Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Victim of Slain Scoutmaster Sues Boy Scouts

PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) - Twenty-five years after a pedophile scoutmaster was shot to death by one of his victims, another victim has sued the Boy Scouts, demanding $5 million for sexual abuse he says the Scouts could have prevented.

One of his more than 15 victims shot Ed Dyer to death in Redmond, Ore., on Jan. 22, 1986. That victim, then 17, said he killed Dyer because he "felt like shooting was the only way to make sure it didn't happen again," according to contemporary news reports.

Dyer admitted he had sexually abused at least 15 boys during his 28 years as a scoutmaster in Central Oregon and Eugene.

In the case filed this week in Multnomah County Court, plaintiff F.D., now 58, says he did not learn until last year of the "causal connection" between his sexual abuse at Dyer's hands, the Boy Scout policies that protected pedophile scoutmasters.

The subject gained national attention when lawsuits forced the Boy Scouts of America to crack open its books detailing the Scouts' long history of hushing up, failing to report and failing to stop sexual predators.

F.D. says the Boy Scouts of America failed to take steps to prevent pedophiles like Dyer from grooming young victims though it knew as early as 1964 that "predatory molesters were using Scouting as means to access victims."

F.D. says Dyer raped him repeatedly from 1964 to 1968, when F.D. was 11 to 15 years old. He says he has suffered "debilitating physical, mental and emotional injury, including pain and suffering, physical and emotional trauma, and permanent psychological damage."

He is represented by Kelly Clark.

Clark, of the Portland firm O'Donnell Clark & Crew, won $18.5 million in punitive damages in a similar suitagainst the Boy Scouts last year, and has other suitspending against the Scouts.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...