By Bob Allen
A retired Baptist state convention executive says formerly confidential files detailing decades of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America reflect the ethos of a time before mandatory reporting, when a common approach was to deal with child molesters behind the scenes.
“In those days, this was a no-no in terms of publicizing it,” James Griffith, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention from 1981 until retirement in 1993, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a story about one of 1,247 scout leaders accused of sexual abuse between 1965 and 1985 in 15,000 pages of documents nicknamed the organization’s “perversion files.”
Ernest Boland, whose file alleges that he molested a dozen or more boys between the 1950s and the 1970s, was a member of the church where Griffith served as pastor when Boland’s name was added to the confidential list of ineligible Boy Scout volunteers in June 1977.
Griffith, pastor at Beech Haven Baptist Church in Athens, Ga., for 14 years, said he heard reports of Boland’s sexual transgressions in the mid-1970s. “It was suspected, but there was not much done about it,” he told the newspaper.
Griffith said nobody in the church discussed reporting Boland to the police or even telling the scouts’ parents.
Griffith said he never confronted Boland directly but asked a church deacon and a lawyer from the congregation to speak to the scoutmaster of the troop, sponsored by Beech Haven Baptist Church.
“That took care of it,” Griffith said. “These two men said, ‘We will handle this.’ They both were capable and it was under their authority. I did not get into it. It’s the kind of thing that can tear up your church. A wise pastor certainly will not do anything to hurt the entire congregation.”
According to his file, Boland, a business owner prominent in his community, was accused of molesting a scout between 1961 and 1963 while scoutmaster of Troop 22 at First Baptist Church of Athens. By the time the alleged victim reported the abuse to a psychiatrist years later, Boland had resigned as scoutmaster of Troop 22 and after two years of inactivity organized Troop 2 at Green Acres Baptist Church.
When the accusations against Boland were made, the troop committee at Green Acres determined to request his resignation as scoutmaster, but before the committee could act he resigned giving health reasons, and the matter was dropped.
For three years Boland approached the Boy Scouts Northeast Georgia Council about organizing a new troop. When Boland finally asked an official point-blank if his name was on the confidential list, the leader discouraged him from being a scoutmaster but admitted there was nothing he could do to prevent his registration.
Boland immediately organized Troop 3 at Beech Haven Baptist Church, where he was a longtime member, in the fall of 1975. The following April, a father of an alleged victim came to the scout office with reason to believe that Boland had abused as many as a dozen boys, but in every case parents determined not to come forward because of potential harm to their sons who were by then adults with families.
After contacting the national office for advice on how to proceed, a regional official met with Griffith in March 1997. That discussion uncovered additional facts. Boland had been keeping an apartment away from his residence and without knowledge of his family, allegedly for the purpose of being with male companions. While at Army Reserve training the previous year, he had provided airline tickets for two scouts, both from broken homes, to fly to Maryland to spend the week with him in a motel.
Following the investigation, the official asked Boland to resign as scoutmaster without bringing any accusations against him. Boland did not respond immediately, but the next day he wrote a resignation letter saying he needed to devote more time to his business.
The incident was never publicized in Athens, where Boland was respected as a colonel in the Army Reserve, a Rotarian active in community and civic organizations and a 25-year scoutmaster who guided dozens of scouts to win the Eagle award, and whose troop was once written up in Boy’s Life magazine.
Now 88, retired from his pest-control business and confined to a wheelchair, Boland declined through his family’s attorney to comment about the allegations in the Boy Scout file.
Griffith said he never heard more claims of sexual misconduct involving Boland.
“I think Ernest tried to do better when he knew he was caught,” Griffith said. “I really think he did.”
The files were made public Oct. 18, by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, at the request of news organizations including the Oregonian newspaper, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the New York Times and the Associated Press.
They are published on the website of Kelly Clark, a Portland attorney who represented six former scouts awarded $1.4 million in general damages and $18.5 million in punitive damages by a jury in 2010.