On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America

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. (Feb.)