The judge in our Montana sex abuse case against the Boy Scouts of America and the Montana Counsel ruled in our favor on key trial issues yesterday. We represent six women who were sexually molested when they were as young as 11 and 12 by Bill Leininger, the leader of their coed Explorer Scout post in Kalispell in the 1970s. (It is nothing new for the Boy Scouts to admit girls. BSA has admitted girls into its Explorer program since 1969.)
Judge James Reynolds affirmed 11 pre-trial Orders issued earlier by Judge Jeffrey Sherlock who had been appointed to act as Special Master in our case. One key Order states that, “as a matter of law, [Boy Scouts] owed a duty of reasonable care to Plaintiffs, Explorer post members, to take reasonable precautions to protect them from foreseeable risks, including sexual assault.”
Our case can now go forward to trial in November on Plaintiffs’ claims, including claims for fraud and punitive damages. Also, the court denied the Boy Scouts’ motion to exclude from evidence the Boy Scouts’ “Ineligible Volunteer Files” on adult volunteers accused of child molestation prior to the Plaintiffs’ abuse. The jury will see BSA’s own historical record of sex abuse in Scouting.
The “IV Files” – which BSA also calls the “Perversion Files” – were used in evidence in a 2010 sex abuse trial against the Boy Scouts in Portland in which I was one of the trial attorneys. That case resulted in a $19.9 million verdict for the Plaintiff.