Richard Herbert Smith was a volunteer Scoutmaster with Boy Scout Troop 269 in Tillamook, Oregon from 1981 until 1983. In July 1990, a paid Scout Executive working for the Columbia Pacific Council of the BSA sent a “Confidential Record Sheet” about Richard Herbert Smith to the national office of the Boy Scouts. The form cryptically notes that Smith had been “eased out” of his troop in 1983.
Presumably, Richard Herbert Smith was “eased out” because he had been convicted in 1966 in New York of four counts of child sexual abuse, including sodomy and carnal abuse of a child. However, the Boy Scouts did not officially exclude Smith from Scouting in 1983. In spite of his 1966 conviction, Smith had been allowed to work with young Scouts for two years in the 1980s.
Only in 1990, when Smith was arrested in Oregon and charged with multiple counts of sodomy of a child and using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct, did a Scout employee begin the process of excluding Smith from Scouting.
Even after his new crimes were reported to the BSA in July 1990, it was only in April 1991 that the Boy Scouts of America put Smith on its “Ineligible Volunteer” list, excluding him from volunteering with Scouts. When the Boy Scouts failed to to stop Richard Herbert Smith, they failed the children he abused.