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Hundreds Of Boy Scouts’ Child Sex Abuse Cases Covered Up For Decades

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For decades, the Boy Scouts Of America (BSA) have been covering up at least hundreds of child sex abuse cases by Scout leaders, often if not mostly without notifying police, or the boys’ parents, and allowing offenders to return to the Scouts, often to restart their abuse anew. Now, as the BSA fears, a century-old set of “pervision files,” dating back as far as 1919, may become public, despite the Scouts attempts in court to keep the documents confidential.

Calling the files “a blacklist of alleged molesters,” who “were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, ‘chronic brain dysfunction’ and duties at a Shakespeare festival,” the L.A. Times in yet another exposé, details their examination of over 1600 files from 1970 to 1991, and “has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks.”

As The Times reported in August, the blacklist often didn’t work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.

In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips.

In about 400 of those cases — 80% — there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

In 1982, a Michigan Boy Scout camp director who learned of allegations of repeated abuse by a staff member told police he didn’t promptly report them because his bosses wanted to protect the reputation of the Scouts and the accused staff member.

“He stated that he had been advised by his supervisors and legal counsel that he should neutralize the situation and keep it quiet,” according to a police report in the file.

That same year, the director of a Boy Scout camp in Virginia wrote to the Scouts’ top lawyer, asking for help dealing with a veteran employee suspected of a “lifelong pattern” of abuse that had not been reported to police.

“When a problem has surfaced, he has been asked to leave a position ‘of his own free will’ rather than risk further investigation,” the director wrote. “The time has come for someone to make a stand and prevent further occurrences.”

There is no indication the Scouts took the matter to law enforcement.

In 1976, five Boy Scouts wrote detailed complaints accusing a Pennsylvania scoutmaster of two rapes and other sex crimes, according to his file. He abruptly resigned in writing, saying he had to travel more for work.

“Good luck to you in your new position,” a top troop representative wrote back. He said he was accepting the resignation “with extreme regret.”

The extensive Times article, which includes images culled from the actual files, details one case of a top Scout leader who ultimately was convicted of abusing 20 young boys.

With 50 years in Scouting, Arthur W. Humphries appeared to be a model leader, winning two presidential citations and the Scouts’ top award for distinguished service — the Silver Beaver — for his work with disabled boys in Chesapeake, Va.

Unknown to most in town, he also was a serial child molester.

A few months after Humphries’ arrest in 1984, local Scouting official Jack Terwilliger told the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that no one at the local Scout council had had suspicions about Humphries.

But that was not true. Records in Humphries’ file show that six years earlier, Terwilliger had ordered officials to interview a Scout who gave a detailed account of Humphries’ repeated acts of oral sex on him.

“He then told me to do the same and I did,” the 12-year-old boy said in a sworn statement in 1978.

Officials not only failed to report Humphries’ alleged crime to police, records show — they alsogave him a strong job reference two years later, when he applied for a post at a national Scouting event.

“I believe the attached letters of recommendation and the newspaper write-up will give you a well rounded picture of Art,” Terwilliger wrote. “If selected, I am sure that he would add much to the handicapped awareness trail at the 1981 Jamboree.”

Humphries continued to work with Scouts and molested at least five more boys before police, acting on a tip, stopped him in 1984. He was convicted of abusing 20 Boy Scouts, some as young as 8, and was sentenced to 151 years in prison.

By then, one of the Scouts he’d abused a decade earlier had become his accomplice. He was convicted of molesting many of the same boys at Humphries’ house.

Currently, the L.A. Times has had access only to 21 years of files, but there are decades more of files, including possibly thousands more cases, that a court may make public.

Reuters adds:

About 1,200 “ineligible volunteer” files dating from 1965 to 1985 are set to be publicly released under a June order by the Oregon Supreme Court, including some already reviewed by the newspaper.

Those files played a key role in a 2010 civil trial in which an Oregon jury found the Boy Scouts liable in a 1980s pedophile case and ordered the organization to pay nearly $20 million in damages.

The files will be released within three to four weeks, said Paul Mones, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiff in the Oregon case.

In the wake of revelations about systemic child sex abuse within the Catholic Church and the recent Penn State sex abuse scandal, the files threaten to damage the reputation of one of America’s most trusted institutions.

The Scouts have been the target of public outcry, coming under fire for not allowing gay people into the organization at any level. A ten-year old boy to a 40-year old Scout Leader may be kicked out or fired if it becomes known they are gay.

In a July email conversation related to a story about the Scouts’ re-affirmation of its policy of banning gay people, Boy Scouts of America Director of Public Relations Deron Smith told The New Civil Rights Movement that their policy had “no relation” to an Oregon Supreme Court’s decision days before, which, according to a report by Reuters, “ordered the release of 20,000 pages of confidential Boy Scouts of America records dubbed the ‘perversion files’ documenting suspected or confirmed sexual abuse by its leaders and volunteers.”

Related:

Boy Scouts Determined To Continue Ban On Gays After Secret Study

Infographic: Boy Scouts Long History Of Anti-LGBT Discrimination

The Boy Scouts’ Futile Isolationism

Boy Scouts Fire Gay Staffer, 10 Quit In Protest

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News

A Conservative Serves Up a Grassroots Fix for Trumpism

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15 hours ago

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November 17, 2025

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A conservative political operative turned commentator and journalist has a grassroots prescription for what she believes ails conservatism in the age of Trump — a “cure” for Trumpism.

Sarah Isgur worked on campaigns for Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina, served as a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, and is now an editor at The Dispatch, a conservative news site.

In an interview with The New York Times’ David Leonhardt, Isgur outlined some suggestions for everyday Americans who may identify as conservative — or who want to make changes.

READ MORE: Prominent Conservative Quits Heritage Over Tucker Defense as Trump Backs Carlson

Isgur “lays out her dream for a return to a small-government ethos and constrained presidential power,” which includes her belief that government can’t fix everything. She also believes there should be no independent federal agencies, like the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Trade Commission, and Congress needs to take more control.

“It’s not that we’re always going to agree on everything,” Isgur added. “That’s never been the American way. My God, we’re connected by nothing — not race, not creed, not religion. This is what we do, though, is that we say we’re going to, first of all, have decisions made at the most local level so that the person making that decision is most responsive and most represents their own constituents.”

So, how does she think that happens?

Americans, she said, “have to look at what is tending to win these elections and the currents that we’re beating up against.”

When asked, “What advice would you give to people who are deeply dissatisfied with what our political system is delivering and want to do something that’s fundamentally patriotic, which is get involved?” Isgur offered a grassroots answer.

READ MORE: ‘Fight Back!’: Trump Demands GOP Keep the House ‘at All Costs’

“Stop reading political news,” she advised. “Put your phone down. Go talk to your neighbors, check out what they’re doing. Don’t talk about politics, just check on their health. How’s their mom? What are the kids up to? Do you have any cute kid videos to show me?”

She urged Americans to “be radically involved in your neighborhood and your community. And I really mean your smallest community — getting to know the other parents in your kids’ class.”

And, she said, “Vote in primaries.”

“Our elections are increasingly getting decided in primaries and that itself is bad. And the way to fix it is to vote in primaries.”

And register for the party that you want to influence, she suggested.

“I don’t understand people who refuse to register with the other party. It’s not a tattoo. You didn’t sign up for a new religion. Part of the problem is we think of politics as a religion. I’m just signing up in a primary to help pick who that candidate is going to be in the general election. That’s it. That’s the extent of what it means to register for a political party,” Isgur explained.

READ MORE: Trump to Rub Elbows With McDonald’s Owners in Push to Promote ‘Affordability’

 

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Prominent Conservative Quits Heritage Over Tucker Defense as Trump Backs Carlson

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17 hours ago

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November 17, 2025

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The Heritage Foundation, billed as the “intellectual backbone” of the conservative movement, has just lost one of the nation’s most prominent conservatives: Princeton Professor Robert P. George. His departure came after the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, publicly called Tucker Carlson a “close friend” of Heritage — even after the former Fox News host gave a platform to far-right extremist leader Nick Fuentes. The split lands at the same moment President Donald Trump extended support to Carlson, despite Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, who is widely seen as promoting Christian nationalism, white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and Islamophobia.

Professor George is a legal scholar who served as the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which opposes same-sex marriage. He was once described as the “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.”

“I have resigned from the board of the Heritage Foundation,” George wrote at the National Review on Monday. “I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30. Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

READ MORE: ‘Fight Back!’: Trump Demands GOP Keep the House ‘at All Costs’

George urged Heritage to uphold “the moral principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the civic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”

“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.'”

Earlier this month, Professor George, also in the National Review, wrote about his opposition to President Roberts’ statement that Heritage has “no enemies to the right.”

The conservative movement, he wrote, “simply cannot include or accommodate white supremacists or racists of any type, antisemites, eugenicists, or others whose ideologies are incompatible with belief in the inherent and equal dignity of all. As a conservative, I say that there is no place for such people in our movement.”

On Sunday, President Donald Trump was asked about Tucker Carlson’s “friendly” interview with “antisemite” Nick Fuentes.

READ MORE: Trump Aims Treason Allegation at His Former FBI Director in New Online Attack

“What role do you think Tucker Carlson should play in the Republican Party in the conservative movement going forward?” a reporter asked the president.

“Well, I found him to be good,” Trump said of Carlson. “I mean, he said good things about me over the years. And he’s, I think he’s good.”

“We’ve had some good interviews. I did an interview with him. We had 300 million hits. You know that,” Trump added.

The president added, “you can’t tell them who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out, let him — you know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide.”

The Washington Post on Monday described Trump’s remarks as “defending” Carlson.

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah said Trump’s call to “get the word out” was “deeply, deeply troubling.”

“When leaders are asked about antisemitism,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday wrote, “there’s only one responsible answer: denounce it. President Trump’s refusal to condemn Nick Fuentes — an avowed antisemite — or to call out Tucker Carlson for amplifying him is unacceptable and dangerous.”

READ MORE: Trump to Rub Elbows With McDonald’s Owners in Push to Promote ‘Affordability’

 

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‘Fight Back!’: Trump Demands GOP Keep the House ‘at All Costs’

Published

20 hours ago

on

November 17, 2025

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As President Donald Trump faces potential pushback from House Republicans over his stance on the Epstein files, he has reversed course and urged members to vote for their release. But now the president is pushing back — hard — against further defections from his agenda and is demanding that Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives “at all costs.”

In a sharply-worded post on his Truth Social website, President Trump demanded that states support his call for a rare mid-decade redistricting plan, his tool to try to pick up more GOP-held seats in the House.

Recently, Indiana Republicans acknowledged that they did not have the votes to support redistricting, leading Trump to unleash a threat on Monday.

READ MORE: Trump Aims Treason Allegation at His Former FBI Director in New Online Attack

“I will be strongly endorsing against any State Senator or House member from the Great State of Indiana that votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by not allowing for Redistricting for Congressional seats in the United States House of Representatives as every other State in our Nation is doing,” Trump alleged. “Republican or Democrat.”

Not all states have decided to redistrict.

“Democrats are trying to steal our seats everywhere,” the president charged, “and we’re not going to let this happen! This all began with the Rigged Census. We must keep the Majority at all costs. Republicans must fight back!”

READ MORE: Trump to Rub Elbows With McDonald’s Owners in Push to Promote ‘Affordability’

The president did not detail specifically what some of those costs might entail. Trump was president in 2020 when the census was conducted.

Trump did speak with Indiana Republican Governor Mike Braun on Monday morning, the governor noted.

“I remain committed to standing with him on the critical issue of passing fair maps in Indiana to ensure the MAGA agenda is successful in Congress,” Braun wrote.

The redistricting push started when Trump urged Texas to redistrict, which he suggested would add five GOP seats for Republicans. California soon undertook plans to do the same, possibly diminishing or neutralizing any potential GOP pickups. But some election and polling experts have said that Hispanic voters are rapidly moving away from the GOP, which could backfire on Republicans in states like Texas.

READ MORE: Democrat Warns How Trump Could Engineer a Path to Stay in Power After 2028

 

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