BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - A law firm that's teamed up with the co-founder of New York Loves Kids, a group working to end child sexual abuse in New York State, releasing today Tuesday the names of more than 130-Boy Scout leaders who worked in the state and were included in the Boy Scouts of America's so-called "perversion files."
Lawyer Jeff Anderson, working with some alleged victims, says that the B-S-A has had an expert auditing those files for years and the expert has identified nearly 8,000 alleged child molesters in the files, which date back to the 1940's.
Anderson also says more than 12,200 victims are mentioned in those files. He accuses the scouting organization of keeping all of that information secret - that the B-S-A, in most cases, prevented the alleged molesters from serving as scout leaders but kept their identities secret, which allowed them to otherwise be involved in their communities.
The following scout leaders with ties to the Western New York community were named by Jeff Anderson & Associates as abusers with the Boy Scouts of America.