In a move that was widely expected, the Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning. The 110 year old organization has helped children learn ethics, basic skills and citizenship but has come under successive attacks in recent years.
The scouts have been at the center of controversies over allowing female members, gay members, and gay scout leaders. They have faced rejection by churches with whom they had long ties over some of their decisions related to their membership. The latest crisis focuses on allegations of sexual abuse, some dating back decades, and lawsuits which have been filed over them.
Multiple states have modified their statutes of limitation for lawsuits for sexual assaults. While these changes were driven primarily because of alleged abuses from clergy, they cleared a path for the seeking of damage payouts to former scouts.
The bankruptcy filing only affects the national group, the umbrella organization of the scouts; individual local groups are not directly affected by the decision. Because the local groups often rely upon national resources, such as campgrounds and written materials, there will be some indirect effects on scouting nationwide.
Enrollment in the scouts has declined precipitously this year, primarily driven by the January disassociation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in a direct response to the decision to allow female, transgender and gay scouts and scoutmasters. Although nearly all of the abuse charges date back to the 1970s or before (concerns about potential abuse caused a reassessment of standards in the 1980s, prompting new rules which seem to have drastically curtailed abuse) the quantity of older charges have left the already-wounded organization at risk of eventual dissolution.
