29 Apr 2010
The Boy Scout of America movement is finally uncovered for its cover up of child sex abuse and is forced to make a payout of $18.5m to a single boy scout. Discover of "secret files" makes me ask, what are on the BKWSU 'secret files' and memory banks? Like the BKWSU, lawyers said the Boy Scouts had never apologised.
The questions we know to ask of their leadership - on the basis of solid evidence or first person reports - are:
The parallels between the Brahma Kumaris and the Boy Scouts of American (albethey perhaps smaller in scale due to their shorter history), are very, very clear. A movement turned corporation protecting its assets, denial of abuses ... and collusion with police forces as we recently read of the BKWSU's cover up of alleged murders in India. Although the cover up of alleged murders in India is extreme, certainly many smaller incidents of police and political manipulation (one would not be so gross as to call it bribery although that is what is alleged in the murder case) have taken place with Sisters "sweetening up" officers and officials.
No would should accuse victims of being vindictive or seeking revenge. Exposure and the corporate humbling of such organizations and their leaders IS part of the healing process and improving of society. I genuinely hope that in years to come the Brahma Kumaris' karma comes back to them in a similar way as they appear to be drunk on their own, and their spirit guide's, apparent omnipotence and deceit at present.
As we have seen so far, the efforts at internal reforms have been farcical.
The questions we know to ask of their leadership - on the basis of solid evidence or first person reports - are:
- child sex abuse cover up
tax abuse
immigration abuse
financial abuse
historical revision and revision of prophecies to hide failures (false representation with the intent to gain money or services - fraud)
bullying to the point of kidnap and physical assault (primarily against PBKs)
The parallels between the Brahma Kumaris and the Boy Scouts of American (albethey perhaps smaller in scale due to their shorter history), are very, very clear. A movement turned corporation protecting its assets, denial of abuses ... and collusion with police forces as we recently read of the BKWSU's cover up of alleged murders in India. Although the cover up of alleged murders in India is extreme, certainly many smaller incidents of police and political manipulation (one would not be so gross as to call it bribery although that is what is alleged in the murder case) have taken place with Sisters "sweetening up" officers and officials.
No would should accuse victims of being vindictive or seeking revenge. Exposure and the corporate humbling of such organizations and their leaders IS part of the healing process and improving of society. I genuinely hope that in years to come the Brahma Kumaris' karma comes back to them in a similar way as they appear to be drunk on their own, and their spirit guide's, apparent omnipotence and deceit at present.
As we have seen so far, the efforts at internal reforms have been farcical.
Sexual abuse scandal rocks Boy Scouts of America after $18.5m payout: Organisation accused of cover-up as it seeks to keep thousands of 'perversion files' secret by Chris McGreal Guardian.co.uk
America's Scouting movement is fighting to keep secret thousands of "perversion files" on suspected child molesters after it was ordered to pay record damages over the sexual abuse of a former Scout.
In a growing scandal threatening to rival the crisis hitting the Roman Catholic church, the Boy Scouts of America has been accused of covering up decades of child abuse in order to protect the reputation of what is now a billion-dollar organisation. Last week, a jury in Oregon made the largest punitive damages award to a single plaintiff in a child abuse case in the US by ordering the Scouts to pay $18.5m (£12m) to Kerry Lewis, who was repeatedly assaulted by a former assistant scoutmaster, Timur Dykes, in the 1980s. Dykes had admitted to a superior in the Scouts that he had abused boys, but was allowed to remain in the organisation and is alleged to have sexually assaulted several other children who are also taking legal action.
The judge in the case overruled the Scouts' attempts to keep the jury from seeing about 1,200 files kept by the organisation on suspected paedophiles. Kelly Clark, Lewis's lawyer, told the jury that while the files were often used to remove child abusers from the Scouting movement, many were allowed to remain in the organisation. He said that the Scouts rarely alerted the police and when they did, the movement asked the authorities to avoid publicity. Clark told the jury that the Scouting leadership had been "reckless and outrageous" in failing to warn parents and boys about the problem.
The files shown to the jury were not made public and are just a small part of what is believed to be a cache of as many as 6,000 held at the Scouts' headquarters in Texas, dating back to the 1920s. Lawyers for alleged sexual abuse victims are suing to have all the files made public at a hearing next month. If that happens, it is likely to prove a severe blow to an organisation that is already at the centre of controversy over a bar on atheists and gay people. Membership stands at about 3 million, but has been dropping for more than a decade, in part because of the controversies over discrimination.
Clark said the scale of the award to Lewis reflects a heightened awareness of sexual crimes against children because of the recent revelations about the Catholic church. But he also said that the jury was shocked by the existence of what in court were called the "perversion files". "We said they had 75 years of secret files about paedophiles, and that's the way the evidence came in. I think that fact in itself was just staggering to the jury," he said. "They had a regular practice of placing guys on probation and then they would allow them to continue to be active in Scouting, not unlike some of what you saw in the Catholic church."
Even where the police did become involved, the Scouts sought to minimise the damage to the organisation. "We saw numerous examples of the Scouts writing to law enforcement saying 'it would be best for the good of Scouting if this could avoid being made too public.' Law enforcement was almost complicit in this saying 'we'll do our best to keep this quiet because we value the work of the Boy Scouts,'" said Clark.
"They've behaved like a corporation with an embarrassing product defect that they don't want to acknowledge. The Scouts were minimising the extent of the problem within their organisation and in large part discrediting their own Boy Scout victims and trying to hide the product defect ... and then fighting tooth and nail in court to keep it secret," he said. "They have also been very heavy handed with the victims, not apologising." The Scouts in the US have settled about 60 similar cases out of court over recent years.
Some critics have accused the Boy Scouts of losing touch with its original purpose as it has evolved into a an organisation which in some ways resembles a large corporation, with close to $900m in assets, including a $45m art collection and a large property portfolio.