Content advisory: This article discusses the sexual assault and abuse of children.
They’re one of the most well-known and respected institutions in America, with more than 130 million members over the years. Unfortunately, there’s also been rampant sexual abuse and denial in the organization, at least according to a new Netflix documentary called Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America.
Things really started to fall apart in 2020 when the storied organization filed for bankruptcy, per Tudum. During that process over 82,000 former members revealed they had experienced some sort of sexual abuse during their tenure as scouts.
The new documentary explores these allegations with first-person accounts from abuse survivors, and also former employees and one former general counsel of the organization. It’s directed by Brian Knappenberger and also features journalist Patrick Boyle.
Boyle was instrumental in bringing the allegations to light by reporting on the so-called “perversion files” from the Boy Scouts, which were released to the public in 2012 by the Oregon Supreme Court.
A lot of the information came courtesy of whistleblower Michael Johnson, who served as the youth protection director. Johnson is a former police detective whose employment with the Boy Scouts was terminated in 2020.
He was offered a severance payment in exchange for signing an non-disclosure agreement but he refused to do so and instead spoke out to the media and urged congress to act.
In a speech at the National Press Club in 2021, he said the scouts are “not safe for kids. It is safer, but it is not safe for kids. We failed you. I failed you.”
He said he tried his best to make changes but he kept running into organizational roadblocks.
“All of [a] sudden, I wasn’t able to make the changes that were needed, and there were excuses and omissions…. I felt, naively, that I could make change within the organization, and there were some successes, but it wasn’t nearly enough,” he said.
The Boy Scouts issued a statement in response saying that “scouting is safer than ever before,” while trying to minimize the horror:
“While any instance of abuse is one too many, it’s important to know that the vast majority of claims in the BSA’s Chapter 11 case predate our modern youth protection policies. Specifically, 85% or more of the claims allege a first instance of abuse prior to 1990, and 50% or more of the claims allege a first instance of abuse prior to 1974.”
In the documentary, one 40-year-old survivor revealed that many victims were forced to deal with the consequences of the abuse silently and internally.
“You took my childhood. You took my growing up. I was so angry,” he said. “I want to take some of the stigma away of boys being victims… It’s not the boys’ fault.”
Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America is streaming now on Netflix.