LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Attorney Paul Mones, a Los Angeles-based attorney specializing in representing victims of childhood sexual abuse throughout the United States, today filed a lawsuit in San Bernardino County Superior Court against the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and California Inland Empire Council, Boy Scouts of America claiming negligence; negligence of supervision and failure to warn, hiring and retention; failure to warn, train and educate plaintiff; and battery of a teenage boy.
The suit states that in 2018 the scout was sexually abused by his troop leader, 70-year-old Charles “Kip” Yotter of Riverside, California. Yotter was arrested and charged this past September in connection with the abuse. Yotter was released from jail on $250,000 bail and, four days later, was found dead in his home from an apparent suicide.
John Doe was approximately seven years old when he first met Yotter who was an adult leader for his Cub Scout Pack 30 in Lake Elsinore, Calif. The suit claims that in or around 2012, Yotter began a pattern of grooming John Doe for the purpose of sexually abusing him, and that the abuse occurred in 2018. To date, the Boy Scouts of America has not made any public statement acknowledging Yotter’s connection to scouting.
According to Mones, while sexual abuse in Boy Scouts of America has been a frequent topic of recent news stories, the vast majority of these stories involve cases from 30 to 50 years ago. “What distinguishes this case is that the alleged abuse of a minor scout happened in the last couple of years, demonstrating that the problem of sexual abuse in scouting is still ongoing, pervasive, and serious,” Mones said. “So pervasive and long-term has been the problem of sexual abuse in BSA, that starting in around 1920, the BSA began maintaining files on adult leaders who sexually abused scouts.”
In 2010, Mones won a $19.9 million-dollar verdict against BSA on behalf of a scout sexually abused in the 1980s. As a result of that case, the BSA was, for the first time in its history, forced to publicly release its files that have come to be known as the “Perversion Files.” The files released for the years 1965 through 1985, clearly show not only the BSA’s vast knowledge of the extent of sexual abuse throughout scouting, but also revealed its efforts to cover up that problem and hide it from parents and the public.
With California’s new law Assembly Bill 218 coming into effect on January 1, 2020—expanding the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual assault from age 26 to 40—Mones says he expects to see an increase in cases of abuse coming forward.
“AB 218 will give many victims of sexual abuse a new opportunity to seek justice for the grievous wrongs done to them as children,” he said.
Anyone with any information concerning Yotter’s actions or behavior in Troop 430 or any other troop in the Boy Scouts of America is urged to contact attorney Mones at 310.566.7418 or paul@paulmones.com.
(Case No.: CIV DS 1937879)
About Paul Mones
For over 30 years, Los Angeles attorney Paul Mones has been a leading nationwide advocate for victims of child sexual abuse, representing hundreds of people who had been sexually abused as children by their Boy Scout leaders, Catholic priests, ministers, coaches, teachers, and camp counselors. He won the nation’s largest sexual abuse jury verdict against the Boy Scouts of America in 2010. www.paulmones.com
