Nov. 4, 2012
In scouts’ sex-abuse scandal, dark secrets for a model citizen
This article is based on the so-called “perversion files” that the Boy Scouts of America maintained for decades to identify scoutmasters and others accused of child molestation. The files were released to the public last month through a lawsuit filed by an Oregon man who said the scouts failed to protect him from sexual abuse. So far, files on 20 Georgia scout leaders have been released, and another 43 Georgia cases are expected to be made public soon.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution attempted to interview former scoutmaster Ernest Boland of Athens, as well as his lawyer. Neither responded to requests for an interview. Several former scout officials involved in Boland’s case declined to comment.
The newspaper is not identifying former scouts who say they were molested. The newspaper’s policy is to generally not name suspected victims of sex crimes.
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The investigation also documented a case that did not directly involve the scouts.
As scoutmaster, Boland apparently forged an unusual arrangement with law-enforcement officials: When boys in the community got into minor trouble with the law, he sometimes acted as an unofficial probation officer, counseling and supervising the boys to keep them out of juvenile court or jail.
Whether Boland brought any of these boys into scouting is not known.
One of the boys, now a 65-year-old man, was placed under Boland’s supervision after neighbors accused him of vandalism when he was 12 or 13, he recalled in an interview. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified publicly.
“For spite,” the man said, he grabbed laundry off the neighbors’ clothesline and hid it nearby. A few days later, he said, two police officers came to his house with a third man: Ernest Boland.Working with Boland, the officers said, would keep the boy out of jail.
“It was my first time ever getting in trouble,” the man said. “It was like probation.”
Soon, he joined other boys doing chores for Boland: cutting the grass on lots he owned or preparing buildings to be repainted. Often, the man said, boys ended up alone with Boland. That, he said, is when Boland threatened them with jail time if they didn’t perform sex acts.
“He would use that against us,” the man said. “He had what we did over our heads.”
Boland molested him two or three times, the man said, before he told his parents. They were angry, he said, but adamant that he keep quiet. “You’d be ridiculed,” they told him.
He never saw Boland again. Until recently, he didn’t know Boland was still living.
Regardless, half a century later, he struggles with shame over the traumas of his adolescence.
“I wish I hadn’t got in trouble,” he said. “None of that would be in my background. You do spiteful things, you get what you deserve.
“I forgive him for what he did. God tells us to. But that don’t mean you’ve got to like the person. It’s kind of hard to forget.”
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