A Case Study of the Perversion Files: An Application of Lanning and Dietz “Commonly Misunderstood Phenomena”

The fight against child sexual abuse has been hindered by the refusal of many public organizations to release information or to report allegations of misconduct. Brought to the public’s attention only when the accused is a well-known person, organizations designed to support children in many aspects of their lives have allowed for decades of abuse to go unchecked. In October of 2012, the Oregon Supreme court ordered the Boy Scouts of American (BSA) to release 14,500 pages of confidential files detailing sexual abuse allegations from 1959 to 1985. The so-called “perversion files” are the single largest collection of information on alleged perpetrators of sexual molestation against youth. The BSA data represented a unique opportunity to examine demographic information from a large sample of purported sexual offenders from across the country over a vast period of time. Additionally, the sexual offenders were not exclusively located in the criminal justice system since BSA officials referred only a small percentage of offenders to law enforcement. The study analyzed a random sample to ascertain description of the actions used by the individuals identified in the perversion files. These were then analyzed to explain why these individuals might have gone unnoticed or their actions unreported by the BSA volunteers.