A former Boy Scout sued the Boy Scouts of America Tuesday, accusing the group of allowing a known sex-abuser and former troop leader, who was barred from the Scouts after a 1970s felony conviction, to later rejoin as a volunteer in another state. The ex-Scout identified only as John Doe said his former troop leader, Thomas Hacker—now 75 and serving two concurrent 50-year prison terms for the aggravated sexual assault of an 11-year-old troop member—sexually assaulted him when he was 10 years old. The suit draws on information from the 14,500 pages of secret "perversion files" released by the Boy Scouts last month by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. According to the suit, one of the first to cite information from the much-publicized document dump, though Hacker was added to an "ineligible volunteer list" after his conviction in Indiana, no one conducted a background check when he applied to rejoin the group in Illinois. The Boy Scouts released a statement Tuesday indicating that they had not reviewed the lawsuit but that they "deeply regret that there have been times when Scouts were abused, and for that we are very sorry and extend our deepest sympathies to victims."
