Boy Scout Lawsuit Loans

TriMark Legal Funding is one of America’s original lawsuit funding companies. We have provided fast, low-cost BSA lawsuit loans for over a decade.

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Boy Scout Lawsuit Loans

TriMark Legal Funding has been providing Boy Scout lawsuit loans since 2011.

In the past, we offered post-settlement funding on settled individual Boy Scout sexual abuse cases. Most recently, we provided pre-settlement cash advances on the pending BSA mass tort multidistrict litigation.

However, when the BSA filed for bankruptcy on February 18, 2020, TriMark temporarily suspended its Boy Scout lawsuit loan program. We fully expect to resume BSA settlement funding after the following has occurred:

1. The bankruptcy is resolved
2. Settlement discussions have concluded
3. Payout amounts have been finalized

How Could So Much Abuse “Fly Under The Radar”?

From a corporate perspective, the Boy Scouts of America have known as far back as the 1920s that it had a serious problem with sexual predators within its ranks.

Apparently, some genius at BSA Corporate decided early on that it would be bad for business if everyone knew that the Boy Scouts of America was both a hotbed and a safe haven for sexual predators.

So instead of doing the right thing and stopping it, the BSA kept quiet and covered it up.

It even colluded with the Mormon Church to cover up the rampant sexual abuse, rather than alerting authorities, informing parents, warning the children, or identifying and removing the predators. In the end, they kept everything under wraps for almost a century.

Enough Is Enough

And then, one day, a guy named Kerry Lewis decided enough was enough and that he wasn’t gonna keep quiet any longer.

So he called an attorney and filed a lawsuit that would eventually pull back the curtain on the BSA and expose their despicable secrets to the entire world.

Lewis’ lawsuit was a line in the sand, and it was the beginning of the end for the BSA. Within a few short years, the multi-billion dollar financial empire would be brought to its knees and forced into bankruptcy.

Ending Sexual Abuse In The Boy Scouts

Everything started falling apart for the BSA in April 2010, when a Portland, Oregon jury awarded Kerry Lewis, the aforementioned 38-year-old former Boy Scout, an $18.5 million verdict for sexual abuse.

Still reeling from that verdict, the BSA, in September of that same year, wised up and settled another sexual abuse lawsuit brought by six other men against the Boy Scouts. They, and Lewis, as it happened, were all abused by one Timur Dykes; a convicted pedophile who also just happened to be an assistant Scoutmaster.

But it gets worse.

The jaw-dropping fact is that the BSA knew Dykes was a convicted child sex offender, but it still allowed him to continue participating in and leading troop activities. This included sleepovers at his home with the scouts, even after he confessed in 1983 to having abused as many as 17 scouts!

^{“Dykes was convicted three times of sexually abusing boys between 1983 and 1994, most of them Scouts. The suit alleges the Boy Scouts knew it had child molesters among its troop leaders, but didn’t tell parents or authorities. The Scouts say they kept confidential files on suspected molesters to protect children.” ~ CBS News}

Attorney Kelly Clark, one of the attorneys representing the men, said he hoped the settlement would make the Boy Scouts safer for children, just as widespread sexual-abuse litigation against the Catholic Church made the church safer. “That’s not primarily because the bishops got the Holy Spirit; that’s because the bishops got sued,” Clark said.

BSA Colluded To Hide The Truth

The BSA began compiling reports, which would eventually be dubbed “Perversion Files”, as far back as the 1920s of volunteers who were considered ineligible to serve in the Boy Scouts due to claims of child sexual abuse. But they kept it a secret and did nothing to stop it.

In 1971, BSA executives admitted to destroying thousands of “Perversion Files,” i.e. files that named sexual abusers in the Scouts. Their actions effectively concealed the identities, for all time, of untold thousands of sexual abusers within the ranks of the BSA.

See the BSA abuse timeline here

The Boy Scout Lawsuit

After the Lewis verdict, attorneys defending the BSA sexual abuse cases admitted to the existence of what has notoriously been dubbed the “Perversion Files”. The perversion files database sprung into public awareness when Multnomah County Judge John Wittmayer ordered the BSA to turn over more than 1,000 such files in their possession.

The Boy Scouts of America released files for 1,247 cases in response to the court order. The files, it turns out, meticulously documented rampant sexual abuse from 1965 to 1985. That, of course, opened the floodgates.

After a nearly 10-year onslaught of litigation and confidential settlements, the BSA filed for bankruptcy protection on February 18, 2020. That was the day TriMark stopped offering Boy Scout lawsuit loans.

In all, more than 92,000 Boy Scout sexual abuse claims were filed with the bankruptcy court before November 16, 2020.

When the Boy Scouts reorganization plan was approved, TriMark Legal Funding once again began receiving hundreds of calls a day from plaintiffs requesting Boy Scout pre-settlement loans.

TriMark is committed to helping injured plaintiffs nationwide with pre-settlement funding and post-settlement funding, and the Boy Scouts lawsuit is no exception.

Boy Scout Lawsuit Update

On September 8, 2022, the Boy Scouts of America secured approval of a $2.46 billion reorganization plan from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Wilmington, Delaware. This should allow the organization to exit Chapter 11 and settle decades of claims by more than 80,000 men who say they suffered sexual abuse as children by troop leaders.

As with all settlement agreements of this magnitude, we expect creditor disputes, legal challenges, and possibly even appeals. Once the dust settles and the settlement begins to take shape, the attorneys will create a payment matrix.

After that happens, TriMark will, in all likelihood, begin offering Boy Scout settlement loans again. But until that happens and the payout details become clear, TriMark will be unable to offer settlement funding on the Boy Scout lawsuit.