BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA NEAR SEX-ABUSE SETTLEMENT

The Boy Scouts of America may be a step closer to emerging from its 16-month Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings after having reached a tentative deal for a child sex-abuse compensation framework, the Wall Street Journal has reported. The Boy Scouts reached the tentative agreement with a coalition of law firms representing most of the 84,000 men who claim they were abused while in scouting programmes as children. The agreement calls for the establishment of a compensation trust to which the Boy Scouts would contribute $250m in cash and other assets and local scouting councils would contribute at least $500m. The Boy Scouts would also sign over its liability insurance policies to the trust. The organisation’s carriers include units of Chubb and Hartford Financial Services. It remains unclear how much the policies would add to the trust. The Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy protection in February 2020 in what is the largest bankruptcy ever filed over childhood sex abuse.