‘Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America’
Three stars
So many details about the Boy Scouts of America sexual abuse scandal that emerge in the engrossing and sobering Netflix documentary “Scouts Honor” mirror the facts we learned about sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy.
- Over a period of not years but DECADES, trusted authority figures taking advantage of their position to commit the most heinous acts on boys and young men who were often ashamed to come forward until years later, if ever.
- Abusers moving from community to community, where they would once again commit their horrific crimes.
- Families that DID come forward finding themselves ostracized by their communities and pressured to drop allegations.
- A system that was aware of a cancer within its ranks and ignored and/or willfully covered up the extent of the problem in order to protect its reputation and brand name.
It’s nauseating. It’s infuriating. This is not an easy watch, but there are also moments of profound emotion and genuine inspiration in the documentary. When we hear from the advocates and journalists who tirelessly worked to shine a light on this issue, when we learn firsthand the stories of a number of brave survivors who agreed to lend their names and faces and histories to this story, we cannot help but feel great empathy and admiration for these individuals.
Director Brian Knappenberger adopts a no-frills, straightforward, journalistically irreproachable approach, alternating between archival footage and a steady stream of sometimes deeply revealing interviews with advocates, survivors and former Boy Scouts of America employees. The main focus of the story is the so-called “Ineligible Volunteer Files,” also known as the “Perversion Files” or “Confidential Files.” Dating back more than a hundred years (the Boy Scouts were founded in England in 1908), the BSA kept a record of cases of abuse and maintained a so-called blacklist of Scout leaders who were alleged abusers, but often failed to hand over these claims to law enforcement.
Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts was becoming the biggest youth club in America and was held up as the epitome of an organization that taught boys and young men a myriad of skills while promoting the Scout Oath: “On my honor I will do my best … to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
Early on, we see grainy home movie footage of Boy Scouts at parades, of presidents through the generations lauding the Boy Scouts, of Scouts learning to shoot a rifle, perform first aid, etc. “Boy Scouts, to me, just represented the best of America,” says former Scout and abuse survivor Christopher Hurley. Another survivor, Douglas Kennedy, says, “I thought Scouts was a great thing, I really did. It was Norman Rockwell. It was Mom, Pop, apple pie.”
These idyllic images and impressions give way to interviews with journalist Patrick Boyle, who did groundbreaking work exposing the Perversion Files, and Michael Johnson, the former Youth Protection Director for the Boy Scouts, who says he ran into nothing but roadblocks as he tried to get the organization to acknowledge it had a terrible problem and needed to do more, so much more, to prevent abuse from continuing. The BSA didn’t even require adult volunteers to do something as basic as submitting a legal I.D., says Johnson, because of reasons of “inconvenience and cost.”
Then there’s Steve McGowan, former general counsel for the Boy Scouts of America from 2013 to 2022, who I’m sure had good intentions when he sat down for an interview but comes across almost as a sad parody of the classic deer-in-the-headlights subjects from programs such as “60 Minutes.” McGowan continually deflects, offering explanations such as, “I would tell you that we’re a microcosm of our entire society. If we had a problem, our society had a problem, many other institutions had a problem,” and, “The Boy Scouts of America did not abuse these kids. We had some bad people that got in.” Not helpful, sir.
After the breathtaking scope of the scandal was eventually made public and reached the courtrooms, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy, and the organization is expected to pay some $2.4 billion to sex abuse survivors. The BSA also instituted new measures such as background checks for all staff and volunteers, a ban on one-on-one interactions with children and mandatory training.
Long after watching “Scout’s Honor,” I felt the stories and heard the words of so many of these survivors; your heart goes out to them and you greatly admire them. Says Mark Eaton: “It took me until I was in my early 40s to realize I was a victim, and I hadn’t done something wrong,” while Tom Krumins says, “We want to feel like our voices are heard. We want to feel like there’s an opportunity to heal.” One hopes and prays this documentary gives Mark and Tom and all the survivors the feeling they ARE being heard, and they deserve every opportunity to heal. At the very damn least.
