I began this series in response to a civil court decision awarding millions of dollars in damages to Kerry Lewis for being sexually abused by a scout leader decades before. More recently, the Oregon Supreme Court heard arguments about the possible release of hundreds of files detailing sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts.
The question of appropriate transparency, one that has long raised divergent concerns, arises because such files were introduced in the Lewis lawsuit, and now several media outlets, both local and national, are petitioning for the files to be made public. The files, dating from 1965 to 1985, contain information about accusations of sexual abuse, the names of victims and what the Boy Scouts did or did not do to prevent abuse.
Although Oregon has a relatively generous statute of limitation in such cases, without access to these files, victims have little recourse in pressing for compensation. However, releasing the files raises equally serious concern about privacy for victims.
What responsibility do religious and civic organizations such as the LDS and the BSA have toward victims of sexual abuse when it comes to transparency, confrontation of abusers, restitution, and full assistance in restoration for the victims? Legally, the ground has shifted in recent decades. Yet the question in this series is not what should be legal, but what is the appropriate moral action, something to which we hope our laws will eventually conform.
First, should organizations be liable for past mistakes when organizational changes have already been made? Certainly, the prophetic voices of biblical times held that corporate entities, particularly nations, were to be held, as were individuals, to God’s moral standards. Family units, clans, communities and whole societies were understood to have moral responsibility. Particularly, the prophets of ancient Israel attributed the downfall and destruction of empires to such sins as the abuse of the poor or the ill treatment of the environment. And such an approach to corporate responsibility has remained an ethical tenet throughout the Christian tradition as well.
What happens when organizations, such as the Latter Day Saints or the Boy Scouts, do make appropriate policy changes to conform to updated laws and social perceptions? Should they still be held liable for mistakes made prior to those changes? Again, I am not a lawyer, but I understand that while the law cannot be backdated for criminal offence, damages can still be awarded in civil cases.
However, we are not merely talking about the legal or fiscal responsibility of religious and civic groups, but their moral responsibility. Would, for example, a scout leader tell his charges that because there was no law against being mean to their fellow scouts, they were therefore absolved of responsibility? Of course not. Responsibility, whether individual or corporate, always goes beyond the letter of the law.
What then should happen if organizations and institutions do not hold themselves appropriately accountable? When they absolve themselves of responsibility quite contrary to the very standards they hold their charges?
My understanding of the biblical witness would say that those who speak for God should defend the weak when the powers-that-be do not. It gets complicated, though, when those who speak for God are the same powers-that-be, or when the powers-that-be must become the voice of God to those who should be fulfilling their role as the voice of God.
It could be argued that God alone has the right to impute justice in such situations, but there is a much stronger case to be made from Judeo-Christian thought that society, particularly through human government, is called to carry out God’s justice. Otherwise there would be no concept of just wars or a case for capital punishment. Even those religious traditions which do not agree with just war theory or who oppose capital punishment on moral grounds still hold that man’s laws and courts, imperfect as they may be, are to be agents of God’s justice on earth.
Therefore, when our nation through the courts of the land holds churches and the Boy Scouts accountable for wrongdoing, it is performing its God-given responsibility. Even so, how sad that when churches and scouting organizations fail to own up to past mistakes without the threat of legal action, they fail their changes by not presenting a better example of moral responsibility. The lesson passed on is that if you are not caught, you are not responsible.
To be continued…
