The Boy Scouts of America has turned over a trove of records that survivors of sexual abuse and their lawyers have long sought from the youth group, which emerged earlier this year from bankruptcy with a plan to pay roughly $2.4 billion to resolve more than 82,000 individual abuse claims, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The youth group last week provided the majority of the more than 7,766 records regarding so-called ineligible volunteers, maintained to keep sexual abusers out of its ranks, to a settlement trust that helps distribute payments to survivors. Most of the files haven’t previously been made available to claimants and their lawyers. “There are over 6,300 new ineligible volunteer files that I just got access to,” said Chris Hurley, a member of the settlement trustee’s advisory committee and a lawyer for sexual-abuse survivors associated with the Boy Scouts. Access to the records could strengthen victims’ cases against alleged perpetrators and help survivors decide whether to pursue independent reviews of their claims, which would cost them $20,000 each but potentially result in more compensation than other settlement options.
