Boy Scouts scandal involves suspect in N.C.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Eyewitness News learned one of the suspects accused in sex abuse allegations involving Boy Scouts is from North Carolina.

Mark Bumgarner was accused as a young Scoutmaster of molesting a Scout during a camping trip.

The Boy Scouts put him on probation, and he was later convicted twice of child sexual abuse.

The case involving Bumgarner is one of more than 1,000 the Los Angeles Times claims the Boy Scouts of America protected after receiving molestation allegations.

The Times report reviewed 1,600 cases from 1970-1991. The paper alleged many accusers continued to find their way back to the Boy Scouts and hold positions of leadership and were later convicted on abuse charges. The newspaper reported that it found the "perversion files" through a 1992 lawsuit against the Boy Scouts.

Channel 9 checked North Carolina records and couldn't find Bumgarner listed, but he was listed on the national database in Virginia, where he's registered as a sex offender.

According to a 27-page document, Bumgarner was a 21-year-old Scoutmaster, and the son of a pastor, who was accused of molesting a Scout during a camping trip in Lenoir, N.C. in 1979.

Bumgarner served time in jail for that crime and was put on probation by the Boy Scouts.

Upon release, he moved to Virginia and six years later was again working as a Boy Scout leader and was convicted of molesting two more boys. Bumgarner was sentenced to six years in prison for the sexual battery of the two other boys.

The Times reported as many as 2,000 to 3,000 victims are named in the files. Many of the files contain handwritten accounts by the young boys who claim to be sexually abused.

The Times took the cases and ran them through public record searches and interviewed people involved in the case.

The Times reported in about 400 of those cases, for about 80 percent of those there's no record of Boy Scout officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it.

"In the more than 100 years that the BSA has served youth, society has learned about this important issue. The BSA continuously enhanced its multi-tiered policies and procedures, which now include background checks, comprehensive training programs and safety policies," Deron Smith, spokesman for Boy Scouts of America, was quoted as saying in a statement released by the organization.

WSOC