By KIRK JOHNSON / The New York  Times

PORTLAND, Ore. — In August 1981, the father of three Boy Scouts in western  Colorado wrote in deep despair to scouting supervisors: a familiar local scout  leader, referred to only as Joe, had sexually abused boys in his troop,  including the writer’s own sons, and yet was still being allowed to have contact  with boys.

Joe had been spotted at a big scout gathering called a Jamboree, the letter  said, wearing a leather name tag like all other scoutmasters. “Your assurances  that Joe was out of scouting and would have no further contact with scouting  have just become meaningless,” he wrote. “Do you care about my distress over  watching Joe insidiously get back?”

Regrets and recriminations about how the Boy Scouts of America have policed  the ranks of its scoutmasters and other volunteers to guard against sexual  predators — and how they have often failed — echo through the thousands of  pages of internal documents, police files and newspaper clippings released here  on Thursday after a lengthy court battle. The files were put together over a  20-year period in states across the nation on 1,247 men who were accused of  abuse between 1965 and 1985, often with multiple victims. The release of the  documents creates, for the first time, a public database on specific abuse  accusations.

But in a sometimes jarring juxtaposition, the language of a guarded,  institutional caution bleeds through too, from scout leaders who seemed to be  protecting the organization, or were suffused with the belief — others might  call it naïveté — that a man who had admitted wrongdoing with young boys should  be given a second chance.

“He recognizes that he has had a problem, and he is personally taking steps  to resolve this situation,” a scout executive wrote in a memo in August 1972  about a leader who, only a week earlier, had admitted “acts of perversion with  several troop members.”

“I would like to let this case drop,” the executive continued. “My personal  opinion in this particular case is, ‘If it don’t stink, don’t stir  it.’ ”

Identifying a sexual offender in advance, before any damage is done, has  never been easy. There is no set profile for serial molesters except for their  willingness to use positions of trust and power to manipulate their victims,  said a professor of psychiatry who examined the internal scout files in a report  last month for the Boy Scouts of America.

But human nature — in a mostly volunteer institution that millions of  Americans have revered for generations because of its values of setting goals,  building character and promoting the outdoor life also led again and again to  tragic results, senior scout officials now say.

“We definitely fell short — for that we just have to apologize to the  victims and the parents and say that we’re profoundly sorry,” said Wayne Perry,  the president of the Boy Scouts of America, in a telephone interview. “We are  sorry for any kid who suffered.”

The “perversion files,” or “ineligible volunteer files,” as they were also  called, played a central role in a civil case in 2010 over the abuse of six boys  by a scout leader in Portland in the 1980s. The judge ruled that because they  were evidence, the files should be released to the public under the open records  provision of the Oregon Constitution — a decision upheld this year by the State  Supreme Court. More than 1,200 files were posted online on Thursday and are  available for public search.

They do not suggest that scouting was riddled with sexual stalkers. Some  internal memos discuss the struggles to be fair when proof was hard to come by  or the accusers would not tell the authorities or press charges.

Other sections seemed to describe psychological horrors, like the scoutmaster  who, according to a 10-year-old boy’s account given to the police, talked about  the virtues of the scouting life even as he slid his hand down the boy’s  pants.

And sometimes there were failures in the system, such as it was, that was  intended to protect Scouts from abuse.

One such case involved a man named Floyd David Slusher. In 1972, the files  say, Mr. Slusher — then an assistant scoutmaster in Troop 48 in Boulder, Colo.  — was fired from his job at a summer camp after a pattern of “overt homosexual  activity” with underage boys was uncovered. Mr. Slusher’s name was duly added to  the “ineligible volunteers” file, although no criminal charges appear to have  been filed.

Five years later, still in the Scouts but now in a different troop, Mr.  Slusher was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault of a  child. A Boulder County Sheriff’s Department report, sent to scout headquarters,  quoted boys who said Mr. Slusher had threatened to kill them if they revealed  what he did with them — telling one Scout that he would poison his food.

Some people whose words flicker through the files saw hypocrisy in the Boy  Scouts’ actions; others saw only confusion and missed communications. An  internal memo in 1977 regarding a scout leader in Santa Monica, Calif., named  Mike Ross, recounted a harsh conversation between a scout field director and a  Los Angeles police official identified only as Officer Worth. A police check  after Mr. Ross’s arrest on charges that he abused boys in a local troop,  according to a document from the Santa Monica Police Department, had turned up  nine arrests between 1960 and 1971 for sexual crimes against children, and three  outstanding felony warrants from New York in similar cases. Mr. Ross had also  changed his name, the files said, to conceal his criminal record.

The officer “was very critical of the Boy Scouts of America and this council  for permitting individuals like Mike Ross to become scout leaders,” the memo  says. “Worth stated that in view of the fact that we knew about Mike two years  ago and did nothing about it left us open to criticism. I told him I was not  aware of any such notification.”

Mr. Perry said that youth protection training and reporting procedures are  stronger now.

The Boy Scouts opposed the release of the files, arguing that opening the  confidential documents to the public could impinge on victims’ privacy and have  a chilling effect on abuse reports.

“That was a different time,” Mr. Perry said. “That was a time when people  thought — the medical community thought — there was a potential for  rehabilitation.”

But there are passages of remorse in the files too, suggesting an awareness  that bad apples often stayed bad. In 1970, for example, a scout leader wrote to  headquarters about an assistant scoutmaster who had recently been arrested and  had signed a confession on “child molester” charges.

The memo’s writer, whose name was redacted, said that the arrested man’s name  had come up a few years earlier concerning a sexual abuse case in another troop.  “At the time, a prominent member of my board called me to say he knew the  family, that Tom was a fine young man, and asked that he not be placed on our  ‘red flag’ list,” the letter said. “Because of no concrete evidence, at the  time, we did not do this, for which I have had many hours of regret.”

Sometimes, the files say, information about a scout leader’s past was simply  withheld. One memo in 1982 discussed the case of man who had been confronted  with accusations by troop members and parents. He had admitted everything, the  memo said — “taking liberties” was how it was phrased — and resigned,  promising to undergo treatment. No criminal charges were filed.

Yet the parents were not told that the man had been on the ineligible list in  the early 1970s after previous episodes of abuse. “On the advice of the  psychiatrist treating him and his minister, he was allegedly ‘cured,’ ” the  memo said. “His service in the intervening period and his conduct appeared to be  exemplary. This history was not shared with the parents,” the memo continued,  with the word “not,” underlined in the text.

But even some parents who felt betrayed held true to the institution. The  father who in 1981 was so outraged by Joe the scoutmaster’s continued contact  with children was also deeply saddened that one of his sons had become estranged  from the Scouts. The father still held out hope that his son could become an  Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in scouting.

“At age 18 it is hard for him to understand that scouting is not at fault,  only misjudgment on the part of individuals,” he wrote.

This article originally appeared in The  New York Times. First Published October 18, 2012 6:01 pm