The Washington Post By Cara Kelly June 8, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EDT
The Boy Scouts' sexual abuse scandal needs to finally be investigated
By ignoring America's largest child-abuse case, Congress and the states put children at risk.
The Scouts scandal and those of theCatholic Churchoverlap in part because,
in the 1980s, the Boy Scouts shifted the burden of screening its volunteers to the religious and civic groups that sponsor individual troops and packs. And these charter organizations include the Catholic Church.
Yet child sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts has routinely been ignored by law enforcement and politicians. Only one state attorney general, Dana Nessel of Michigan, is investigating.
Congress has authority over the Boy Scouts; the organization was congressionally chartered in 1916. But Congress has never investigated. Even after Michael Johnson, the Scouts’ former head of youth protection, wrote a letter in 2021 detailing how the institution remains unsafe for children and begging lawmakers to act, they remained quiet.
This was not the first time Congress avoided the issue. In 2018, House members wrote to the Boy Scouts asking why the organization was lobbying against child sexual abuse laws. In response, Michael Surbaugh, then the Scouts chief executive, said, “at no time in our history have we ever knowingly allowed a sexual predator to work with youth.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/08/boy-scouts-child-sexual-abuse-catholic-church-congress-investigate/