Minnesota man details abuse while in Boy Scouts in New York lawsuit
(FOX 9) - The Boy Scouts of America were hit with more accusations of sexual abuse Tuesday.
Nine new lawsuits were filed in the state of New York, and one of the accusers is a Minnesota man who spoke out publicly for the first time about the sexual abuse he says he endured when he was a child.
“My goal here today is to get them to tell the truth about what they’ve been concealing for years,” said the man identified as John Doe in the lawsuit.
The 61-year-old is charging that in the 1970s, he was repeatedly raped by his scout leader in the Bronx, New York.
The abuse, he said, started at the age of 12.
“Seeing the concealment at the corporate and headquarters level was so infuriating. It was worse than the abuse I suffered as a child,” said the man.
He says that even after coming forward with the abuse when he was a child, the scout leader went on to abuse even more children.
His suit is among nine new cases filed a week after the passage of the New York Child Victims Act, which extends the statute of limitations on sexual crimes for one year.
“This suit is designed to get the truth revealed,” said Jeff Anderson, an attorney who has focused some of his efforts on the Boy Scouts “The peril acknowledged, the identities disclosed.”
Anderson is seeking to get a hold of the Boy Scouts so-called “perversion files,” which he says contains the allegations of sexual misconduct against children involving more than 7,000 accused perpetrators.
He estimates that there are more than 12,000 victims dating back between 1944 and 2016.
“I would like to ask my friends from scouting from 50 years ago - and they know who they are - if they are hearing this today, to come forward,” he said.
The man who spoke out Tuesday said he decided to come forward after seeing his alleged abuser named in files that were made public.
The Boy Scouts of America has been plagued with sexual abuse allegations for decades.