesn't seem like quite enough?
What is? What is? There's a exactly there's a retired bankruptcy judge named Barbara Hauser, and she and her team are in charge of this process. They say the entire settlement process is going to take years at lee. Individual abuse survivors are expected to receive between three thy five hundred dollars to two point seven million dollars, depending on how their claims are assessed. And not everyone is happy with this plan. To be clear, there are two separate
groups that raised a pretty salience point. They appealed the settlement and they said, look, this prevents churches and organizations that sponsored scouting programs but have not themselves filed for bankruptcy from being held accountable for some of this. You know, like a lot of if you've ever been in Boy Scouts, you know a lot of the troops meet it community centers,
they meet in churches, things like that. Right, So, these groups who are objecting to the settlement are saying they feel that some of these affiliated organizations who may have aided and embedded the conspiracy and abuse are getting off the hook because the bankruptcy settlement says you're going to release any claims against alleged partially responsible organizations or organizations that contributed to the Boy Scouts are contributed to the settlement.
And sadly, there are a lot of places that appear to have turned a blind eye over the years. It does seem that the stuff they don't want you to know about the Boy Scouts continues in the modern day. And you know, I think it's also not to sound not to sound deferential, but I think it's also important for us to know what we said at the beginning. The heartbreaking thing about this is organizations like this, when
done correctly, they can really help kids. You know, I owe a lot of formative experiences and a couple of survival situations, if we're being honest, I owe it to time spent in the Boy Scouts at similar organizations.
Dude, I was just in Cub Scouts for like a year or so, and I made a lifelong friend that I still am very close with to this day. And it was also the first time I've ever been to the Cracker Barrel. I remember that distinctly. I think that was very much a popular boy Scout spot during camping trips when you wanted to get away from the nature of it all. But yeah, I think we started off it was important the way we started off, talking about how inherently a lot of these things are a good idea.
But then there is that in citio is kind of weird, creepy language that you don't even notice right up front the whole, you know, kind of submissive aspect, you.
Know, Yeah, Hey, do you guys remember Boys Life or I think a Scouts Life or Scout Life something like that. Just the magazines Boy Scouts in America would put out all kinds of different publications. Some of them were, you know, more official than others. Some of them were more local. But there were official publications back in the day that
would call people out for having inappropriate contact. In the documentary, there's one where you can read an article from a nineteen twenties boy Scouting magazine that says the title is red Flag this Man, and it goes on to describe, Hey, here's this person who was a volunteer on this scouting trip.
Do not allow this person on your scouting trips. You know, it feels at least back back for a time, there was internal reporting before this organization became so huge and such a powerful, moneied organization.
And that was Yeah. Do watch the documentary, folks. That was a scouting magazine, I think nineteen twenty three, and the part you see in the documentary about this, it gives you a knowledge of the extent of the problem. Because the lead journalist for the Washington Times is reading that article for the first time on air, he was, yeah, familiar, there's so much out there.
He finds it while going down the rabbit hole, just of realizing that those ineligible volunteer files slash, confidential files slash you know, the bad, the horrible thing, the red flag list. It's just it's astounding to me and its heartbreaking, honestly, because it does it. It destroys something that I hold as fundamental to who I think I.
Am, and many people can say can say the same. Unfortunately, we want to end on a couple of important points. You know, we have established that these organizations, or the skills learned in these organizations, the moral philosophies learned in these organizations, can be tremendously formative and helpful. We also must know abuse of children can occur in any organization, and conspiracies to cover this up continue in many similar institutions in the modern day. Of course, not every adult
volunteer is a villain or a predator. The world would fundamentally not be able to work if that were the case. And if you or someone you know needs help, please remember this is perhaps the most important part of this episode. You are not alone. There are resources available. You can call or text in the United States one eight hundred number four a child. That's one eight hundred four two two four four five three. Again, that's one eight hundred four two two four four five three. You can also
visit Childwelfare dot gov for more information. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in Conspiracy Realist. We immensely appreciate your time. We're here if you have some stories, some insight you would like to shed on this conspiracy. We try to be easy to find online. We do.
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