Anchorage man files sex abuse suit against Boy Scouts

An Anchorage man filed a lawsuit in state Superior Court Wednesday alleging he was sexually abused as a child in the 1970s by his Boy Scout leader, say his attorneys.

The lawsuit is against the Boy Scouts of America and the Boy Scout's Great Alaska Council. It says the man was abused by a scout leader named Dean Wendall You, who is listed on the Alaska sex offender registry for having been convicted of attempted sexual abuse of a minor in 1997, a separate case. You is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The Boy Scout Council released a statement saying it wouldn't comment on the lawsuit, but "the Boy Scouts of America is saddened by any incident of abuse, and we extend our sympathies to all such victims."

The statement said the Boy Scouts of America is continuing to improve youth-protection programs, including a prohibition of one-on-one contact between adults and scouts.

The man filing the lawsuit against the Boy Scouts is now in his 40s, and filed the case under a pseudonym, Barry Doe. One of his lawyers, Kelly Clark of Portland, Ore., says the man read about an abuse case against the Boy Scouts in Portland, and realized his situation was similar.

Clark was one of the attorneys in the Portland case, which ended last April with the jury ordering the Boy Scouts of America to pay a sexual abuse victim a total of about $20 million. Clark and his associate in Oregon argued in the Portland lawsuit that the Boy Scouts of America knew it had a problem with sexual abusers, but ignored the problem.

"The pattern that we saw in the Portland trial ... is the same pattern we saw here," Clark said Wednesday: a leader who had lots of one-on-one time with a scout, working on projects, often in the scout leader's home.

"This gentleman read about the trial there. He said, 'Holy cow, maybe this wasn't my fault,' " said Clark.

Clark and Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who is working with him, said the Anchorage victim was abused two different times when he was 10 or 11, while he was spending the night at the scout leader's home. The overnight event was supposedly to work on martial arts training and scout projects.

The man has suffered from long-term depression and has difficulty keeping up relationships, problems often associated with sexual abuse as a child, the lawyers said in a press release.

But he didn't begin to connect his adult problems with childhood abuse until about two years ago, the lawyers said.