Stories

Page 4

• Sexual Abuse

  I was a cub scout in the mid sixties and not abused but was very wary of the cub leader. A few years later my father told me that he had seen in a local newspaper that the cub leader had been arrested for sexually assaulting various boys in the cub group.
• Sexual Abuse

  I was on summer camp away from home. I guess I was maybe 12. I fell climbing a slope in the woods and cut my knee. I was taken to hospital to get it stitched. The Scout Leader suggested that I should sleep in his tent so he could keep an eye on me. During the night he masturbated me. I didn’t really know what was happening at the time and have only disclosed the incident anonymously when participating in CPD relating to sexual abuse.
• Post 2014

  My ex-husband started as a scout leader during our divorce proceedings after his solicitor told him it would make him look more agreeable/sympathetic. He became leader of our daughters scout group and started using it as a tool of emotional abuse. She stopped wanting to go to scouts and he seemed to take this as a personal rejection and started terrorising her. He sent text after vile text about what a terrible daughter she was and texts and voice messages to me screaming and berating me for not “being more supportive”. Police got involved, and I contacted scouts safeguarding who made a LADO referral after looking at the evidence. I feel scouts safeguarding mostly handled the matter well, but it is concerning how my ex saw scout leadership as an easy, low barrier path to being a pillar of the community and a cloak of plausible deniability. Scouts has a recruiting shortage, and they are too quick to recruit people who a simple safeguarding check would show were unsuitable.
• Sexual Abuse

  I was abused at 13. I never told anyone. At 17 as an apprentice, my abuser was one of the trainers in the company training centre. I told the managers. I was transferred to another location.

  At 63, I read his name in the local paper. Others, who had been abused were helping the police investigate him. I joined them. He got 6 years. An old man with God knows how many kids, who joined the scouts for fun, were abused by the bastard.
• Grooming

  I was a Cub leader and became aware of the Venture Scout leaders behaviour over a long period. He was over familiar with the children, spending to much time with several individuals.
  He also approached my son for one on one kayak lessons.
  I decided to notify my area leader and nothing was done.
  He was found out to be having email conversations with an Explorer and when this came to light the association buried the issue and forced the individual out.
  I had enough of the association due to there negligence and left.
• Post 2014

  I started scouts when I was 12. I was a very shy and reserved child and one particular leader, man in his mid 50s, took me under his wing and made me feel much more at ease with joining the group.

  The grooming began pretty much immediately as he spoke to my parents regularly and formed a close bond with me and my family both in and outside of scouts. He used to give me lifts to various different scouting activities and would start with holding my hand, telling me I am pretty. It then started to get more sexual as he complimented me on my breasts and my behind. When I was 13 he would then take me on ‘dates’ at the local cafe and would give me money and ask I didn’t mention it to anyone. He would invite me round to his house where I would eat dinner with his wife and children as he rubbed my upper leg under the table. He would tell me about other women he was sleeping with and was extremely graphic about their sexual encounters. He made me watch pornography with him whilst we were in his car as he masturbated and made me touch myself in front of him, I was still only 13.

   

  The grooming and abuse continued as I carried on attending scouts. I had fallen in love with scouting, I loved sailing and I really enjoyed summer camps. I felt like I would be letting everyone down if I came out and told people about the abuse. When I was 15 I was a big tennis fan and was vocal with him about my love for Wimbledon. I told him it was always a dream of mine to go one year. Disguising it as a “scouts trip” He booked us a hotel room to go to Wimbledon just after my 16th birthday.

   

  Looking back, I can see exactly what was going to happen had I gone along with the trip. I met my boyfriend (now husband) 3 weeks before this trip was supposed to go ahead. I told him everything about my leader and he urged me to go to the police and the scouting association. It came as a shock to me as I was so unbelievably brainwashed I didn’t see anything wrong with his behaviour. To me, he was my friend and my parents trusted him so what could be wrong?

   

  The story gets worse as I remember sitting with the group leader and having him shake his head and tell me I must have got something wrong and there was no way that he would do this. He was eventually told to leave scouting, however, nearly 10 years on I regularly pass my old scout group and see his car parked out there. I just hope to god some other young girl hasn’t fallen in his trap.
• Post 2014

  I’d been in Scouting since I was 8 years old. It had become such an important part of my life, that as soon as I could, I become a young leader at age 14 with a Cub group while I attended Explorers.
  Upon joining, an adult leader quickly became attached to me and built a ‘friendship’. In hindsight I can see that be was clearly grooming me, buying me gifts etc. I told him I wasn’t comfortable talking outside of sessions but he just wouldn’t stop and made out that he’d be lonely and wouldn’t cope without me. I wanted to tell somebody but I was embarrassed as nothing particularly bad had happened and who could I even tell?? The entire group of leaders were all his family.
  Over a period of time, this escalated into sexual abuse and an abusive ‘relationship’. He’d meet me before and after meetings, as well as frequently taking me out to ‘support my mental health’. He became extremely controlling of me. I couldn’t leave else he’d threatened to kill himself/ tell the police.
  Other leaders were aware the rules were broken by him. Perhaps they were not aware of the extent to which they were, but regardless, they chose to do nothing.
  Eventually I reached out to my Explorer leader about what had been happening. Rather than taking it seriously, they told me to try and sort it out between us. They were friends with my abuser. My Explorer leader began to groom me too and would spend a lot of time with me, inviting me to their house. Once my abuser had started essentially stalking me, they finally encouraged me to go to the police.
  My Explorer leader did get removed from scouting after investigation. I’m aware that they did exactly the same to another girl a few years previously. Neither of us can say anything about it due to the hostility of the leader’s family.
  Which is the same with the family of my abuser. He got sent to prison. But despite that, I faced rumours stemming from grown adults blaming me for what happened.

  Scouts still have not completed their internal investigation.

  I have been left with PTSD from the trauma and such anger that Scouts have just ignored what happened to me in order to protect their leaders. It felt like a group of families just trying to protect each other while compromising the safety of the children in their care and it has to change.
• Sexual Abuse

  I was abused by a scout leader along with some other boys.

  I went to the police and nothing happened to start, more people then came forward and it went to court and he was arrested and put in jail. I went to the head of the scouts UK and the basic message from them was – we are very sorry. Nothing else was done.
• Post 2014

  I was a rainbow, a brownie and then a scout and onto explorers, and after a few years returning at 20 to be a leader at 2 explorer groups in my area.

  When I was 13 (a scout) and a part of the local scout show, a leader in his 20s also in the show offered to drive me and my younger brother to and from rehearsals, my parents were grateful of the help.

  I exchanged numbers with this adult, and it turned into him leaving anonymous flowers at my house, begging me to be his girlfriend – to which I refused – he started following me when I walked to school, intercepting me in the cut through between alotments just to ‘make sure I got there safe’ he would show up in his car after school and incist he gave me a lift home, if I refused he’d only follow along side in the car or park and walk with me. It only stopped when his girlfriend, a woman with his baby in her 20s found that he’d been texting me and confronted me, and I told her it was unsolicited it then stopped. We’ll call him ‘creeper’.

  My experience in explorers was great, we had a dynamic group of leaders, did lots of camps, I had lots of friends and made fabulous memories. One of our leaders at the time, probably in his mid 20s so approximately 10 years older than me, we will call ‘smokey’ because he is a heavy smoker.

  When I rejoined my old explorer group and another locally as a leader, the same team of leaders were running the explorer units, including smokey, and they were grateful for a female leader regularly for camps and such.

  On a camp with the explorers locally, only one tent was brought for the 4 leaders, with 2 pods. I wasn’t too bothered about having to share with a bloke…as planned to sleep in all my clothes anyway. That evening a few beers were had amongst the leaders, me included. I don’t fully remember what happened after this point, but I don’t recall having more that 2 drinks, (as a responsible adult on the trip why would I!?)

  I woke up the next morning, with a complete blank from the night before, I was alone in my pod, the sleeping bag was over me and I was trouserless, knickerless, and sticky…in the not cleaned up after being ejaculated into kind of way. I got dressed, and asked where smokey was, and he’d gone home for a shower, odd. I felt dizzy, and confused, and when smokey returned he offered to drive me home rather than stay and finish the hike with the explorers that day.

  For about 8 years, I kept this entirely to myself, I told family I’d ‘gotten too drunk’ and was hungover…..which was a laughing point in our family, ‘remember when she got drunk on a scout camp’ and this covered up the confusion.

  I continued to be a leader for a few months, avoiding smokey, however he called me occasionally in the early hours asking if I was free, I never answered.

  Creeper then joined our unit as a leader, I hadn’t seen him for 7 years, and avoided him, until he asked why I was ignoring him, I said what you did when I was a kid was wrong, and he brushed it off and got angry with me, saying I lead him on etc. It was that point I left scouts.

  I have moved to a new district, and I so want to go back as a leader, now 10 years on from smokey. I love what the scouts can do for young people, it’s a shame this experience is ruined for some.

  Smokey was after 2014, Creeper was before.
• Post 2014

  My husband was charged with physically assaulting my son, his stepson. I was a witness. A local Scout leader had my husband help out as a volunteer with the Scout group while on bail for child assault – and behaved inappropriately around the situation as regards believing my husband’s version of events etc. leading to an incident – where the Scout leader bullied me – which I later tried to report. But if your child isn’t in Scouts, it seems to be impossible to raise a concern or complaint. So the Scout leader carried on leading Scout groups.