At least three adult Boy Scout leaders in Hawaii resigned or were forced out of the organization in the 1970s and ’80s because of alleged improprieties involving children, according to documents released Thursday.
The records were part of confidential Boy Scout files obtained by the Los Angeles Times as part of its investigation that showed thousands of men were expelled from the national organization from the 1960s to 2005 because of suspicions they molested children.
The newspaper also disclosed that the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and frequently did not disclose the allegations to parents and the public.
The head of the Boy Scouts in Hawaii said the organization provides much more comprehensive youth-protection training today for its adult leaders and runs all their names through a criminal background check.
"We take this very seriously," said Rick Burr, executive director of the Boy Scouts of America Aloha Council.
He said he was unaware of the past Hawaii cases revealed by the Times documents and couldn’t comment on them.
The court-ordered release Thursday of more than 1,200 of the Boy Scouts’ "perversion files" included records identifying three Hawaii Scout leaders who left the organization amid allegations of wrongdoing.
The Times’ files, which are available online, also showed about another dozen cases linked to roughly 10 Hawaii Boy Scout troops from 1966 to 2001. But no names or details about the allegations were included with those.
The documents don’t indicate whether parents from the affected Hawaii troops were informed at the time about what was happening.
The three men who were identified included Dale Edmund Wilson, the assistant district executive in Honolulu when he resigned in October 1971, according to the records. He was 35 at the time.
An FBI document in the Times’ database indicates that Wilson, a former Navy man, husband and father of four sons, had been arrested multiple times between 1955 and 1969 for indecent exposure, larceny and other charges. The FBI document indicated Wilson was a registered sex offender in 1967.
Another Hawaii man, Edward P. Dunham, a 43-year-old Air Force senior master sergeant, was suspended or denied registration with the Scouts in 1982, according to the documents.
In a section detailing the reasons for the action, a Scout official wrote, "Although there have been no formal charges, there is strong evidence that (Dunham) may have been involved with child molestation. The Air Force did reprimand him with an Article 15 for misconduct."
Article 15 refers to nonjudicial punishment. At his court-martial, Dunham did not challenge charges that he took "indecent liberties with boys in his troop," according to a Scout document.
Married and a father of two children at the time, Dunham helped with two Scout troops in Wahiawa and at Wheeler Air Force Base. An August 1982 Air Force document said Dunham was removed as scoutmaster for the Wheeler group "due to improprieties."
That same month, a national Scouts executive advised a local one to complete a confidential report on Dunham "so we can identify this individual in case he moves somewhere else and tries to register" with the Scouts.
The third man identified in the Times’ documents was Gary L. Strain, who was 20 when he was suspended or denied registration in Hawaii in 1983 because of police charges involving child sex abuse, according to the documents.
Strain, who was single at the time, helped a Honolulu troop, but his title wasn’t clear in the documents.
In an October 1983 letter to the Scouts’ director of registration in Texas, a local official said he would keep close watch on Strain and another man "as we have reason to believe they should not be registered with the Boy Scouts of America and our council."
The Star-Advertiser could not find contact information Thursday for the three men.
For the 19-year period through mid-1984, Boy Scouts files apparently show relatively few cases of Hawaii volunteers suspected of or confirmed to have had inappropriate sexual contact with youth.
University of Virginia psychiatry professor Janet Warren, who reviewed Scout files nationally for parties in a lawsuit against the organization, found four such cases in Hawaii from January 1965 through June 1984, according to her August 2011 report. She found 829 cases nationally.
Hawaii was one of 17 states with four or fewer cases, according to the report.
After the release of the documents Thursday, the national Scouting organization issued a news release touting what it called the most comprehensive youth-protection training among all youth-serving organizations and its policy of mandatory reporting of all suspected abuse.
"Nothing is more important than the safety of our Scouts," the organization said in the statement.
"There have been instances where people misused their positions in Scouting to abuse children, and in certain cases, our response to these incidents and our efforts to protect youth were plainly insufficient, inappropriate or wrong. Where those involved in Scouting failed to protect, or worse, inflicted harm on children, we extend our deepest and sincere apologies to victims and their families."
