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Six Former Montana Scout Leaders Listed in Confidential Files
Five women suing Boy Scouts over accusations that Kalispell man raped or molested them
HELENA — Files on six Montana leaders from the 1960s and 1970s are included in the more than 1,200 confidential files kept by the Boy Scouts documenting child sex abuse allegations, according to the documents released by an Oregon Supreme Court order.
Gilion Dumas, a Portland, Ore., attorney who works for the law firm that made the files available Thursday, said one of them is William Leininger Jr., of Kalispell. Five women are suing the Boy Scouts over accusations that Leininger raped or molested them while they were in the Explorer Scout program in Kalispell in the 1970s.
Leininger was convicted in 1976 of abusing the five girls and a sixth who is not involved in the lawsuit. He was convicted again in 1982 of another charge of sexual intercourse without consent, according to Montana Department of Corrections records. He died in prison in 2002 at age 80.
Files also were created by the Boy Scouts for two men from Billings, one from Butte, one from Libby and one from Cascade.
Three of the men besides Leininger were convicted of sex crimes against children.
Of the other two, one was an assistant scoutmaster from Libby. He left the organization only after officials learned from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office that he had previously pleaded guilty to 15 counts of sex crimes against children, according to a 1977 letter by Robert Hanawalt, who was then the Scout executive of the Boy Scouts' Montana Council.
Around that same time, a Billings Scout leader was asked to resign after angry parents approached Hanawalt in October 1976 with accusations the man groped a child during a camping trip.
Boy Scout officials in Billings summoned the leader soon afterward and read him a statement by Hanawalt that recommended the leader submit a letter of resignation and then break all contact with the organization and its members.
"This, I am sure, will save embarrassment on both your part and ours," the statement read.
A couple of months later, in January 1977, Hanawalt wrote a letter to the organization's regional office in Kansas City that said, in part, "to our knowledge, (the former scout master) has not been arrested."
"As usual in cases like these the information leads us to believe that we were 'the last to know,'" Hanawalt wrote.
Gordon Rubard, the current Scout executive of the Montana Council, told the Billings Gazette the children's safety is more important than the Boy Scouts' reputation. Requirements for Scout leaders now involve extensive background checks and hours of required safety training, he said.
"We have to be transparent," Rubard said. "We don't have a choice."
Gilion Dumas, a Portland, Ore., attorney who works for the law firm that made the files available Thursday, said one of them is William Leininger Jr., of Kalispell. Five women are suing the Boy Scouts over accusations that Leininger raped or molested them while they were in the Explorer Scout program in Kalispell in the 1970s.
Leininger was convicted in 1976 of abusing the five girls and a sixth who is not involved in the lawsuit. He was convicted again in 1982 of another charge of sexual intercourse without consent, according to Montana Department of Corrections records. He died in prison in 2002 at age 80.
Files also were created by the Boy Scouts for two men from Billings, one from Butte, one from Libby and one from Cascade.
Of the other two, one was an assistant scoutmaster from Libby. He left the organization only after officials learned from the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office that he had previously pleaded guilty to 15 counts of sex crimes against children, according to a 1977 letter by Robert Hanawalt, who was then the Scout executive of the Boy Scouts' Montana Council.
Around that same time, a Billings Scout leader was asked to resign after angry parents approached Hanawalt in October 1976 with accusations the man groped a child during a camping trip.
Boy Scout officials in Billings summoned the leader soon afterward and read him a statement by Hanawalt that recommended the leader submit a letter of resignation and then break all contact with the organization and its members.
"This, I am sure, will save embarrassment on both your part and ours," the statement read.
A couple of months later, in January 1977, Hanawalt wrote a letter to the organization's regional office in Kansas City that said, in part, "to our knowledge, (the former scout master) has not been arrested."
"As usual in cases like these the information leads us to believe that we were 'the last to know,'" Hanawalt wrote.
Gordon Rubard, the current Scout executive of the Montana Council, told the Billings Gazette the children's safety is more important than the Boy Scouts' reputation. Requirements for Scout leaders now involve extensive background checks and hours of required safety training, he said.
"We have to be transparent," Rubard said. "We don't have a choice."
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