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Published: Friday, October 19, 2012

Three men from Nashua among 22 Granite Staters named in Boy Scout perversion files
By JOSEPH G. COTE Staff Writer Three Nashua men, and five from Manchester, are among 22 New Hampshire men and women who were expelled from the Boy Scouts of America because of suspected sexual abuses, according to a database of previously secret files released Thursday. Three of those cases, reported in 1973, 1985 and 1986, originated in Nashua. Another five were reported in Manchester from 1965 through 1998, according to the database posted by the Los Angeles Times. The New Hampshire cases represent only a fraction of the roughly 5,000 men and handful of women kicked out of the group from 1947-2004, the LA Times stated. It also doesnt include files purged, known as the perversion files, by the Boy Scouts before the 1990s. The anticipated release of the files Thursday by Portland attorney Kelly Clark will reveal roughly 14,500 pages of documents the Scouts kept on men inside and in some cases outside the organization believed to have committed acts of abuse. Among the New Hampshire men identified as of Thursday night is then-Nashua resident Richard Frederick Bishop, who at the time of his 1973 expulsion lived at 4 Laton St. and had been Cubmaster, or leader, of Nashua Cub Scout Pack 7 for four years, according to the documents. Records state that Bishop, then 42, pleaded no contest to a morals charge. He received a $150 fine and three-year suspended jail sentence, according to a Telegraph story that was included in the Boy Scouts file. According to an obituary in The Telegraph archives, Richard F. Bishop died in 1999 from cancer at the age of 70. He worked at the former Sanders Associates for 38 years, was a member of the First Baptist Church of Milford, and served in the Navy in the late 1940s, according to the obituary. The obituary listed Bishops address as 6 Laton St. and his date of birth as Jan. 10, 1929, which would have made him 44 in 1973, not 42. Documents for just one of the five Manchester offenders were released by Thursday night. He is Richard A. Dubois, scoutmaster of Manchester Troop 117 who was 27 and lived at 126 Philips St. when he was convicted in 1982 for aggravated felonious sexual assault for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old member of his troop. It was one of 16 counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault the Grand Jury had handed down against Dubois.

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10/25/2012

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Other documents in the Bishop case include correspondence from William Moran, Boy Scouts of Americas director of support services, to Daniel Webster Council 330 advising it of Bishops plea, as well as other letters within the Boy Scouts with copies of the information. Something called a Confidential Record Sheet referenced Bishops age and Sanders employment. Handwritten notes at the bottom of the form state Bishop was convicted on June 1, 1973 of lascivious behavior he was convicted of manhandling a six-year-old female. The two others from New Hampshire whose documents were released by late Thursday are: Hazen James Currier, then of Rochester, who was 37, a part time teacher and associated with Troop 240 when he was expelled in 1981 after being charged with sexually assaulting a boy at a place called Teen-Haven Inc. Ralph R. Sonny Harper Jr., a 39-year-old brick mason and Boscawen resident who was Scoutmaster of Troop 384 when expelled in 1973 after an arrest on a morals charge involving a teenage boy. Besides Nashua and Manchester, the pending documents involving New Hampshire offenders, and the years in which they were expelled, include two in Derry, in 1984 and 1993; two in Gorham, both in 1979; and one each in Salem in 1996; Hampton in 2000; Keene in 1986; Candia in 2002; Rindge in 1997; Laconia in 1997; Gilford in 1985; and Claremont in 1970. An Oregon court ordered the files released and has prompted the group to pledge that it will go back into the files and report any offenders who may have not been reported to the police when alleged abuse took place. That could prompt a new round of criminal prosecutions for offenders who have so far escaped justice. The Scouts have, until now, argued they did all they could to prevent sex abuse within their ranks by spending a century tracking pedophiles and using those records to keep known sex offenders out of their organization. The Scouts began keeping the files shortly after their creation in 1910, when pedophilia was largely a crime dealt with privately. The organization argues that the files helped them track offenders and protect children. But some of the files released in 1991, detailing cases from 1971 to 1991, showed repeated instances of Scout leaders failing to disclose sex abuse to authorities, even when they had a confession. A lawsuit culminated in April 2010, with the jury ruling the Scouts had failed to protect the plaintiff from a pedophile assistant Scoutmaster in the 1980s, even though that man had previously admitted to molesting Scouts. The jury awarded $20 million to the plaintiff. Files kept before 1971 remained secret, until a judge ruled and the Oregon Supreme Court agreed that they should be released. Staff reporter Dean Shalhoup contributed material to this story. Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashua telegraph.com. Also follow Cote on Twitter (@Telegraph_JoeC). Associated Press reports were used in this story.
2012, Telegraph Publishing Company, Nashua, New Hampshire

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10/25/2012