Matt Stewart traces the growing line of men who say they were sexually abused by their trusted Boy Scout leaders back nearly two decades and finds himself.

“Here we are 20 years later,” he said. “And the story just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”  

In 2003, Stewart and his brother Tom filed a lawsuit that broke new ground in the effort – still ongoing today – to unearth the scope of abuse in scouting. 

The case, filed against the Boy Scouts of America and the former scoutmaster they say molested them as children in the 1970s and 1980s in Tacoma, Washington, forced the Boy Scouts to turn over secret files on volunteers it had deemed ineligible. The records – some of which later were released to the public by court order, becoming known as the “Perversion Files” – revealed that the organization had removed thousands of leaders for abusing children over the course of more than five decades.