“They’ve been attracting pedophiles.”
Filmmaker Irene Taylor investigated the downfall of the Boy Scouts of America ... #tribeca2022
Filmmaker Irene Taylor investigated the downfall of the Boy Scouts of America ... #tribeca2022
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Short filmTranscript
00:00They have been protecting pedophiles, they have actually been attracting pedophiles.
00:27Part of the reason why so many Boy Scouts got sexually abused is because we had blinders
00:31on.
00:32We thought that everything was wholesome.
00:34We thought that everything was safe.
00:36We thought that, you know, Boy Scouts was baseball and apple pie.
00:41In early 1920s, Bear Mountain, New York is site of one of Scouts biggest encampments.
00:57Boy Scouts of America was pretty much founded as a monopoly.
01:02Which is to say, very early on, they cleared the playing field of competition and the way
01:09they did that was they got a charter from the federal government that allowed them to
01:14exclusively use the name Boy Scouts of America.
01:18They got tax perks, they got a lot of the government and presidents and politicians
01:26and wealthy people who had things to donate looked favorably upon the Boy Scouts because
01:30let's face it, it was a very honorable mission.
01:48What we really saw was that these files were kept but no one within the organization was
02:08using them in a way that could have prevented abuse.
02:12In fact, they were actually actively suppressing the information and keeping it from law enforcement.
02:19Unfettered access to American boyhood and sort of the boyhood ideal probably peaked
02:25in the 1960s.
02:27We really saw like everyone wanted to be a Boy Scout.
02:43We started saying, oh my God, there were troop leaders being found to have abused children
02:57at one troop and then a year later at another troop and again and again and again.
03:13Over many years, we've implemented barriers that help prevent situations where abuse may occur.
03:22These other barriers include our too deep leadership policy, which prohibits any one-on-one
03:27interaction between an adult and youth member in person, online, over the phone, or through text.
03:43It's very hard for survivors to talk about what happened to them.
03:54Social scientists have told us that the average age for a man to acknowledge that he's been abused
04:01as a child is the age of 52, which means that's a solid 35 to 40 years that pass where they keep
04:10this horrible secret.
04:40The Boy Scouts are going to have to sell a lot of property that they own in order to pay the survivors.
05:03And what they owe the survivors is going to amount to about $2.7 billion.
05:09So they basically have their own, what I would call their own private national park system.
05:15So we're going to see the Boy Scouts selling a lot of land.
05:19We're also going to see them selling their collection of original Norman Rockwell paintings.
05:25And they have several dozen commissioned Rockwell paintings that are valued at tens of millions of dollars.
05:34They were expecting about 7,500 claimants.
05:37And the numbers just kept going up and up and up.
05:40It's not just about financial settlement. It's about Boy Scouts admitting that they did wrong.
05:46I don't think you can put a price on that.
05:48I think that these men in our film are actually the truest Boy Scouts because they're trustworthy, loyal, kind, brave.
05:58And I think that we as a society can make it easier for victims of childhood sexual abuse by listening to them without judgment.
06:07And hearing their stories and hearing what happened to them.
06:10And I think as that happens more, it's going to be easier for victims and harder for pedophiles.