Tens of thousands of Boy Scout sexual abuse survivors are still waiting for payment from a billion-dollar settlement while nearly $40 million has already gone to trustee and legal fees since the trust fund was approved three years ago.
Lee Forbes, Curtis Garrison and Kenneth Richter are among the more than 62,000 survivors who have been approved for settlements through the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy trust.
For Forbes, the settlement represents justice for abuse, he said, that lasted nearly two years while he was a teen scout in the Explorer program."It's all the justice I'm going to get," he said.
For Garrison, the money represents accountability."They need to pay us in full for all the harm they've done," he said.
Our recent investigation found that five years after the Boy Scouts agreed to settle one of the costliest child sex abuse cases in U.S. history, its bankruptcy trust fund does not have enough money to pay all 62,000 survivors what they are owed. As a result, survivors are expected to receive 4.7% of their claims' value.
In Forbes' case, that means about $75,000 from his abuse, which was valued at $1.6 million.
"It's laughable," he said.
Garrison's settlement total equals just over $100,000 from what he describes as five years of abuse valued at $2.5 million.
"I haven't gotten a penny," Garrison said. [He challenged his case which caused a delay in payouts]
But settlement documents we recently analyzed reveal that while survivors have received little — if anything at all — those working the case have been collecting millions of dollars since the trust fund was set up.
According to annual reports posted to the trust fund's website, nearly $40 million has gone to trustee and legal fees since the settlement was approved three years ago.
The judge serving as trustee has been paid more than $2 million each year, or $175,000 per month.
