The Daily - ‘Something Terrible Has Happened’

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

This episode contains descriptions of sexual assault.When the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy this year, it created a final window for claims of sexual abuse against the organization’s leaders.Within nine months, nearly 100,000 victims filed suits — that far eclipses the number of sexual-abuse allegations that the Roman Catholic Church faced in the early 2000s.Today, we hear from one of the victims, Dave Henson, a 40-year-old naval officer who was sexually abused for five years by one of his scout troop’s leaders. Alcoholism and emotional trauma followed. Now, he has joined the ranks of thousands of people seeking redress.Guest: Mike Baker, Seattle bureau chief for The New York Times. We want to hear from you. Fill out our survey about The Daily and other shows at: nytimes.com/thedailysurveyFor an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Read the latest edition hereBackground reading: The bankruptcy proceedings allowed the Boy Scouts organization to keep operating while it grapples with questions about the future of the century-old movement.The deluge of sex-abuse claims documents a decades-long accumulation of assaults at the hands of scout leaders across the nation who had been trusted as role models.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

So I see myself as, you know, there's kind of, there's two people. There's the man who goes to work, who loves his wife, who loves his children, who tries to do the right thing. But inside is a, I call it a tent, but I think sometimes when I used to dream about it, it looked more like a cage. And inside the cage is a small, terrified, hurting child. And he's lonely. He's in despair. He's lonely. He's in despair. He's suffering. But, oh my God, is he angry.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. When the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy this year, it created a final window for claims of sexual abuse against its leaders. There are now more than 92,000 of those claims, far more than against the Catholic Church. claims far more than against the Catholic Church. Today, my colleague Mike Baker with the story of one former Scout.

It's Thursday, December 3rd. How's your day going? Pretty good. It's kind of early in the day, so it's only 9 o'clock here in the morning. Yeah, you're in Hawaii. Whereabouts? Oahu. So I'm in Honolulu right now. Dave Henson is 40 years old he's a big guy six foot three 240 pounds he works in the navy and lives in hawaii he grew up in a mobile home in denton texas where his mom and dad worked all the time and you know when my dad came home from work he was tired and uh we did stuff but we didn't do a lot of, you know, like throwing the ball back and forth.

Or, you know, most of it was, you know, entertain yourself. And my brother and I, we watched He-Man. And the masters of the universe. We watched Ninja Turtles. Like Master Splinter says, a ninja is always prepared. We watched G.I. Joe. We'll fight for freedom wherever there's trouble watched G.I. Joe. Fight for freedom wherever there's trouble. G.I. Joe is there.

G.I. Joe, the American hero. Anytime we collected toys or anything like that, he always collected the bad guys, I always collected the good guys. Typically, I would categorize myself as the good guy. I always wanted to be the hero. I would categorize myself as the good guy. I always wanted to be the hero. My grandparents on my father's side,

my mamaw and papa, they were always watching Gunsmoke, John Wayne. Lived most of my life in the wild country and he set a code of laws to live by. I wanted to be John Wayne. I liked how cool and composed he was. I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. He was the hero and he did it without hurting innocent people and it was a good role model.

I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people. I require the same from them. It was just what I watched all the time. But my brother and I, I guess we're spending too much time around the house with nothing to do. And so my parents kind of mentioned Boy Scouts. Do you remember your first impressions of sort of what the Boy Scouts were and what you were going to be doing there? Yeah, I mean, I thought we were going to be doing a bunch of camping and not tying. And I was super excited to chop wood and to use my pocket knife and climb trees. And that's kind of what I was looking to do. And, you know, there was

a lot of new people and the uniform was cool at the time and I was excited about it. I'm curious, just even at that age, you know, are you thinking that this is kind of an extension of your sort of good guy personality at that point? Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, their core values. They are boys of every height and weight and lung power, every age and creed and color. and weight and lung power, every age and creed and color. All of that, you know, trustworthy, kind, obedient, you know, those all things I could connect with. And from every county in the USA,

they share only a driving zest for fun and an active quest for challenge in their great adventure of growing up. I remember when I first got there, they were talking about Eagle Scout projects. They were planting trees in some park somewhere, and I was like, well, that's pretty cool. So I like digging holes. Dave says he latched onto the Boy Scouts pretty quickly. He went to meetings every week, campouts every three weeks or so, and he was into it.

He enjoyed collecting the badges and advancing up the ranks. And there was one leader in the troop who took special interest in him. Tony was really the only adult that was outside of my family who was ready and willing to be a mentor and to teach me things. And he taught me things with patience. And he was very engaging, very good at making you comfortable. And he had a lot of knowledge to share. He had been in the Boy Scouts for a long time. He was an Eagle Scout. You know, I'm sure if there was somebody there snapping pictures of the campsite, anytime you took a picture of him, you probably saw me in the background. And so you said Tony's an Eagle Scout. What to you was an Eagle Scout then?

You know, Eagle Scout was, you know, the top of the game. They were, you know, the best of the best. They had the dedication to get there. They had a lot of knowledge. You hear Eagle Scout, you know, and you just think good and right. And I guess that's kind of really what I thought at the time is that that's, you know, it was kind of in awe of anybody who had the Eagle Scout rank. And so what's Tony's role? He's an assistant scoutmaster. And so how old is Tony? He's 20. He's 20 when I'm 10. Dave and Tony spent a lot of time together. Dave looked up to Tony, trusted him, felt safe with him. Tony would take Dave on overnight hikes and teach him survival skills, like how to build a fire,

how to cook while out in nature. At this point, Dave had turned 11. And here, the story gets graphic. Typically, we would go up to, there's a nature reserve by Fort Sill right across the border into Oklahoma. Right. And that's that's typically where we would go to camp i don't remember ever sleeping in a tent that didn't

have tony in it none with other boys or anything like that so we had camped probably three or four ready. And then, you know, there was that one night where, um, I, uh, I guess I can get into it now. Um, there was that one night where I woke up and he was touching me. He was, his hands were all over my privates and I froze and he froze and nobody moved. And I didn't really understand what was going on. And he probably sat like that for, I don't know, maybe five, 10 minutes. It could have been 45 seconds. I don't know. It just seemed like it was forever. I could just feel him touching me.

And then he just starts talking to me first. I can't remember what he was talking about. I think like the day or something like that, like the climbing that we did that day or, you know, and then, uh, after about, uh, some other unknown time period, he started moving his hand again. And then, and then as he, as he moves through it, And then as he moves through it, he starts talking to me about my body. And then he mentions that he's been doing this for a while, but this was the first time I woke up from it. And I don't know, I just remember just being there frozen in the dark. It's like the middle of the night, probably. It's pitch black outside. It's pitch black in the dark. You know, it's like the middle of the night, probably it's pitch black outside,

it's pitch black in the tent. I can hear him moving around and then his mouth is on me. And again, I still really not sure what's going on. I've never really felt that feeling before. And then I just remember being on my stomach at that point and then his weight on top of me. And I just remember being on my stomach at that point and then his weight on top of me and I just remember his weight was very heavy and it wasn't just his weight

it was like the whole weight of the situation I didn't feel like I could move I felt like I was pretty much strapped down everywhere I wasn't physically strapped down but I felt like I was and then I kind of remember just I kind of remember separating from my body. You know, like a pan out from a movie that you would see.

And, you know, I don't remember a lot after that. All I really remember is the pain and the darkness and the weight. Those are the three things that I always remember. When the dawn came, it was, you know, wake up. I was kind of already awake. Didn't sleep very well after that. But, you know, I mean, he, like nothing happened.

Same, you know, same conversation, same attitude, like normal whenever he would, he would wake us up or he would start to get out of the tent. It was the exact same. So it was like nothing occurred. You know, I latched onto that and then, you know, responded in kind that nothing happened. Did you tell anyone about what, what had happened? No, no, I did not. Why not? Because I was afraid of the repercussions. I didn't know what it meant. Dave didn't know what to make of what had happened to him here. Remember, he's 11 years old at this point. He didn't realize that he was being abused.

There were all these thoughts that were swirling in his head, and he worried about what this meant for his sexuality, whether he'd get in trouble, you know, even whether his family would reject him. Dave, did the abuse keep happening? Oh yeah, over the entire five years, from about 91 to 96. Did you ever think of leaving the Scouts when you were that age? No, I tell you, I don't remember a lot about my childhood after that night.

It's hard to really think about what my motivations were, what my thoughts were. I think I kind of went on, kind of went on autopilot. So, you know, I would still communicate with my parents if they would communicate with me. The friends that I currently did have, I still hung out with them. You know, other than that, you know, I just, I remember being, feeling alone a lot, feeling different from everybody else. Dave started to withdraw emotionally at scouting events at school and also from his family. And then when he was 15 years old, he stopped going to the Boy Scout meetings altogether. But he continued to see Tony and he didn't really understand why. A part of him still wanted Tony's mentorship and that connection to a role model.

When was the last time that you saw Tony? We got together to go, there was an indoor climbing place that he would pick me up every now and then to go to. And then typically either on the way there, on the way back, he would have to, you know, stop by his apartment for something. And then that always led to sex or to being raped, however you want to say it. And then afterwards, we're in his car and we're driving back to the house, my house, to drop me off. And he mentioned to me that he had a friend that if I was interested would pay to have sex with me. And then he asked me to think about it and then he dropped me off.

then he asked me to think about it and then he dropped me off. And I think it was at that point, it kind of like broke whatever trance I think he had me in or whatever connection that we had that still tied me to him. And, you know, I stopped returning his phone calls. I didn't really speak to him after that. So at that point, you broke ties with Tony, is that right? Yeah. Dave didn't report Tony to the authorities. He was just trying to get through high school. He played football and he dated, but he didn't have many friends and he had issues with fighting. and he dated, but he didn't have many friends and he had issues with fighting. After he graduated from high school, he had a couple of jobs stocking shelves at a department store, sorting mail for

UPS. He wasn't really motivated to apply to college, but he really wanted to get out of Texas. I did end up joining the Navy in 2001 when I was 20. Once I turned 21, I found alcohol and that was a new beginning in my life because when I drank enough, I felt relaxed in a room. I could communicate with people. communicate with people. I could have fun, but I didn't understand when to stop. You know, it's like somebody who's in the desert and they're starving and they finally get somewhere and they're like, oh, I'm so, so hungry. So they eat everything they can, but you know, you're going to hurt yourself. And that's kind of the way it was with the drinking. It wasn't the alcohol. It was, I felt free from the tent. the anger, and I liked it. But I was obsessive about it. And I was pretty much either at work or I was drunk or getting drunk. Dave's drinking got so bad that the Navy forced him to enroll into a substance abuse program. And he started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I was sitting in probably my fourth or fifth AA meeting and somebody was

getting up again. They were talking about alcohol and you know, what alcohol meant to them. And you know, and it's just like, I, none of this relates to me. I don't, I don't have an alcohol problem or I don't have a problem with alcohol. I don't have an alcohol problem. I don't have a problem with alcohol. I started thinking about that and thinking about that. And then in one of the group sessions, you know, it kind of just, it just came out of my mouth that, you know, I don't have an alcohol problem. I was molested as a child. And hearing me say that, that first time, it was intense. A lot of crying. I started spiraling out of control then. I didn't really know what to do. I didn't know where to go.

And I buried it down again, as deep as I could go. And tried to continue on like nothing happened, like nothing So I met my wife in 2003, late 2003. And, you know, she had two kids and we started to spend a lot of time together. And eventually, you know, very shortly after that, I think about four or five months, we got married. I was 23, barely able to take care of myself, and now I was a husband with two children. But they're the reasons why I stopped drinking. They, my wife and the children included, they saved my life in that time period. Over the next couple of years, Dave worked a lot. As a Navy guy,

he was often on a submarine or a ship and there wasn't a lot of downtime. But when he was home, he was spending it with family. And he and his wife went on to have two more kids. And he described this period as a happy one. These were good years for him. But then... I think it was really in 2009 that I had a spiral. One of his sons came to him with a request. My oldest son wanted to join the Boy Scouts. My first reaction was, no, no, F no, no, no. We'll be right back. The End So when does the Boy Scouts sort of first come up in your family? So my son had a friend that was in the local chapter.

And, you know, he came home one day and talked about his friend and how much fun his friend was having. And then he wanted to be a part of it. And my wife kind of looked at me and, you know, she was like, oh, it sounds fun. Let me talk to Dave downstairs because our room was downstairs at the time. So we went downstairs and I pretty much immediately threw up in the downstairs bathroom. My wife was trying to explain to me that not every man in the world is a pedophile. You know, we will make sure that we go to the meetings and that we really truly know the people that he's going to go on the campouts with. And eventually, in communicating with my wife and, you know, not wanting my fears to inhibit the children from being able to be children, we let him join.

I started going to the meetings. I'd be very angry. I want to break something, kill somebody, blow up something. I'm sitting against the wall in a chair, not interacting with anybody. All I'm doing is watching the adults. How close they stand to somebody else. You know, where do they put their hands? What are they looking at? You know, what clothes are they wearing?

What shoes are they wearing? Like, I searched all their names on predator websites. I was just looking for any indication that they were possibly a pedophile. When I would get back from the meetings, I would typically throw up. Does your son at this point know that this is going through your mind? No, he doesn't know anything at this point. Did he know about your history?

No. Did you get the sense that he had some inclination that you were really uncomfortable with this whole situation? Yeah, he would always ask me if I was okay on the way back, you know, was I upset about something? And the first camp out he went on, I almost got into my truck three or four times to go drive and go pick him up or do a spot check, random check of where people were sleeping in tents. But my wife convinced me that probably was not a great idea to storm into a camp out in the middle of the night.

Eventually my wife got tired of me coming home tore up, so she forbid me from going to any of the meetings anymore. And then she absolutely refused to let me go on one of the campouts. But within months, their son was souring on the Boy Scouts. They did one campout where it wasn't supposed to rain and they had this long 10, 12 mile hike to do. My son is flat footed. It had poured rain the entire time. They had marched through all this rain and mud

and he had a miserable experience. He came back on Sunday. He slept most of Sunday. When he came home from school Monday, he was still exhausted from the trip. And he's just like, oh, I don't know if the Boy Scouts are for me. I don't really want to do it anymore. And, you know, I was sitting on the couch next to him and I was like, done. You never have to go back. And, you know, we got

rid of his Boy Scout uniform. I mean, I don't think that camping gear, at least the stuff that had like the Boy Scout emblem on it, I don't think it lasted in the house for another five or ten minutes. It was on the curb. Last year, Dave reached a breaking point. You know, I couldn't box it up anymore. I didn't have a box that was strong enough, that was big enough. I didn't have a box to be able to push it down. And then, you know, every day of my life, whenever I would leave the house, whenever I would go outside, you know, I would put on this stoic man's man

exo suit where I showed no weakness. I showed the ability to be angry, to be aggressive with other people, to be the alpha male in the room. That is the person I was all the time outside the house, and I didn't like that person. But that person is what the exosuit, the suit of armor that I would wear, that I thought was going to keep me safe and my family safe. And it just got too hard to be that person. It got too hard, too difficult to put that suit of armor on, that exosuit on, and to walk around the day. It was too heavy. I just couldn't do it anymore. Dave and his wife decided to check him into the hospital so he could get some professional help.

19 was a good but very, very difficult year. started to actually work on trying to heal, trying to understand what occurred, understand my thought processes and how they relate to the abuse in the way that I think, the way that I see the world, the way that I see myself. At night, I would go to sleep and I would, every now and then, I would dream of just these eyes looking back at me. And it's the eyes of unnamed boys that I could have protected but didn't because I never reported him. I never reported him. I would sit at a bench looking at an open field, and in my mind, I would go over this event. It was always the same.

It was a child standing in the middle of this field, and then a bear or a mountain lion or something would be charging the child. Or sometimes the child would be standing in the middle of the street and it would be a car coming. And I would just have this image over and over and over again of, you know, running out there, saving the child, but dying in the process. saving the child, but dying in the process. And I felt for such a long time that that's how I had to die. I needed to die that way so that maybe I could redeem myself for my inaction by giving the ultimate sacrifice for a child. That's what I feel on the inside most of the time, because I have that voice that's

constantly reminding me that I did nothing. I reported no one. You know, I'm not a man. I am weak. I'm scared, useless. And I'm still working on it. I want to be comfortable crying in front of other people. I want to be comfortable showing emotions in front of other people. I want to be comfortable with asking somebody for help.

I want to be comfortable with communicating with other males in a non-professional environment. I would like to have a friend. That would be kind of nice, I think. I am part of a men's group that meets monthly and I see my therapist once every two weeks or my psychologist and I see a psychiatrist you know once every four weeks for medication. It's getting a little bit easier every day. I wear a thinner suit, a lighter suit, but still I'm not there yet. Dave said the therapy compelled him to try and do something about the abuse and something about Tony. So in 2019, I did call Texas CPS Child Protective Services.

I gave them my name. I gave them the dates. I gave them Tony's name. Their response to me was that they would pass the information on to law enforcement. me was that they would pass the information on to law enforcement. But since there was no active child in danger, which my response to that was, how do you know? They couldn't really do anything. So that was a ginormous kick in the face. But soon Dave found out that he wasn't the only one with allegations of abuse as a Boy Scout, that there were actually thousands of other boys who said they'd been abused too. For a long time, these men couldn't bring a case against the Boy Scouts because too much time had

passed since the alleged abuse happened. But Dave learned that many victims could now sue the Boy Scouts because of changes in state and local laws that allowed people to file a claim, even if the alleged abuse happened many years ago. And so Dave decided to join them and file a claim. It's been healing for me. It's been good for me to be a part of that process. I'm hoping that this effort to hold the Boy Scouts accountable will cause change. These lawsuits started piling up, and so the Boy Scouts decided

to file for bankruptcy in February of this year. And that might sound like the organization is going under, but that's not what's happening. The Boy Scouts are actually using this bankruptcy case to try and survive, saying, okay, well, we'll compensate the victims, but there's going to be a limit. The court set a deadline for people to come forward and file their claims. Within nine months, thousands of claims have poured in, nearly 100,000.

That's about 10 times the number of sexual abuse allegations that the Catholic Church faced in the early 2000s. Each one, like Dave, is asking the Boy Scouts to compensate for their abuse. That, to me, is what the lawsuit is about. The lawsuit is about cost. the lawsuit is about. The lawsuit is about cost. Because when you're talking about major companies and you're talking about making significant change to establish processes, to hire people, train them appropriately,

send them around the country, depending on how you structure it, that's gonna take money. It's gonna take time. And people are not willing to pay that price. And they won't be until something terrible happens. And my message to the Boy Scouts is that something terrible has happened. You've had multiple boys be molested multiple times.

And how many boys did commit suicide? How many men have we lost because they couldn't handle all of the pain and all the despair and all the anger that comes from being molested as a child? Are you going to 100% prevent it? No, no organization can 100% prevent it, but you can significantly reduce numbers. You know, I think back to my time in scouting. It's like, I don't even understand why I was in Tony's tent. Like that doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, what scout master or other scout leaders that were there on this camp out thought that was a good idea, but they did. They accepted it because they trusted Tony.

accepted it because they trusted Tony. That was it. It was blind trust. And blind trust, to me, is a mistake. And now change has to be made. And if that change has to be through the Boy Scouts paying money to thousands of men, then I can only hope that the other organizations that are also in charge of youth and are trying to develop youth and are trying to do good for the world, takes the appropriate steps, establishes the right processes, spends the money that it has to spend to be able to ensure the safety of our children. Dave, thanks so much for your time and thanks for your willingness to talk about it. Really appreciate it.

I never know how to respond to that. So you're welcome. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. This is a monumental step forward. It's no longer if there's going to be a vaccine, it's when. On Wednesday, Britain gave emergency authorization to a vaccine against the coronavirus made by Pfizer, becoming the first Western country to allow for mass inoculations against the virus.

This is a day to remember, frankly, in a year to forget. Similar emergency authorization in the United States could come as early as next week. And... We're in that range potentially now of starting to see 1,500 to 2,000 to 2,500 deaths a day from this virus. During a news conference, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, warned that the country faced a devastating winter, during which deaths from the coronavirus could approach 450,000 by February. The reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.

On Wednesday night, the number of COVID-19 patients in American hospitals exceeded 100,000 for the first time in the pandemic. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilbaro. See you tomorrow.