Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Boy Scouts are a Bastard
Aired: 2021-11-04
Duration: 01:19:05


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=== Boy Scouts Anti-LGBT Controversy (14:45) ===

[00:02:21]  And we're all recording.
[00:02:27]  All of that, Chris, every little bit of that goes into the episode.
[00:02:31]  Darwin?
[00:02:32]  I'm Robert Evans.
[00:02:33]  Are you?
[00:02:33]  Hi.
[00:02:34]  This is Behind the Bastards with Matt Lieb.
[00:02:37]  Yep.
[00:02:37]  Hey, I'm back.
[00:02:40]  How are you feeling learning all this fun stuff about the Boy Scouts of America?
[00:02:44]  Oh, I'm, you know, remember earlier when I was saying I always felt like I missed out not being a Boy Scout?
[00:02:49]  Yeah.
[00:02:50]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:51]  I have a feeling that that was God just looking out for me because this is going to get dark.
[00:02:58]  It is.
[00:02:58]  It's so fucked up.
[00:03:00]  Like, again, not to like center my own experience like in this, but it is weird to me that like, again, I know I've spent all of this time writing 20 pages on how fucked up the Boy Scouts are.
[00:03:11]  I personally have like nothing but positive memories of my time in the scouts.
[00:03:15]  And it was, it was weird.
[00:03:16]  Like I didn't start to recognize because there was, we're not talking about a lot of the other stuff that's fucked up about the Boy Scouts.
[00:03:24]  Like everyone knows like they for decades would not let you be gay or trans or whatnot in the Boy Scouts.
[00:03:29]  You would get kicked out if you came out.
[00:03:31]  You couldn't be an atheist.
[00:03:32]  You didn't have to be a specific religion, but you had to acknowledge the existence of a higher power.
[00:03:37]  There's like other stuff that they've been attacked for.
[00:03:39]  And part of the reason why I'm not really focusing on that is that like that's bad.
[00:03:44]  That is not something that would render an organization founded in 1910 fundamentally unsalvageable, right?
[00:03:54]  Lot of organizations that old had weird attitudes to bad attitudes towards gay people, even racist attitudes, and can change over time.
[00:04:00]  Be like, well, yeah, the people who founded us believe these things.
[00:04:03]  The fundamentals of our organization are good teaching people how to camp.
[00:04:07]  We've grown.
[00:04:09]  That all, I think that the Boy Scouts could have grown past, you know, the anti-LGBT thing, and they have started accepting kids who are gay and trans.
[00:04:16]  I think they could have grown past the restriction to just boys because now they do accept girls.
[00:04:21]  They could have grown past a number of the problematic things.
[00:04:24]  What you cannot grow past is enabling the rape of tens of thousands of boys.
[00:04:28]  That cannot be redeemed.
[00:04:30]  That's the thing that seems systemic.
[00:04:34]  Yeah, it's one of those things like, yeah, an organization founded in 1910.
[00:04:37]  People who made it probably had some weird beliefs on race and gender.
[00:04:40]  And like, yeah, you can, you can, the organization, I think, can move past that as long as it acknowledges the flaws of its past and it confronts them head on, which I'm not saying the Boy Scouts did.
[00:04:50]  Like they, they delayed way too long reforming on that stuff.
[00:04:54]  But I think that the thing that makes them unsalvageable, the reason I think the Boy Scouts just needs to be destroyed as an organization is the mass rape of children.
[00:05:04]  Like that's, you can't, there's no, no getting past that.
[00:05:07]  No, that's there's no moving on.
[00:05:09]  That's fair.
[00:05:09]  That's a fair.
[00:05:10]  That's a fair problem.
[00:05:12]  That's a fair reason.
[00:05:13]  Yeah.
[00:05:15]  Yeah.
[00:05:15]  If not for the mass rape of children, I feel like it would be, you know, an organization that could do some reform.
[00:05:23]  Move past its past.
[00:05:25]  Yeah.
[00:05:25]  Sure, sure.
[00:05:26]  But is that that little thing where it was a mass rape of children?
[00:05:30]  The tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of boys raped.
[00:05:32]  Yeah.
[00:05:33]  Yes.
[00:05:34]  Yeah.
[00:05:34]  And thus also creating a cycle of abuse and predation due to the nature of, you know, early childhood sexual violence.
[00:05:43]  Like that alone probably grounds that they should destroy the organization.
[00:05:49]  I don't feel differently about the Catholic Church in fairness.
[00:05:55]  It is weird.
[00:05:56]  Like I can say, because again, I grew up very conservative.
[00:05:59]  As I said, I said a number of times, if I had been like 16 in 2014, I might have wound up like alt-right for a while.
[00:06:05]  I was really right-wing.
[00:06:07]  Right, right.
[00:06:08]  One of like the first cracks in that armor is when I was, I'm not sure if I was 17 or 18.
[00:06:12]  I think it was my senior year of high school.
[00:06:14]  It was an academic decathlon, which is like a nerd thing.
[00:06:17]  And we had our own little like classroom.
[00:06:19]  And if you were on the team, you could hang out in that classroom in between classes or during lunch, which as a nerdy kid who just wanted to read his Warhammer books, that was nice to do.
[00:06:27]  And so I'm in there one day with another kid on the team who was in the Boy Scouts.
[00:06:32]  We were in different troops, but he was, he was, and he was, I think I had actually quit the, because I quit the Boy Scouts at like 16, 15 or 16.
[00:06:39]  He was still in the Boy Scouts and was like either 18 or almost 18 and was very close to getting his eagle.
[00:06:45]  And, you know, he and I were friends.
[00:06:46]  We were sitting in the classroom one day and kind of in the middle of just sort of like we're both reading separate books quietly alone in this room.
[00:06:52]  He just looks up at me and tells me that he's gay.
[00:06:54]  And this is the first person I ever met who like I knew was gay who would like that I like had talked to me about it.
[00:07:01]  Right.
[00:07:01]  Yeah.
[00:07:02]  And I said, oh, okay.
[00:07:05]  And he immediately after that, because it just like, I think he just had to tell somebody, just burst out of him.
[00:07:09]  And immediately after they said, please don't tell anybody.
[00:07:12]  Like, the most important thing in the world to me is finishing my Eagle Scout is like getting my Eagle Scout.
[00:07:17]  Like, and they won't let me.
[00:07:19]  And that was, that was like, for me, a moment of less like, well, that's really fucked up, actually.
[00:07:23]  Like that this kid's, this kid who clearly loves the Boy Scouts is dedicated to like what this organization stands for is terrified of being kicked out for just like something like it was just very obvious in that moment like, oh yeah, that's clearly not a choice.
[00:07:37]  Like the way he told me about it was just like this, he had to let somebody know.
[00:07:41]  It was this thing that was, I don't know, that was a moment for me.
[00:07:44]  Sure.
[00:07:45]  And like a just a, I don't know, that's when I first started to think really critically about the Boy Scouts as an organization.
[00:07:53]  Because again, I grew up in this right-wing bubble.
[00:07:57]  I guess I think it's like that one way or another for a lot of people.
[00:07:59]  You live in this kind of ideological bubble until you meet someone who's you care about, whose life experience contradicts the things that you just never thought about before.
[00:08:08]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:08]  Oh, I'm wrong about some really important shit.
[00:08:11]  Yeah.
[00:08:12]  Yeah.
[00:08:14]  Sometimes it just takes that, you know, having an actual one-on-one or just a human experience to get you outside of like kind of the strict dogmatism of your like inherited ideology where you're just like, you know, of course I'm a libertarian.
[00:08:30]  My dad's a libertarian and he raised me to be libertarian, you know, and then you, you know, you live life and you meet people who, you know, in which the government was actually a necessary entity in their life.
[00:08:44]  And you're like, oh, shit.
[00:08:46]  Like, you know, people who just grow up in a bubble, I think as soon as they have that, you know, bubble bursts a little bit, then they can kind of move past whatever, you know, dogmatic ideology they have.
[00:08:58]  Yep.
[00:08:58]  Yep.
[00:08:59]  It is that thing where like the Republican politicians who have like a life experience that doesn't fit in with conservatism are like the ones who have these very public like John McCain, Arch Republican and everything, but torture because he was tortured.
[00:09:10]  Right.
[00:09:11]  And it was very consistently like, no, we can't, this is not okay.
[00:09:14]  Fucking Dick Cheney, Arch Republican and everything, but gay rights because his daughter's gay.
[00:09:19]  And he's like, yeah.
[00:09:22]  It's just, yeah, I mean, that's just how people are, I guess.
[00:09:25]  So the Boy Scouts of America began operating what they called an ineligible volunteer file system in 1919.
[00:09:32]  So Baden Powell is still alive when they, this is like, they, they, they, and this is not just even prime, this is not primarily about sexual assault.
[00:09:39]  This is obviously you've got this growing organization.
[00:09:41]  A bunch of men join it.
[00:09:42]  And for one reason or another, they do not meet the standards that the BSA does have for adult volunteers.
[00:09:47]  So they're not screening people, but people who do the job and are bad at it.
[00:09:52]  And I think most of these people, again, are not molesting kids.
[00:09:54]  They're like, they get some kid killed on a hike or some shit, right?
[00:09:57]  Like they're irresponsible.
[00:09:59]  You know, like there's a lot of ways to be bad at being a scout master.
[00:10:02]  You know, you're taking kids into the woods.
[00:10:04]  A number of things can go awry.
[00:10:05]  Yeah.
[00:10:05]  Yeah.
[00:10:06]  Usually pedophilia isn't the first problem when you're streaming alone in the woods with an adult that you would think of.
[00:10:12]  Yeah.
[00:10:12]  And I think most of the men in the ineligible volunteer files had not purposefully harmed a child.
[00:10:17]  They had just like fucked up in some way, probably some way that's like still deplorable, but like not, they're not trying to harm anybody.
[00:10:23]  Right.
[00:10:24]  A subset, though, of the ineligible volunteer list are men who had been caught or at least accused of molesting the children in their care.
[00:10:31]  This subset of the ineligible volunteer system were dubbed the P-files or perversion files.
[00:10:38]  Yeah, that's the P-word.
[00:10:40]  Yeah.
[00:10:41]  I thought they would go with.
[00:10:43]  Not pedophile, pederist.
[00:10:45]  I mean, it's a lot of rape.
[00:10:46]  Yeah.
[00:10:49]  So this starts in like the 20s.
[00:10:52]  The problematic files.
[00:10:54]  I'm sorry.
[00:10:54]  Yeah.
[00:10:54]  The problematic.
[00:10:55]  So when Baden Powell's alive, they do like attempt to, and again, they don't attempt to by screening people beforehand, but they do attempt to be like, oh, we should, if a guy gets kicked out for raping a kid, we should probably put his name in a file somewhere.
[00:11:07]  Like we should, we should probably write this down, huh?
[00:11:12]  Which is the minimum.
[00:11:13]  The bare minimum.
[00:11:14]  Like the barest minimum.
[00:11:16]  I just want to remember his name.
[00:11:17]  That's it.
[00:11:18]  We'd have a list of the guys who fucked the kids in our care.
[00:11:21]  If I could also get their phone numbers just so we can talk and just strategize.
[00:11:25]  See if they have photos.
[00:11:26]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:28]  Do you want to go to the lake?
[00:11:32]  Oh, Baden-Powell.
[00:11:34]  So in 1975, the list was computerized, but there still existed a hard copy, and there is still one today, which reportedly fills 15 file cabinets at the BSA headquarters in Irving, Texas.
[00:11:45]  Only a handful of men at the very top of the organization can access them.
[00:11:49]  And the BSA is the Boy Scouts of America.
[00:11:51]  So I should note when we talk about this, this is all focused on the BSA, which is not technically the organization Baden-Powell founded because it's very decentralized.
[00:11:59]  So there's like the different countries, they're different like organizations, right?
[00:12:02]  Effectively kind of corporations almost.
[00:12:04]  And they're all kind of like linked and related to each other.
[00:12:07]  And they do jam, but like people get together from different countries.
[00:12:10]  But I mean, the BSA is made in the image of what Baden Powell talks about.
[00:12:13]  I'm sure there is a lot on like abuses in like England and great in the UK and in like other countries.
[00:12:20]  The vast majority of the documentation on abuse within the Boy Scouts is within the BSA.
[00:12:26]  So that's what we're focusing on here today.
[00:12:30]  So for decades, the files were either entirely unknown or at most a rumor to those outside the organization.
[00:12:36]  They would occasionally make appearances, though.
[00:12:38]  By the time Lord Baden-Powell died in 1941, there had already been multiple cases of child molesters who had been caught and convicted for what they'd done as Boy Scout leaders.
[00:12:47]  This pattern continued up to the present day.
[00:12:49]  And when those cases would end in criminal charges and trials, files on the perpetrator would often be admitted into evidence, usually under seal.
[00:12:57]  This most frequently happened in the latter half of the 20th and early 21st century, when boys and groups of boys began to allege that what had happened to them, the abuse they had suffered, was not an isolated incident, but was instead the result of a pattern of abuse within the organization.
[00:13:12]  The files contain often harrowing first-hand accounts from victims, like this interview with a 10-year-old scout in 1972, the victim of a sexual assault by Georgia troop leader Samuel Max Dubois Jr.
[00:13:24]  Quote: I was crying and I reached around and hit Max in the face and said I was going to quit the troop and tell my daddy.
[00:13:31]  Then we heard the others coming back and Max said, put your pants back on.
[00:13:36]  Oh my God.
[00:13:37]  That's like one of the less harrowing ones.
[00:13:41]  I'm not going to read in detail, but we will discuss what happened.
[00:13:45]  Like I'm not going to read detailed accounts of kids getting molested here.
[00:13:49]  Thank you.
[00:13:49]  But you do need to know what broadly occurred.
[00:13:52]  You know, the P-files at least were something.
[00:13:58]  So it's better than certainly doing nothing at all.
[00:14:00]  But as a barrier to the assault of boys in care of the Boy Scouts of America, they were incredibly porous.
[00:14:06]  To illustrate this, let's start with an illustrative case of abuse among the Boy Scouts from a little more than a generation after Baden-Powell's death.
[00:14:14]  Stephen Field was a troop leader in Southern California.
[00:14:17]  The BSA started investigating him in 1971 after a scout in Santa Monica reported that he'd been sexually abused by Field.
[00:14:25]  A troop committee, which included parents, BSA officials, and a psychiatrist.
[00:14:29]  So that's good, right?
[00:14:30]  You're bringing not just parents, but a professional in.
[00:14:33]  That's a positive way to look at things, right?
[00:14:38]  This feels like the doctor thing from last episode.
[00:14:40]  I don't trust it.
[00:14:41]  No, quite.
[00:14:42]  So this committee is convened and they look at the evidence and they conclude that the story was true.
[00:14:46]  This kid had been abused.
[00:14:47]  What Field had done was sexual abuse.
[00:14:49]  Their investigation, in fact, found not only had he abused this kid, but he had a pattern of what could credibly be called criminally sexual behavior, including forcing his Boy Scouts to play strip poker and run around naked after losing games.
[00:15:02]  Which is not ever like there's there's that's not even a like a gray area.
[00:15:07]  That's not part of it.
[00:15:08]  Yeah, strip poker is not really inside the Boy Scouts milieu, you know?
[00:15:12]  Yeah, and also like running around naked is not part of it.
[00:15:16]  That's never, you know, you can play poker.
[00:15:18]  I mean, it kind of was from the start, actually.
[00:15:21]  Oh, it shouldn't have been.
[00:15:25]  They were just finding new and clever ways to get kids to run around naked.
[00:15:29]  Yeah.
[00:15:29]  It's what it is when we talk about like naked, swimming, running around naked.
[00:15:32]  Like, I believe very strongly that like it nudities, there's nothing wrong or inherently sexual about nudity.
[00:15:38]  It shouldn't be like this thing where the idea that like people are doing things naked is like lascivious.
[00:15:44]  But clearly, Baden-Powell and a number of like the men found it lascivious.
[00:15:49]  And so that's a problem.
[00:15:50]  Yeah, it ended up being one of their favorite things.
[00:15:54]  Yeah, that's an issue.
[00:15:55]  That's going to be an issue, you know?
[00:15:58]  Yeah.
[00:15:59]  So they find out this guy not only molests this kid, but he has a history of very like criminal.
[00:16:05]  I suspect it is illegal to make children play strip poker.
[00:16:08]  Like, I think that is a crime.
[00:16:10]  Yeah.
[00:16:10]  Not a law knower, but that seems crimy.
[00:16:16]  I don't know the exact like number letter statute, but like that seems not legal.
[00:16:22]  It seems like a thing you would use.
[00:16:24]  That seems like a thing we don't allow.
[00:16:26]  Like, I have to think that's against some law.
[00:16:29]  It's got to be in there somewhere.
[00:16:31]  Yeah, probably relating to the delinquency of a minor or something.
[00:16:34]  I don't know.
[00:16:35]  Whatever.
[00:16:36]  Something not right about that.
[00:16:38]  But the Boy Scouts don't report him to the police.
[00:16:41]  They don't report him to anyone, in fact.
[00:16:44]  They remove him.
[00:16:45]  They kick him out of the Boy Scouts.
[00:16:46]  But the only report they make about this is from a regional Boy Scouts employee who fills out a form on Field and sends it to headquarters, and that form is placed in the P-files.
[00:16:56]  So that's all that happens.
[00:16:58]  National officials told the regional official that this meant that Fields would never be able to work in or volunteer for the Boy Scouts again.

=== Failure to Report Abusers (09:09) ===

[00:17:06]  And yet, from a report in the Los Angeles Times, quote, he was involved with several Southern California troops over the next 17 years, according to his file.
[00:17:16]  Contacted recently by the Times, Field explained that after he failed a lie detector test required by the Santa Monica Troop Committee, he was encouraged to transfer to another troop in the city, where he served as scout master for four years.
[00:17:28]  God damn it, he fails a lie detector.
[00:17:32]  And they're like, you just got to go to another troop, bro.
[00:17:34]  Oh my God.
[00:17:36]  What the fuck?
[00:17:37]  Just do what they do at the corner liquor store when someone has fucking.
[00:17:43]  Put a picture of him up on the wall.
[00:17:45]  Yeah, put a picture on the wall.
[00:17:46]  Just say, not that guy.
[00:17:49]  It's so easy, dude.
[00:17:50]  Oh, my God.
[00:17:51]  Your job is protecting children.
[00:17:53]  Show at least as much care as a liquor store clerk over a bounced check.
[00:17:59]  What the fuck?
[00:18:01]  So fucking Field tells the Los Angeles Times, they said it had all been cleared up with the scouts.
[00:18:07]  Like, I don't know, how do you clear this out?
[00:18:08]  In Valencia, he joined his brother-in-law's troop, but left after a parent intercepted a love letter he had written to a scout.
[00:18:15]  The file shows.
[00:18:16]  At one point, the file says, Field was caught watching pornography with naked scouts in his jacuzzi.
[00:18:22]  Jesus, fuck.
[00:18:24]  I know.
[00:18:25]  Someone stopped this guy.
[00:18:27]  17 years of this.
[00:18:30]  Come on.
[00:18:31]  17 years.
[00:18:33]  This isn't like, yeah, you know, 20 years later, he changed his name and his identity and moved across the country and he just stuck his way into another.
[00:18:40]  No, he just shows up.
[00:18:42]  One group is like, yeah, you failed the, I promise not to molest kids part of the lie detector.
[00:18:47]  Here, go to this other group.
[00:18:48]  Bring your jacuzzi with you.
[00:18:50]  You're out of the Silmar chapter of the scouts.
[00:18:55]  But you know what?
[00:18:56]  Glendale's recruiting.
[00:19:00]  Oh my God.
[00:19:02]  Super fucked up.
[00:19:03]  Like, again, there are in its height, like 7 million boys in the Boy Scouts.
[00:19:09]  Some of them were always, and I'm not being callous here.
[00:19:12]  It is inevitable in any population of 7 million boys, some of them will get molested by adults, right?
[00:19:18]  The fact that this is a thing that happens is not inherently the fault of the Boy Scouts.
[00:19:21]  But as this example shows, they are criminally irresponsible in taking any attempts to stop it.
[00:19:27]  That's the problem.
[00:19:28]  It's not that like there are some bad apples.
[00:19:30]  It's that they're kind of like the cops.
[00:19:32]  They just like they enable the bad apples.
[00:19:34]  Yeah, it's like they literally have a basket of like with a with a foundation of poison and they're going, oh, some of these apples are bad.
[00:19:41]  It's like you are, you've poisoned the fucking best.
[00:19:44]  Yeah, you poured cyanide into an apple basket.
[00:19:47]  And then you're pissed in it.
[00:19:50]  This is directly your fault.
[00:19:52]  Yeah.
[00:19:52]  Now, among other things, that story is why I think jacuzzi ownership should require a license.
[00:19:57]  Um, but beside that, that's fair.
[00:19:59]  That's another two-parter.
[00:20:01]  Now, despite the fact that this guy had repeatedly engaged in what I think we can agree, it's pretty outrageous and public abuse of children.
[00:20:08]  Yeah, BSA National Office didn't realize he'd snuck back into the organization until 1988.
[00:20:14]  Again, almost 20 years.
[00:20:16]  And they only realized this because another local scouting official reported that Steve Field, who was at that point chairman of a local troop committee, had been arrested for masturbating in front of a child.
[00:20:26]  So he doesn't get kicked out by the Boy Scouts.
[00:20:28]  He gets arrested by the cops.
[00:20:30]  And a local scout is like, oh, hey, you guys should know this guy turns out he was a child molester.
[00:20:36]  This local official doesn't know this guy is a record, but he sends this in to report this guy.
[00:20:41]  And the people who run the P-files are like, oh, Steve Field is the same as Steven Field.
[00:20:46]  How could we have known his ingenious criminal mind?
[00:20:53]  God damn.
[00:20:54]  They're just like, the cop comes in and goes like, oh, this, you know, this guy got arrested, you know, for masturbation.
[00:21:00]  And they're like, oh, you mean creepy Steve?
[00:21:03]  Oh, creepy Steve, the rapist.
[00:21:04]  Steve the rapist is raping.
[00:21:08]  Oh, yeah.
[00:21:09]  Oh, he's been doing that.
[00:21:11]  He's been doing that for a while.
[00:21:13]  That's why we call him Creepy Steve.
[00:21:15]  Yeah.
[00:21:16]  Oh, wacky Steve.
[00:21:17]  Don't leave him alone with your kids.
[00:21:18]  Anyway, he's in charge of the kids.
[00:21:24]  So, for what it's worth, once the sheriff's department actually got involved with Steve's case, which should have fallen into their lap around 20 years earlier, they launched a serious investigation.
[00:21:34]  And again, all of the police aside, one of the things they have a better record of taking seriously, although not a perfect one, because a lot of cops are child molesters.
[00:21:42]  Generally, detectives who find out that kids are being raped are like, well, this is probably important.
[00:21:49]  It's just the thing, even if you're a fucking cop.
[00:21:51]  Most people, you hear a child is being abused and you're like, well, yeah, we got to fucking do something about this.
[00:21:56]  Yeah.
[00:21:57]  Most cops, you know, obviously ACAB, but not a, you know, cab.
[00:22:04]  All cops do not deliberately enable child molestation.
[00:22:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:08]  Whatever that acronym spells out.
[00:22:10]  They hear about this guy.
[00:22:12]  And generally, this is the case, like 20 years in, like, with these abusive adults.
[00:22:16]  And that's when finally shit happens.
[00:22:18]  This guy gets arrested, and it's because like the BSA can't hide it anymore.
[00:22:22]  Right.
[00:22:23]  Child pornography was found in Fields' home.
[00:22:26]  Photos he'd taken of nude boys, nude Boy Scouts, as far back as 15 years ago are found.
[00:22:31]  And when the cops realize this guy has been preying on Boy Scouts for more than a decade, they ask the national office, Do you have a file on this guy?
[00:22:37]  And the BSA sends the P file for Fields to the or for Field to them.
[00:22:42]  But they send it along with a request.
[00:22:44]  And here's the ACAB part because the cops abide by this request.
[00:22:47]  We hope you will use this information with discretion since we have tried to maintain our files that they cannot be subpoenaed in any legal action.
[00:22:54]  Wow.
[00:22:55]  If, again, if you're cops are better people than they are, if you're a decent person, my first question would be, this guy raped kids.
[00:23:01]  Why don't you want this subpoenaed?
[00:23:02]  Like, why, in any, why are you not like throwing your doors open to this?
[00:23:09]  Like, why, why not let this be?
[00:23:11]  He's raping kids.
[00:23:13]  Like, God.
[00:23:15]  I mean, so the cops abided by just an arbitrary, like, oh, if you could do us a favor and like they're probably all Boy Scouts.
[00:23:25]  Oh, fuck.
[00:23:26]  A lot of cops, like, fucking half of Congress people were Boy Scouts, or like half Congressmen or whatever, like a huge percentage.
[00:23:31]  Like, all almost all of our recent presidents have been either Boy Scouts or Eagle Scouts.
[00:23:36]  Like, it actually does mean a lot to a lot of it.
[00:23:39]  So, like, here's a story that could have gone badly from my childhood.
[00:23:41]  When I was a kid, I think like 13 or 14, I would go every Saturday, I would go with my friends to a hobby store and we would play Warhammer.
[00:23:48]  And then we at one point started wanting to play D ⁇ D, which I'd started playing in the scouts.
[00:23:52]  And like the people who we found to play with us were this guy who was like 19 at the time.
[00:23:57]  He just graduated high school and was in college and a dude who was almost 30, who's like an engineer.
[00:24:03]  And that dude invites us all like, well, on Saturday night, since the hobby shop closes like five, just come over to my house and we'll all play D ⁇ D until like midnight.
[00:24:11]  And like my parents hear this and they're like, okay, well, that's a little quite, he's like, almost 30.
[00:24:17]  Like this concerns us.
[00:24:18]  And this other guy's an adult too.
[00:24:20]  But both of them were Eagle Scouts.
[00:24:21]  So my parents were like, okay.
[00:24:23]  And it was like they were like, there was fine.
[00:24:24]  Like nothing, like those people were huge positive influences on me.
[00:24:27]  Like I don't want to like, they were both very positive parts of you, but like that's why my parents trusted them is they were there's an intrinsic intrinsic trust in like, oh, these people are part of this organization that I have nothing but my dad was an Eagle Scout, you know?
[00:24:42]  Right.
[00:24:43]  Yeah.
[00:24:44]  So anyway, just culturally, I think this is part of why the cops play ball with the BSA for so long and don't make more of an issue about this is that like a lot of them were probably Boy Scouts and they were probably fucking troop leaders, you know?
[00:24:57]  Yeah.
[00:24:58]  You know, there were a bunch of like cop kids and stuff in Boy Scouts when I was in the scouts, obviously.
[00:25:04]  But I mean, it's, it's kids getting fucked.
[00:25:07]  It's like, that's why.
[00:25:08]  Yes.
[00:25:09]  Yeah.
[00:25:09]  But I think from the cops perspective is like, well, we're getting this guy and we don't want to, we don't want to tarnish because they're cops.
[00:25:15]  Like they protect organizations from shitty.
[00:25:18]  Like cops are often horrified at things other cops do.
[00:25:21]  They just cover it up because they believe in the institution.
[00:25:24]  So I think they're willing to do that for the Boy Scouts.
[00:25:27]  But they have so much room for it.
[00:25:29]  It's like, it's one of those things.
[00:25:30]  It's like I'm not defending it.
[00:25:33]  I'm just explaining the thought process.
[00:25:35]  I'm just thinking about it.
[00:25:36]  It's like, if I'm a cop and I'm like, okay, I'm going to back up all these cops no matter fucking what.
[00:25:42]  And then someone throws out another organization like, oh, yeah, this is like the rape organization.
[00:25:46]  Like, all right, I have room in my moral compass for one more organization to defend.
[00:25:51]  It is worth noting that at this point, they're not thinking about this as the rape organization.
[00:25:54]  This is 70s.
[00:25:55]  This is the Boy Scouts.
[00:25:56]  We don't want to let another, this is already terrible.
[00:25:59]  We don't want to also defame this beautiful organization that does a lot of good at the same time.
[00:26:07]  It is not until I think the first really big academic quality work on sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts is that book we've been quoting from, Scouts Honor, which we'll have linked in.

=== Patrick Boyle Systemic Issues (05:00) ===

[00:26:16]  The whole book is available online right now.
[00:26:18]  It was published in 1994 by a guy named Patrick Boyle.
[00:26:22]  And it was, I mean, it was, I don't think it did super well at the time, obviously.
[00:26:27]  I think he got a lot of shit for publishing it, but it is.
[00:26:29]  Yeah, not a fun read.
[00:26:31]  Of the heroes in this story, one of them has to be Patrick Boyle for being in 1994.
[00:26:36]  Like, people need to know that this is a systemic problem.
[00:26:38]  And you know, it was not until three or four years ago that it became mainstream knowledge how systemic the problem was.
[00:26:44]  He's well.
[00:26:46]  Yeah.
[00:26:46]  Because I started hearing about this stuff with the 17, 18.
[00:26:52]  Right.
[00:26:52]  Yeah.
[00:26:52]  Yeah.
[00:26:52]  And the fact that this book came out in 93 is crazy to me.
[00:26:55]  Yeah.
[00:26:56]  Yeah.
[00:26:57]  And you know what else is ahead of the curve?
[00:27:01]  The products.
[00:27:02]  The products and services that support this podcast.
[00:27:05]  Way ahead of the curve.
[00:27:06]  The Patrick Boyles of their day.
[00:27:08]  Good.
[00:27:08]  I would say.
[00:27:09]  Okay.
[00:27:12]  If you are a founder or a freelancer or the friend who always says, hey, you know what?
[00:27:17]  What if I started that?
[00:27:18]  This is for you.
[00:27:19]  I'm telling you, I had nothing to my name.
[00:27:21]  I didn't know a single person in New York.
[00:27:23]  And somehow I'm dressed by Oscar DeLorenta walking down that red carpet.
[00:27:27]  This month we sit down with entrepreneurs and creators who actually did it who turned this scary leap into a business, a paycheck, and a life they are proud of.
[00:27:36]  Direct center of our happiness or our regrets is whether or not we're taking action on the things that matter to us.
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[00:27:44]  They're so important.
[00:27:45]  They actually lead to our greatest contributions because when we're living fulfilled, we actually show up better everywhere.
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[00:27:58]  If you're trying to build something of your own this year, join us in these conversations that will make you braver and smarter with your money.
[00:28:04]  Listen to Dos Amingos as part of the Michael Tuta Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:28:13]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:28:16]  I was like, hi, Dad.
[00:28:18]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:28:26]  This is this badass convict.
[00:28:28]  Right.
[00:28:28]  Just finished five years.
[00:28:30]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:28:32]  Come on.
[00:28:34]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:28:42]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:28:51]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:28:59]  I'm an alcoholic and without this program, I'm a guy.
[00:29:05]  Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Ceno Show, and listen now.
[00:29:14]  I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
[00:29:19]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wild Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:29:27]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:29:36]  If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
[00:29:41]  Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
[00:29:44]  They believe everything, but at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
[00:29:49]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:29:52]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
[00:29:56]  And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
[00:29:58]  They cannot feed their kids.
[00:29:59]  They do not have homes.
[00:30:00]  Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
[00:30:04]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:30:13]  Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[00:30:21]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
[00:30:28]  I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between.
[00:30:32]  This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
[00:30:43]  If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.
[00:30:52]  Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[00:30:57]  Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top.
[00:31:06]  Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

=== Giving Pedophiles Second Chances (14:45) ===

[00:31:16]  We're back.
[00:31:17]  So Fields, or Field, gets arrested for abusing two 13-year-old boys and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
[00:31:24]  When the LA Times found him, because he's out of prison by the time, these LA Times articles are very recent.
[00:31:28]  We'll talk about why.
[00:31:30]  And I'm reading from a bunch of different LA Times articles because they have done, as far as I can find, the best journalistic reporting on abuse within the Boy Scouts.
[00:31:38]  So when they find this guy, right?
[00:31:40]  Because he's out of prison now.
[00:31:41]  He's working.
[00:31:42]  I think he's a fucking lawyer or something.
[00:31:45]  No, might have been in finance.
[00:31:46]  I forget exactly, but they find him.
[00:31:47]  He's like out and free and like working.
[00:31:49]  And they interviewed him.
[00:31:50]  And he admitted to abusing the kids he'd been convicted of abusing, but the night allegations that he'd abused any other kids, even though absolutely it's other kids.
[00:31:58]  Yeah.
[00:31:59]  The Times informed him that he'd been on a blacklist since 1971 in the Boy Scouts.
[00:32:04]  And when they said, Did you know the Boy Scouts had a file blacklisting you?
[00:32:07]  He told them, No, I had no idea.
[00:32:09]  That's surprising because I was able to stay in the Boy Scouts for like 20 additional years.
[00:32:13]  Yeah, I was in, I was in the Boy Scouts.
[00:32:16]  The child molester told them, It's like a no-fly list.
[00:32:19]  If your name is on the no-fly list, you shouldn't be able to get on a plane.
[00:32:22]  Like, the pedophile is baffled by how easy it was for him to get back into the Boy Scouts milestone.
[00:32:28]  Like, yeah, they really shouldn't have allowed this.
[00:32:31]  You're not wrong, pedophile.
[00:32:33]  But, like, yeah, you're not wrong.
[00:32:37]  This is a problem.
[00:32:38]  That sounds like a miscarriage of justice to me.
[00:32:41]  Yeah, as the guy who raped those kids, you have accurately identified the issue.
[00:32:47]  Or molested.
[00:32:47]  Like, I don't know.
[00:32:48]  Like, so, yeah, and it is that really like that goes to show how fucked up the BSA is because when the pedophile your organization allowed to repeatedly harm children in your care throws shade on you for your irresponsibility and letting him in, that's that's a that's an epic fuck up.
[00:33:04]  Like, you have failed so comprehensively.
[00:33:07]  I don't have a word for it.
[00:33:09]  Yeah, that's a there's a signal there.
[00:33:11]  Yeah.
[00:33:12]  Yeah.
[00:33:14]  That Times article goes on to tell the story of scout master Alan C. Dunlap of Fresno, California, who was arrested in 1973 on suspicion of having abused several children.
[00:33:24]  Dunlap pled guilty to four counts of molestation and was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
[00:33:29]  The scouts created yet another P-file on him.
[00:33:32]  13 years later, in 1986, Dunlap was out of the hospital and registered as a scout volunteer in Bryan, Texas.
[00:33:38]  God, he did.
[00:33:40]  Yeah, you're going to be saying that a lot, my friend.
[00:33:44]  It does not appear that anyone even checked the blacklist before registering him, which gets at the chief problem with the whole system.
[00:33:50]  The BSA actually did a pretty good job of documenting guys who had been caught or accused of sexual assault, right?
[00:33:55]  They're very thorough in like when stuff gets in.
[00:33:58]  They do put it all in this file, but there's still no again, remember, Baden Powell doesn't want there to be a big barrier to entry.
[00:34:05]  There's for most of this period, the 60s, 70s, 80s, there's no real screening process.
[00:34:12]  Again, as we said, like that one scout troop had like they chose to do like a polygraph test, which polygraphs are problematic.
[00:34:19]  And obviously, they just sent him to another troop.
[00:34:20]  So like it did not.
[00:34:22]  There are, there are, though, it's worth noting, individual, because it's a very decentralized organization.
[00:34:26]  Some troops do have really good, like, you know, policies in order to screen people, but nationally, there's nothing.
[00:34:33]  And this blacklist, only a handful of people at the top have access to it.
[00:34:37]  And they don't run every name through it.
[00:34:39]  Like, there's no way you, when a guy joins a scout troop in fucking Texas, they don't, or in fucking, like, I don't know, Maine, they don't send his name in to the national file to scan it.
[00:34:49]  They do nothing.
[00:34:50]  They only find out afterwards.
[00:34:52]  So it's useless.
[00:34:52]  It's fucking other than like as documentation that a lot of guys are repeatedly molesting kids in the Boy Scouts.
[00:34:57]  It's useless.
[00:34:58]  It's just a fun way to get a nice list going, but there's nothing you can possibly do.
[00:35:03]  It does nothing to protect children or very close.
[00:35:06]  The Boy Scouts are like, well, no, there's actually this X number of men that we stopped because they were in the blacklist and someone recognized it.
[00:35:12]  Not to say it never happened, but like clearly it was not an effective protective system and they knew it at the time.
[00:35:20]  So yeah, of course, so after this guy gets, you know, this dude is arrested and kicked out of the scouts in 73 after abusing some children.
[00:35:28]  13 years later, he becomes a scout volunteer in Bryan, Texas.
[00:35:32]  And he immediately gets back to sexually assaulting children.
[00:35:34]  He was eventually caught and pled guilty to abusing a nine-year-old Cub Scout.
[00:35:38]  He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
[00:35:40]  A local official learned this and called the National BSA office to report Dunlap so he could be added to the P-files.
[00:35:47]  And the National Office realized they already had a file on the guy.
[00:35:50]  Probably a different guy.
[00:35:53]  Here's what they do, actually.
[00:35:54]  It's even worse than that.
[00:35:56]  They just add a note to his file.
[00:35:58]  Four words.
[00:36:00]  Convicted again.
[00:36:01]  Dash child molestation.
[00:36:06]  Jesus Christ.
[00:36:07]  Come on.
[00:36:08]  Come on, guys.
[00:36:10]  Addendum.
[00:36:12]  He done it again.
[00:36:13]  He done it again.
[00:36:16]  We might have a problem here, Cletus.
[00:36:19]  Oh, my God.
[00:36:20]  This is all pretty bad, but it gets worse.
[00:36:24]  Worse.
[00:36:25]  Both of those, actually.
[00:36:26]  The LA Times writes: quote, in some instances, the Boy Scouts of America chose to give alleged molesters a second chance.
[00:36:33]  In a 1992 deposition, Ernst, then keeper of the National File, testified that alleged abusers were given probation, which required periodic updates on the person's behavior only if evidence of molestation was, quote, extremely weak.
[00:36:47]  An individual's confidential file was generally destroyed after probation was completed, but the file sometimes survived when the men went on to abuse again.
[00:36:55]  Several of those cases suggest the initial evidence of abuse was strong.
[00:36:59]  Again, the BSA policy is error on the side of believing the child molester when he denies having molested a kid.
[00:37:06]  Oh my God.
[00:37:07]  My fucking God.
[00:37:09]  Yeah, and I'm sure there you could find there's, I'm sure there have to be statistically millions of people, a couple of cases of kids who lied because they were angry at it.
[00:37:17]  I'm sure it happened.
[00:37:18]  Statistically, we have thousands, like hundreds, minimum hundreds and hundreds, and probably like by some accounts, thousands of cases of people molesting kids repeatedly within the Boy Scouts.
[00:37:32]  But again, they err on the side of protecting the adult, not the children.
[00:37:36]  And their entire job should be to protect these children, right?
[00:37:39]  I mean, that's literally what their job is.
[00:37:42]  It's like teaching them how to fend for themselves.
[00:37:45]  I mean, again, my scout master, who was a, I mean, he was a great scout master.
[00:37:49]  He did something horrible for Raytheon that we don't know entirely what.
[00:37:53]  Like a bunch of the guys who taught me how to camp were all Raytheon engineers.
[00:37:56]  It's like Plano.
[00:37:57]  Like that's, but anyway, he like his attitude was, my only job is to stop kids from dying.
[00:38:02]  So like you go out there, he'll teach you to, he would teach us anything we wanted to learn.
[00:38:06]  He would help us learn, but he didn't do anything for you.
[00:38:08]  So if you were miserable for days, if you fucked up, if your shit got soaked, if you like lit your tent on fire, like, yeah, you can camp out under the stars or whatever.
[00:38:15]  Like, my only job is to stop you from dying because it's about self-reliance.
[00:38:20]  But still, very, he took safety, like our physical health, very seriously.
[00:38:26]  And that's not what the Boy Scouts are protecting the adults above the children, like the organization nationally.
[00:38:33]  And again, I had a lot of great scout leaders who, while they may have been war criminals, always put the safety of the kids in the Boy Scouts.
[00:38:40]  American kids.
[00:38:41]  And I didn't even know what Raytheon was at the time.
[00:38:44]  Not the Iraqi kids.
[00:38:45]  Yeah, I mean, good God only knows what they were actually like working on.
[00:38:50]  But yeah.
[00:38:51]  You can only care about so many kids, Robert.
[00:38:53]  Yeah, you can.
[00:38:54]  Look.
[00:38:56]  So for an example of how the Boy Scouts would protect and give second chances to child molesters, let's talk about Mark F. Bumgarner.
[00:39:05]  He was a 21-year-old assistant scout master in North Carolina.
[00:39:08]  In September 1978, he was at Camp Scheele, helping to manage a camp with several other adult leaders.
[00:39:14]  Late one night, after most scouts and adults had went to bed, he struck up a conversation with another boy.
[00:39:19]  I think they're just like sitting around a campfire and they talk for a while.
[00:39:22]  Everybody else goes to sleep.
[00:39:23]  And quite suddenly, when they're alone, Bumgardner sticks his hand into the boy's pants and fondles his genitals.
[00:39:29]  The boy tells him to stop.
[00:39:30]  So Bumgarner says, The cartilage in your penis is similar to your nose, and I can break it.
[00:39:37]  Jesus fuck.
[00:39:38]  Yeah, Yeah.
[00:39:42]  So, I mean, like, I try not to get on the whole, like, you know, vengeance side of things, but just shoot that guy.
[00:39:48]  Yeah, just shoot that guy.
[00:39:49]  Just shoot that guy.
[00:39:50]  Just shoot that guy.
[00:39:51]  We don't need that guy.
[00:39:54]  Just kill that guy.
[00:39:56]  That is just like, you know, sometimes you fantasize about a righteous kill, you know?
[00:40:01]  Yeah.
[00:40:01]  Yeah.
[00:40:01]  That would be one.
[00:40:03]  Yeah.
[00:40:03]  Just little, little, little shallow grave in the woods, you know?
[00:40:07]  Just like making the earth, just the planet just benefits a little bit from this one murder.
[00:40:15]  I think when you threaten to break a child's penis when you're hand if he tells about you molesting him, you don't deserve to live anymore.
[00:40:21]  You don't deserve it.
[00:40:22]  That's the end of your right to exist, I argue, is my opinion.
[00:40:27]  It's funny because before this podcast, I never thought there were levels of pedophilia in which I would.
[00:40:32]  That's a high one, right?
[00:40:34]  Yeah, that's when it's like, oh, he's like, I mean, yeah, pedophilia is evil, but he's like evil and evil.
[00:40:40]  Yeah.
[00:40:40]  I think pedophiles are disgusted by that.
[00:40:42]  Like, yeah.
[00:40:44]  Yeah.
[00:40:45]  Anyway, like that, that's like the worst level probably of pedophilia that I can imagine is that kind of thing.
[00:40:52]  Yeah, that's the top of the pedophile pyramid.
[00:40:56]  So after this horrifying experience, the kid went to his father, who reported this to the Boy Scouts rather than to the police.
[00:41:03]  The BSA investigated the matter and after what the National Office described as considerable discussion, decided that Bum Garner deserved a second chance.
[00:41:12]  Of all.
[00:41:15]  Because again, this is the second chance.
[00:41:18]  It would be still bad, but different if it was like, well, he was caught, you know, massaging a boy in his jacuzzi and the boy's shirt was off and like, whatever.
[00:41:29]  Like, that's bad to let that go on.
[00:41:32]  He threatened to break a child's penis.
[00:41:35]  He molested a kid.
[00:41:37]  How do you give a second chance to that?
[00:41:40]  Jesus fucking.
[00:41:42]  Yeah.
[00:41:43]  The reason why is because Bum Garner was an Eagle Scout and the son of the pastor whose church sponsored the troop.
[00:41:49]  Yeah, there it is.
[00:41:50]  Yeah, there it is.
[00:41:52]  So he kept working for the Boy Scouts, spending time in close proximity with children absolutely unmonitored.
[00:41:58]  He was arrested several months later for sexually abusing two scouts during a camp out.
[00:42:02]  He pled guilty and was expelled by the national office, who added yet another name to the P-Files.
[00:42:07]  Six years later.
[00:42:09]  Oh, yeah.
[00:42:10]  You thought this was done?
[00:42:11]  You thought we were done with Bum Garner?
[00:42:13]  I don't know.
[00:42:13]  Come on.
[00:42:16]  Six years later, Bum Garner gets out of jail and back into the Boy Scouts.
[00:42:20]  He moves from North Carolina to Virginia and he becomes assistant district commissioner to the Fairfax Boy Scouts.
[00:42:26]  This was 1984.
[00:42:27]  It was two years later, 1986, before the national organization realized that this pedophile had gotten back in.
[00:42:34]  They didn't find it out on their own.
[00:42:36]  He was convicted.
[00:42:37]  Convicted pedophile.
[00:42:39]  Yeah, and they only find out that he's gotten back in because he gets convicted again.
[00:42:43]  He gets caught sexually battering two boys and sentenced to six years in prison.
[00:42:48]  Just like, well, just this conversation.
[00:42:51]  How could we have known?
[00:42:53]  How could we have known?
[00:42:55]  Every single time.
[00:42:58]  Yeah.
[00:42:58]  The Los Angeles Times continues.
[00:43:00]  Probation was also given to Floyd David Slusher, a 19-year-old staffer at a Boy Scout camp in Germany, who was caught abusing a scout in 1972 and sent home to the United States.
[00:43:10]  Even after he was caught, they had to physically restrain him from attempting to visit the scout he was molesting.
[00:43:15]  A scouts official wrote to headquarters.
[00:43:17]  A file was opened, but Slusher was allowed to continue working with scouts.
[00:43:21]  So again, another Boy Scout leader is like, this guy is such fucking pedophile that we had to physically stop him from going after this kid after we caught him.
[00:43:30]  It's like a cartoon of a pedophile.
[00:43:32]  Yeah.
[00:43:34]  The Boy Scouts are like, this guy deserves a second chance.
[00:43:38]  When did the second chance program start existing?
[00:43:41]  What is it?
[00:43:43]  Because you hear like, like, oh, they gave a second chance.
[00:43:45]  You assume it's something like, like, oh, he like showed them some weird pictures and they decided there was plausible, which again is not okay.
[00:43:52]  But no, these guys are like, this is hardcore shit.
[00:43:55]  These are convicted fucking pedophiles.
[00:43:58]  Child rapists.
[00:43:59]  Yeah.
[00:43:59]  And they're just like, yeah, I feel like we give him a second chance.
[00:44:03]  We had to physically restrain the guy from doing more molestations.
[00:44:06]  Yeah.
[00:44:06]  He's like, come on, let me go.
[00:44:09]  They're like, Slusher was romantic.
[00:44:11]  So Slusher also shouldn't let a guy named Slusher do damn near anything.
[00:44:15]  Absolutely.
[00:44:15]  That's an okay name.
[00:44:16]  That's not an okay name.
[00:44:18]  So he's allowed to keep working with the scouts, and he goes on to molest at least eight boys in a Boulder, Colorado troop, threatening to kill them if they told anybody, according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Department.
[00:44:28]  Yeah.
[00:44:28]  Wow.
[00:44:29]  Yeah.
[00:44:29]  Yeah.
[00:44:30]  The detective in Boulder County wrote, quote, almost every Boy Scout in troop 75 and Troop 73 has been approached sexually by Slusher on one time or another, adding that the victims are too numerous to interview.
[00:44:43]  The deck is like, I can't interview all the kids he molested because like I don't have that kind of time.
[00:44:48]  Oh my God.
[00:44:49]  The Boulder police don't have the time to talk to all of this guy's scouts.
[00:44:53]  We're not authorizing any OT right now.
[00:44:56]  So we can't investigate this single person.
[00:45:00]  I mean, in fairness, they probably had plenty to put him away.
[00:45:02]  And he pleads guilty to one account of sexually assaulting a child.
[00:45:06]  The Boy Scouts continued the practice of offering probation and suspension to prominent men accused of abuse until 1988 as the result of a high-profile abuse case in San Mateo, California.
[00:45:18]  Richard Stingler was the adult head of a Sea Scouts unit, which is kind of like a for older boys, closer to adulthood, like elite, like you're doing like boat shit, right?
[00:45:25]  Like it's just doing cool stuff.
[00:45:27]  It actually was the thing I wanted to do, but Texas is not as easy to do that kind of stuff.
[00:45:33]  The Boy Scout Navy.
[00:45:34]  Yeah, the Boy Scout Navy.
[00:45:35]  Yeah, the Sea Org.
[00:45:39]  You gotta, that's always a red flag when your organization starts a Sea Org.
[00:45:43]  And they have a Navy.
[00:45:43]  It's especially a red flag for the Navy.
[00:45:46]  Yeah.
[00:45:46]  I think all the Marines in the audience would agree with that.
[00:45:50]  But like, you know, there's the goop crews.
[00:45:52]  Like, you know, it's like the Boy Scouts.
[00:45:54]  When you take to sea, probably an issue.
[00:45:58]  Someone says, you know, good people don't take to sea.

=== Sea Scouts Navy Adventures (04:13) ===

[00:46:02]  By the way, I'm crowdfunding to buy a yacht for all of my followers to live on.
[00:46:06]  We're going to sail around the ocean.
[00:46:08]  We're going to look for gold.
[00:46:10]  It's international waters.
[00:46:11]  Anything international waters, baby.
[00:46:13]  There's no laws in international waters.
[00:46:15]  We'll make our own society, our own civilization.
[00:46:18]  Stop it.
[00:46:19]  Sophie, come on.
[00:46:21]  Come on.
[00:46:22]  That would be sick.
[00:46:24]  No hubbarding.
[00:46:25]  No hubbarding.
[00:46:29]  All right.
[00:46:29]  Well, you're no fun.
[00:46:30]  Here's some ads.
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[00:47:37]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:47:40]  I was, hi, dad.
[00:47:42]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:47:50]  This is badass convict.
[00:47:52]  Right.
[00:47:52]  Just finished five years.
[00:47:54]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:47:56]  Yeah, come on.
[00:47:57]  Yeah.
[00:47:58]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
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[00:48:43]  It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
[00:48:51]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
[00:49:00]  If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
[00:49:05]  Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
[00:49:08]  They believe everything, but at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
[00:49:12]  There's an economic component to communities thriving.
[00:49:16]  If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
[00:49:20]  And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
[00:49:22]  They cannot feed their kids.
[00:49:23]  They do not have homes.
[00:49:24]  Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
[00:49:28]  Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
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[00:49:56]  This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take-to interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick.
[00:50:07]  If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.

=== Criminal Background Checks Fail (15:02) ===

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[00:50:41]  We're back.
[00:50:43]  I'm just sad.
[00:50:43]  Sophie won't let me hubbard.
[00:50:46]  Nope.
[00:50:47]  All right.
[00:50:48]  Well.
[00:50:49]  Okay.
[00:50:50]  So this guy, Richard Stingler, in 1971, is the head of a Sea Scouts unit.
[00:50:57]  And in 71, he gets charged with tying up and groping three boys.
[00:51:01]  This was the thing I alluded to in the first episode with the restraints.
[00:51:06]  Is that like a not, do you get a merit badge for how good you're going to be?
[00:51:09]  Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate to say this, but a Boy Scout troop leader is probably in the most able to tie up a boy because he's probably pretty good at knots.
[00:51:18]  That really makes that merit badge a lot darker.
[00:51:22]  It does.
[00:51:22]  It does.
[00:51:22]  It's not great.
[00:51:23]  It's not great.
[00:51:25]  So he gets convicted in 71 and sentenced to three years of probation, which I might argue the court system failed there too, because I think tying up and groping boys, probably more than three years' probation.
[00:51:37]  I might argue longer for like smoking for like pot.
[00:51:41]  Yeah.
[00:51:42]  Yeah.
[00:51:42]  Anyway, the scouts suspended him during this period, but they didn't kick him out.
[00:51:47]  When his probation ended, a local scout executive and a number of parents lobbied for his suspension to be lifted.
[00:51:53]  So clearly this guy had some sort of charisma, was good at like convincing parents.
[00:51:57]  I don't know what he fucking told them.
[00:51:58]  Maybe like it was a merit badge thing gone wrong.
[00:52:02]  But parents lobby for this guy, which is unsettling.
[00:52:06]  I mean, this is not, again, this is not an unheard of kind of situation.
[00:52:10]  Like this, this occurs in other organizations and whatnot.
[00:52:14]  Sure.
[00:52:14]  It's just like, I mean, to me, the Catholic Church, you know, not accessible.
[00:52:20]  He would be one of them.
[00:52:21]  Yeah.
[00:52:21]  But I understand a little bit more having like basically the guy who talks to God being an important figure in your life.
[00:52:31]  And like standing up for the organization and the church and maybe even a specific priest in the church who's been accused of something because you're like, that dude talks to God.
[00:52:41]  Who am I to question that guy?
[00:52:42]  These are fucking volunteer scout masters.
[00:52:46]  These are doing like cosplay and teaching you how to whittle.
[00:52:50]  And they're just like, no, but he's a good dude.
[00:52:52]  Yeah, he's a fucking good dude.
[00:52:54]  I mean, there's actually just a tremendous amount in common with like the Boy Scouts and how this works and like and the Catholic Church.
[00:53:03]  Yeah.
[00:53:06]  Okay.
[00:53:07]  Um, all right.
[00:53:08]  Jesus Christ.
[00:53:09]  Let's get back into this.
[00:53:10]  So so this guy, after tying up and molesting several boys, does three years probation.
[00:53:16]  And when it ends, he gets successfully reinstituted to the Boy Scouts.
[00:53:19]  The local scout officer who lobbied for him being brought back in wrote, quote, I feel quite confident that no further problems will arise.
[00:53:26]  Just fucking, just an organization of marks.
[00:53:30]  Everyone is a fucking mark.
[00:53:31]  Yeah.
[00:53:32]  14 years later, in 1989, a parent reported that Stinger had padlocked her 11-year-old boy in a harness and watched as he hung in the air during a boat trip.
[00:53:42]  So that's good.
[00:53:44]  That's fine.
[00:53:46]  The BSA called the police, and the police go to Stinger's home and they search it and they find dozens of restraints and an enormous cache of child pornography, naked photos that he took of boys that he had blindfolded and like tied to things.
[00:54:01]  At least one is a picture of a naked six-year-old boy that he blindfolded and tied to a bed.
[00:54:07]  Like profound child abuse.
[00:54:11]  Yeah.
[00:54:12]  And again, they catch him 14 years later.
[00:54:14]  He's doing this the whole time.
[00:54:16]  That's what the photos show that he'd been the whole time he gets back in.
[00:54:18]  He's just tying up and molesting kids.
[00:54:20]  So wait, did they call they called the cops when he, what did he do to the kid?
[00:54:25]  He like tied him up.
[00:54:26]  Yeah, he, I don't even know if this was sexual or if he was just like being a dick, probably both, but he'd like padlocked an 11-year-old boy in a harness and hung him in the air during a boat trip.
[00:54:35]  So his mom's just like, that's physical abuse.
[00:54:38]  I don't think she called it in a sexual abuse.
[00:54:39]  She was just like, that's assault.
[00:54:41]  That's when they call the cops.
[00:54:43]  Yeah, I mean, his mom calls the cops.
[00:54:45]  Like, to her credit, this is probably the first she's aware anything's wrong.
[00:54:47]  And she immediately was like, yeah, we need to deal with this shit.
[00:54:50]  And the cops search his house and find out that he has been tying up and restraining and molesting kids for 14 years and has tons of pictures of it.
[00:54:58]  Jesus.
[00:54:58]  So this guy's like both like a sexual abuser and just a literal fucking psychopath.
[00:55:04]  Yeah.
[00:55:04]  Yeah.
[00:55:04]  This guy's not that there's not bits of both, but dangerous, dangerous person.
[00:55:09]  Yeah.
[00:55:09]  Fucking shit.
[00:55:10]  So when all this dropped, more than 24 former and current scouts came forward to report that they'd been abused by Stinger.
[00:55:16]  Some had been victimized as early as 1958.
[00:55:19]  Up until 2015, the Chief Scout executive, effectively the head of Boy Scouts, was a guy named Wayne Brock.
[00:55:25]  Wayne got that August position in 2012 after a four-year stint as the Deputy Chief Scout executive.
[00:55:32]  Before he held this national position in 1987, Wayne was the local Boy Scouts executive for the state of Georgia.
[00:55:38]  That year, a scout master at a camp in his domain was accused of molesting a boy in a sleeping bag.
[00:55:44]  Wayne followed procedure, which at the time meant documenting the allegation and sending that documentation on to Texas.
[00:55:50]  The leader's name and crimes were added to the confidential files.
[00:55:54]  The scout master was expelled, but the police were not informed.
[00:55:58]  He left town.
[00:55:59]  Brock was promoted again and again and eventually wound up running the Boy Scouts.
[00:56:03]  As a different Los Angeles Times article notes, quote, As he and his recent predecessors rose through the ranks of scouting, they handled at least 120 cases of suspected sexual abuse dating from the mid-1970s, according to a Times analysis of confidential Boy Scout files.
[00:56:18]  As district executives, it was their job to gather evidence and witness statements, determine whether to recommend a leader's expulsion, and report their findings to headquarters, which made the final decision.
[00:56:28]  In the process, the officials had a front-row seat on cases in which scouting's abuse prevention policies failed.
[00:56:34]  Although the officials may have followed scout policy and violated no laws, the files in several cases indicate that they did not inform authorities or their communities of suspected child molesters who were expelled from the organization.
[00:56:47]  So this is the guy who runs the Boy Scouts, right?
[00:56:51]  His history, which isn't, you know, he's not a molester himself, but he has a, shall we say, imperfect history of dealing with cases where kids are molested.
[00:56:58]  And they all, all of their last names are just for it.
[00:57:01]  We got Stinger, we got Brock, we got Slusher.
[00:57:05]  Yep, yep.
[00:57:06]  Problems.
[00:57:07]  I mean, just like they sound like a really scary A-team.
[00:57:12]  Yeah, so this is the guy who runs the Boy Scouts.
[00:57:16]  And his predecessor, the guy who had headed the BSA before him, was a guy named Robert Mazuka.
[00:57:20]  And before Robert McCauley.
[00:57:21]  Another scary name.
[00:57:22]  I know, I know.
[00:57:23]  And before he ran the Boy Scouts, Mazuka spent 20 years as a regional scout executive in California and Pennsylvania.
[00:57:30]  He dealt with numerous cases of child sexual abuse by adults in scouting.
[00:57:33]  One of these was the case of David Cooley, an assistant scout master in Pittsburgh who was expelled in 1997 after police found videos that he'd made of himself having sex with children.
[00:57:44]  Cooley was eventually sentenced to 54 years in prison.
[00:57:48]  When the case broke, it came out that Mazuka had earlier been arrested and convicted in 1987 for molesting a boy in South Carolina.
[00:57:55]  He'd been allowed to volunteer in scouting and molest kids after that because the Boy Scouts did not require background checks at that point.
[00:58:02]  And this brings us to a particularly dark part of the story.
[00:58:06]  Oh, are we going to get dark now, Rob?
[00:58:08]  Yeah, we're finally going to get dark, my man.
[00:58:12]  So if you'll remember, back at the very start of this story, back at the very start of scouting, Robert Baden-Powell had rejected the idea that scouting volunteers should be filtered under the justification that this would reduce the number of adults who volunteered and slow expansion.
[00:58:26]  Now, at that time, even though kids were being molested, child sexual abuse was not a widely understood phenomenon.
[00:58:33]  By the 1980s, this had changed.
[00:58:35]  A number of high-profile cases of abuse of children had led several other leading youth groups to institute criminal background checks for their adult volunteers.
[00:58:44]  Criminal background checks first became widely possible in 1985.
[00:58:48]  And in 1986, the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization made this a requirement for volunteers.
[00:58:54]  And the Boys and Girls Club did the same thing in the same year, 1986.
[00:58:57]  So as soon as this becomes possible, responsible organizations who take care of kids are like, well, of course we should do criminal background checks on our adult volunteers, obviously.
[00:59:06]  That just makes sense.
[00:59:07]  The Boy Scouts don't do this.
[00:59:09]  Scouting officials claimed that background checks would be too expensive and would scare away volunteers.
[00:59:14]  Too expensive.
[00:59:15]  Again, it would have cost tens of millions.
[00:59:17]  They made hundreds of millions.
[00:59:19]  Yeah, I was gonna say the fucking Boy Scouts.
[00:59:20]  They really cash during this period.
[00:59:23]  Yeah.
[00:59:24]  Everyone's a volunteer or pays.
[00:59:28]  So they said that, and they also argued that doing so would at best provide a false sense of security.
[00:59:34]  I just read how many stories of guys with criminal records getting back in the Boy Scouts.
[00:59:40]  They're like, listen, it's going to happen one way or another.
[00:59:43]  Might as well.
[00:59:45]  Let me promise you.
[00:59:46]  Even with criminal background checks, we're not going to stop kids from adults from molesting kids.
[00:59:51]  Don't like that's just going to do it.
[00:59:52]  It's still going to happen.
[00:59:55]  But you always feel bad.
[00:59:57]  Our job is to help pedophiles scout for boys.
[01:00:00]  Yeah, that's the name of the organization.
[01:00:04]  Oh, man.
[01:00:05]  Oh, God.
[01:00:05]  Be prepared is a motto that means be prepared to get molested.
[01:00:10]  Yeah, you be prepared for what the adults in this organization are going to do to you.
[01:00:15]  Jesus.
[01:00:16]  So the Boy Scouts didn't just refuse to require criminal background checks for their volunteers.
[01:00:21]  They poured huge amounts of money into lobbying local governments because states start to be like, well, we as a state want to require FBI background checks for youth volunteers for organizations anywhere in the state.
[01:00:34]  And the BSA lobbies local elected leaders to stop these laws.
[01:00:41]  I don't understand.
[01:00:42]  Like at that point, you just directly enabling it.
[01:00:46]  This is all like, is this like an Epstein thing?
[01:00:50]  Like, is this like what the fuck is going on with this?
[01:00:53]  Is this on purpose?
[01:00:54]  At this point, it sounds on purpose.
[01:00:55]  I can't even.
[01:00:57]  I don't know.
[01:00:58]  For an ideological reason?
[01:00:59]  Yeah, I think some just because this is the way it's always been.
[01:01:02]  I think some of it might, some of it is probably that there are pedophiles in the organization who want this.
[01:01:07]  And some of it might be, well, shit, if we do this, people will find out how many adults have been molesting kids in the Boy Scouts.
[01:01:13]  Yeah.
[01:01:14]  And that, that, that's not going to be good for us.
[01:01:16]  Just burn the p-file or whatever.
[01:01:19]  What the fuck?
[01:01:20]  I mean, God damn.
[01:01:22]  So the BSA did not ultimately start requiring criminal background checks for volunteers.
[01:01:27]  You want to guess what year?
[01:01:30]  2003?
[01:01:32]  2008.
[01:01:33]  Get the fuck out of here.
[01:01:35]  Get the fuck.
[01:01:36]  We have the internet.
[01:01:39]  By this point, hundreds and possibly thousands of men with criminal histories of child molestation were allowed into the Boy Scouts.
[01:01:45]  Most of these men went on to abuse more children.
[01:01:48]  From the very earliest days after the decision not to require background checks, this was recognized as a problem from yet another Los Angeles Times article.
[01:01:56]  In 1989, a scout committee chairman in St. Paul, Minnesota decried the organization's half-hearted screening in a letter to headquarters.
[01:02:02]  BSA is only creating an illusion of performing what they claim.
[01:02:06]  K. Russell Syas wrote to Scout Chief Executive Ben Love.
[01:02:10]  It becomes quite clear that BSA is more concerned with passing the buck than in accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders.
[01:02:17]  That same year, a Las Vegas scout master with a criminal history of exposing himself to boys was arrested for sexually abusing a 12-year-old scout.
[01:02:24]  One parent said casinos did a better job of screening workers.
[01:02:28]  Honestly.
[01:02:30]  Yeah.
[01:02:30]  Yeah.
[01:02:31]  The parent wrote to scouting officials, the black eye which scouting has suffered in this could easily have been avoided if the council had taken the simple expedient of doing a background investigation.
[01:02:42]  I mean, yeah, yeah.
[01:02:45]  I mean, I don't, I just don't, I don't understand it.
[01:02:48]  At this point, it's just, was it the money?
[01:02:50]  They didn't want to pay the money at that time.
[01:02:52]  Some that has to be some of it because of what we're about to talk about.
[01:02:55]  Because it gets worse.
[01:02:57]  We have not hit bottom yet, Matt.
[01:02:59]  Are you excited?
[01:03:01]  I'm just like, if my blood pressure goes any higher, I'm going to fucking die.
[01:03:05]  Yes, we have, we have.
[01:03:07]  Oh, boy.
[01:03:09]  So while the Boy Scouts are giving child molesters probation, covering up abuse, refusing background checks, yada yada yada, children keep coming forward to tell their stories.
[01:03:18]  And by the 90s, again, this book comes out in 93, it's getting more known, right, that this is a problem the organization has.
[01:03:26]  And as a result, once it becomes clear to people, at least who pay attention that, like, this might be a systemic issue, some parents of kids who get molested try to sue the organization, claiming a pattern of abuse enabled by the very structure of the BSA itself.
[01:03:37]  Confronted with these threats in the form of children entrusted to the BSA and abused by men that organization had refused to properly vet, the Boy Scouts viciously attacked the victims and their families.
[01:03:49]  In one case, two boys in Michigan alleged that they had been molested, quote, hundreds of times by a troop leader.
[01:03:55]  The BSA denied any responsibility and instead, in court, blamed their widowed mother.
[01:04:01]  They claimed she had failed, quote, to provide adequate supervision over the volunteer they had approved.
[01:04:07]  Wow.
[01:04:08]  Yeah.
[01:04:09]  Your fault your kids got molested.
[01:04:10]  You weren't watching hard enough over the guy that his whole job, according to the ethos of our organization, is to help like single moms raise their kids.
[01:04:18]  You didn't, it's your fault that he yeah, you should have done a background check.
[01:04:23]  Yeah, you should have done a background check.
[01:04:24]  Why did you do that?
[01:04:25]  Yeah.
[01:04:26]  Don't you scream?
[01:04:27]  Come on.
[01:04:29]  And it gets worse from the LA Times.
[01:04:31]  Quote: In 2002, Gerald Schwartz, a 42-year-old former scout master in New York, admitted to abusing a boy in his troop in the 1990s.
[01:04:39]  After being secretly recorded saying he did something very, very wrong and apologizing to the boy, Schwartz pleaded guilty to four counts of sodomy and was sent to prison.
[01:04:48]  Despite the conviction and the victim's testimony that Schwartz raped me and forced me to perform oral sex on him, the scouts, in a motion to dismiss the subsequent lawsuit, contended that the sex was consensual.
[01:04:59]  What the fuck?
[01:05:00]  Yep.
[01:05:02]  Wow.
[01:05:03]  Yeah.
[01:05:04]  We got to burn it down.
[01:05:05]  This is real.
[01:05:06]  Yeah, we got to burn this shit down.
[01:05:08]  This is not, this is not salvageable.
[01:05:10]  This is not salvageable.
[01:05:12]  Holy fuck.
[01:05:13]  Yeah.
[01:05:14]  Yeah, that's bad.
[01:05:15]  That's the worst.
[01:05:16]  These guys are.

=== Lawsuit Fallout and Justice (08:58) ===

[01:05:18]  You know what?
[01:05:18]  That's so much worse than I thought it was.
[01:05:21]  Yeah, it really is.
[01:05:24]  I'm not, I'm not pro-Scout no more.
[01:05:27]  No, no, this has definitely turned me around.
[01:05:31]  Honestly.
[01:05:32]  Yeah.
[01:05:32]  Fuck him.
[01:05:33]  Sorry.
[01:05:33]  Yeah.
[01:05:34]  Go ahead.
[01:05:34]  In the 1980s, in Oregon, one man alleged that scouting troop leader Timur Dykes was allowed to continue his leadership position after he admitted to molesting 17 boys.
[01:05:44]  And this kid didn't molest him after that.
[01:05:46]  Yeah.
[01:05:47]  It took decades for one of the boys victimized by Dykes to seek legal recourse.
[01:05:52]  But when he did, at a trial in 2010, regional BSA official Eugene Grant blamed his parents for letting their children go to Dykes' apartment to work on merit badges and attend a scouting sleepover.
[01:06:04]  Which maybe there's some questionable parenting calls being made here, but you let him into your organization and let him stay after he molested 17 boys.
[01:06:12]  And also, like, you know, it's like you were saying it's like you trust you.
[01:06:16]  You trust him.
[01:06:16]  He's a legal scout, right?
[01:06:18]  Yeah.
[01:06:18]  Fuck him.
[01:06:20]  But the Boy Scouts representative said in court, his parents should have known better.
[01:06:24]  I think it's criminal.
[01:06:26]  You let him stay in the scouts after he admitted to molesting 17 boys.
[01:06:32]  And the parents are the criminals?
[01:06:35]  What in the fuck is wrong with you?
[01:06:37]  These guys, we gotta.
[01:06:41]  I don't understand.
[01:06:42]  I'm not gonna say you can say that in a court of law and not immediately burst into fire.
[01:06:50]  I mean, just like, yeah.
[01:06:53]  Murder is wrong, right?
[01:06:56]  Yeah, but kind of in some cases.
[01:06:59]  I'm not trying to say publicly right now anything that's gonna get me in trouble, but I feel like sometimes murder is good.
[01:07:09]  Is that yeah, that's a reasonable thing to feel hearing this story?
[01:07:14]  Like They said these words out loud and the fact that no one was just like, yeah, oh, I got to kill this guy where he stands.
[01:07:23]  The value of brickings, that's a brickin'.
[01:07:25]  That's like, somebody should just be like, okay, I gotta hit this guy with a fucking brick.
[01:07:29]  Yeah, hit him in the face with a brick.
[01:07:30]  Yeah, you don't get to say that and not get hit in the face with the brick.
[01:07:34]  Holy shit.
[01:07:35]  That's brickin' words.
[01:07:37]  Very easy to brick that guy.
[01:07:39]  Thankfully, the Oregon jury rejected his line of argument and found the scouts liable for almost $20 million in damages.
[01:07:47]  This is the case.
[01:07:48]  This is why we all know en masse about the problem now.
[01:07:51]  This case breaks open the floodgates of abuse claims against the Boy Scouts.
[01:07:56]  And it's during this case, part of the discovery in this, like 1,200 of the P-files are revealed and put into the public record because they're trying to show there's a pattern of abuse, right?
[01:08:05]  These guys keep getting in and abused and the Boy Scouts let them in again.
[01:08:10]  This is what led to all of the Los Angeles Times articles we've quoted so far.
[01:08:13]  Because once these things are made public, because if it's introduced into like a legal case in that way, it's like anyone can see that.
[01:08:20]  So they start combing through this stuff and they start doing like other stuff gets released.
[01:08:26]  This is the blood in the water, you know?
[01:08:29]  Journalists start finding out other details of sordid Boy Scout sexual abuse history and more victims start coming forward.
[01:08:34]  An avalanche begins.
[01:08:36]  One issue that confronted many victims is the fact that some states had very strict laws regarding the statute of limitation for sex crimes.
[01:08:42]  So like a lot of these guys, they were abused in like the 50s, you know?
[01:08:46]  And like now as an adult who's like, and these stories are heartbreaking.
[01:08:49]  Some of these men are like, I was never, I was abused in like the 50s, the 60s.
[01:08:53]  I was never able to like have a relationship that I was correct.
[01:08:56]  I've never been able to feel intimate with anybody.
[01:08:57]  Like this is, there's cases of people who commit suicide.
[01:09:00]  One guy's brother were molested and he's like, yeah, my brother became addicted to drugs and died of an overdose.
[01:09:05]  And like he never recovered from this, you know?
[01:09:08]  I mean, anyone who knows a victim of childhood sexual abuse knows how deep uniquely evil of an act it is to inflict upon somebody.
[01:09:21]  And how, yeah, the stories are just fucking.
[01:09:24]  So when these guys start realizing I'm not alone, people will believe me now.
[01:09:31]  And also, maybe if I speak up, this will help to protect other kids, you know?
[01:09:35]  So they start to come forward, but in a lot of states, they can't bring charges against the people who'd victimized them or the Boy Scouts because of the statute of limitations.
[01:09:43]  So many states, when they realize how many these kids are out there to their credit, a bunch of state lawmakers put forward bills to expand the statute of limitations and allow charges to be pressed further away from the time of the abuse to be like, well, shit, maybe we didn't really, we didn't make these laws considering everything that was happening.
[01:09:58]  And like, we need to allow these people a chance to get justice.
[01:10:02]  The Boy Scouts spend a fortune in lawyers and lobbying fighting these bills wherever they crop up, once again devoting huge financial resources, which they'd said were not worth spending on background checks to try and make it harder for boys victimized by BSA officials to seek justice.
[01:10:15]  From the Washington Post, quote, the group retained lobbyists in Georgia and New York, where lawmakers say such action helped stall proposals that included lookback windows, allowing adults to take legal action over decades-old claims.
[01:10:27]  It has hired lobbyists in Michigan, where similar proposals are being debated.
[01:10:31]  The bills would give adults who were abused as children a second chance to file suit if they missed their first opportunity under state law.
[01:10:37]  Opponents of the state proposals, including the Boy Scouts and Catholic Archdiocese, argued that open-ended lookback periods violate due process and would put groups in the tough position of defending themselves in cases from the distant past.
[01:10:50]  I love like the people or Boy Scouts in the Catholic Church coming together to coming together just like a fucking rapey Voltron trying to be like, well, this is just wrong.
[01:11:04]  And this is, I want to belabor a bit on the argument they're making, which is that this is unfair because it puts us in the position of defending our organization from actions that other, we weren't in charge of the Boy Scouts on this app.
[01:11:16]  This was 50 years ago.
[01:11:18]  Yeah.
[01:11:18]  A completely different group of men who were in charge.
[01:11:20]  Like, how can we be held responsible today for the actions of two generations, you know, leaders from two generations ago?
[01:11:26]  Yeah.
[01:11:26]  I don't think this is a good argument.
[01:11:28]  For one thing, as we have discussed, the historical record shows that the BSA's attitude towards sex abusers and the ways in which you enable them and defend them has not wavered since the days of Robert Baden-Powell.
[01:11:39]  From Baden-Powell's time to the fucking 2000s, the Boy Scouts are doing basically the same shit.
[01:11:45]  For another, the same officials who led the BSA in the late aughts had been the ones in the 70s and 80s, furthering the hide and ignore policies that enabled sexual abuse of children.
[01:11:56]  In April of 2019, an expert who had been working with the BSA estimated that as many as 7,819 adult volunteers and staff members had sexually abused boys over the course of the BSA's history.
[01:12:08]  He suggested they were responsible for harming as many as 12,254 victims.
[01:12:14]  That's the BSA's expert, right?
[01:12:17]  Now, if that were it, if that were the extent of the problem, this would be a huge problem.
[01:12:21]  But it turns out that was a drastic underestimation.
[01:12:24]  A little over a year later, in November of 2020, after a series of lawsuits and settlements, more than 100,000 alleged victims had come forward to claim they had been sexually assaulted as children in the Boy Scouts.
[01:12:36]  So that's 100,000 who have said, I was a victim.
[01:12:42]  Yeah.
[01:12:43]  And this is in the last year.
[01:12:45]  Fuck.
[01:12:46]  Yeah.
[01:12:47]  The Boy Scouts have filed for bankruptcy, claiming to be devastated by the allegations.
[01:12:52]  There's a number of fucked up things in the fallout of this.
[01:12:55]  One of the most, the worst things, the Boy Scouts were stewards of a huge amount of wild lands, right?
[01:13:00]  For campgrounds and stuff.
[01:13:01]  And they were that they would take care of.
[01:13:03]  They've sold a bunch of that to developers.
[01:13:05]  A lot of that shit, this like pristine wilds, they've been turned into like housing developments and shit because the Boy Scouts went broke trying to defending themselves from all the rape that their members did.
[01:13:18]  It's just like a comprehensively bleak story.
[01:13:22]  Oh my God.
[01:13:23]  They can't even redeem themselves and make them like public lands.
[01:13:26]  They're just amusing.
[01:13:27]  No, we got to sell it to pay for lawyers to attack these kids.
[01:13:31]  Hey, if I can't touch kids on this land, then I'm going to fucking build condos on it.
[01:13:37]  Yeah.
[01:13:37]  Fuck you.
[01:13:39]  Well, that's the story of the Boy Scouts.
[01:13:42]  I hate it.
[01:13:44]  Yeah.
[01:13:45]  Oh, my good God, dude.
[01:13:47]  I mean, it's like...
[01:13:48]  Yeah.
[01:13:49]  Usually when I, you know, the name of the show behind the bastards, it's like, usually it's like, the plural is because you have many episodes covering specific bastards.
[01:13:58]  This is one that was just like one bastard at the beginning and then just an endless slew of bastards.
[01:14:05]  Yeah.
[01:14:05]  And it's too many.
[01:14:08]  I think I'm on bastard overload and I want to do some righteous murder.
[01:14:14]  Let's do a righteous kill together, dude.

=== Endless Slew of Bastards (02:11) ===

[01:14:16]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:14:16]  Let's go.
[01:14:17]  Sophie, can you can we can we like get get like a write off some some money for murder tools?
[01:14:25]  I mean that can we do that probably not, but I'll ask.
[01:14:29]  Well, what about a boat so that we can go to international waters?
[01:14:32]  Yeah, in international waters, it's legal, Sophie.
[01:14:34]  Stop trying to pull up.
[01:14:38]  Come on.
[01:14:39]  Right.
[01:14:40]  It'll be like Sea Org, but like, but a good one.
[01:14:43]  But good, a good Sea Org.
[01:14:45]  People just haven't quite done it right.
[01:14:47]  Good Sea Org.
[01:14:49]  There could, but not yet.
[01:14:51]  Sophie, you have a very closed mind towards Sea Orgs, and I don't think that's fair to all the good Sea Orgs out there.
[01:14:58]  Yeah, like, I don't know, the Spanish Navy?
[01:15:03]  Yeah, they'd probably chill.
[01:15:04]  Yeah.
[01:15:06]  Come on.
[01:15:09]  No.
[01:15:09]  I don't think it's going to happen.
[01:15:12]  I mean, you know, we can do it on land, I guess.
[01:15:16]  But the point is, is I'm currently furious and I'm disassociating.
[01:15:22]  So I've had a really good time.
[01:15:24]  Yeah.
[01:15:24]  So you had a good time on my show.
[01:15:27]  Well, I'm sure everyone's dissociating now.
[01:15:30]  So have a good time staring into the distance and just kind of like thinking my views.
[01:15:43]  Have a good time losing touch with your corporeal body as the rage within you becomes transcendent.
[01:15:49]  Yeah.
[01:15:50]  Yeah.
[01:15:53]  It's a type of drug.
[01:15:54]  Rage is.
[01:15:55]  It is a type of drug, Rage-A-Hol.
[01:15:56]  Yeah.
[01:15:57]  Yeah.
[01:15:57]  I'm just going to get some Rage-A-Hol on right now.
[01:16:00]  I need a Xanax.
[01:16:02]  Yeah, Rage Out with your page out.
[01:16:04]  I don't know.
[01:16:06]  I don't know.
[01:16:07]  Oh, boy.
[01:16:08]  Matt, you got any pluggables to plug?
[01:16:11]  Yeah, I do Sopranos podcasts.
[01:16:13]  Pod yourself a gun.
[01:16:14]  Check it out.
[01:16:15]  We're about to start season six.
[01:16:17]  By the time this comes out, season six, episode one, will be out.
[01:16:21]  It's a great show.
[01:16:22]  Film drunk frock cast.
[01:16:24]  That's us, but same guys talking about movies.

=== Johnny Aaron Childhood Friend (02:37) ===

[01:16:28]  Wanted to dedicate this to my childhood friend, Johnny Aaron.
[01:16:32]  You know, you listen to this show.
[01:16:34]  Johnny Aaron, you're a good man.
[01:16:37]  Sorry it was the molestation one.
[01:16:40]  Yeah, this is a rough episode to get a shout out to.
[01:16:45]  But, you know, fucking, hey, it can't all be winners.
[01:16:48]  You know what I mean?
[01:16:49]  Yeah.
[01:16:49]  Yeah.
[01:16:50]  Thanks.
[01:16:50]  Thanks for having me back.
[01:16:52]  Yep.
[01:16:53]  Thanks for coming back.
[01:16:56]  And also, sorry.
[01:17:02]  Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[01:17:11]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
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[01:17:23]  People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
[01:17:30]  You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
[01:17:33]  Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[01:17:38]  Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
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[01:17:47]  And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
[01:17:54]  What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
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[01:18:37]  This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
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