Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-host: Gerardo Sumano · Guest: Tim Kosnoff
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introducing the Episode and Guest
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's August 12, 2022. We are here in studio with Gerardo.
Tim Kosnoff [00:00:09] Hey, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:00:10] Hey, John.
John Dehlin [00:00:10] You tired yet?
Gerardo Sumano [00:00:12] No, I'm ready to keep going.
John Dehlin [00:00:14] We are smack dab in the middle, or late middle, of what we hope is an epic series on abuse in the Mormon Church. It was kicked off this round. We've covered this for years and years and years. But the most recent round of discussion started from an Associated Press that was released last week about a case in Arizona that also referenced the case in West Virginia and even a spurious case in Oregon. But I guess Mormon sexual abuse and the Mormon Church sexual abuse hotline is in the news again. And because all of a sudden that makes a lot of people care about it, we decided to jump in and really do some deep dives in ways that we never have before because these are super important issues that affect thousands, if not tens of thousands of Mormons past, present, and future. Because abuse seems to be way too common within the Mormon context. And so we're reporting on it. We have already done an intro episode, sharing an episode with Gina Colvin and attorney Tim Koznoff kind of about the history of the Mormon Church and sexual abuse litigation. We also interviewed a new friend of ours, Brenton, an attorney here in Utah, where we kind of dug deep into the hotline and the AP article. The AP story in Arizona and the church's response we dug into tonight. Yesterday. Today we spent two or three wonderful hours with attorney Tim Koznoff talking about the history of the hotline and his experience litigating sexual abuse cases within Mormonism that we consider Tim to be a legend over the past several decades as one of the world's leaders in litigating against religions and specifically the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America as it relates to sexual abuse and cover ups. And so, Tim, we're so thrilled to have you back for the second part today on Mormon Stories. Welcome back.
Tim Kosnoff [00:02:03] Thank you. Thank you for having me.
John Dehlin [00:02:05] Yeah. And we decided that for the second part of our interview with Tim today, we were going to be focusing on the Boy Scouts of America and their history of supporting maybe unintentionally or intentionally. We can see sexual abuse amongst the Boy Scouts for decades. And we're going to talk about the long, close, cozy relationship between the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts that that culminated in massive reports of sexual abuse throughout, at least emerging significantly in the 80s and 90s and 2000s, but culminating in the bankruptcy of the Boy Scouts of America and the unfathomable disaffiliation between the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America that used to consider formally the Boy Scouts of America as their official young men's program. And then all of that leading to recently the Mormon Church agreeing in some sort of settlement, which we'll Discuss, to offer $250 million as part of a settlement for a larger billion dollar settlement with a bunch of insurance companies around claims by victims against the Boy Scouts and their affiliates. So that's a preview of what we're going to be talking about today. And I'm just going to, I'm going to start out with something that I don't think you know. Tim Harado, I don't know if you know this, but, but my father admitted to me he was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He's 88 now. He admitted to me just in the past few years that when he was a Boy scout in the 1950s here in Salt Lake City, he was sexually abused by a Boy Scout leader. And so this is an issue that's actually very personal to me as well because my, my dad, I hope he doesn't hear this. Well, I, I don't think he would mind me saying it. He listens to Mormon stories. We're close. But, but my dad was sexually abused in a Boy Scout con, Mormon Boy Scout context. So that's my best shot at a quick introduction or maybe a not so quick introduction. Tim Koznoff, welcome back to Mormon Stories.
Tim Kosnoff [00:04:16] Well, thank you for having me. And I'm sorry that happened to your father, but I'm, I'm happy to hear that he disclosed it to you even all these years later. And it's an all too common experience that I've had. Currently, along with two other law firms, I'm representing 17,000 men who were abused in Scouting against the Boy Scouts of America in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy, which also involves sponsoring organizations like the Mormon Church and others. And our team, we gave ourselves a name for marketing purposes when we began advertising back in 2019. Abused in Scouting AIs. And we can talk more about that later. But we have clients age 7 to 93, so this is a wound that lasts a lifetime. And sadly, we've lost many of our elderly clients to time and they passed before they got a chance to see any justice in this Boy Scouts case. But yeah, that aside, thank you for sharing that and thank your dad for unloading that with you. Doesn't surprise me with what I know. And I think even though there were 82,500 men who came forward and filed claims in the Boy Scouts bankruptcy, I believe that there were millions that did not come forward.
John Dehlin [00:06:04] Millions, yes. That's a large number.
Tim Kosnoff [00:06:06] And I can explain that. It sounds hyperbolic, but I can give you the numbers and tell you why I think that's true. But anyway, maybe.
John Dehlin [00:06:16] Maybe a really good place to start. Let's just follow a timeline if you want to talk about. I don't know how much you know about the actual beginning of the Boy Scouts, but at a minimum, I know you can talk about the beginning of the affiliation between the Boy Scouts and the Mormons.
How Tim Kosnoff Entered Boy Scout Abuse Litigation
Tim Kosnoff [00:06:29] Well, let me do this. Let me talk about how I came into to this, and then we can talk about my sort of journey of discovery in this. And it actually began with the Mormon Church and the. The Jeremiah Scott case. We talked about this morning. Frank Curtis, this violent criminal who abused Jeremiah Scott. I use his name because he used his name and authorized me to use his name. He was abused by Frank Curtis. There were other men that subsequently came forward and were abused by Frank Curtis, scoutmaster of an LDS ward in the Portland east stake in the 1980s. So that got me thinking about the connection between the Boy Scouts and the Mormon Church and how it was that somebody like Frank Curtis, who multiple bishops, stake presidents, knew, had a history of child rape, could be placed in a position of leadership in Scouting over boys who he would take back to his apartment under the auspices of merit badge training or whatever and perform hideous acts of sexual abuse on them. So I found a book that had been written in 1993, which was very influential to me. It was not very successful. One edition didn't sell very well. It was called Scouts Honor Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution by an author named Patrick Boyle. And Patrick, at that time was a young reporter with the Washington Times newspaper in Washington, D.C. and he was covering a trial in Virginia outside of Washington, a civil trial involving the Boy Scouts in a sexual abuse case. And he wondered how common this was. So he kind of took the idea away for a future book project. And this was in the 80s, and then in the early 90s, he decided to pursue this as a book project. And he. He found a lawyer in Sacramento named Michael Rothschild. And Michael Rothschild had a case of a boy who was abused in Scouting. And he filed a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts. And as plaintiff's lawyers, do they want to recruit? They request in discovery that the defendant produce files on any similar incidents, he didn't know the extent of the problem, but it's something you would do if you were handling a case involving the negligent, Negligent design of a highway. You'd want to know how many accidents there were at that curve in the past and so forth, because it demonstrates the risk, the knowledge and so forth of the occurrence that allegedly could have been prevented but for the negligence. So Rothschild requested these documents. The Boy Scouts came back. They produced a minimal number of files. He took some discoveries, some depositions, discovered that those weren't all the files, and the organization produced some more files. And he took some more discovery and discovered that they still hadn't produced all the files. So he brought a motion to compel, and the court ordered the Boy Scouts to produce the remainder of the files. At that time, they were called the ineligible volunteer files. And these were files of the Boy Scouts of America, which reflected that they had removed these individuals from scouting for sexual abuse, in some cases, other reasons, but that was predominantly it. And they were keeping records of their experience of sexual abuse in scouting that would be sent in from district executives from local councils around the country. And they were kept at a central storage room at headquarters in Irving, Texas, before that in Brunswick, New Jersey. And once again, despite the court's order, the Boy Scouts did not fully comply. So he went. Rothschild went back to court. This time the judge was very angry and ordered the Boy Scouts to turn over all their files within three days. And the Boy Scout lawyers said, but, judge, that won't give us time to redact them. There's names of victims and perpetrators in there. He said, no, it's too late. You're going to produce all these files unredacted, and you're going to give them to this lawyer. There were roughly 2,000 of these files, and he had them. The Boy Scouts settled that case with Mr. Rothschild shortly thereafter. And he had all these file boxes of these files. So Mr. Boyle, who wrote the book, found out about it, asked if he could copy those files, and Rothschild said, yeah, sure, fine. And so he copied them, went on to write his book. And it was a very. A very insightful book, ahead of its time, or rather, the public was behind the time. But in any event, it just was just out there. I found a used copy on ebay and read it cover to cover, marked it up, and I said, so I contacted Rothschild and I asked him if I could have access to those files. And he said, well, I destroyed them. I said, oh, oh, no. He said, well, But Patrick Boyle, this author, has these files. So I called him up in Washington D.C. and introduced myself and told him I was interested in getting access to these files and did he still have them. And he said, well, it's interesting that you called because my wife and I are having a second child and, and they're filling up our spare bedroom, which we need for a nursery. So I was going to have them shredded and I said, no, no, no, no, please don't do that. I said, I'll make you a deal. I'm going to hire a company to bring out two high speed scanners, set them up in that room, and they're going to scan all those files and when we're done, we'll have a digitized version on a disk and you'll have a copy and I'll have a copy, and then you can destroy these files. He said, okay, fine. So I had the only surviving copy, aside from Mr. Boyle, who was done with them, of the unredacted Boy Scout ineligible volunteer files, which spanned a period of time of roughly 1971 to 1991. So this is before I even had a Boy Scout client. So I undertook to review all these and to abstract the information onto spreadsheets and analyze it. Eventually I did get some clients and Boy Scout clients came to me and we litigated and resolved those cases pretty impressively with the Boy Scouts in Washington State. And so after about five or six years, the Boy Scouts appealed, or rather challenged our legal theories on the grounds that they couldn't be held liable for sexual abuse because they didn't have custody and control of the Scouts or the troop. They didn't select the Scout leader. They didn't. They weren't in control of the Scout camp or the outings. They simply provided the program materials. Scouting was actually carried out at the local level by the sponsoring organization, the local troop or the local council. So if you can't demonstrate that BSA had custody and control, then they can't be held liable. So that was a precedent that basically sort of ended what we could do against the Boy Scouts of America in Washington State. There were other cases around the country, a few, and there was one case down in Oregon that led to an $18 million verdict around 2012. But at least in Washington, we had this bad legal precedent. We could pursue the sponsoring organization, and we did. And we were able to settle cases, for example, against the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, because they were the sponsoring organization, it was their troop and they were liable. So this is about the time I was contemplating winding down my practice and retiring. I was in my 60s and I'd always had a dream of living on a sailboat and sailing around. So I did that, continued to work on cases, but I wasn't taking on new cases. And I had set. December 31, 2018 is my retirement day. That after that I was no longer practicing law. Well, about three weeks before that, I was reading the Wall Street Journal and there was an article about how the Boy Scouts, because they were facing two or 300 lawsuits involving sexual abuse and their insurers were not agreeing to pay, that they were considering chapter 11 bankruptcy. Well, I had read all these files and I knew the extent, I realized the extent of the problem. And they thought two or 300 cases was what it at issue. I mean, I thought there were tens of thousands of victims out there. And so I couldn't believe that they would be so foolish as to actually file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But they did.
The Mormon Church's Role in Boy Scouts
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:30] Do you know, Tim, if by this point the Mormon Church was with. Had planned to withdraw from the Boy Scouts or was. Or. Or was this after they planned for bankruptcy?
Tim Kosnoff [00:17:42] I. I believe it was in the works. I don't know when it was officially announced, but I. The. I believe the church saw this coming and particularly once they saw that the Boy Scouts were going to go into bankruptcy, they pulled the plug. But the church had objections to the liberalization of Scouting, the admission of girls, LGBT people. Yeah. Gay leadership and other social issues. And the church had always been really sort of a problematic outlier within scouting because the Boy Scouts had implemented a sexual abuse education program to be administered in all the troops at the orientation meetings in the fall. And it was developed by an expert back east named Dr. Finkelhoer, who was an expert in child sexual abuse. And he produced these materials and a little video. And it was called the three Recognize, Resist and Report. Recognize the Abuse, Resist it and Report It. And then there was a little video that was shown to scouts and you know, it was an abuser can be your dad's best friend, can be a fireman or a policeman, and you know, it would show these situations where the adult in the scenario was grooming the boy for abuse and so forth, and how the boy demonstrate how the boy reacted properly by resisting reporting and so forth. The interesting thing about that was that there was no mention of Scouting or that an abuser could be a Scout leader, even though the Scouts developed the training. Correct. When I got the 2000 files from Boyle and went through them, I calculated just by going through Them that a new file was being opened up once every three days that the Boy Scout national was kicking out an adult leader for sexual abuse at the rate of one every three days.
John Dehlin [00:19:59] Well, this 100 a year.
Tim Kosnoff [00:20:01] Yeah, this. After this three Rs program was implemented, it actually had a pretty good effect because boys reported in increasing numbers and it went from one every two days where it was reporting. Interesting thing about this three hours program was it was a directive from BSA national that is a condition of your charter. You know you have to use our program materials, including this. The Mormon Church said no matters of a sexual nature are the exclusive province of the church. And we will not allow these materials to be distributed or this video to be shown in Mormon Church sponsored wards or Mormon Church troops, which is every ward in North America. 10,000 I believe.
John Dehlin [00:21:09] Now we haven't yet talked about kind of the forging of that relationship and how close it was. But that's. And I hope we cover that. But that's shocking news that when the Boy Scouts of America was trying to implement or implemented sexual abuse trading that the Mormon Church resisted it.
Tim Kosnoff [00:21:30] That's correct. And I will circle back and we'll go back to the beginning. The early history is interesting, but this statistic will tell you about. All you need to know is that the Mormon Church was the largest sponsoring organization of scouting in the country. Roughly 35 to 40% of all Scout troops were sponsored by the Mormon Church. It was almost obligatory from what I'm told from Mormon boys that even if they didn't want to be in scouting, the pressure was yeah, you're going to be in scouting. It was the exclusive youth activity in the Mormon Church for boys, which is different than it was elsewhere where it was voluntary. Boys could sign up at school and they didn't have to. They paid or their parents paid the registration fees in the Mormon Church. All of the fees, all of the dues were paid by the Mormon Church for every Scout troop, every ward in America. Why is this important? Well, because it gave the Mormon Church outsize influence on the national organization. And they would emphasize this point every year because somebody from the presidency would personally deliver the check for tens of millions of dollars to Boy Scout headquarters as registration fees for all. However number 400,000 boys enrolled in Scouting and Mormon Church troops around the country.
John Dehlin [00:23:22] So Gordon B. Hinckley or Thomas S. Monson in the Mormon Church First Presidency would hand deliver the check every year as a way to say, don't forget where your bread is butter.
Tim Kosnoff [00:23:32] Who's your daddy? Yeah, and it's also seen if you go back and look during these years of the composition of the members of the national board. It's like a who's who of Mormonism, General authorities, important private individuals, LDs in corporate America and so forth. But the power and influence of the Mormon Church in the Boy Scouts of America was really unmistakable. And they got their way in a lot of ways. We've talked about one. Another example is the Boy Scouts of America received a charter from Congress
John Dehlin [00:24:16] in
Tim Kosnoff [00:24:16] roughly 1916, a congressional charter that gave them the exclusive right to the name and emblems Boy Scouts of America. The symbols, the fleur de lis and all of that. And these were very powerful intellectual property items which the Boy Scouts of America was very good at monetizing through equipment, merit badge uniforms that brought in a lot of income. And they also got a lot of perks from the federal government. Throughout the federal code are code provisions that would give stuff to the organization. Free access to military equipment, free access to national parklands. They could issue commemorative coins and keep the profit on things like that. So there was always this very cozy relationship between the federal government and the Boy Scouts of America and the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church was the first chartering organization that Boy Scouts national ever signed up. In fact, the whole concept that the Boy Scouts would use their rights under this charter granted exclusively to them by an act of Congress signed by the President of the United States would enable them to then franchise, if you will, the same thing to different. And so they set up local councils under chartering agreements. These were independently incorporated. They used the Boy Scouts under the contract, the chartering agreement. Same thing with sponsoring organizations. Within this bankruptcy, there are 65,000 chartering organizations who will be getting a release if this plan is approved. It's just about every church civic organization, pta, you name was massive. At one time the Boy Scouts of America had somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 million boys. And they estimate that this was 30 years ago, that at one time or another 125 million boys were either members or participated in Boy Scout sponsoring organization. Boy Scouts sponsored activities, camps, jamborees, hikes, and so on and so forth. And the church was also recognized the marketing value, marketing missionary value of scouting to if you can interest boys into joining the ward's scout troop, maybe they will convert and maybe they'll bring their parents with them, that, that kind of thing. So I'd never thought of that before,
John Dehlin [00:27:27] but that makes perfect sense.
Tim Kosnoff [00:27:29] So, so, so they, they definitely saw that as a proselytizing opportunity, as well, we were talking about the, the symbols and the emblems. One of the things that struck me because there have been lawsuits that the boy scouts of America have brought at various times over the years when somebody or some organization infringed on those trademarks, the fleur de lis, the other symbols, they would jump on them with a cease and desist letter in a New York second if they didn't stop using it. But the Mormon church put the angel moroney on their BSA messages. Now the Catholic church didn't get to put the cross on it. The Mormons were the only organization that got to cross brand, visibly basically violate the brand and so forth.
Mormon Influence in Washington and BSA Politics
John Dehlin [00:28:29] So 40% has its privileges.
Tim Kosnoff [00:28:31] It has its privileges, absolutely. So, so they go back to the very beginning and can I just say
John Dehlin [00:28:39] like, like Mormons represent less than 1% of the u. S. Population. So 40% is a massive multiple of influence relative to actual population representation.
Tim Kosnoff [00:28:53] Well, not, not to go sideways here, but look at Mormon representation in Congress.
John Dehlin [00:29:00] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [00:29:00] Or in state legislatures, or in state and local government. I mean it's way outsize the population of Mormons in the country.
John Dehlin [00:29:08] Even corporate CEOs and corporate CEOs.
Tim Kosnoff [00:29:11] But you know, this is also not an accident. This is something that was, has strongly been encouraged by the leadership of the church for years.
John Dehlin [00:29:20] Also dentist and orthodontist. But that's. Now we're really going sideways.
Tim Kosnoff [00:29:24] Yeah. So I mean they've risen to the heights, almost captured the presidency may yet again, you know, you know, Senate leadership, you know, how many in the senate, how many in congress and so forth.
John Dehlin [00:29:43] So Senate majority leader was Harry Reid.
Tim Kosnoff [00:29:46] Right.
John Dehlin [00:29:46] You know, yeah. Mitt Romney was Republican nominee. Yeah, it's, it's, we arrived the kind of 2010s was the arrival of Mormons basically.
Tim Kosnoff [00:29:55] Yeah, absolutely. And while I'm no fan of Mitt Romney, I actually would have liked to take my vote for Obama back and you know, I don't know what I've done with it. But nevertheless, they have power, they have influence. And I experienced that firsthand for the first time. This is a segue in the Scott case where we were in mediation for three days with a federal judge in Eugene, Oregon and we'd been sent there by our trial judge who we were just, we were about ready to go in and she was going to have to rule on whether we could request punitive damages. She knew clearly we had a right to. And there was just this brass knuckle pressure from this federal judge to settle this case. And I didn't Understand it until later, except when I learned that this state court trial judge had ambitions to be a federal judge and there was a seat opening up in Portland and she wanted it. The problem is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee was Orrin Hatch and she had to get past him. She first had to even be nominated by the senior senator from Oregon whose name escapes me now, but he was also lds. So this is, you know, part of the power structure. And I encountered it and you encounter it, you know, you don't have to go to Utah or Idaho or a lot of these places. I mean the church can exert this power everywhere and they do when pressed. But anyways, back to the Boy Scouts. So it's now December 2019 and I see what they're planning on doing. What they want to do is they want to go into bankruptcy quick and dirty, have a short claims notice period so that victims have a very short period of time to come forward and file their claims. And if they don't file by X date, then their claims were barred forever. And then they were hoping to basically use their insurance and whatever cash they might have. You know, they probably thought they might have as many as 5,000 claims. And so I got together with a law firm in Philadelphia that I'd worked with and I said, look, this is what they're planning on doing and they're going to screw all these men and we've got to stop them. So they said, okay, so let's joint venture. And I said, this is a national outreach. I don't know how to do that. I've never done television advertising. They said, well, we know somebody who's pretty good at it and he produces these television ads and so forth. So we contacted him and he joined us and he has contacts with cable operators and Dish and so forth and he'd buy up remnant time and so forth. And we, I don't know, I think I put up four or five hundred thousand dollars. And so we started running these commercials and they were, you know, these, these ads. Have you been abused in scouting? Your time to come forward is short. You know, please contact us at abused and scouting this phone number and so forth. And you know, it might be 2:00am and you know, Andy Griffith or you know, Hogan's Heroes or you know, you know, where you can, you know, you can run a 32nd piece for 20 bucks, you know. And it started to work. Initially it was slow. I think we started in February of 2019. By August we had 800 clients. And by a year from the following November, which is when the claims bar deadline expired. We had 17,000. But there were other law firms that saw what we were doing and jumped in and they started copycatting our ads. And so ultimately there were 82,000 or 80, 84,000 claims that were filed by men alleging that they were abused in Scouting. Wow.
The Boy Scouts' Path to Bankruptcy
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:32] And they were planning to go bankrupt with like couple hundred.
Tim Kosnoff [00:34:36] Right. That, that's, that was a, that was a big mistake by the lawyer that advised the Boy Scouts of America that they should file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. There's, there's a saying about bankruptcy. It's the cockroach Motel. Easy to get in, hard to get out. And I think this case has demonstrated that the Boy Scouts, I mean, I knew there would be more than 3,000. I didn't know there'd be 84,000. But once that number came in, you know, they were finished. So they have spent the last two and a half years, they've burned through probably $2 billion in cash trying to get out of bankruptcy. Many of these law firms, these Johnny come lately that jumped in, were not sexual abuse attorneys. They were mass tort lawyers who, you know, whatever the mass tort du jour is, they jump into it, whether it's, you know, opioids or hot coffee spill at McDonald's, you know, army earplugs and so forth. And they just, they have no commitment to the clients or the case. But they figured out a way to basically jam these insurance companies and these, these institutional defendants in these mass tort personal injury product liability cases and, you know, make a fortune for very little work. And they came in and basically hijacked the case. I was a sort of lone wolf in the wilderness saying, the Boy Scouts of America have been on the road to perdition for 70 years and they have arrived and they belong in hell and they don't deserve a second chance. And they've had second and third chances and fourth chances. They are a menace and they need to be ended. That's how you make kids safe. But these other lawyers and interests didn't have a way to run their scheme if it didn't include the Boy Scouts of America and getting them a discharge. The plan is, it is almost too complex to describe. It is probably the Most complex Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan in history. It seeks not only a discharge and bankruptcy for the Boy Scouts of America, but all 285 local councils and upwards of 65,000 chartering organizations and an untold hundreds of thousands of individuals in those organizations who would be released under this bankruptcy.
John Dehlin [00:37:32] Released meaning exonerated.
Tim Kosnoff [00:37:34] Released meaning they can't be sued. And most of them are not contributing anything to the fund. Currently there is.
John Dehlin [00:37:43] What do you mean to the fund?
Tim Kosnoff [00:37:45] The settlement fund.
John Dehlin [00:37:46] Okay.
Tim Kosnoff [00:37:47] The Boy Scouts were able to cobble together a few hundred million from a couple of local councils from their own. And the two major insurance companies, Chubb and. And the Hartford combined, kicked in 1.6 billion. So the total fund as it stands now is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.9 billion.
John Dehlin [00:38:09] Can we back up and explain? Well, first of all, just a couple quick questions.
Tim Kosnoff [00:38:13] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:38:13] How wealthy was the Boy Scouts of America? Do you know? At its peak in terms of total assets and. Or annual revenues. And I don't even expect you to know this, but if you do, that'd be cool to know.
Tim Kosnoff [00:38:25] Sure. Well, even five, six years ago, they were the most wealthy, not for profit organization in the United States.
John Dehlin [00:38:36] So no United way, Salvation army without being religious.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:41] Right.
Tim Kosnoff [00:38:41] Yeah. Well, period. Well, of course. I. Churches don't have to file nine 90s.
Gerardo Sumano [00:38:53] Right.
Tim Kosnoff [00:38:54] But other, you know, secular do. So I mean, it'd be great if the Mormon Church was required to file a Form 990, and then we'd know what their assets are. But they're exempt because they're a religious right? Non. For profit. But membership has been declining steadily for 20 years, 25 years. I'm told the peak was somewhere in the late 60s, early 70s. And today kids have so many other interests, particularly with the Internet and gaming and everything else. Scouting just doesn't have the allure that it might have had at one time. They had at the outset of the case, BSA national, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 to $2 billion in cash. They also had a payroll of 6,000 people. People. Their top four jointly were paid, I don't know, two or $3 million in salary and benefits.
Gerardo Sumano [00:40:05] Wow.
Tim Kosnoff [00:40:07] And it was really a boondoggle for the insiders.
John Dehlin [00:40:12] How much again? How much is that?
Tim Kosnoff [00:40:13] Well, the. The Chief Scout made 1.8 and then. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:40:21] A year.
Tim Kosnoff [00:40:21] His dep. Yeah. By comparison, the CEO of Girl Scouts of America makes 250,000.
John Dehlin [00:40:28] Right.
Tim Kosnoff [00:40:29] So plus there were perks and boondoggles and people would, you know, insiders would tell me that, you know how they abused this. They took their wives on first class trips with them to business meetings, you know, private planes and so forth.
John Dehlin [00:40:47] And I even remember hearing that these local councils had leadership that was almost. Some of these positions were doled out as a form of patronage by, you know, organizations like the Mormon Church, where There'd be a council head that would make two or three hundred thousand dollars a year. Some Mormon, Mormon guy that the church appointed. And he would have this cushy long term job and probably multiple instances of that sort of more local council administrative duties that are multiple six figure jobs.
Tim Kosnoff [00:41:24] Yeah. That kind of corruption was rampant. Also, when you start going through the
John Dehlin [00:41:30] names, you see the nepotism, like general authorities, last names.
Tim Kosnoff [00:41:34] Yeah. I mean, it's also, this is, you know, people talk about the Mormon Church being a cult. The most cultish organization I have gone up against in all these years is the Boy Scouts of America.
John Dehlin [00:41:49] Wow.
Tim Kosnoff [00:41:50] There is a cultish devotion to this organization that is just weird. I don't know how else to put it. So it's also, you know, an organization that has big muscles. You know, the president, the honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America is the President of the United States, The board president of the national features. People like Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State under Clinton. Can't remember. Not secretary, Secretary of defense, like Rumsfeld or before Rumsfeld, he was also CIA director. I'm spacing out on his name.
John Dehlin [00:42:40] Gates.
Tim Kosnoff [00:42:42] Yes, Gates. Okay, William Gates. Right, yeah, not William Gates. Robert Gates.
John Dehlin [00:42:46] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [00:42:49] You know, head of, you know, Secretary of defense, CIA.
John Dehlin [00:42:52] Right.
Tim Kosnoff [00:42:52] You know, and so, you know, this was going on on their watches. And you know, a question clients have asked is, why didn't Rex Tillerson protect me? You know, if he didn't know about these files and the extent of the problem, why didn't he? What did he know and when did he know it? And the same thing could be asked of all these, the most recent one who was board chair was, I forget his name, President of AT&T. So, you know, you look at who these people are on these national boards and then you see the same thing on these local council boards. You know, it's ex governor, it's the attorney General, it's the big shots from the corporations, you know, in Utah. Yeah. I mean, all you have to do is go on their website and look up who's there and it's like, oh, wow. Yeah. So this is how the organization makes itself bulletproof, makes powerful friends, puts them on these positions of honor, looks good on your resume. And the Wall Street Journal around the time that the Boy Scouts national filed bankruptcy, wanted to know what the asset value of scouting was. And so they started searching real estate records. And the bulk of the wealth in scouting is land. And what they found is 80% of the assets of scouting reside in the local councils because under their charter agreements, which date back 100 years or longer, they were allowed to acquire property in their own name for the benefit of BSA National. So BSA national could terminate that local council and take their property. And sometimes they did that. They would consult, they would close a console, take the assets and consolidate it into the assets of a neighboring consul for the purposes of scouting. So this is important because in the bankruptcy, the lawyers whose responsibility it was was to represent the interests of the abuse victims, the claimants in the case never pursued the local consuls. What they should have done is litigated the issue of whether the assets of the local consuls rightfully belong in the debtor's estate, the BSA's estate. Because BSA had this residual interest in billions of dollars in property. And the experts that were hired by the official committee that was responsible and had a fiduciary duty to all of the claimants estimated or their expert came up with a number between 90 and $120 billion in, in assets and insurance.
Hidden Assets and the BSA's True Wealth
John Dehlin [00:46:01] Whoa. Nationwide Boy Scouts assets.
Tim Kosnoff [00:46:04] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:46:04] Over 100 billion.
Tim Kosnoff [00:46:05] Yeah. Now the, the, the, the, the second fascinating aspect of this case is the Boy Scouts began acquiring insurance decades ago. They've uncovered policies from the 1930s. They also started their own program insurance program that included all of the local councils and chartering organizations and that began in the mid-1970s. A portion of every Scout registration fee was sliced off and was used to pay the premiums for these policies. And these policies were issued by a variety of insurance companies, some of which got gobbled up by larger insurance companies, which, which in turn got gobbled up by larger insurance companies, which in turn got gobbled up by larger insurance companies. But when they gobbled up these insurance policies, these companies, these insurance companies, household names, the Hartford Chubb, which is the largest property casualty insurer in the world, a market cap of $90 billion and reserves of somewhere between $350 and $400 billion. They acquired companies that issued these policies back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And here's the kicker. These policies insured the local BSA national, the chartering organization, for up to $500,000 per occurrence. So each time a kid gets abused, $500,000. But there was no annual aggregate cap on the number of claims that could be stacked. So if you had two claims in 1969, $1 million was their exposure. If you had 50, 25 million. We have claims where there are thousands of claims within a single policy year. And those claims also extend from year to year to year because we have abuse occurring in 69, 70, 71, 72. You get the idea. So the exposure of these insurance companies was astronomical. It was existential. And.
John Dehlin [00:48:41] So when a fund gets put together. Explain how a fund works, why a fund is put together,
Tim Kosnoff [00:48:49] all these participants, the local councils, bsa, National Mormon Church. Well, the Mormon Church and the sponsoring organizations do come in later, but the primary asset, liquid asset, is the insurance. The local councils have land, and some of it is prime. You know, just to give you an example, I mean, they started receiving as bequests 70 years ago. Property. Well, it's just a bunch of farmland. Well, no, it's 10,000 linear feet of waterfront on Long Island Sound. You know, back when it was donated, maybe it was just old farmland and it was no big deal. Okay, well, have you been to Connecticut lately? You know, it's. You know, so. And some of these are. And even the ones that aren't on the ocean, I mean, there's remarkable properties in Florida, in the Southeast. If you actually look at some of these camps and properties that are owned by the Boy Scouts, I mean, they're gems. The. The crown jewels. The Philmont in New Mexico. It's the size of a county. I mean, it's spectacular. It should be a national park. It's got that kind of feature. They just acquired and developed the Bechtel property in West Virginia. I think they spent 500 million for that, and I don't know how. And then they borrowed, I don't know, up to 500 million from JP Mark and Chase to develop it. So they have the outdoor experience out west, and you also have it out east. And if you want your kid to have an experience of two weeks at Philmont, write the check for $10,000. I mean, it's for rich Scouts from rich parents that get to do that. So. So all of this is hidden behind a shroud of mediation, secrecy. I wasn't included, although I had more experience and knowledge and more relevant things to say than these others. But I was a troublemaker. I didn't want to play ball. Everybody there operated under the shared agreement that they would work towards a settlement that would save the Boy Scouts of America. I didn't want to save the Boy Scouts of America. I wanted to maximize the recovery for our clients. And if the Boy Scouts have to be burnt to the ground, then so be it. And I just didn't see how you could. You could get fair settlements for these clients and preserve the Boy Scouts of America. So under this. This deal, although it sounds like a lot of money. When you divide it up among 82,500 claimants. Yeah, it's 32,000. Some people get $700 for being raped multiple times in the woods. If you were abused in a state that didn't have a window, a look back window like California or New York and New Jersey, which are many states, including Utah, then let's say they valued your claim at $72,000. Well they scale that down because you're from a bad statute of limitation state. Doesn't really matter what happened to you. You get 10% of $72,000 or 7,200 for, for having been repeatedly raped over years. And that's the deal. These lawyers brought back and peddled to clients representing to them that no, no, no, no, there's going to be much more money. There'll be more. That's not what you're going to get. It'll be much more than that. And that was just flat out untrue. Once they settled with these two insurance companies, that capped what they were ever gonna be able to recover. So anyway, back tying this back to the Mormon Church.
Scrambling to Shield Assets Before Mass Claims
John Dehlin [00:53:10] Okay, wait, so just to make sure I understand. So once the Boy Scouts of America knows that it's gonna be super sued by 80 plus thousand people, it scrambles. Gets the insurance companies together, it gets its own internal leadership together and any other interested parties.
Tim Kosnoff [00:53:27] Yeah, but it's already in bankruptcy.
John Dehlin [00:53:29] Already in bankruptcy. In bankruptcy as a way to try and rush this process and minimize the number of people that could ever possibly file. Then they pull together some number which you know, might seem impressive at first. One point. What? Billion.
Tim Kosnoff [00:53:43] You're saying 2.8 billion.
John Dehlin [00:53:45] 2.8 billion. But then when you divide 2.8 billion by 80,000 plus all the discounts and
Tim Kosnoff [00:53:52] plus there's attorneys fees. Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:53:54] Else you're saying the average claimant is going to get a pittance of what they probably.
Tim Kosnoff [00:53:59] Absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:54:00] And in your perspective, just to state it plainly, if this meant the total annihilation and dissolution of the Boy Scouts of America, you wouldn't feel bad about that. Why?
Tim Kosnoff [00:54:14] Because it's a. It's the largest pedophile ring on earth and it has been. They've been keeping these IV files since before their. The beginning. They've known about this. The, the man who brought scouting to the United States. You know sir, Baden Powell had a similar system in England in the 1890s. So they knew that Scouting had characteristics that made it a desirable place for pedophiles to go to get access to boys under almost ideal circumstances. I mean, if you were the most sinister pedophile on earth and wanted to devise, you know, a system that would be for pedophiles, the Boy Scout system couldn't have been more ideal. It's everything a pedophile wants, a male fixated pedophile. But now with girls, they get, you know, an additional flavor of victim to pursue. But so you've got boys and age range of, well, if you go Cub scouts down to six, but Boy Scouts age 12 to 18. So you've got an age range. Maybe you're not attracted to post pubescent, maybe you just like prepubescent, you've got an excuse to take them alone out in the woods away from their parents, sometimes for days, perhaps across state lines where you're going to have unfettered access to them under circumstances where you could abuse them, threaten them to remain silent. And these pedophiles, I mean, I've read 6,000 of our intake summaries. These are the most vile, violent, awful, horrible abusers I've seen. I mean the Catholic Church, it pales in comparison. And I think it was just because scouting was just such a perfect setting for men like this that could come in, no background checks, they'd be selected by some, you know, the Mormon Church. A Mormon bishop, you know, you know, maybe he knew about the perpetrators predilections,
John Dehlin [00:56:35] maybe he didn't, or maybe he felt he was forgiven.
Tim Kosnoff [00:56:37] Maybe he was forgiven. And we have examples of that. The bishop typically wasn't present or overseeing it. Maybe the bishop was. But generally that's why he appointed a scoutmaster and that was that person's calling. But it was particularly in the Mormon Church, the program was so sloppily run that there would be adults that would go on, you know, 50 mile hikes and you know, jamborees and all kinds of things that were just like a friend of a friend of the assistant scoutmaster, he said, hey, yeah, I'll help, you know, drive the equipment up there and hang out and whatever.
John Dehlin [00:57:19] Some of the boys can ride with
Tim Kosnoff [00:57:20] me, can ride with me. And you know, parents are clueless. Who is this guy? You know, maybe they know the scoutmaster, the assistant scoutmaster. But typically, I mean, frequently these, these, I mean we find that a lot of these abusers aren't even registered in scouting. Scouting doesn't even know who they are. Well, they were there. They abused our client in your program. And if you didn't know who they were, hmm, who's that on?
John Dehlin [00:57:47] So, and that's one of the Things I noticed because when we moved to Logan, to Cache Valley, Utah, after I'd kind of lost my faith, and we were trying to raise our kids, but we were trying to assess and measure Mormon influence. We looked at the secular Boy Scout troop in Logan as something to consider. Actually. We had an ex Mormon friend who had younger kids, and he knew he couldn't have his younger kids participate in the Boy Scouts. So he found the local secular Logan, Utah Boy Scout troop and said it was 50 times more professional, better run, you know, better for child abuse, all that, than any Mormon troop he had ever been exposed to. And that what. And I, and I found that to be true. And what I realized was, was the irony that the Mormon Church had had risen to the point of representing 40% of the nationwide troops, but they were, on average, the sloppiest run troops of all the troops. So the church had the largest number of troops and the poorest run troops in the entire bsa. Is that unfair?
Tim Kosnoff [00:59:02] No, it's not. And it's true. And I've heard that from many sort of true blue Scouters who were sort of disgusted. But it kind of makes sense when you think about it, because it's secondary.
John Dehlin [00:59:19] It's the gospel that's primary. It's the voice.
Tim Kosnoff [00:59:21] Well, and it's also, if you're an army and you've got volunteers who want to join because they want to go fight, or you've got a group of conscripts that don't want to be there, which one do you think is going to be the more effective fighting unit? You know, better, you know, unit cohesion, leadership and all of that. And it's sort of the same thing if you have. I mean, there are probably wards where none of the boys wanted to be in Scouting, or very few of them to even have a troop, so they had to be basically conscripted into it through some sort of pressure campaign. Yeah, this is part of your advancement in the priesthood, and you're going to do it. And, you know, and you're going to get a merit, you're going to get an eagle, and you're going to collect all these merit badges because we're going to judge you as a good Mormon or a bad Mormon based upon how you do in our youth organization, which is Scouting. So, I mean, I've heard this remark from a lot of former Scout leaders that said that, you know, Mormon troops, by and large were inferior to secular or even troops run by other mainstream or mainstream religions.
John Dehlin [01:00:39] And yet they had a disproportionate influence in the organization nationally. Really quick, there's a comment from a gentleman named Kevin M. On YouTube who, in response to your comment that it's the largest pedophile ring in the world, he said, this is getting a little bit Alex Jonesy, and I'm not trying to inflame you or put you against him or even give, you know, give, give spotlight to a, maybe a bit of a trollish comment, but in a, in a, in a reasonable, even handed way. When you, when you say something like the Boy Scouts of America was the largest official pedophile ring in the world or whatever, do you mind giving a little bit more backup for that so that people who think you're just being, let's say they would dismiss you as like a rhetorical, you know, self interested attorney. Give a little bit more background there
Tim Kosnoff [01:01:30] so you can address those charges. Let's, let's start with 84,000 came forward and filed proofs of claim. 84,000. Okay. If you consider that 1 in 25 disclose their abuse, that men on average don't disclose their abuse until age 52.
John Dehlin [01:01:50] Like my dad, literally, like, except he was 70 or 80 when he disclosed. Right.
Tim Kosnoff [01:01:55] So I use colorful language because it helps make the point. I'm not aware of any organization that has had this level of sexual abuse within it over decades. I'm not saying everybody or every scout leader was a child molester, but I'm pretty sure, I mean, I hear anecdotally from our clients that the kids knew, stay away from that guy or stay away from that guy, or they just didn't disclose. And pedophiles have, According to the FBI statistics, on average, over 100 victims over a lifetime of offending. So we found within our client files that there were very, very few that named a common abuser. So out of 84,000, that's roughly 84,000 unique abusers. Okay, so do the math.
John Dehlin [01:03:02] And one out of 25.
Tim Kosnoff [01:03:04] So, you know, not all of them had 100, but if an average had 100 victims and in scouting they easily could have because kids were so available. So I mean, what number would support. Would you agree with me that this was the largest pedophile ring on Earth? If 82,000 isn't big enough, how about 400,000? How about 1 million? How about 1.5 million? If I'm right, would you agree with me that that's the largest something on earth?
John Dehlin [01:03:36] Yeah. And those are reasonable numbers in conservative. And nobody would have guessed the, the Catholic church would have had like 7 or 8% of its priests, known pedophiles. Like, no one would believe that was possible until you found out through Spotlight that it was really quickly in your interview, I think, with Gina about the Boy Scouts of America, you talked about how did they even put, like a pedophile in charge of the pedophiles? Something like that.
Tim Kosnoff [01:04:02] Yeah. I mean, this is. This is a story that just. It's like. It is Alex Jonesy, but it's true. So they set up this Scout safety program about the time that they came up with this three R's program, late 80s and in the mid 90s, they appointed an executive down there. His name was Douglas S. Smith. I don't know if he's LDS or not. So he was the guy that was in charge of youth protection at BSA national. And it was his responsibility to ensure that the program was being. The safety program was being carried out nationally. So Homeland Security gets a tip from somebody in Europe that this guy, that this man in Irving is been sending and receiving over the Internet, child porn. So they arrest him and they recover hundreds of thousands of child pornographic images off of his computer. Some of which, it was reported, the Justice Department in Dallas said that some of the photographs contain images of Scout Properties, that there were indication that some of these photographs were taken at Scout Properties. They weren't just random child porn pictures taken and. And disseminated that way.
Gerardo Sumano [01:05:34] So.
Tim Kosnoff [01:05:35] Yeah. So the guy that they put in charge of guarding the hen house was himself trafficking in child porn. He went to prison, served a decade, got out, and he's back living in Irving, Texas, and living off of his Boy Scouts of America pension.
John Dehlin [01:05:59] Yeah. To this day.
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:01] To this day.
John Dehlin [01:06:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very different than Alex Jones. We're talking about real.
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:09] Yeah, Real lives. Yeah, I. I don't. I don't.
Gerardo Sumano [01:06:13] Real clients.
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:14] Because you're representing them. Yeah. These are real people. Alex Jones just makes shit up. You know, it's because he can pedal it. But I'm not here to pedal anything, you know. You know, read it and weep. Look at the numbers and tell me I'm wrong. Explain to me why I'm wrong. Am I hyperbolic? A little. But this stuff angers me and, you know, it's. It got your attention.
John Dehlin [01:06:39] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:39] You sent a comment, so I guess it worked.
John Dehlin [01:06:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were going to talk about now, the church's connection to all this and the bankruptcy.
The Mormon Church's Involvement in the Bankruptcy Plan
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:50] Yeah. Let me come back to that.
John Dehlin [01:06:52] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:06:53] So this is an important piece, and we should tie in the LDS Church here.
John Dehlin [01:06:58] I do just Want to.
Gerardo Sumano [01:07:00] My friend, a friend of mine who was. He was called in the LDS Church to be a scoutmaster. He told me this story a while ago, and he reminded to me just a couple days ago when I was talking to him about this, but he said that when he was doing the training, there was a question about sex abuse. And the question was, if you find out about sex abuse, who do you go to? And he was selecting go to the police. And it would mark him as wrong. Like that the answer going to the police was the wrong answer.
John Dehlin [01:07:37] And.
Gerardo Sumano [01:07:38] And so he kept marking it. And then he went to the bishop and said, bishop, why is it marking it wrong? Oh, because that's not, that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is you go to the bishop. Go to the bishop, call the helpline, that kind of stuff. And so the bishop told him, like, okay, I know you want to go to the police. Just mark it how it's supposed to. And then you do whatever you think you should do. And it's like. And he was like, no, I'm not gonna market just to pass the test. And he didn't become a Scout Master.
Tim Kosnoff [01:08:09] It's absolutely consistent with everything. I know. I hadn't heard that specific slant, but it certainly makes sense based upon what we've talked about today with respect to the helpline. They don't want this stuff to go to the civil authorities. They want to handle it internally. They want to do everything to protect the church from liability and, and reputational injury. Yeah, but that must have been the church's own training program, because I don't think the Boy Scouts online training program would have. Does that. Yeah, so this must have been something that they've recently set up. But I don't, I don't doubt it for a bit. But so here at the Mormon Church, you know, he's been in the church. They've been in Boy Scouts for, since the beginning, 110, 120 years. And a percentage of these 84,000 cases, and I don't have privy to that number. I know what our number is, but I'm told it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 2400, 2500 cases involve abuse in the context of the LDS Church. The number is probably greater than that because at the time, at least when we were doing the questionnaire, the person couldn't either identify who the sponsoring organization was or they didn't volunteer that. A lot of times when I go back and look at them, it's like, you know, he's from, you Know, someplace in Utah. Gotta be an LDS case, but it doesn't say it was an LDS sponsored ward. So we have to go back through the Boy Scouts records and determine just who was the, which chartering organization was the sponsor of that troop. But so the church cuts a deal with these proponents, the bsa, this group of lawyers called the coalition, the official committee representing all of the survivors in the bankruptcy and they cut a deal with LDS for $250 million. But the definition of what's covered is, is not just abuse that occurs in LDS Scouting or in the Scouting context, but all of its cases. So cases individuals that would come forward who were abused and there was no connection to Scouting, the Mormon Church would get a release for that as well. In other instances, maybe the grooming took place in Scouting, but the abuse took place outside of Scouting at the abuser's apartment or in some other church related activity. Well, the court said that's a bridge too far. I'm not going to approve a plan that releases the Mormon Church for non scouting related abuse. So these are called mixed claims where there might have been abuse that occurred in Scouting and abuse that occurred outside of Scouting. Well, the Church's deal with the Boy Scouts of America was they would get a clean bill for all of it for 250 million, which was just preposterous. And it was the one thing the judge did that she actually got right in a ruling two weeks ago was saying I can't approve that deal. So as we sit here today, it's my understanding that the Boy Scouts of America are going to be filing yet another revised plan. I think this is like the 27th revised plan. And they've got to deal with the fact that she's not approved a deal with the Mormon Church for 250 million which gives them a release for everything. So what's the Church going to do?
John Dehlin [01:12:30] So wait, so when the church offered 250 million, like on the one hand someone could go, that's amazing, that's generous. That's such a huge number. Number one, it seems to be a huge admission of guilt, right? Yeah, 250 million.
Tim Kosnoff [01:12:46] Like I like my, it's an admission or something.
John Dehlin [01:12:48] Yeah. My, my friend Randy, you know, he made the argument that it's hard to get a couple million dollar settlement in, in a, in a lawsuit. So you know, 250 million, if the Church is proactively offering that, then it must have a lot of potential cases or liability that it's fearing. But so, so number one, it seems to be a Big admission of guilt. I want you to speak to that if you can. Secondly, but still by many, that's a quarter of a billion dollars. That seems to be very generous. But then if I know anything about the church and how the law process works and about now how you're describing bankruptcy, I'm guessing that that was a way, and this is probably what the judge ended up deciding, this is a way for the church to actually try and get away with paying a lot less than it normally would have had to.
Tim Kosnoff [01:13:36] Yes, and that's exactly right. $250 million sounds like a lot of money. Um, but even when you average it out across 2500, it's about 100,000, maybe 110,000 per claim. Some of those claims, if they were in the tort system, could be worth tens of millions of dollars. Others might be worth very little or nothing because they're time barred by the statute of limitations. That's not the issue. The issue is they're getting a release for everything. That if somebody was abused and there's no relation to Scouting, maybe the abuser was an assistant scoutmaster, but he wasn't a member of the troop, or there's just, it wasn't at a Scout camp, it wasn't at a Scout meeting, it wasn't a Scout anything. There was no Scout related. The Church is on the hook for that. But under this deal, they'd get released for those fact patterns as well. And I believe that there are maybe as many as 50, 60% of the claims involve mixed claims abuse that occurred in Scouting, but also outside of Scouting. So will the church take its 250 million and say, we'll assign you the insurance so at least we get releases for the Scouting related abuse and then we'll just go it alone on these mixed claims. They're going to make their calculation. I guess we'll find out soon. I think that's, that's foolish. I think they'd be better, you know, from the church's perspective, to take their 250 million and hold on to their Boy Scout insurance as very valuable because they give up that insurance, then they've still got to defend these mixed claims. And that's going to be a mess with hundreds of these. Not to mention that there are going to be additional individuals coming forward that may not have filed claims in the bankruptcy that may want to join in and bring these claims against the church. So the church thought it was buying a complete release for all of its sexual abuse liability everywhere and forever. And the judge said no. And this comes to the sort of the central problem with this entire plan, which I think is built on a house of sticks. Bankruptcy, you know, is a commercial system meant to give businesses who downturn in the economy, they ended up with too much inventory, you know, too much debt and made some, you know, bad business decisions. And you know, they need to resolve this. Maybe they want to restructure, maybe they want to liquidate. That's what the system was set up for. Not for child sexual abuse victims. I believe it's wrong to even allow it to be used in this context. And so the thought that these victims could be treated this way, to be stripped of all their legal rights for a sum of money which isn't going to come nearly close enough to compensating them for their injuries, you know, I, I believe is wrong.
John Dehlin [01:17:12] The church, especially when the Mormon church, now it's a matter of public record, they probably got $200 billion, you know, in like Tesla and you know, GameStop and real estate and cash and municipalities like the whole ensign peak investments, that's just the stuff we know about. So knowing the church is just sitting on a gazillion dollars worth of assets, knowing that it had a 40% controlling share in the Boy Scouts of America, that it had a controlling interest in the Boy Scouts of America for over a century, you know, I guess if we're not talking about a legal duty, but let's just say a moral duty or an ethical duty, they could say, you know, we had our general authorities and rich influential people on the board since time immemorial, we had a controlling interest. We tried to shoot down trainings whenever we could, like we were somehow a part of this huge mess that's obviously out there. Let's just liquidate $2 billion of our Coca Cola and our Tesla and our GameStop stock and let's just be the good citizens here and, and really provide a settlement that matches our culpability.
Tim Kosnoff [01:18:30] That would.
John Dehlin [01:18:31] If Jesus had a law firm, it seems like that's what Jesus would say to do. It's like, yeah, free up, free up.5 billion. Come on, we're, we're a part of this mess and let's try and make it right. It seems like that's what Jesus would do.
Tim Kosnoff [01:18:44] Yeah, but it's, you know, depends who you worship, Jesus or the golden calf. So they, yeah, so I, you know, moral arguments, you know, I don't think are particularly persuasive with them. I know they're not. So I just sort of stick to legal arguments. And business arguments which are, look, you want out of this mess, I understand that. And, but don't give them $250 million and basically let this trustee that's controlled by this group of plaintiff's lawyers control this process and you know, let the tail wag you, you should take control of this, take your 250 million, set up a process and start resolving these cases with me and other lawyers who have cases and let's work through them. And if the insurance company doesn't want to pay or play ball, then you can sue them later to recoup what you paid and sue them for bad faith or breach of contract because you're an additional insured on all these Boy Scout policies. They need your release. They have to pay. So come in, let's do an expeditious program of compensating these men. Most of these men aren't asking for gazillion dollars, but $1,700 or $5,000, you know, is just, it's just, you know, that's absurd. And you know that somebody said in
John Dehlin [01:20:31] the comments it's an insult to the victim.
Tim Kosnoff [01:20:33] Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's beyond that. And you know, I think as a, you know, I, here I am giving, you know, legal advice or business advice to the Mormon Church. That's kind of laughable. But, you know, it's true. You know, I, they have a history with me and we've been getting cases resolved and they can, I think they can get these cases resolved on their own for a lot less than what they're giving up by staying in this Boy Scout plan. So, you know, we'll see what they do. You know, it's probably the kiss of death that I just recommended that idea. But, you know, I think, you know, we'll see. I mean, they may just say, well, we'll give you the Boy Scout insurance and we'll just deal with these mixed claims on our own and, and try and resolve them and we'll just slog through those. But it's just such a mess for them because these mixed claims are so fact dependent and you've got to go through. And is the jury going to have to decide whether this occurred in the context of scouting or not? And the testimony could be conflicting. And when is it scout related? When is it not, Scott Related? Do you really want to be involved in that morass with 2,500 Mormon Scout victims? I mean, that doesn't even make business sense to me. It may be a good deal for the lawyers at Curtin, McConkey, billing hourly. But I don't think it makes much sense for the Mormon Church.
John Dehlin [01:22:04] I'm just going to, I do this sometimes. I mentioned a couple, what I call smoking guns. You know, oftentimes in the Mormon faith crisis world, we're always trying to ask ourselves, is there any evidence that the church isn't true? Is there any evidence that the church isn't what it claims to be? Is the Book of Mormon a smoking gun? Is the Book of Abraham a smoking gun? Is the black priesthood ban a smoking gun? I want to say this, that if ever there were, and I've said this three times just this week, if ever there were a smoking gun within the history of Mormonism, it's when our prophet seers and revelators decided to get in bed with the Boy Scouts of America. Because you would expect that if, you know, if God's going to send an angel with the flaming sword to command Joseph Smith, you know, to marry a teenage bride, you know, God would have sent an angel with the flaming sword to some of those Mormon prophets in the 20th century and say, hey, you're a prophet. That means you get to see the future. I'm God or I'm Jesus, or I'm an angel. I'm Angel Moroni. Hey, you know, Heber J. Grant or hey, George Albert Smith, I know you're wanting to get in bed with the Boy Scouts, but in just a few decades, they're going to be uncovered, you know, by attorney Tim Kosnoff as one of the largest pedophile rings in the world. Since you're a prophet, me, God, I'm going to tell you ahead of time, don't get in bed with the Boy Scouts of America. Instead, not only do they get in bed with the Boy Scouts of America, they have a controlling interest in the Boy Scouts of America. And so they've got their fingerprints all over one of the largest pedophile rings in the history of the world. And how much of that is on the church? And by the way, I, if, if they had 40% of the troops, why isn't it fair to say that they have probably 40% of the victims? And so in other words, if there's 80,000 people that have come forward, known victims, if there's 80,000, why aren't in my back of the envelope calculations that's at least 32,000 Mormon victims? Is that, is that totally unreasonable?
Evidence, Cover-Ups, and Institutional Accountability
Tim Kosnoff [01:24:17] No. And you don't think it is because
John Dehlin [01:24:20] I've had people get really mad at me for saying tens of thousands of sexual abuse.
Tim Kosnoff [01:24:24] I know, but I, I think that LDS Scout survivors didn't come forward in greater numbers for the same reason that they don't come forward period today. Yeah, well, scouting or non scouting, it's just, there's just too much pressure. Maybe they've thought about it, maybe they talked to their bishop and, you know, there's a double layer that Mormon Scout victims carry because again, boy Scouts don't tell anyone, keep it secret. Same culture of secrecy, and that's what they're hearing from their bishop and their parents and everybody else. So there's a lot of blame to go around and it's easy to dump it all on the church. But, you know, there are a lot of parents who knew and didn't do anything. And other people, members of the ward knew about this guy, didn't complain, didn't do anything, because you don't do that. It's the bishop's business and you should butt out. And if you, if you say anything, you're going to get slapped. I mean, all the reasons why people complain in the Mormon Church is that it's not welcome and you're there to affirm, you know, your ecclesiastical leadership not to challenge them. Yeah, so that's a, that's a powerful layer. But this is a huge component of the church's sex abuse exposure, because so much of the abuse occurred in the context of scouting for the same reasons. Harder, you know, to, you know, just abusers, you know, search for the weak link. And even in the Catholic Church, you know, you have these priests, but, you know, where did they assault them? You know, in the rectory. If they could get them there in the robing room, maybe they could persuade the parents to let him take little Johnny out somewhere. And they were so honored that Father
John Dehlin [01:26:44] John, he's an altar boy, John, you
Tim Kosnoff [01:26:45] know, you know, Father John has taken such a keen interest, but it's a little strange because it's not within the job description of a Catholic priest, generally speaking, to be taking a boy or groups of boys away on ski trips and this, that and the other thing. Whereas with boy scouting, no, that's the essence of scouting is to take the boy away from not just his parents, but protective institutions and places. And, you know, a boy out in the wilderness is completely vulnerable in his community. He has neighbors, teachers, buildings he can run to, you know, things that he can use to protect him. And sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. But the whole concept of scouting, where men about whom you know nothing can take young, vulnerable boys out into the wilderness. Men whose backgrounds are not known, they haven't been vetted, they're selected by moms and dads who don't have the slightest clue or bishops about the problem of pedophilia in the Boy Scouts of America. I mean it was, it was a turkey shoot.
John Dehlin [01:28:04] And what makes it even more sad, and there was just a comment about this that I'm going to share. B. Dan wrote the public respectability of the bsa and I would even add the Mormon Church because at some point the Mormon Church was able to sort of successfully resurrect its image with Donnie and Marie Osmond and Steve Young. And you know, the, in the 70s and 80s, the Mormon Church was able to become kind of like representing all America. And so, so B. Dan writes, the public respectability of the BSA has also really helped whitewash the church because it makes them seem reasonable and mainstream and Norman Rockwell ish. Right. It's just, it's like there's mother apple pie, Boy Scouts and the Mormon Church. And so it's hard when some of these institutions that actually you over respected, you held as almost sacred as the most holy and pure institutions turned out to be the ones that were most corrupt.
Tim Kosnoff [01:29:12] Well, here's some more history about the Boy Scouts of America, which may play into why the Mormon Church wanted to be so closely affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America. And I think that was part of it. In 1910, America was a rural country. People lived on farms and in the country. And as we transformed through the industrial revolution in the United States and these cities grew up and factories and they needed workers, young men, boys flocked in from the, you know, from farms in the countryside to these cities. And you had many, many youths who were getting involved in delinquency and other problems. And this was kind of an issue. And a businessman traveled to England and the story goes that he encountered a British scout who offered to help him across the street or something like that. And he was so impressed, he said, he tried to tip the boy and he said, no, no we don't. This is not for compensation. This is what we do. We do a good deed every day. So he liked that and he saw the need in the United States. So he came back and there was a scouting movement in the United States, several different organizations. It's not like the Boy Scouts invented it, it was here. But he saw a need to expand it, grow it and so forth. So that's when the politicians in Congress got involved and prominent businessmen and they said, look, we need to uphold the high standards of scouting. And we can't let all these little ragtag scouting groups, you know, deter from that. So they got the charter from Congress, and then scouting took off. And it promised two things. One, it said, inasmuch to parents, you're lousy. We can do a better job of raising your boy and instilling in him, you know, American civic virtues because, you know, your husband's a drunk and you're working all the time and you got too many kids. So entrust them to us. And in the process, the Boy Scouts of America, the boy Scouts of America became almost a surrogate third parent and exerted that kind of influence and convinced parents to entrust their boys to this organization because it's true, they don't have time, and he is getting in trouble. And, you know, we do want him to get into the outdoors and learn scout craft and so forth. So it was an easy sell. But here's a fact that most people don't appreciate scouting. The Boy Scouts of America invented what we now understand as modern advertising. It didn't exist. If you wanted to buy something, you went to the Sears catalog and ordered it online. There was no advertising for this shirt or what have you. You know, maybe you'd see something in a windows storefront, but no radio, no television. I mean, the whole concept of advertising. But the Boy Scouts were brilliant marketers, and they knew that if they. That they didn't have a product, they didn't sell anything except an idea, an image. And so they enshrouded that image in the American flag. Mom and apple pie. And, you know, this was. This was a powerful symbolism. And in the process of doing that, companies, manufacturers, saw what they were doing and saying, we like that, you know, and in fact, we like the fact that the boy Scouts are instilling these kinds of virtues of honesty, cleanliness, obedience to authority, patriotism, et cetera. And that's the kind of people we need in our white collar workforce, People that show up clean in a white shirt and give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. So we want to support you. So they began developing this relationship with corporate America, and it grew. And that's how they acquired much of their wealth is through corporate donations. Later on, it became what we now know as cross branding, which is, you know, Ford Motor company and the Fleur de lis. Just like the Olympic thing. I mean, these are valuable things. And the boy Scouts figured out a way to monetize that significantly. All across the spectrum of American business. And to this day, much of the work of local council leaders is spent recruiting local corporate sponsors to give money to donate and so on and so forth. And that takes up much of the activity of these local Scout executives who are supposed to be administering the program, but basically they're out getting money for the organization, fundraising. So they accomplished that. It also had this sort of paramilitary aspect to it.
John Dehlin [01:34:48] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
Tim Kosnoff [01:34:50] And.
John Dehlin [01:34:51] Because maybe scouts make good soldiers. Right?
Tim Kosnoff [01:34:53] Well, and they did. And, you know, there were sharpshooters in World War II who learned how to shoot in scouting. And, you know, they. You know, they learned how to rough it and, you know, live in the outdoors and live under uncomfortable conditions, and those are good soldiers. The city kids were kind of pampered, lazy, out of shape, you know, had to be trained how to shoot a gun and so forth. So, you know, the Boy Scouts were an important feeder organization, not just for, you know, the corporate world, but also for the military. And then eventually, I'm not sure when it was a prerequisite for political office of really any kind, that you were an Eagle. I mean, you couldn't run for Congress or mayor or dogcatcher unless you could brag that you were, you know, that you had your Eagle in Scouting. It had that kind of symbolic power.
John Dehlin [01:35:53] And that's true in Mormonism. And Mormonism, up until just a few years ago, every young Mormon boy tried to get his ego before age 13, because that was part of Mormonism
Tim Kosnoff [01:36:07] before 13.
John Dehlin [01:36:09] Yeah, yeah. In Utah, most Mormon boys would try and get their ego by the age 13. From. From what I've seen.
Tim Kosnoff [01:36:16] Yeah, well.
John Dehlin [01:36:17] Which I think, in and of itself, was kind of a bastardization of the whole purpose.
Tim Kosnoff [01:36:22] And I'm sure other people can talk about other aspects of the bastardization of the. Of the Scout system.
John Dehlin [01:36:27] And there are always jokes that it was the boy's mom that actually got him the Eagle. You know, the boy's Mormon mom.
Tim Kosnoff [01:36:32] Well, not that well. And also, I've had many, many clients tell me how the abuser, the Scout leader, basically used the merit badge as candy.
John Dehlin [01:36:42] Oh.
Tim Kosnoff [01:36:42] You know, is a reward as a treat. And, you know, you know, it's the quid pro quo. You do this, you get that. You do this, you get that. And those merit badges are so important. And to think that they've got to accumulate them all before age 13, not 18.
John Dehlin [01:37:01] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:37:04] I mean, I'm not sure it's even physically possible. I don't know how many you need, but that's that's, it's almost kind of unbelievable that somebody could be able to do that by age. That's like one year.
John Dehlin [01:37:18] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:37:18] If you come into scouting at age 11 and 12 and you've got your eagle by age 13, something wasn't doing something right.
John Dehlin [01:37:25] Yeah. Viewers and listeners can tell me if I'm wrong, but that's, I've been around a while and that's my experience, you know, and I'll just end this little segment by saying this like for all. Most of the time, for all the time I was Mormon basically because I was excommunicated right before the Boy Scouts relationship ended. But it was like the ideal Mormon boy would have been an Eagle Scout returned missionary, married in the temple. That's like so like being an Eagle Scout was elevated to the same level of bragging rights as serving return missionary service and temple marriage. It's been that in integrated into our religious culture. Eagle Scouts, I think. And you, you, I mean, we talked with you about this. I don't even think you know this, but like before five years ago, you Google like Mormon prophets, Boy Scouts of America. You're seeing Thomas S. Monson proudly receiving his silver beaver or whatever it is. Gordon B. Hinckley. You're seeing a long and deep and historic relationship between Mormon prophet seers and revelators and the Boy Scouts of America. And if you go right now, dear listener and viewer, and Google Boy Scouts of America, Thomas S. Monson. The Internet has been completely scrubbed clean of any association between Mormon prophet seers and revelators and the Boy Scouts of America, which just five or 10 years ago, it was one of our. Was one of their proudest. You know, Thomas S. Monson, one of his proudest accomplishments from when I was raised Mormon was his association with the Boy Scouts.
Tim Kosnoff [01:39:06] Well, that was listed on the BSA national website for years. You could see all the Silver Beaver award winners and so forth. And Monson, before he became president, while I think he was still, I don't know, second, was very prominent in the leadership of the Boy Scouts national. And we talked a little bit about this anniversary coffee table book, or I guess Coca Cola table book 100 years.
John Dehlin [01:39:40] Post them. It's a Postum. Post them table. Mormons drink. Post them instead of coffee.
Tim Kosnoff [01:39:45] Okay.
John Dehlin [01:39:45] Post them. Table book.
Tim Kosnoff [01:39:46] Okay. See, I learned something. And it's a picture book and I ordered it and it's mostly photographs, but it also has a description of the, the story of scouting in the Mormon Church. And, and it was interesting to me to see that it existed for 30 years, before the Boy Scouts even came around, I think they were called the Young Pioneers. And I mean, it dates back to the 1880s, 1890s, and there are these wonderful vintage photographs. And then as you move up into the 1920s and 30s, you start recognizing there's photographs of notable figures. There's President hinckley is a 14 year old, you know, sitting on a horse or doing something, and you see other luminaries that they put in there. And it was a. It was a pretty interesting book. I don't know if they're still selling it, but I'm sure Monson's in there. I have to go back and look.
John Dehlin [01:40:42] But we need to get those photos back on the Internet. So anyone who's got photos of past Mormon prophets doing Boy Scouty like things, send them to me@mormonstoriesmail. Take photos of them, send them, and we'll have a MormonStories.org webpage dedicated to the dip deep, rich, long historic association between Mormon prophet seers and revelators and the Boy Scouts of America.
Tim Kosnoff [01:41:06] Well, I wonder now because you still have within, you know, the state of Utah and Idaho and other predominantly Mormon states, these, these BSA local councils. So if they're not being sponsored, these troops within these councils aren't being sponsored by the church. I'm not sure what they're supposed to do, what's going to happen to their properties and so on and so forth. And also while they have this venture program that they've started, it doesn't look like they've put a lot of effort into it. But one of the things I thought was credible, progressive is they've changed the model. It's family scouting. So it's not junior goes out alone with some stranger. Your family goes together on some sort of scout thing. And I think they lease some of these BSA facilities and so forth. But from what I hear from some people is the church is really winding down a lot of its extracurricular
Gerardo Sumano [01:42:15] stuff.
Tim Kosnoff [01:42:16] No more fun stuff in the church. It's just church.
John Dehlin [01:42:20] Can I address that really quickly, please? So Maven just. First of all, Maven just made a comment that she's noticed in the comments, and this is something I knew, but I forgot to mention. For many Mormon youth men, young men within the Mormon tradition, you could not get a driver's license at the age 16 until you had gotten your Eagle Scout. So that was. I've heard that thousands and thousands of times.
Tim Kosnoff [01:42:45] That's a motivator.
John Dehlin [01:42:46] That's just another example of how Inculcated and integrated Boy scouting was with the Mormon experience. The only other thing.
Tim Kosnoff [01:42:53] So you had to get the bishop's permission to apply to the state of Utah for a driver's license.
John Dehlin [01:42:58] No, no, no, no.
Tim Kosnoff [01:42:59] Parents wouldn't allow their kids.
John Dehlin [01:43:01] Wouldn't allow their kid to have a car at age 16.
Tim Kosnoff [01:43:04] Right.
John Dehlin [01:43:04] And so it basically forced Mormon kids to get their Eagle Scout by the age of 16. That, that, that, that was a major thing. And Maven was saying there's been a, many, many comments indicating about that. And I knew that. And so I, I think that's worth mentioning.
Tim Kosnoff [01:43:19] Well, that's part of the, you know, that's part of the carrot, you know, with the stick, which is, you know, you get to drive.
John Dehlin [01:43:26] Yeah. The only other thing, I don't think, and I don't know if you know this, but we haven't really talked about this, but I think there's probably something to it, something you may or may not know. We just did an episode recently on the Mormon missionary program and how bankrupt and prob. I know you gotta go. How problematic the Mormon missionary institution or program has become. And we've got some insider statistics that something like only a third of the eligible young men over the past few years are going on missions. So we've had something like a 60 to 70% reduction by 2022 in young men wanting to serve missions such that in many stakes along the Wasatch front in Utah, two thirds of the missionaries being sent out by wards and stakes are young women now and not young men. And that's only a few years after women were generally discouraged from serving missions. And it was ironically, Thomas S. Monson, that lowered the missionary age and encouraged women to all of a sudden become missionaries. But I am just dying to know if some historian or social scientist or sociologist were to go back and look at the cancellation of the Boy Scouts program, if that led to a narrowing of the pipeline of young men that would ultimately become missionaries for the church. Because in 2022, 2/3 of the young men who reach the age of 16 worthy to go on a mission, you know, active in the church, are declining missionary service. I have to think that the Boy Scouts was a great preparatory influence on the Mormon missionary program for young men. I don't know that we've ever drawn that comparison before.
Survivor Experiences and the Scope of Abuse
Tim Kosnoff [01:45:14] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:45:15] Does that seem reasonable?
Gerardo Sumano [01:45:16] Oh, for sure.
John Dehlin [01:45:16] At least is a factor.
Gerardo Sumano [01:45:17] Yeah. Well, you were talking about how we prepare man for military stuffs and rough conditions, you know, like obedient to leadership and authority. This is the same Thing, that uniform,
John Dehlin [01:45:32] being away from home, obeying instructions. Right, right. It's a great preparation for Mormon mission. Which by the way, many consider to be the most cult like aspect of Mormonism is, is the two year Mormon missionary service. Which maps onto your description of the Boy Scouts as being the most cultist organization.
Tim Kosnoff [01:45:51] Well, that kind of makes sense to me because if you're not offering scouting, how are you keeping teenage boys connected to the church? It's easier to fall away, I think. You know, Sunday sacrament, you know, you've got your priesthood meetings and so forth. You know, it's. Where's the fun? You know, maybe the dances with the young women or something, I don't know. But no, as I'm thinking about growing
John Dehlin [01:46:25] up in the church and as an adult, some of the most impactful testimony meetings were, you know, the first Sunday of each month where any member of the ward can get up and bear their testimony would be when youth who went out on adventure expeditions, big hikes, you know, 40, 40, 50 mile hikes, canoeing trips, rafting trips, biking trips, filmont trips, they weave in the spirituality and the religiosity with those outdoor activities and then they come back to testimony meeting on Sunday and it's like we had the best time ever, brother. So and so is the coolest leader and scoutmaster ever. And the church is true because we happen to have a testimony meeting around the campfire. And I got, I felt the Holy Ghost, but, but it was almost like the testimony and the commitment to the church was interwoven with these amazing adventure adventurous outdoor Boy Scouts activities. And now a lot of that's gone.
Tim Kosnoff [01:47:28] Yeah, I, it makes sense to me. I think part of the reason they associated and chartered with the Boy Scouts of America is it was sort of one stop shopping. The Boy Scouts would provide all the program materials, you know, and this, that and the other thing. And the church didn't really have people that could run and administer a program like that. I mean it's arguable whether they're even able to administer the, the ward system,
John Dehlin [01:47:54] given our last episode.
Tim Kosnoff [01:47:56] Right, yeah. Given the problems that that occur because bishops don't really understand what they're doing a lot of times in my impression. But maybe they made a mistake by quitting the Boy Scouts of America. Maybe they really needed that kind of enthusiasm, Builder. I mean they obviously thought it was, it was a recruitment tool, a missionary tool and
John Dehlin [01:48:29] a youth program.
Tim Kosnoff [01:48:30] A youth program. I don't know if they are now bolstering their young men's program to make it more fun or what have you.
John Dehlin [01:48:38] They're not. Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:48:40] And even the mission itself, you know, I just think it's like one of the most horrible things that's done to young men. Take them away from in the prime of their lives, interrupt their education, their development, and basically send them out to proselytize, sometimes in dangerous places, putting them at risk. And I remember having represented many returned Mormon missionaries and I said, I'm curious, how many did you convert? None. None. I had one who was an absolute superstar in the eyes of the church because in two years he had converted eight. And so, I mean, it's hard to go out and fail day after day after day after day. And somebody explained this to me and said, tim, you don't understand. The purpose is not to convert members to the church. The purpose is to keep people embedded in the church. Because studies have shown that if you served a mission, you're far less likely to leave the church than somebody who hasn't served a mission. And I thought, wow, that's really an enlightening bit of psychology.
Gerardo Sumano [01:50:02] Yeah. We showed a video of a general authority from the church telling the youth just a few months ago exactly that, that statistic. He told them, like, if you serve a mission, the likelihood of you staying in the church and your posterity of staying in the church and being tithe bearers is much higher.
John Dehlin [01:50:20] No, he actually said something like the multiple or the factor of tithe payers down the road is 0.8 if you don't serve a mission and like 20 if you do. And he actually framed it in terms of tithe paying posterity.
Tim Kosnoff [01:50:36] Right, right. Well, that's really something. I mean, I mean, I also understand there's like a returned missionary has far more sex appeal to the opposite sex in the church than a failed returned missionary or somebody that didn't serve a missionary. So, you know, it's a chick magnet, supposedly. I don't know if that's true.
John Dehlin [01:50:58] Have we gotten off the rails here? I'm loving this conversation, by the way. Our viewers are saying that you're gold. Like, I just, I just made a comment in the show notes like, this is an outsider's view of the Mormon missionary program, which is gold. It's fun. It's fun. Tim, you're a legend.
Tim Kosnoff [01:51:13] Well, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's really an amazing group. I mean, to think that this person was able to invent a religion and shepherd it and see it grow into, into what it's become. I, you know, I don't. I don't know if there's anything comparable in the 20th, 21st century. I don't know how many the Moonies have or these other sort of. Well, Scientology, I think that's a.
John Dehlin [01:51:55] They're. They're nothing. We have millions of. Of members and that we're a trillion dollar church. Nobody compares to us.
Tim Kosnoff [01:52:01] Yep. Yeah, well, you know, it's, you know, I. There's a lot that I admire about, maybe not the church so much, but the people in it.
John Dehlin [01:52:14] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:52:15] And, you know, so many folks are just so salt of the earth people who would, you know, help a stranger, give you the shirt off their back, feed you, give you shelter, and, you know, that kind of goodness is kind of hard to find in American culture anymore. And I don't know exactly why that is, but I don't know if they have ulterior motives. They want to convert you, but there's just a sort of genuineness. And we should probably wrap up in a second. But there's a story that I've always wondered about it, and I was wondering if you could, if you recognize it. So I was representing this client, and his father was in the church, and he came to one of our conferences, meetings, and I got visiting with him and he had like an Irish last name. It wasn't like a Mormon last name where it's, you know, Scandinavian or Welsh or something. And he said, well, yeah, I said, I grew up in Boston and I was working in the yachts and I was sick of it and I wanted to go out west and be a cowboy. And I said, and so you did that? Yeah, I was like 23, and I came out to Wyoming and became a cowboy and I became a Mormon. And I said, well, I understand the cowboy part well, why did you become a Mormon? He said, well, because I thought that if you were going to be a good cowboy, you had to be a Mormon. And I was like, that's interesting. Do you have any insight into that?
John Dehlin [01:54:03] Only that Wyoming is one of the handful of states where we have a very, very heavy inflow influence. And there's some small Mormon towns in. In Wyoming or Montana or Idaho or Utah where we. We're kind of the predominant, you know, controlling culture. So I don't know if that's part of it.
Tim Kosnoff [01:54:22] No, I'm just wondering if. If the. If the cowboy culture and the Mormon culture are, you know, intersecting and if,
John Dehlin [01:54:28] you know, I mean, I mean, we did settle. We did settle much of the American west, right? Mountain West. Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [01:54:37] Yeah. So if you're going to go to church, chances are in Wyoming, maybe the only one is the Mormon branch down the street or what have you. But let me ask you this really
John Dehlin [01:54:48] quickly to wrap up. Some were surprised at how quickly the Mormon Church dropped the Boy Scouts of America, almost like a hot potato. Given our heavy involvement in it, in our long history with it, and the importance of. Of the role that it placed in the church, what do we make of the fact that the church was so willing to just drop them and distance themselves, given our history?
Tim Kosnoff [01:55:13] Well, see, I was kind of out of the loop in 14, 15, 16. You're on a boat. I mean, ordinarily, I just. I monitor this, you know, this stuff daily. I have bots that scour the Internet and. And I read every story that has to do with Mormon Boy Scout sex abuse, anything, so. But the testimony in the bankruptcy plan confirmation trial included testimony from. I forget his name now. Director of Risk Management. Department of Risk Management.
John Dehlin [01:55:54] Not Von Keach?
Tim Kosnoff [01:55:55] No, no, no, no. He's. This guy is a member of the. He's. He's a. He's a head of a department. I should remember this because when you get checks, it's his signature on them.
John Dehlin [01:56:06] Okay.
Tim Kosnoff [01:56:07] Huh.
John Dehlin [01:56:08] Is your Burton.
Tim Kosnoff [01:56:09] No, he's not a bishop. Gosh, I'm sorry, I can't remember his name.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:14] He's an employee.
Tim Kosnoff [01:56:15] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:15] It's not a.
Tim Kosnoff [01:56:20] And Apollo.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:22] Written. Writing.
John Dehlin [01:56:24] Writing.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:25] Writing.
Tim Kosnoff [01:56:25] Paul. Writing. Yes, Reading. Yeah, reading. Nice job, Ry. Yeah, Very good. All right, thank you. And a senior moment there. And I think I heard his testimony, or maybe I heard about it afterwards, but he was asked this exact question, why did LDS quit scouting? And I'm sure he got a whooping when he got back, but he told the truth. And he said, because there's bankruptcy and we wanted to get as far away from it as possible. And I think that was one of the rare moments when people inadvertently tell the truth. That wasn't the official line. I think the official line was something more anodyne, like we wanted to form our own scouting and the values of BSA were no longer consistent with the values of the church. And, you know, we wanted to make it worldwide and make it worldwide and. And so forth. And
John Dehlin [01:57:31] I just have to say.
Tim Kosnoff [01:57:32] But it doesn't.
John Dehlin [01:57:33] It doesn't seem like it lies in its. Its press releases and its marketing, it's newsroom completely lies. If the church gives a reason for some decision it's making, it's almost guaranteed that that is not the reason. And you're saying it's likely the opposite reason?
Tim Kosnoff [01:57:50] Well, I was going to say, you know, it's almost a perfect negative barometer, you know, if it points, you know.
John Dehlin [01:58:00] Yeah, it's like we did the hotline for the victims. It's like, oh, okay. What's the opposite of the victims? It's for money and reputation. Oh, it turns out to be true. We jettisoned the Boy Scouts for honor, truth and integrity and multiculturalism and diversity. And the opposite is true is for bankruptcy and legal liability and pedophilia scandals. Right.
Tim Kosnoff [01:58:21] You know, I don't know why church lawyers would have been so upset with him about that testimony, because what's wrong with saying, yeah, we have to look out after ourselves? This thing is a complex mess. We know that we're going to have to deal with it on some level, but we don't have confidence going forward in this organization or the restructured Boy Scouts of America. And, you know, we want to cut our losses. I mean, I think that's basically what he was saying.
Gerardo Sumano [01:58:56] The only reason I think they would be upset is because it doesn't line up with what the church PR put out.
Tim Kosnoff [01:59:03] Well, that's that. Somebody told me that. Which is. That's not what they're telling the members.
John Dehlin [01:59:08] Well, there's this saying, you know, you said the private thing out loud or something like that, right?
Tim Kosnoff [01:59:12] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:59:12] Don't ever say the private thing out loud.
Tim Kosnoff [01:59:14] Yeah, it's. Yeah, so it is one of those. Those moments. But, you know, it's funny, you. You sometimes get the truth out of them and, you know, it may be,
John Dehlin [01:59:26] I don't know, like when Richard Bushman said that the predominant narrative isn't true and is not sustainable.
Tim Kosnoff [01:59:32] You know, in the Catholic Church, they actually have a canon, you know, which we referred to as lying for the Lord. And I don't know, you know, that basically it's, you know, it's okay to lie if it's to protect Mother Church. And I don't think the Catholic Church is the only one that has that sort of idea that, you know, it's not lying because you're protecting God's true church. Okay, that makes sense to me.
Where the Lawsuit Stands and What Victims Can Do
John Dehlin [01:59:59] So where are we today with the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts and the lawsuit and the settlement and, you know, what people should care about and if there are any listeners who are victims, what. What should they do? Or is there anything we can tell them? Let's just do a closing summary if you want to.
Tim Kosnoff [02:00:15] The answer is, I hope to know a little bit more when they file this amended plan later, I think it should give us, it should tell us what the Mormon Church is going to do.
John Dehlin [02:00:25] So the Mormon Church is filing a plan?
Tim Kosnoff [02:00:27] No, but the Boy Scouts are filing this plan since the judge ruled two weeks ago saying I can't support this deal because of the Mormons. So Boy Scouts of America, you better go back and make some decisions. Well, part of those decisions is what are we going to do with the LDS Church? What's the LDS Church going to do with us? Because they thought they were going to get 250 million in a complete, you know, car wash. Everything gets cleaned, but no. And so it's much more complicated for them now.
John Dehlin [02:01:00] And so we're about to hear a big announcement.
Tim Kosnoff [02:01:02] Yeah. So you know, will that fall apart? So I guess there's like three possibilities. The church just takes their 250 million and their Boy Scout insurance and says, sayonara, we're done with you. Make a clean break, we'll deal with these cases. We've got our insurance, we're going to hang onto it. Now at that point the insurance companies are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We put up 1.8 billion, you know, for these, all these releases, including the LDS Church, and you're telling us that we're not going to get released for 40% or for all these LDS cases, then we're not putting in that money and then the whole deal starts to crumble. But from the Church's perspective, I don't see what's in it for them to stick around. Grab the two valuable assets that you threw into this thing, the 250 million and your boy Scott insurance. Plus you have your own excess insurance
John Dehlin [02:02:02] and
Tim Kosnoff [02:02:04] start talking to the lawyers and let's start working through these cases. You know, you've got exposure on these and you know, let's work through and try and get folks compensation now instead of them having to wait for another two or three years for this whole obscene, convoluted, extravagant, elaborate plan which is probably going to get reversed on appeal anyway because it's unprecedented. A debtor in bankruptcy. Chapter 11 gets a release. But if you're a non debtor, the bankruptcy code doesn't authorize you getting a release. This was, I don't know if you followed the Purdue opioid Sackler case. The sacklers kicked in 5 or 6 billion and they got a release. And the bankruptcy judge confirmed that plan. It went up to the district court and said, no, there's no support for this in the bankruptcy code. If the sacklers want a release, they should file their own bankruptcy. And that was much cleaner, much simpler because it was just one family, a few individuals here. There's countless individuals that are getting released and there's no authority for that. And on top of that, I think it's unconstitutional. You're taking away the rights of people to sue institutions that were responsible for their abuse. That's a property right. And you're taking it away sometimes for little value or compensation. And that's a denial of due process. It's a denial of property without due process. So I think this thing is vulnerable on both the bankruptcy code statutory issue, but also on the constitutional issue. And it'll probably end up in the Supreme Court, God knows when.
John Dehlin [02:03:57] Oh, the U.S. supreme Court.
Tim Kosnoff [02:03:59] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:03:59] And we know how they rule.
Tim Kosnoff [02:04:02] Yeah, yeah, but I think, you know, they're, they're conservative. And I think the conservative viewpoint is if it's not in the language of the bankruptcy statute and it's not in the Constitution, where does it come from? Well, it comes from this little bankruptcy judge who just made this up out of thin air. It's not authorized under the code. So this whole effort, this whole process, all these men waiting all these years, all these. And the lawyers have billed $300 million to the estate so far to produce failure, if not now on appeal. And I mean, does the Mormon Church want this uncertainty hanging over it for how many more years? Or do they want to step up to the table and get their liabilities resolved?
John Dehlin [02:04:54] But I'm sure, you know, there is an alliance between conservative, religious, conservative politics and sort of orthodox religiosity. And so, you know, just like with the pro life stuff or, you know, contraception stuff, if the church feels like whatever deal they make with the BSA could go to the US Supreme Court, given the current constitution of the US Supreme Court, maybe they feel like they'll side on the side of religious freedom or religious protection over.
Tim Kosnoff [02:05:22] Yeah, I know what you're saying, but I don't think this case turns on religion. This is about third party releases and mass tort cases. The Mormon Church just happens to be one of the sponsoring organizations. Good at issue. But it's not, it's not. The Mormon Church is not central to the. Okay to this case. It's central to the plan. Because if they take their 250 million and their insurance, I don't see how that plan stands on its, on its own. So, but, so you said one option
John Dehlin [02:05:54] is the church completely walks. Did you give the other.
Tim Kosnoff [02:05:57] Yeah, yeah, they take, they take their ball and they go home and they say, you know, we'll do, we'll deal with it, you know, but we'll be able to control the process and we'll do it. We don't want to piggyback on their bankruptcy and we'll deal with this on our own. That's one. Or they could say we will throw in our Boy Scout insurance and get released for all the scouting related activity. But even that doesn't liberate them because they're still on the hook to pay more money in the future. And then the third is, I suppose, a wait and see, which is you can have our insurance. We've got a year to decide how much money we're going to kick into the plan. Maybe we can negotiate these cases out outside of the bankruptcy and be done. I don't know. I mean, those just seem messy, complicated. And you know, the church has gotten more cases resolved in the last two years than the Boy Scouts have, and the Boy Scouts haven't gotten anything resolved.
John Dehlin [02:07:05] It's clear what direction you want the church to take. What do you think is most likely one of the listeners. Viewers wants to know?
Tim Kosnoff [02:07:12] Well, this is a situation where, you know, what I want and what is in the church's best interest happened to coincide whether they see it or not. So. But they're going to do, you know, whatever they're going to do. And sometimes it takes them a while, but I think eventually they figure it out and, you know, it's all dollars and cents to them. And, you know, general counsel and general authorities are, you know, I'm sure they've had these conversations, well, like, what if we go down this path? What's that going to look like? And then what if we go down that path? What's it going to look like? And so forth. And I think if they're getting an honest presentation from their lawyers about how if we give up our insurance, we're still going to get sued, there's going to be an onslaught of lawsuits and they're all going to claim that the abuse occurred outside of scouting and we're going to have, you know, we're going to be in the same spot we're in, so why give up that valuable asset? You know, we can just do it on our own and we'll do individual settlements, go one by one by one, get insurance company approval. If they don't approve, we'll settle and we'll deal with the insurance company down the road saying we settled this case out for a reasonable amount based upon the facts, you wouldn't come in and defend or pay. So, you know, see in federal court, and that goes on every day. So the church has experience in this. They have layers of insurance over a certain amount. And these are big international insurance companies. And so they've got the cash to go in and settle cases and then go back to these insurance companies and say, here's the bill for our settlement and attorney's fees and so forth. Pay it. And if it doesn't, then the church can demand mandatory arbitration. And then it goes into arbitration and gets resolved quietly. And it's businesslike, it's orderly. And so if I was, if I was looking at this from the church, haven't they seen enough of this Boy Scout case to know what a quagmire it is? Don't you want to get as far away from this as you can? What's the upside of you staying in and giving up your valuable insurance rights? I don't see it. But again, there may be considerations that you have that I'm not aware of and maybe it makes perfect sense. But.
John Dehlin [02:09:55] So if somebody has been a victim and they want to join some sort of class action lawsuit, is there a way for them to do it or is it too late or.
Tim Kosnoff [02:10:02] Well, yeah, the church is still going to be exposed on these mixed claims. So if you were abused both in scouting but didn't file a claim timely, then you can't. You're not eligible to get an award from the bankruptcy. But if you were abused by a scout leader outside of scouting, or if you're abused in a context not even involving scouting at all, but by an adult leader in the church, you know, if your case is particularly in a place like California, where the window is still open, I know the church is interested in resolving those claims and they will sign tolling agreements which basically stop the running of the statute of limitations to give us time to give them time to learn a little bit more about the case, make an offer, suggest we go into mediation, get it resolved. So we've been resolving cases in a businesslike way with the church, and the church likes that. They like to do things in an orderly, businesslike way. And, you know, I do too, you know, because the other just, it's too taxing on the client, on the lawyers. There's too much risk involved. And lawyers won't take on these cases because even if it's a great case, you're going to spend, you know, law firms can't take, you know, a risk on expending millions of Dollars in costs and attorney time on a chance you may lose. So that's a big reason why people can't find lawyers is, you know, the Church has made it very clear, sure, you can sue us, and we will make it, you know, very, very expensive. So expensive is you'll never want to sue us again. And that'll serve as notice to any other lawyer that's considering suing us. So if a client comes to us and says, you know, I want to nail their hide to the wall, I said, okay, well, this is what you need to understand. It's going to happen. And you have to ask yourself whether you're really up for that or you want us to reach out to the church, their lawyers, and say, we've got a claim, and we think you should take a look at it. And we think we can negotiate something that's reasonable and fair to the Church based upon all the facts and circumstances. It may be a strong case or in one aspect, but maybe weak on statute of limitations or there may be some other problem with the case. Most often, you know, our clients, they don't want to go to war with the Church. Yeah, it's.
John Dehlin [02:12:52] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [02:12:53] You know, even if they're angry and even if they blame the Church, you know, they don't have the resiliency factors to go through that experience. And I tell them right up front, you know, it's. I'm gonna make that judgment. And if I think you don't have the psychological equipment to do what you say you want to do, then you can't ask me to take on that risk, because it's a huge risk.
John Dehlin [02:13:24] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [02:13:25] And so you have to have a very frank conversation with your client. And he may say, I don't care. Then you're not the lawyer for me. And I said, you're right. And you go find another lawyer who's going to file a lawsuit against the Mormon Church to litigate this case for five years.
John Dehlin [02:13:40] Yeah. Because the Church is super wealthy, super powerful, and sometimes super scrupulous. But you were saying Curtin McConkie is seeming more reasonable these days with maybe some of the younger attorneys than maybe they've been.
Tim Kosnoff [02:13:53] Yeah. Well, it could be because I'm more reasonable these days, you know. You know, it's just you get a sore arm throwing bricks all the time, you know, and. But I. But I do think it's also, you know, they're. They're problem solvers. This is a problem that their client has, and they want to get it resolved. And, yeah, they want to save Their client money. Sure. And. But, you know, most cases that go through litigation or trial, particularly trial, are examples of one side's lawyer or the other side's lawyer miscalculating. Because every case is settleable.
John Dehlin [02:14:39] Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [02:14:40] And should be settled. And if it doesn't, it goes forward to trial, it's because somebody miscalculated. And, you know, that can end badly for the victim or badly for the church. And jury trials are crapshoots. It's just 12 strangers in the box. And in a civil case, if you've got 12, you need nine out of 12 and a six person jury, you need five out of six. And you've got somebody on there that thinks, I don't think it's right you should be able to sue a church or I'm not Mormon, but, you know, I'm Baptist and I don't want a case like this being brought against my church. So, you know, you get, you know, there's biases and prejudices out there and there's nothing you can do about that.
John Dehlin [02:15:28] Right. Yeah.
Tim Kosnoff [02:15:29] So.
John Dehlin [02:15:30] Well, Tim. Timothy Koznoff, attorney, you are a legend. I've wanted you on Mormon Stories for years. Mormons have no idea how much you've helped them and how much good you've done for our people. And so I'm glad this AP Arizona article was an excuse. You flew out here voluntarily on your own dime. And I just want you to know I'm so happy to meet you and I'm so happy you came on Mormon Stories. So are our viewers and listeners. And mostly, I'm just from the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for all the work you've done to help clean up the messes we've been making as a church.
Tim Kosnoff [02:16:09] Back at you, John. This is a valuable service and it was a privilege to come on your show. Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:16:15] All right. All right. Gerardo, thanks so much for helping make this happen. And thanks for writing Shotgun.
Tim Kosnoff [02:16:21] Yeah, for sure.
John Dehlin [02:16:22] You feeling good?
Gerardo Sumano [02:16:23] Yeah, feeling great.
John Dehlin [02:16:24] Yeah. Are we done with the series or is there a little bit more?
Gerardo Sumano [02:16:27] You said there's one more, so maybe.
John Dehlin [02:16:29] Maybe yet. We have a couple episodes. We want to definitely share people's experience, experiences where the church told them not to report to police. And we may, we may interview a victim or two as well. But we hope you've enjoyed this series so far on the Mormon Church and sexual abuse. Thanks to all the viewers and listeners. Thanks to all the donors. And if you don't contribute to Mormon Stories of the Open Stories foundation, you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor and we promise to create more content like this for you in the weeks, months and years ahead. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye, everybody.
TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of Sexual Assault, Rape, Child Abuse
Join John and Gerardo as they interview attorney Tim Kosnoff about the relationship between the Boy Scouts of America abuse epidemic and the Mormon church.
Tim Kosnoff is a US attorney who has spent the last two decades representing victims of abuse.
His introduction to the LDS Church and their lawyers was when he represented Jeremiah Scott who was sexually abused by a serial paedophile Frank Curtis. His work, in this case, appears in Lisa Davis’ legal thriller, The Sins of Brother Curtis. This case has led to a practice in which he has come to represent over 150 Mormon abuse victims bringing him face to face with the Mormon law machine repeatedly.
- Tim Kosnoff: kosnoff.com
- https://twitter.com/SexAbuseAttys
- https://abusedinscouting.com/
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Show Notes:
-
- AP: Seven years of sex abuse: How Mormon officials let it happen
- AP: How Mormon church ‘help line’ hid child sex abuse
- Abused in Scouting (Tim’s legal efforts)
- The Sins of Brother Curtis
- Spotlight Movie
- Scouts Honor – Sexual Abuse and the BSA
- The Three R’s – Recognize, Review, and Report (BSA Abuse training)
One Response
Having a son in the Young Men’s program during the time the church discontinued Scouting I noticed a general decline in the Young Men’s program. There seemed to be no forethought into the cancellation of the program. Just a few years before there were videos of President Monson promoting Scouting, and proclaiming the everlasting bond between Scouts and the Church. They discontinued scouting so abruptly there was not a program developed to replace it. General confusion seemed to surround the young men. Leaders did not know what to do with the kids, and there was a general aimlessness. I assume that the lag between cancelling the only program the young men had and developing a tradition around something new had a serious impact on the likelihood of boys going on to serve missions.