Files Detailing Boy Scout Abuse Speak Volumes
By Jeff Pillets, Colleen Diskin And Mary Jo Layton
Albert T. Bischoff of Bergenfield was a married father of two who worked as a custodian in Englewood schools and spent his free time as a merit badge counselor and assistant troop leader for the Boy Scouts. Scout officials described him as “shy and retiring.” But internal Boy Scout documents released Thursday show that some of the boys saw another side of Bischoff — a man who took photos of Scouts urinating in the latrine, who talked openly about oral sex, orgies, sensual massage and the merits of bisexuality. Local Boy Scout executives removed Bischoff, now deceased, from the organization in 1982 after parents demanded action. But the Scouts also promised Bischoff they would keep the matter quiet. “For the good of the B.S.A. it is necessary for Mr. Bischoff to resign immediately,” a Bergen County Scout official wrote in March 1982, in a letter to other local Scout executives. “He was also informed that the matter would remain strictly confidential, between him and the B.S.A.” Bischoff’s story — and hundreds like it dating from 1965 to 1985 — came to light in vivid detail Thursday with the court-ordered release of some 20,000 pages of internal Boy Scout documents that reveal 36 cases in New Jersey alone. The documents are a subset of some 5,000 confidential files created by the Boy Scouts over nearly 60 years on thousands of men they suspected of molesting children. Perhaps more shocking than the lurid details emerging in the files is the suggestion of sex-abuse coverups in yet another hallowed American institution: In more than a third of the newly released cases, police were not informed about reports of abuse, according to the Scouts’ own tally. A top North Jersey Scouting official acknowledged in an interview Thursday that, until about one year ago, Boy Scout policy did not require automatic police notification of all instances of suspected abuse. “There were local differences as to what point a report would go to the authorities,” said Patrick M. Coviello, a 30-year Scouting veteran who is chief operating officer of the 15,000-member Northern New Jersey Council. “Now it is automatic.” Many of the newly released files, which were made available by a Portland, Ore., law firm in litigation with the Scouts, show Scout executives again and again extending the offer Bischoff received to other suspected child abusers: Resign, stay away from Scouting and all will be kept confidential. In New Jersey and across the nation, news of this decades-long shielding of possible child molesters drew sharp calls for reform Thursday even as communities came to grips with explicit details of alleged abuse cases that had been unknown. “You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children,” said Portland attorney Kelly Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s. His firm released the files Thursday. “The deal is, our society will give you incredible status and respect, Norman Rockwell will paint pictures of you, and in exchange for that, you take care of our kids,” said Clark. “But there was a worm in the apple.” Clark is also calling for Congress to review Boy Scout procedures, noting that the organization is congressionally chartered. National Boy Scout leaders said they welcomed any review and defended their procedures for preventing abuse. They strongly objected to the idea that “the perversion files” were secret, but acknowledged that their handling of sexual-abuse complaints has at times been lacking. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our Scouts,” the Boy Scouts of America said in a prepared statement. “There have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate, or wrong.” But child-abuse advocates said the newly released files show the organization cannot be trusted. “We see this time and time again — an iconic organization putting its own reputation over the welfare of children,” said Mark Crawford, New Jersey director of S.N.A.P., the non-profit Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “How can we expect the Scouts to reform themselves?” Crawford and others said an independent review, similar to former FBI chief Louis Freeh’s investigation of sex abuse at Penn State, is now needed. New state laws that lengthen New Jersey’s two-year statute of limitations on civil cases stemming from sex abuse are also needed, the advocates said. A bill pending in the New Jersey Legislature would give victims of sexual abuse 10 years to pursue civil litigation. The legislation was prompted by complaints from victims of clergy sexual abuse who only came to grips with the damaging episodes of their childhood as adults — when it was too late to pursue lawsuits. “I think it’s clear now over time we’ve been seeing there are sex offenders in every walk of life and in many organizations,’’ said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, who sponsored the bill. Critics say the Scouts put other children in jeopardy by not reporting all allegations to authorities, and at least one New Jersey example could be used as a case in point. George Diegelman, 62, of Egg Harbor, pleaded guilty in October 1995 to endangering the welfare of a child and sexual assault. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, state records show. The files released Thursday show that, 11 years earlier, Diegelman, then Scoutmaster of Troop 73, was suspended along with another volunteer after a Scout alleged they had condoned an initiation ceremony on a camping trip in which Scouts were ordered to strip naked, roll around in the sand and then had shaving cream sprayed on their genitals. The two men denied the allegations, and the Atlantic Area Council decided to reinstate the two men in 1985. That decision was challenged by a national Scout representative in 1988, but there’s no indication from the file that the accusations were ever reported to police. Diegelman did not return a phone message left at his home Thursday. Robert Hoatson of West Orange, a former priest who heads a group that |helps victims of abuse by clerics, said the newly revealed details show a Boy Scout coverup similar to secrecy within the Roman Catholic church. “Here we go again,’’ he said. “Just reading these cases is enough to make victims everywhere relive nightmares from the past.” A review of local cases from the Scouts’ files released Thursday shows decades worth of suspected abuse, including a school bus driver from West Milford who pleaded guilty to exposing himself to a 14-year-old boy and soliciting sex in 1972, a Wyckoff scoutmaster who admitted to paying underage scouts for sex in 1976, volunteers from Mahwah and Paramus who were banned from Scouting in 1983, in part because they were members of the National Man-Boy Love Association, and a Fort Lee leader who was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior while on a camping trip in 1968. Glen Rock: Sought forgiveness John Deneke, 67, of Glen Rock, is among those on the list who were criminally charged. He pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated criminal contact after admitting he had fondled three boys, age 15, 13, and 11, on a camping trip in April 1980, according to the Boy Scout documents. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to participate in a psychotherapy program. Reached by telephone Thursday, Deneke said he was upset that, decades after being charged in a case that received no media attention at the time and having completed five years of treatment at a sexual behavior clinic, he is now being publicly identified. “When it [his case] was fresh, I didn’t get phone calls and people knocking on my door,” said Deneke, who suffers from polio, walks with braces and has never married. Deneke did not deny the inappropriate contact but said that, despite being 35 at the time, he was very naive about sexual boundaries and did not know his actions would be considered abuse. “It happened. I can’t say it didn’t,” he said. “But I didn’t have the knowledge and the understanding at the time.” For years after his conviction, Deneke sent the Boy Scouts pages-long letters, laced with biblical references about forgiveness, asking to be reinstated as a leader of the Glen Rock troop he had served. In 1987, Scout officials went before a municipal judge with complaints that Deneke had parked his car outside an event, with a sign on his vehicle addressed to his former troop that read: “Please forgive me. Let me come home.” The judge ordered him to stay away from any Scouting activities, according to the files. He’s worried that Thursday’s release will now jeopardize his participation in a model airplane club called the North Jersey Radio Control Club, whose members meet in Ringwood to fly their models. The club’s members are adults, although some bring their kids along, Deneke said. “That’s probably going to be taken away from me now, too,” Deneke said. Teaneck: ‘Impairing morals’ Robert John Jacoby resigned from a Teaneck troop in 1976 before he was charged with inducing a 14-year-old Teaneck boy to perform fellatio, according to the Scout records. He pleaded guilty in November of that year in Bergen County Superior Court to “impairing the morals of a child.” It was unclear in the records if the boy was a Scout. Jacoby was sentenced to the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center at Avenel, the state’s prison for sex offenders, but the sentence was suspended and Jacoby was put on probation for five years — with conditions that included outpatient psychiatric treatment and no contact with minors without supervision, the records state. “His problem is long-standing and calls for a maximum period of probation and supervision,” Superior Court records said. Police informed the Boy Scouts on May 13, 1976, that Jacoby would be charged within 30 days with at least nine counts of child molesting, according to a letter in the documents. He resigned, but the Scouts said they were waiting until he was officially charged before submitting the information to the national office, the letter said. Efforts to contact Jacoby by phone and at a condo registered in his name were unsuccessful. Nutley: Satanic rituals In a 1983 case, a pair of Scout leaders from Nutley emerged at the center of what authorities described as a Satanic sex cult where underage children were lured with drugs and alcohol. One of the cult leaders was identified as a 19-year-old Eagle Scout named Michael Abidiwan, who belonged to a troop sponsored by the Franklin Reformed Church in Nutley, the Scout records say. The other was identified as 22-year-old John Sileo, who had been an assistant cubmaster of Pack 45 before Scout officials found he had a “neurological impairment” and revoked his Scouting registration, the records state. A police investigation found that the cult involved 35 boys and girls, aged 15 through 17, who were subjected to satanic rituals, sexual abuse and various forms of humiliation, including being forced to wear dog collars and lap milk from a bowl. Both men were indicted by an Essex County grand jury on charges of aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of children, the Scout documents show; they eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Abidiwan was sentenced to five years’ probation while Sileo spent more than a decade in prison, the documents state. Neither could be reached for comment. This article contains material from news service reports. Staff Writers Dave Sheingold, Chris Harris and Zach Patberg contributed to this article.
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