(AP) – The president of the Boy Scout council for the Portland area has testified he believes the parents of some Scouts were negligent and even criminal for allowing sleepovers that led to sex abuse. Eugene Grant told a jury in a $29 million sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts that parents should not have allowed boys to stay overnight with a single man at his apartment. "I just find it almost incomprehensible to think their children were going to be safe in that type of environment," Grant said.
The man, Timur Dykes, has admitted molesting the victim who filed the lawsuit and has been convicted of other sex abuse dating back to the early 1980s, when Dykes was an assistant Scoutmaster. During cross-examination by an attorney for the victim, Grant said yesterday it was not Boy Scouts policy to allow sleepovers, especially when they were unsupervised. "His parents should have known better," Grant said, referring to the parents of the victim. "I think it was criminal." But when about whether the Boy Scouts had any formal policy against sleepovers in the early 1980s, Grant replied, "At the time, no." Grant later said he believed that, at the very least, the parents were negligent.
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