BY all accounts, Earnest Boland raped and molested many boys. He used the Boy Scouts and his church as a place to find victims. And his pastor knew. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
“In those days, this was a no-no in terms of publicizing it,” said the Rev. James Griffith, who as Boland’s pastor in the mid-1970s heard reports of his sexual transgressions. “It was suspected, but there was not much done about it.” [Baloney. There were laws against it. James Griffith knew it was a crime. But the rich white guys in Southern Baptist churches always get away with molesting little boys, don't they? Gotta keep that tithe check coming in.]
No one at his church, Griffith said, discussed reporting Boland to the police or even telling the scouts’ parents."
(Snip)
In the fall of 1975, Boland established Boy Scouts Troop 3. He based the troop at Beech Haven Baptist Church, where he was a longtime member.
If Boland was looking for a fresh start in scouting, he instead stoked old suspicions about his behavior with children.
The father of the former Troop 22 scout approached the parents’ committee of the new troop, saying he knew of as many as 10 to 12 boys Boland had molested, according to the scouts’ investigation. Parents had not reported the abuse, the father said, to protect their sons’ privacy.
Hegwood notified the Boy Scouts’ national headquarters, and he met with Griffith, the Beech Haven pastor. The pastor, Hegwood later wrote, shared even more damning information: Boland had kept an apartment in Athens, purportedly for illicit sexual encounters, and he had taken two scouts to Maryland for a week during his Army Reserve training, staying with them in a motel.
In a report to the scouts’ national office, Hegwood checked a box describing reports of abuse by Boland as “substantiated.”
Griffith never confronted Boland. Instead, he said last week, he asked a church deacon and a lawyer from the congregation to speak to the scoutmaster.
“That took care of it,” Griffith said. “These two men said, ‘We will handle this.’ They both were capable and it was under their authority. I did not get into it. It’s the kind of thing that can tear up your church. A wise pastor certainly will not do anything to hurt the entire congregation.”
Both emissaries have since died. Griffith, who later became executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, said he never heard more claims of sexual impropriety involving Boland."
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/in-scouts-sex-abuse-scandal-dark-secrets-for-a-mod/nSwxL/
'Why I am not Southern Baptist"
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