The Boys Scouts of America (BSA), which has 2.2 million members aged 5 to 21, announced Tuesday, February 18, to file for bankruptcy.

"There was a time when individuals took advantage of BSA programs to harm children," writes the organization. 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".

Nearly 8,000 alleged assailants and more than 12,000 victims

Revelations of sexual abuse by BSAs came to light in 2012. Thousands of pages of documents had been published by the Los Angeles Times showing that the organization of American scouts had covered for decades many 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 BSA, 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, that is, more than previous estimates.

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.

With AFP

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