Minnesota County Commissioner Jim McDonough has filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and its local chapter, the Northern Star Council. The filing of the Boy Scout sexual abuse lawsuit was not the reason the story made headlines across the country.
The public filing using the survivor’s name and not an anonymous John Doe led to headlines in Minnesota as well as in other national media outlets. McDonough made the choice to disclose his name in order to support other survivors and encourage them to come forward. “I think it’s important for me that I use that to be able to help give other people strength to seek out help,” McDonough said Tuesday when he announced his lawsuit. “(Predators) are going to be there, they’re going to be in our communities. It’s about how we watch and the actions we take when we find out; what we do to help prevent this, to contain this, to make it extremely hard for predators to be successful. That’s part of my public role, it’s part of my responsibility to the community. And I take that very seriously.”
McDonough was abused between 1967 and 1971 when he was 12 to 16 years old, by Leland Opalinski. According to a Minnesota media outlet, “Opalinski was the scoutmaster for McDonough’s St. Paul-based Boy Scout Troop 12 and was also an Explorer advisor for Troop 2012. He was released by the Boy Scouts in August 1971 when he was arrested on charges of sodomy and ‘indecent liberties’ involving a boy, according to a publicly released letter in Opalinski’s file maintained by the Boy Scouts of America.”