Additional Boy Scout 'Perversion Files' May be Released

A lawsuit filed by a victim of Burnsville's Peter Stibal II, now serving a 21-year prison sentence for molesting four Boy Scouts, has resulted in an order that the national scouting organization release files documenting the sexual abuse of children from 1999 to 2008.

A number of Lakeville boys were a part of Stibal's troop, which frequently met at River Hills United Methodist Church.

According to this Associated Press report, Ramsey County District Judge Elena Ostby issued the order Tuesday.

Stibal was sentenced in 2011; his troop frequently met at River Hills United Methodist Church, court documents said.

The documents Ostby is seeking are from internal Boy Scouts of America records that chronicle allegations of abuse, often called the “perversion files.” Some of those files were public by court corder in Oregon last year. But the documents released in that case covered the years 1965 to 1985.

St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson, representing a victim of Stibal, called the order a triumph over institutional secrecy.

Attorneys for the Boy Scouts of America and the local Northern Star Council did not immediately return calls seeking comment, according to the AP.

Ostby ordered that identifying information in the files be blacked out, but Anderson's co-counsel, Paul Mones, said the material would still be valuable for establishing what scouting officials in Dakota County knew about the problem of abuse, and when they knew about it, while Stibal was a leader.

Defense attorneys have two weeks to produce the files. Mones said this order also follows similar orders by state courts in Texas and California for the Scouts to produce files covering 1985 through 2011 to plaintiffs suing in other pending abuse cases.