More than 80,000 American Boy Scouts have filed a complaint about past sexual abuse with the Boy Scouts of America scouting organization. They have reported to the organization’s compensation fund in the hope of compensation.
According to the complainants’ lawyers, this is nearly eight times as many cases as worldwide in the Catholic Church, where about 11,000 victims of abuse have reported.
The Boy Scouts of America itself does not want to confirm the number of complainers, but says it is shocked by the number of people who have suffered from the abuses in the past.
The organization filed for bankruptcy in February. With that, all claims for damages filed by former Boy Scouts were frozen and passed on to the compensation fund.
Size of compensation fund still unknown
Founded in 1910, Boy Scouts of America is by far the foremost scouting movement in the United States, with 2.2 million members aged 5 to 21. The organization has an estimated capital of 1 billion dollars (more than 844 million euros). It is not yet known how much money will be spent on the compensation fund.
The sexual abuse among American Boy Scouts came to light in 2012 when the newspaper reported Los Angeles Times published internal documents of the organization describing decades of wrongdoing.
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