Boy Scouts of America Establishes Over $2 billion Trust to Compensate Sex Abuse Survivors

Director Irene Taylor accepts the 2023 duPont Silver Baton, flanked by partner Nigel Jaquiss and production team, along with a group of the film’s subjects - survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the Boy Scouts of America.

“Leave No Trace: A Hidden History of the Boy Scouts” is a 2023 duPont-winning documentary investigating the damage the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has done to thousands of boys through its century-long cover-up of sexual abuse within its own ranks. In the film, Pulitzer-winning journalist Nigel Jaquiss and director Irene Taylor also follow several former Boy Scouts in their journey towards healing and justice. 

The film tells the story of the biggest sexual abuse settlement in history. In February 2020, as the extent of this wrongdoing came to light and BSA was facing legal costs from hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits, the organization responded by filing for bankruptcy. BSA was already dealing with declining membership at the time, and said it likely would not survive if it didn’t resolve the lawsuits in bankruptcy.

Since then, over 82,000 men have stepped forward with claims of sexual abuse, exposing the failure of BSA to protect their young Scouts - and leading to a massive settlement.

In April, the Boy Scouts announced they were exiting bankruptcy and establishing the $2.4 billion fund to equitably compensate survivors. Roger Mosby, Boy Scouts of America CEO, said in a statement that their court-ordered reorganization plan was supported by more than 85% of the survivors involved in the case.

“Our hope is that our Plan of Reorganization will bring some measure of peace to survivors of past abuse in Scouting, whose bravery, patience and willingness to share their experiences has moved us beyond words,” Mosby said.

The news is “a very important step.” Jaquiss told us. “The best bankruptcy lawyers in the country were trying to help the Boy Scouts and the insurers avoid liability… but it's still an incremental step to actually getting money into survivors' hands.” 

Under the plan, individual survivors may be compensated between $3,500 to $2.7 million depending on the details of the alleged abuse. When the news of the plan was announced in April, there was talk of additional steps to distribute the funds taking months.  Jaquiss suspects it will be years.

A team of two retired judges are now slated to re-examine all the claims. 

“There are about 7,000 survivors who agreed to take the absolute minimum settlement, which was $3,500,” Jaquiss explained. “That'll happen pretty quickly. And then they have to sort through the remaining more than 70,000 claims and verify them so they can't be accused of paying fraudulent or bogus claims.”

Jaquiss stresses the importance of not just the money but of new protocols the BSA announced that would serve as barriers to abuse. This includes background checks and training for volunteers and employees, education to help children understand and recognize abuse, and a policy banning one-on-one interactions with children.

When BSA was founded over a century ago, the group presented itself to parents as a bastion of wholesome American values with powerful allies like Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. They also commissioned beloved American artist Norman Rockwell to help equate the scouts with a virtuous depiction of boyhood. A former scout himself, Jaquiss says this image helped the organization convince parents that being a scout would be good for their son.

In the film, director Irene Taylor talks to six survivors, five of whom are speaking publicly about their abuse for the first time. They show how the organization’s culture enabled predatory behavior from scout leaders by training young boys to be obedient and isolating them outdoors with little adult supervision.

“Leave No Trace” also discusses the “perversion files,” where BSA collected information about abuse almost since its inception in the early part of the 20th century, proving undeniably that the organization knew about these crimes, further enabling them.  Perpetrators were sometimes shuffled elsewhere in the organization, but otherwise BSA took no action on the abuse they knew was happening.

For more behind the scenes on this subject and the making of “Leave No Trace,” listen to Director Irene Taylor’s conversation with Prizes Executive Director Abi Wright and duPont Director Lisa Cohen for our On Assignment podcast episode here. You can stream “Leave No Trace” on Hulu, here.