The Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the main scout movement in the United States, announced Tuesday that they would file for bankruptcy, weighed down by charges of sexual abuse that have led to a series of trials.
The organization, which has 2.2 million members aged 5 to 21, has chosen the safeguard procedure to be able to continue its activity and create a compensation fund for victims of sexual abuse, according to a statement published on Tuesday. .
"The best way to compensate the victims"
According to the Los Angeles Times, the document filed with the federal bankruptcy court of the state of Delaware estimates the liabilities of the organization between 100 and 500 million dollars.
The BSAs have not indicated how much they intend to devote to the victim compensation fund, which will take the legal form of a trust.
"There was a time when individuals took advantage of BSA programs to harm children," the organization wrote in the statement.
The leaders of the movement consider that the compensation fund, whose creation will have to be validated by a judge, "is the best way to compensate the victims fairly and while preserving their identity".
5,000 “files of perversion”
The revelations about sexual abuse among the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) came to light in 2012.
Thousands of pages of documents had been published by the Los Angeles Times showing that the organization of the American scouts had covered for decades numerous sexual abuses committed by thousands of volunteer supervisors.
Some 5,000 “cases of perversion” were then mentioned, corresponding to as many alleged sexual assailants among the Scout leaders.
This information had hitherto been kept secret by the management of the BSAs, which often had not made a report to the authorities. The organization regularly confined itself to removing the alleged culprits.
At the end of January 2019, during a trial in Minnesota, an expert hired by the BSA to compile these "perversion files", indicated that she had identified 7,819 suspected attackers and 12,254 victims between 1944 and 2016, more than previous estimates.
Multiplying legal actions
Legal actions have multiplied against BSAs in recent years, notably thanks to legislative changes in several states which have lengthened the limitation periods for sexual assaults on minors.
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