When William Stevens decided to sue the Boy Scouts of America in June 2018, he felt a deeply ingrained sense of guilt as he told attorneys at Green and Gillispie that a Scout leader sexually abused him when he was a child, he said.
"I heard a 10-year-old version of myself yelling at me that I had told his secret," Stevens said Tuesday. "That never goes away."
Stevens will speak publicly as a survivor at 2 p.m. today during a news conference outside the Green and Gillispie office in North Little Rock. Stevens is one of about 900 survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Scout leaders in Arkansas, and he plans to voice his opposition to a proposed $1.8 billion bankruptcy settlement that includes an $850 million fund to compensate tens of thousands of survivors across the U.S.
The settlement would allow hundreds of local Boy Scout councils to retain most of their unrestricted assets and pay only about $600 million collectively, said Joshua Gillispie, Stevens' attorney. The largest council in Arkansas, the Little Rock-based Quapaw Area Council, has about $12.8 million in unrestricted assets and 300 claims of abuse against it. The proposed settlement would force the council to pay about $4.5 million of those assets, which Gillispie said is "unheard of" in a bankruptcy case.
Under the settlement, the chartering organizations behind many Scout troops, such as churches and the Salvation Army, would not have to pay anything.
"Oftentimes, the men who become Scout leaders in these troops are from these chartering organizations, and those are the men who are committing the crimes, so they have a lot of liability," Gillispie said.
Gillispie represents 25 other men who say they were abused by Scout leaders in Arkansas, including Travis Barkley of Mississippi and Timothy Gore of Colorado.
The three victims, including Stevens, said the proposed settlement is unfair.
"This is a slap in the face to those people who have been treated like trash by the Boy Scouts of America, and I have little faith that they will ever do anything right for those that they have abused and the other abuse they've covered up over the years," Stevens said.
In August, a bankruptcy judge in Delaware approved the Boy Scouts of America's proposed settlement and gave the 82,000 abuse claimants nationwide until Dec. 14 to approve or reject the plan. Gillispie said his 26 clients should all vote "no."
The Boy Scouts of America will have to "go back to the drawing board" if enough claimants reject the plan, Gillispie said, although the number of "no" votes to warrant a rejection is up to the judge's discretion. Gillispie and his clients hope the Boy Scouts of America will draw up a fairer plan, including repercussions for chartering organizations, if the efforts to reject the current plan are successful, he said.
Stevens' 2018 case in Pulaski County Circuit Court was dismissed later that year after the judge said it was filed too late. Gillispie filed a motion of reconsideration, which has kept the case alive, he said.
The Justice for Vulnerable Victims Of Sexual Abuse Act of 2021, partially drafted by Gillispie, increased the statute of limitations for child victims of sexual abuse from age 21 to 55. Stevens spoke before the judiciary committees in both chambers of the Arkansas General Assembly in favor of the bill, which became law in April.
Under the proposed settlement, survivors of abuse in Arkansas and 12 other states and territories would be compensated to the dollar for their claims, while compensation in other states varies based on statutes of limitations. Claimants would receive as little as 1 to 10 cents on the dollar in seven states and territories.
A claim of sexual penetration, the most serious, would result in a payout of $57,771 before attorneys' fees in Arkansas but only $3,177 in some states. Payment for a claim of abuse that did not involve physical contact would range from $19 to $337 before attorneys' fees.
Stevens and Barkley said they were abused by the same Scout leader in 1979 and 1980. The man, who is deceased, was an employee of the Salvation Army, which chartered Stevens' and Barkley's troops.
Barkley said the Scout leader took him and 10 or 11 other boys on outings to increasingly remote locations and eventually directed them to go skinny-dipping. He said the Scout leader would then take one boy at a time with him into the woods and leave the rest of the group alone.
"He would come back, and whoever went with him just didn't act the same again," Barkley said. "[Eventually] it was my turn, and I found out what it was all about."
Stevens said the Scout leader groomed him for months before starting the abuse, which Stevens said included administering oral sex on him, until Stevens told him to stop or he would tell his father about the abuse.
The man was removed from his position as Scout leader shortly afterward because of allegations of abuse from another Scout's family, and Stevens was questioned by a Salvation Army leader and then ordered to keep the entire situation a secret, he said.
Stevens found out years later that the Scout leader was transferred to Arkansas after he had been reported to the Boy Scouts of America for sexually abusing boys in Georgia in 1977. He and Barkley said they were appalled that the organization could have stopped the man from abusing them.
"If it had saved one of us, it would have been worth it all," Barkley said.
Stevens' oral sex claim would result in a payment of more than $43,000, before attorneys' fees, under the proposed settlement.
Gore's troop was chartered by a Methodist church in Paragould. He said his Scout leader abused him more than 15 times over two years by touching him under his clothes.
Gore and Stevens both said they have received counseling for their experiences, and Gore said his potential payout of more than $14,000 for his claims would cover only about a year's worth of counseling.
Barkley said he suffered two nervous breakdowns as an adult because of the abuse. Gore and Stevens said they have struggled to form and maintain meaningful relationships.
They said no settlement can stop the abuse from continuing to haunt them, especially if there is no systemic change within the Boy Scouts of America.
"If they accept this, I don't think we understand how much of a widespread travesty that is to the 82,000 men that are out there," Gore said. "It's not an impediment for them to try to keep this under wraps again. It's like a slap on the wrist, so why would they try to enforce anything in the future?"