Rev. Wilson was a Lutheran minister who did not register with the Boy Scouts but for some inexplicable reason was allowed to volunteer with them until someone flagged him due to his past history. His “Ineligible Volunteer File” with the Boy Scouts highlights to enormous problem of “unregistered” volunteers that still exists in Scouting.
Based on information that came out in the 2010 sex abuse trial against the Boy Scouts here in Portland, it could be that as many as one-third of all adults who volunteer with the Boy Scouts never officially register and, therefore, never get a background check done and are never checked against the BSA’s internal “Ineligible Volunteer” list. Bad guys can fly under the radar and only get attention if they get caught molesting kids.
The Boy Scouts’ Confidential Record Sheet concerning Wilson notes, “Has not registered but has taken part in Troop 258, Benton District, Corvallis. Also went to National Camping School in the Spring of 1985 and applied for Camp Baker staff Oregon Trail Council. He did not serve on the staff.”
In the same document, under why the applicant was suspended or denied, the following is written, “We’ve not received a registration application from him however, we did refuse to a (sic) him to work at summer camp in 1985 because of information on his past background.”
Roy S. Wilson Past Background
The past background to which the file referred concerned inappropriate behavior with teenagers at his Lutheran church. According to the medical records in his Ineligible File, Wilson sought medical treatment for an assortment of maladies in 1984. The medical records note,
This is a 29-year-old white, single minister who has become very anxious and depressed and was having serious difficulty functioning in his congregation. He had begun to turn to very young teenagers, 14 and 16 year olds, as his main support system and some acting out to place in the form of drinking too much and possibly some activities under the influence of alcohol that were not healthy for anyone involved.
Roy S. Wilson was discharged with “brief reactive psychosis and borderline personality disorder”.
Two years later, a young scout reported to his mother that in 1985 he had been sexually molested by Wilson during a Scout hiking trip. The Scout report at the time (1986) acknowledges that Wilson was on the hiking trip even though he had never registered with the Scouts and therefore had never had any background check performed on him. The incident in question involved Wilson sleeping naked in his sleeping bag and coercing a young Scout to give him a back rub. Wilson then straddled the young boy while giving him a back rub.
As in all of these cases, young children suffered because adults in positions of authority didn’t do their job. These same adults failed to protect children by insisting on compliance with the most basic Scout rules such as registering with the Scouts and the two-deep rule. Failing to supervise Roy S. Wilson have had tragic consequences for all of us.