Superior Court Judge Harry Tobias has sided with the Boy Scouts of America during a hearing in San Benito County on Thursday. In the hearing, Tobias dismissed part of a lawsuit that would have forced the organization to release documents relating to allegations and records of sexual misconduct with minors.
The documents, called “ineligible volunteer files” or “perversion files,” detail assault allegations against volunteers and scoutmasters. The lawsuit alleges that since 1965, the Boy Scouts has created over 5,000 of these private files, which are maintained at its corporate headquarters in Irving, Texas.
Back in 2010, a court in Portland, Oregon ordered the release of thousands of pages of these documents.
This element in the five-part complaint brought by Robert Kutz, alleged that the Boy Scouts caused a public nuisance by concealing the identities of those accused of abusing minors. The lawsuit called on the Boy Scouts to “identify each and every one of their current and former agents who have been accused of childhood sexual abuse” including where and when the alleged abuse took place.
“If the public nuisance cause of action had been able to continue, well the implication would have been that they would have been required to ultimately turn over these thousands of files, each one representing an individual perpetrator, to law enforcement, and to notify the public when they would have done so,” said Tim Hale, who represents Kutz. “And just having that information in the public record would have made today’s children safer, because it would have provided information to scouts, scout parents, scout volunteers, of who poses a risk and of the danger in scouting.”