DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - More than 800 people have joined a lawsuit filed against the Boy Scouts of America.
The Boy Scouts are headquartered in Irving; the lawsuit was filed in Philadelphia.
The suit accuses the Boy Scouts of failing to screen volunteers and hiding reports of sexual abuse.
"This was a massive problem that was successfully kept hidden from the very people who needed to know this, which was the children, the parents," says lawyer Tim Kosnoff.
Kosnoff and other lawyers started airing a commercial earlier this year, urging people to join the lawsuit. Several law firms are working together.
"There is a crisis in the Boy Scouts, and there has been for many years, many decades," says Stuart Eisenberg, who says many clients are in their 50s and 60s.
Lawyers say they hope the lawsuit will call attention to an organization that has "largely gone ignored" and is free from Congressional oversight.
Kosnoff called the Boy Scouts the "largest pedophile ring on Earth."
"The kind of numbers we're talking about now dwarf what we've seen in the Catholic Church cases," Kosnoff says.
Of the 800 people who have joined the suit, about 325 are from Texas.
The Boy Scouts have 20 days to respond to the lawsuit. The organization has previously stated that it apologizes to victims, has created programs for those victims and improved screening.