SCOUTS HONOR: THE SECRET FILES OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America, Netflix

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | September 6, 2023

Scandals emerge, make headlines, and are often forgotten. That seems to be what has happened with the revelation of tens of thousands of allegations of child sexual abuse leveled against the Boy Scouts of America across the country, aimed at various local leaders associated with the organization, which made assurances for decades that the safety of boys and teenagers was among its highest priorities. Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America dissects that awful problem, made possible by a series of systematic failings, but it also makes a convincing case that this is one scandal we shouldn't so soon forget.

If the issue of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts doesn't exist at the moment, it very well might happen again. That's the argument put forth by Michael Johnson, a retired police detective who spent the majority of his career investigating sexual crimes against children. More to the point of this case, though, Johnson was employed by the national office of the Boy Scouts for ten years, overseeing the organization's goal of protecting the children in its care.

He believed in that mission, obviously, and attempted to bolster the Boy Scouts' efforts as much as he could. People above him, though, either didn't appear to know or care that a very real problem existed and was continuing within the organization.

Johnson is one of the primary subjects of director Brian Knappenberger's documentary, which also interviews journalist Patrick Boyle, who literally wrote the book on this case, and various survivors of sexual abuse that was committed by local troop leaders. The stories are horrifying, not only because of the nature and severity of the crimes, but also because these men have spent decades in silence out of fear and shame.

The filmmakers may only speak to a few survivors, but their experiences reflect the more than 80,000 potential victims who have come forth since Boyle's revelations, a vital court case, and the Boy Scouts' subsequent filing for bankruptcy. Some of those stories reference other victims, who either haven't come forward or have died by suicide following their abuse. If the relatively miniscule collection of survivors within this film share such elements in common, imagine just how large the actual number of victims must be.

Such are the dreadful thoughts that this documentary demands us to consider, because it is so thorough in its investigatory work, so comprehensive in its history of both the Boy Scouts and in uncovering more cases than just ones we hear from survivors in front of the camera, and so compassionate in its approach to allowing these victims to be heard. Guiding us through that history is Boyle, who takes us through the Boys Scouts origins in 1910, inspired by a similar group in England that almost immediately had issues with abuse, to the height of its influence and impact on the country and culture.

Throughout that history, there have been cases of sexual abuse among the local groups of the Boy Scouts proper. These may look like isolated incidents on their own, but in showing them together and one after the other, it's much larger. What else is a series of isolated incidents, all of them sharing similar patterns and occurring within the same system, if not a systemic problem?

That's the obvious point both Boyle and Johnson make, albeit in slightly different ways. Boyle, having access to files that show the Boy Scouts should have been aware of countless cases and abusers from around the mid-point of the 20th century onward, presents the facts as he has discovered them in his research. Johnson was right there, from 2010 until 2020, in the head offices of the organizations, pointing out shortcomings in the Boys Scouts' screening process, which he says is useless to the point of it being essentially non-existent (at least while he was there), and noting how no one above him even seemed to be aware of the safety measures that were supposed to be in place, despite many of those leaders signing off on them.

Johnson charges that the Boy Scouts basically put him in his former position to sign off on such things, too, and to give the organization the veneer of toughness. He's angry, to say the least, but straight to the point and utterly convincing in his accusations. Meanwhile, Knappenberger also interviews Steve McGowan, who served as the primary legal advisor to the Boy Scouts around and beyond the same period as Johnson's tenure, and the differences between these two men and the cases they put forth couldn't be more striking.

Parroting the company line (The director puts up some matching text from the organization's official literature as the attorney speaks) and contradicting himself within sentences, McGowan is called a liar by Johnson at one point. As a reasonable person, this critic would like to offer the belief that Johnson's statement both appears to be a matter of opinion and, based on the evidence on display in this film and McGowan's presentation of his side of the case, could be perceived as accurate. McGowan does neither himself nor the Boy Scouts any favors in his interview.

The most vital takeaways of Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America, though, are Johnson's assertions that, despite the national spotlight on the organization in the aftermath of these revelations, little to nothing has changed and the stories of the survivors who do speak, have yet to, and who are now unable to do so. That spotlight, then, might have dimmed, but it's worth illuminating again.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products