The Boy Scouts of America announced it will open its membership to girls beginning in 2018. Families should demand more before signing up their daughters. The Girl Scouts described the Boy Scouts’ decision in an official statement:
The Boy Scouts’ house is on fire. Instead of addressing systemic issues of continuing sexual assault, financial mismanagement and deficient programming, BSA’s senior management wants to add an accelerant to the house fire by recruiting girls.
As lawyers who have worked with over 100 victims of sexual abuse in Boy Scouts, we agree. Boy Scouts has a sorry history of adult volunteers sexually abusing boys, a history documented in thousands of “Perversion files” created by the BSA on volunteers kicked out of Scouting for child molestation. BSA started creating these confidential files on “Ineligible Volunteers” in the early days of the organization and continues to create them today.
And the abuse was not limited to boys. Girls have been members of Boy Scouts since 1969, when BSA opened its Explorer program to girls on a trial basis. In 1971, Explorers officially went coed and has been ever since. We currently represent six women who were raped and abused when they were as young as 11 by their Explorer post leader in Kalispell, Montana in the early 1970s.
Before BSA starts recruiting more girls, it should offer complete transparency about its history of sexual abuse, including making public all of its Perversion files.