Boy Scouts of America sex abuse survivors claim censorship, object to bankruptcy exit plans – By Cara Kelly (USA Today) / May 10 2021
More than a year into the Boy Scouts of America’s bankruptcy proceedings, frustration is at a boiling point for sex abuse survivors who say the nonprofit organization is doing little to put forth meaningful reparations for their trauma.
Their anger has extended to the bankruptcy court itself, which is redacting hundreds of letters sent to Judge Laurie Silverstein, preventing the public from understanding the full extent of the abuse they say they suffered as children.
On Monday, the Torts Claimants Committee, the official body chosen to represent abuse survivors in the case, filed an objection to the Scouts’ latest bankruptcy reorganization plan, saying it “minimizes the organization’s history of failing to protect children from sexual predators.”
The scathing objection says this strategy has been on display since day one, when an attorney for the organization failed to mention the abuse for the first 15 minutes of her opening presentation to the court, “well after her recitation of the Boy Scout Oath and Law.”
Comprised of nine men who say they were abused as children at the hands of Scout leaders, the committee said it has concluded over hours of meetings that “the Boy Scouts is either tone deaf or purposely minimizing the childhood sexual abuse claims that led to this Chapter 11 case.”
