Dangerous Child Predator

No, of course it's not just priests, teachers, sport coaches - people who are held by society to respect their positions of trust over young people who prey on children who breach that trust. It's scout leaders too, of course. No mystery there, hasn't it always been known?

What perhaps hasn't always been known is the backup protection by those who should be responsible for oversight, and ensuring that nothing untoward occurred between the trusted adult and the trusting child. Keeping these truly annoying, irritating peccadilloes under wraps. Lest their own judgement be questioned, lest the Scout movement itself be placed under an unfortunate veil of suspicion.

Suspicions are merely that. Without proof to substantiate suspicions, well, they're in the category of ill-judged rumours. Best brushed aside. Why be unfair to someone who so plainly is attempting to do something good for his community? People are always digging up imagined smutty occurrences for the purpose of gossip and cheap thrills.

But there were pedophiles among the trusted volunteers. So much for due diligence and having background checks routinely commissioned. Where there were rumours there were likely nasty-minded, suspicious old biddies intent on getting a fellow into trouble with the law. In the best interests of young boys, the scouting experience was crucial, and the decision would always be to carry on.

But really, how obvious does it have to be before someone becomes alarmed, involved, and gets to the bottom of things? Someone who had been convicted once of kidnapping a boy, had served time in a state hospital as a "mentally disordered sex offender", given opportunities to continue preying in his position of permitted trust?

Even when someone on the inside of the Scouts movement had her suspicions, they were tamped down, went no further. Because this fellow, Richard Turley, who had cut a swath through Scouts groups in California and British Columbia, for years preying on vulnerable boys was held to be a "wonderfully involved scout leader".

It's only dirty minds that think simply because he invites boys to his home and for 'unauthorized' camping trips, that he might have something sinister in mind. Finally the man was courteously permitted to volunteer under another leader's supervision. Who had been instructed that he was never to be alone with any of the boys. And that made it all right.

"I was shocked they would give him another chance, but they explained they had no grounds to stop it. It was just hearsay."