Boy Scout Exec: Parents to Blame for Sleepovers

Parents 'negligent,' 'criminal' for allowing nights with Scoutmaster
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 2, 2010 7:13 AM CDT
Boy Scout Exec: Parents to Blame for Sleepovers
This undated image made available by the State of Oregon on March 18, 2010 shows Timur Dykes. Relying on about 1,000 confidential Boy Scouts of America files, the lawyer for a man sexually abused in the 1980s by Dykes, a Scout leader who later admitted to being a serial molester, claims the organization...   (AP Photo/State of Oregon)

The president of the Boy Scout council for the Portland area has testified he believes the parents of some Scouts were negligent and even criminal for allowing sleepovers that led to sex abuse. Eugene Grant told a jury in a $29 million sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts that parents should not have allowed boys to stay overnight with a single man at his apartment. "I just find it almost incomprehensible to think their children were going to be safe in that type of environment," Grant said.

The man, Timur Dykes, has admitted molesting the victim who filed the lawsuit and has been convicted of other sex abuse dating back to the early 1980s, when Dykes was an assistant Scoutmaster. During cross-examination by an attorney for the victim, Grant said yesterday it was not Boy Scouts policy to allow sleepovers, especially when they were unsupervised. "His parents should have known better," Grant said, referring to the parents of the victim. "I think it was criminal." But when about whether the Boy Scouts had any formal policy against sleepovers in the early 1980s, Grant replied, "At the time, no." Grant later said he believed that, at the very least, the parents were negligent. (More Boy Scouts of America stories.)

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