United States | Scout’s (dis)honour

The Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy amid child-abuse lawsuits

Some victims see it as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the organisation

|NEW YORK

RALPH MORSE was 11 years old when the abuse began in the 1960s. John Brown, his scoutmaster, a supposedly upstanding man in his small upstate New York town, molested him regularly. While looking up at the constellations to earn merit badges, Mr Morse remembers, “he’d come up behind you in the dark, pressing himself up against you in a field. You’re standing in pitch black with this humongous man taking hold of you. And what do you do? What do you say to stop?”

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Scout’s (dis)honour”

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