On their honor. LDS and Boys Scouts in Idaho

Ridenbaugh Press: "On their honor
On their honor


A few days ago, down below in this space, you may note this: "You get the sense that we're just on the verge of seeing a bunch of really ugly stories coming up on the subject of the Boy Scouts."

That was not really a guess, even though the point came from a look at organizational dynamics. A story from out of Idaho has been bewing for a while; today it surfaced, in the Idaho Falls Post Register, and it is explosive.

It evolved out of a shabby attempt at coverup - the disappearance of a whole civil suit court file, that action itself being the subject of some discussion of abuse of court process some weeks back. This might have been just an odd curiosity, but the few details which did surface - that it had to do with a child sex abuse case and that it related to the Boy Scouts - suggested that something much deeper and more damaging, something near the heart of the social, political and power structure of the area, was involved.

The bit of background to that conclusion is this: Nearly all Boy Scout activity in eastern Idaho (and a very large chunk in Idaho overall) is sponsored directly by the LDS Church, which is socially dominant in the region, and which has made scouting an official church activity since 1913. That means child abuse in the Boy Scouts in Eastern Idaho translates to child abuse under the umbrella of the LDS Church. Once journalists and others gained access to the court records, as they eventually did, the dots were almost sure to be connected.

And they have, in some alarming ways.

The Post-Register story (no direct link available) starts: "Paid professionals at the Grand Teton Council hired a child molester to work at Camp Little Lemhi even though they, the national Boy Scout office and troop sponsors in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were warned about Brad Stowell. Court records, which the Boy Scouts' lawyers fought to hide from public view, show the warnings might have been sufficient to disqualify Stowell from scouting six years before he was finally arrested."

Stowell was picked up for sex abuse (of a six-year-old) as a teenager, and his mother was well aware of it - she took him to rehabilitative treatment for months. But she also was long heavily involved in scouting, is in the regional council's Hall of Fame, and let her son take a job at a scout camp. Stowell's LDS bishop knew as well. But Stowell went on abusing. The story says he eventually confessed to molesting two dozen boys; ultimately, he was arrested after some of his victims complained directly - but that was after years of warnings to the adults yielded no results. This is a key point: None of those trustworthy and morally straight adults would act; it took the kids to do it.

The effort to bar Stowell from scouting activities apparently had been led before that by a Blackfoot man, Richard Scarborough, who pleaded with the national scout organization and his own church to keep Stowell away from the kids - to no avail. The response he got from the high offices of the LDS church raised a whole set of other questions, because officials there wrote back to note an investigation by the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare had determined no further action was needed.

The Post-Register noted, "It's unclear how church officials obtained the information because Idaho law prohibits Health and Welfare from releasing such details to private individuals or organizations, particularly in a case involving a juvenile."

As indicated, this case goes to the heart of the social-political-power structure in Idaho. (Should be noted that running the story at all constitutes an act of courage on the part of the Post Register.) On various levels, many people have been involved in what has happened, and only a few have been publicly named inthis first round. This story does not appear to be done.

Among the implications: Is it even conceivable that this is the only such case? Or that, with this one exposed, no one else (maybe in another state) will come forward to tell of another? Bear in mind what the Catholic Church has undergone in the last decade, and how all that started, and you can easily imagine - now - what may lie ahead. 02/28/05 11:42 [comment / reprint]