The Boys Scouts and its New Mexico nonprofit organization are accused of allowing two priests to sexually abuse boys in a new lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, then-Catholic priests Robert Malloy and Ronald Bruckner, who served as scout leaders, participated in sex parties with children in the 1990s. The Boy Scouts allegedly knew the abuse was going on and did nothing to stop it.
“From at least the 1960s, if not earlier, (the Boy Scouts) knew that Scout Leader positions were being used by predatory child molesters to victimize children and that defendants had an institution-wide or systemic child abuse problems, but the Plaintiff’s family was never so informed,” the lawsuit says.
The priests made friends with the plaintiff in this lawsuit, who is now in his 40s, and convinced his family to allow them to spend substantial time alone with the boy. They even let the boy spend the night with the priests on camping trips.
The plaintiff said that the priests abused him during hiking and camping trips in the state, including Cochiti Lake and Jemez.
Chris Shelby, scout executive/CEO at the Great Southwest Council, said that the organization can’t discuss pending lawsuits.
“Youth protection is always our top priority, and nothing is more important than the safety of our youth members. One incident of child abuse is one too many. We care deeply about all victims of child sex abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed in our programs,” he added.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the Boy Scouts has been involved in a sexual abuse lawsuit. In June, four men filed a lawsuit in Stanford Superior Court, accusing the organization of allowing a scoutmaster to molest them in the 1970s.
Waldron Ackerman, a scoutmaster with Stamford Boy Scout Troop 38, allegedly abused the boys between 1974 and 1976 when he was alone with them for hours.
The lawsuit states the the Boy Scouts didn’t conduct background checks on volunteers, even though they knew scouting was a “pedaphile magnet.”
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