On My Honor

January 1, 2025
Thoroughgoing expos� of the Boy Scouts' long-unacknowledged history of sexual abuse and subsequent bankruptcy. Working with a fellow reporter, Christensen knocked on doors and examined hidden archives in order to find himself "peering into a Pandora's box of sexual abuse involving thousands of Boy Scouts victimized by their leaders and betrayed by the nation's preeminent youth group." That number grew as advocacy groups, formed along the lines of support groups for victims of clerical abuse, entered a complex legal fray: In the end, some 82,000 former Boy Scouts sued, and to date, Christensen writes, the adjudicated payout has amounted to a mere $7.9 million. He writes that the Boy Scouts had long known of sexual abusers among the ranks of its adult leaders, keeping files, most recently, on more than 5,000 "ineligible volunteers," many of whom were nonetheless able to sign on as scoutmasters; these "IV files," he adds, predominantly concerned cases of "perversion." These secret files--"secret," he writes, being a term the Scouts shun, preferring the legalistic "confidential"--are incomplete, since they were purged to ostensibly "protect the privacy of victims, witnesses, and anyone falsely accused of sexual abuse." As the instances of provable sexual abuse grew, Christensen writes, the Scouts lost a huge number of members, despite the organization's reversal of long-standing prohibitions against gay and female Scouts (agnostics and atheists still need not apply)--a reversal that in turn cost the organization the support of the Mormon church, the leading contributor of both Scouts and money, such that "425,000 Mormon Boy Scouts had decamped, likely never to return." Though the Scouts' parent organization tested many legal maneuvers, the courts finally ruled against the group, forcing bankruptcy--even though, Christensen reckons, it still has "net assets of nearly $1 billion." A vigorous takedown of a supposed moral exemplar.

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December 20, 2024

Upon its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America established the longstanding tradition of building the skills and talents of young men and boys across the country. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christensen (1952-2024) argues that it also prioritized its own public reputation over the lives of boys destroyed by the alleged sexual predators who reportedly used the organization to gain access to them. His book indicates his assertion that protecting the former meant suppressing the latter, and that, he argues, is what led to what is now an irreparably damaged youth organization. Christensen tells this bifurcated history concisely yet unsparingly and dives deep into the secret side of the organization. The scale of the injustices done to these boys for generations is shattering to read, but Christensen does them a great service by shining a light on it in his final work. VERDICT A deeply unsettling book that is well suited to readers of books about social injustices and history.--Brett Rohlwing

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 6, 2025
The discrepancy between the Boy Scouts of America’s wholesome image and its decades-long reality of rampant sexual abuse is uncovered in this harrowing, posthumously published debut account from Pulitzer-winning journalist Christensen. Beginning with the organization's founding in 1910, Christensen tracks how, as the Boy Scouts became increasingly tied to “American boyhood and masculinity,” there was a parallel development within the institution: the emergence and maintenance of the “Ineligible Volunteer files,” a “closely held blacklist intended to keep suspected sexual predators out of the ranks.” Through analysis of the files and interviews with abuse survivors, Christensen proves this list was a failure as a safeguard: “time and again... men who were booted from Scouting for molesting boys found ways to get back in.” Gaming the files was as easy as changing a name—as in the case of Thomas E. Hacker, the Boy Scouts’ “most prolific known abuser” who molested more than 100 boys from the 1960s to the ’80s. Christensen also reveals how the organization would refuse to alert authorities about predators, instead helping them resign with such "bogus explanations” as “chronic brain dysfunction” and “duties at a Shakespeare festival.” The book’s most distressing revelations are drawn from letters written by survivors that were filed in the organization’s recent bankruptcy proceedings (Christensen calls the trove “a compilation of heartbreak and human wreckage strewn across generations and all fifty states”). It's an unflinching and stomach-churning exposé.

February 1, 2025
In recent years, there have been a number of books, articles, films, and more detailing the rife sexual abuse tolerated--and sometimes covered up--by the Roman Catholic Church. Now, it is the Boy Scouts of America's turn for a reckoning. Starting with a single case in Newport, Pennsylvania, in which a scoutmaster named Rodger Beatty groomed several boys in his charge, veteran newspaper writer Christensen delves into the explosive yet somehow underreported world of BSA wickedness, whose victims number 82,000 and climbing--seven times that of the Catholic Church, Christensen reports. On My Honor is more than a scandal fest, however. It traces the rise and fall of this once-proud organization, from its beginning as the brainchild of British army officer Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in the 1800s, through its mid-twentieth-century heyday, to its current state of bankruptcy, falling enrollments, and disgrace. Fans of deep reportage like Dave Cullen's Columbine (2009), David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon (2017), and Beth Macy's Dopesick (2018) will enjoy this David-versus-Goliath story that offers a much-needed megaphone to the most vulnerable population among us: kids.

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