The trail of Richard Turley

Des­pite a 1975 felony child-steal­ing con­vic­tion and a stint in a state hos­pit­al as a men­tally dis­ordered sex of­fend­er, Richard “Rick” Tur­ley spent the next dec­ade in­volved in Scout­ing, through which he met and mo­les­ted boys in South­ern Cali­for­nia and Brit­ish Columbia. His vic­tims num­ber at least 15, ac­cord­ing to court re­cords and con­fid­en­tial Boy Scouts of Amer­ica files.

Read: The Times in­vest­ig­a­tion

Po­lice re­ports from Richard Tur­ley’s 1975 ar­rest on child steal­ing charges. Re­dac­tions were made by Los Angeles County Dis­trict At­tor­ney’s of­fice.
In 1979, the Boy Scout’s of Amer­ica cre­ated a con­fid­en­tial “per­ver­sion file” on Richard J. Tur­ley, who was caught mo­lest­ing three boys at a South­ern Cali­for­nia scout camp.
Boy Scouts of Amer­ica’s 1972 policy on “Main­tain­ing Stand­ards of Lead­er­ship” ad­vised BSA staff on how to con­fid­en­tially doc­u­ment al­leg­a­tions of sexu­al ab­use or oth­er im­pro­pri­et­ies.
Advertisement
About The Data Desk

This page was created by the Data Desk, a team of reporters and Web developers in downtown L.A.

More from The Times’ Data Desk