The Boy Scouts of America’s push to settle sex-abuse claims from 82,200 men has touched off lobbying campaigns by plaintiffs’ lawyers who disagree on whether victims should back a compensation plan that could be the organization’s ticket out of bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Abuse victims across the country are debating whether the $1.9 billion settlement offer is fair compensation for lives affected by childhood trauma, as lawyers on different sides of the issue have given conflicting information on what they can expect to receive. One group of lawyers told victims they could receive as much as $2.7 million for the worst abuses, while another estimated that the highest payout would be no more than $58,000. Mario Fernandez, who said he was abused more than 100 times by three different Boy Scout leaders when he was between 8 and 16 years old at a camp in New Jersey, is following his lawyers’ advice and plans to vote against the Scouts’ offer. The law firm representing Fernandez, Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala, set up a calculator on its website that shows the maximum that victims of the worst abuses — including repeated rapes — can expect to get is about $58,000. The calculator factors in the type of abuse suffered, with choices ranging from “non-touching” to “penetration,” and the state where the incidents occurred. The $2.7 million figure assumes that plaintiffs will get paid the full value of their claims, when in reality there is likely to only be enough money from settlements to date to pay at most 10% of the full value, Jason Amala of PCVA said.
