UPDATE: Second St. Louis Park Troop Named in Boy Scouts' 'Perversion Files'

(UPDATE 5:58 a.m., Oct. 22, 2012) — A second St. Louis Park Boy Scout Troop has been identified as a Scout troop that expelled a member because of suspicions of sexual abuse.

In a public database released by the Los Angeles Times Friday, the newspaper reported that it had identified information on a person associated with St. Louis Park Troop 379 who was later "ex­pelled from the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica between 1947 and Janu­ary 2005 on sus­pi­cion of sexu­al ab­use."

The newspaper reports the case was filed in 1984, but offered no additional information about the case.

This report comes in addition to reports last week that a St. Louis Park man in 1970 resigned as a Scout Leader from the Boy Scouts' Troop 307 in St. Louis Park after he admitted in a statement that he asked four Scouts to masturbate in front of him.

The Times also reported two cases had been filed in neighboring Edina Boy Scout Troop 68—in 1998 and 2000.  Details were unavailable on those cases as well.

St. Louis Park Patch will update this story as more information becomes available.

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(OCTOBER 20, 2012) — A St. Louis Park man in 1970 resigned as a Scout Leader from the Boy Scouts' Troop 307 in St. Louis Park after he admitted in writing to encouraging several Boy Scouts under his purview to masturbate in front of him.

The man was identified in a confidential file released Friday dubbed the "perversion files," for being connected to allegations of sexual abuse and homosexuality in the Boy Scouts of America.

The man was confronted about this behavior with several Boy Scouts between January-March in that year, after which he resigned. It is unknown whether the man was ever criminally charged.

Read the Scouts' 1970 St. Louis Park case file

The files were released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. They were used as evidence in a 2010 lawsuit against the Scouts in a molestation case that resulted in a jury awarding $20 million to a man molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

The files include the names of more than 1,200 people from across the country, including 23 from Minnesota, whom the Boy Scouts suspected might be child abusers.

Because many of the men listed in the "perversion files" have not been charged or convicted of crimes, some media outlets, including the Boston Globe, have refrained from naming them without further investigating the allegations.

The files are publicly available, and you can find them here.

Scoutmaster Resigned After Being Confronted About Behavior

In the St. Louis Park case, the then-47-year-old Scout leader submitted a letter of resignation on March 30, 1970, in which he described himself first asking inappropriate questions of his Scouts about their sexual behaviors, and then asking four Scouts to masturbate in front of him. The four Scouts refused, he wrote.

The man had held various leadership roles in the pack between 1965-70. He was married and had two sons and a daughter at the time.

In his resignation letter, he wrote:

"It was my method of striking back at some of my family problems. I stopped [asking questions] after the last boy as I became aware it was a form of embarrassment to the boy  ... I don't recall the exact questions verbatim, but they were all related to his personal sex habits of which I realize now are none of my business. 

"I used my trust as a Scout leader in talking with the boy and realized that I betrayed that trust. The boys that performed this for me [redacted], [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted] all refused. I asked them to stimulate to erection and masturbate in front of me."

The letter was witnessed by four members of the Minneapolis Viking Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The Council forwarded the letter to its national headquarters, at which point the national organization wrote:

"We have placed this information in our file. This will certainly enable us to identify (him) should he ever again attempt to register in the Scouting program."

Patch Associate Regional Editor Scott Fagerstrom contributed to this report.