Johnny Austin says he can still remember the smell of whisky on his Cub Scout leader’s breath from more than 40 years ago — when he was a boy in New Jersey being raped by a man he and his family trusted.
The abuse was so frequent that Austin, then about 10 or 11 years old, developed a system to wash the blood out of his underwear so his parents wouldn’t notice: First, clean it with hydrogen peroxide, then, rinse it with soap to get out the chemical smell.
“There was no way I could’ve fought back. If I fought back it would’ve been a joke,” Austin, now 57, told the Daily News. “I never felt more alone in my entire life.”
Austin never told a soul about the 21/2 years of torture he allegedly faced at the hands of several scout leaders at Troop 94 in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., in the 1970s.
Now there may be a way for him to be heard.
Next month, the Boy Scouts will be hit with a lawsuit from former members — the first to be filed in a federal court. The suit, which will be filed in Washington, D.C., includes about a dozen plaintiffs claiming that the organization failed to ensure a safe environment for boys while covering up decades of sex abuse.
By alleging an unsafe environment, lawyers are hoping to get justice for people who cannot file a sex abuse claim in their own state because of a statute of limitations.
The plaintiffs are represented by a law firm called Abused in Scouting, which formed in February after rumors began swirling last winter that the Boy Scouts may file for bankruptcy.
In the event the 109-year-old organization does go bankrupt, there will be a small window of time — up to what lawyers call the claims bar date — during which victims will be able to make their case.
To date, the firm represents 2,000 people like Johnny Austin.
“We’ve got clients from every state and we have abuse that was committed in 49 of the 50 states,” Tim Kosnoff, one of the lead attorneys, told The News. “And that’s still going to be a fraction by the time the claims bar deadline runs” out.
The Boy Scouts said they haven’t made a decision on filing Chapter 11, but said they are “working with experts and exploring all options available so we can live up to our social and moral responsibility to fairly compensate victims who suffered abuse during their time in scouting.”
“We’re encouraging men to break their silence, come forward, protect today’s children by identifying these abusers,” said Kosnoff, who has represented thousands of abuse survivors.
Austin struggled for decades to bury the memories of the abuse. Twice, he says, he considered suicide.
“I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger and it took out a nice portion of my head. When I shave my head you can see the scars,” he explained. “A part of it was eating at me, but I just never addressed it.”
This February, he saw a TV commercial for Abused in Scouting that urged victims to come forward.
“For over 40 years I’ve buried this stuff so deep I don’t even acknowledge it, and now over 40 years later, it shows up? I couldn’t dial that phone fast enough,” said Austin, who works as a private investigator in Idaho.
Austin decided to reach out to lawyers, even though he can no longer confront some of his alleged abusers. One of the accused died in a December 2008 car accident, according to his online obituary, which also mentioned his work as a Boy Scout troop leader.
The man’s widow confirmed to The News that he was in the Boy Scouts in Egg Harbor Township in the 1970s, but would not comment further. The other accused molesters could not be reached for comment.
Jeff Williams, 48, was a young boy in Cincinnati in the 1980s when, he says, his scout leader introduced him to a bizarre card game that always ended with oral sex.
“From there, things escalated. It was touching me, touching him, for two years,” Williams explained.
The trauma hurled him down a dark path of destruction.
“It kind of destroyed me,” Williams said, struggling to hold back tears. “Suicide attempts and alcoholism. At 18, I tried to kill myself; turned 19 in the hospital.”
The News was unable to reach his scout leader for comment.
Now that Williams is two years sober, and living a comfortable life in Brooklyn with his wife and twin boys, he feels ready to speak out.
“If I tell my story, then somebody else starts telling their story, and somebody else tells their story,” Williams said. “All of a sudden, maybe there’s less of a taboo about it, about being abused.”
Allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct in the Boy Scouts is not a new phenomenon. The organization has kept a record of “ineligible volunteer” files for decades, and was forced to hand over 20,000 pages — representing 1,200 suspected molesters — in a 2012 Oregon Supreme Court decision.
Thousands of other cases of sexual predators have been uncovered since then, and Kosnoff suspects there are thousands more who have not yet been publicly identified.
For Lance Wallach, the lack of justice was worse than the abuse.
The 69-year-old Queens native got into trouble with his scout leader one summer in the 1960s for hazing kids at Ten Mile River camp in Narrowsburg, Sullivan County.
“After he was done screaming and yelling and punching, he said, ‘You gotta be punished,’ ” Wallach recalled. “So he sat me and made me lie in his lap and spanked me for 15 minutes. This went on for like six days.”
Once Wallach’s father found out, he beat up the scout leader and Wallach was immediately thrown out of the troop. He said he continued to face harassment from his scout leader because the man lived across the street from him in Laurelton, Queens.
“The kids wouldn’t play with me,” Wallach said. “Meanwhile he [the scout leader] was a hero for banning the hazer, the ringleader, from the Boy Scouts.”
His alleged abuser passed away in 1992, according to public records. The man’s wife died in 2011, according to her online obituary.
The Boy Scouts say they’ve amended their rules in recent years to include “a leadership policy that requires at least two youth-protection-trained adults be present with youth at all times and bans one-on-one situations where adults would have any interactions alone with children.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for Abused in Scouting are still fielding about 50 to 60 calls a week from survivors, preparing for the day that the Boy Scouts will pull the plug.
“It really is come forward now or forever hold your peace,” Kosnoff said.