Scouts official describes files of unwanted members

PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) A Boy Scouts executive testified Friday (March 19) that the organization keeps files — including “perversion files” — on volunteers deemed unfit to serve, including suspected child molesters, thieves, gays, atheists and agnostics. Nate Marshall of the Boy Scouts of America told jurors that the files were meant to help the organization […]

PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) A Boy Scouts executive testified Friday (March 19) that the organization keeps files — including “perversion files” — on volunteers deemed unfit to serve, including suspected child molesters, thieves, gays, atheists and agnostics.

Nate Marshall of the Boy Scouts of America told jurors that the files were meant to help the organization keep undesirables out. He spoke specifically of files kept from 1965 to 1985, but acknowledged that the Scouts continue to gather such information.

The information, Marshall said, helps maintain the Scouts’ positive image and has helped make it “one of the safest organizations a young person can be involved in.”


The files offer an exceptionally rare glimpse into the Scouts’ inner workings — showing the Scouts themselves knew the organization had attracted scores of pedophiles, and providing ammunition to critics who see the Scouts as discriminatory because of their antipathy toward gays and those who don’t profess belief in God.

Marshall’s testimony came as the Boy Scouts of America and Oregon’s Cascade Pacific Council defend themselves against a $14 million lawsuit by a 37-year-old man, identified in court documents as Jack Doe, who was molested by a Portland Boy Scout volunteer named Timur Dykes in the early 1980s.

Marshall told jurors he oversees the files, which are kept in a locked, fire-proof cabinet — with one set of keys — at national offices in Irving, Texas. Only he and an assistant handle the files, he said, which date to 1949.

Marshall said the organization sorts volunteers deemed unfit into six categories: criminal, financial, leadership, religious, moral and perversion. Those who fall into the first three categories have committed crimes, been involved in inappropriate financial dealings or proved themselves poor leaders by treating children badly.

The “religious” files describe volunteers who are atheists or agnostics, and thus not allowed in the organization. The “moral” category is designated for gays.

From 1965 to 1985, he said, the Boy Scouts created 1,587 confidential files, also known as “ineligible volunteer files.” Of those, 71 percent were created on volunteers with perversions.


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