Investigation finds 200-plus allegations of abuse in Scouting America program for ages 14-21

Earlier this summer, a border patrol agent in Yuma was charged with 15 felony counts after he allegedly sexually abused a 16-year-old girl. The girl was part of a mentorship program meant to provide experience and exposure to careers in law enforcement.

The case is making its way through Yuma County Superior Court, but it isn’t the only one of its kind.

This youth program, dubbed the Explorers, has faced more than 200 allegations of abuse. It’s overseen by the Boy Scouts, which is now called Scouting America.

Investigative reporter Lakeidra Chavis tracked down the records for the Marshall Project. She joined The Show to speak more about it.

Full conversation

LAKEIDRA CHAVIS: This program, Explorers, is a type of youth vocational program that was created by the Boy Scouts of America a really long time ago, back in the ’70s. And it was a way, it is a way for teenagers age 14-21 into young adulthood, for them to learn about, about a specific career field.

So exploring programs exist for a lot of different careers like medical fields or firefighter fields. But they are very popular among law enforcement agencies, so police departments and sheriff’s offices. And the key perk of this program, especially for law enforcement exploring, is ride-alongs, where participants can accompany an officer as they go on patrol in their vehicle.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so a perk of the program. But you found a disturbing and very lengthy history of abuse in programs like that. And specifically to do with ride-alongs, right? Tell us what you found.

CHAVIS: Exactly. So like I said, ride-alongs are a key perk. But what we found in our reporting is that it is also a gateway to abuse. So let’s take a step back and talk about the two big safety policies that the Boy Scouts have for their youth programs.

So one is a two-deep leadership So two adults have to be present for all programming. And the other one is no one-on-one contact. So there cannot be one adult alone with a participant.

But what Scouting did for this program up until very recently is that they actually carved out an exception for law enforcement exploring. So for ride-alongs, this one-on-one contact was allowed.

And what we found is that in the 220 cases of abuse that we have documented, nearly a quarter, about a quarter of the abuse and the misconduct began on ride-alongs where this type of isolation was allowed.

GILGER: Wow, a quarter. OK, so one case happened here in Arizona. Tell us about this case out of Yuma involving a Border Patrol agent and a ride-along.

CHAVIS: In May, prosecutors charged 31-year-old Ramon Marquez with multiple counts of charges related to sexual abuse involving a minor. This was a 16-year-old explorer participant who was a participant for the Customs and Border Protections Explorer Program. They have one, too.

And so he was arrested. He is of course facing those charges. And I believe this week he is due back in court for a trial date to be set and for a change of plea. When I was looking into the charging documents, one of the things that stood out is that the alleged abuse took place in multiple locations, including in his police vehicle as he was transporting her to and from Explorer events.

The Marshall Project

GILGER: Yeah. And that’s just one of several active ride-along abuse cases across the country that you uncovered. Is there any way to track just how many incidents like this there are?

CHAVIS: There is not, which is quite unfortunate. You know, there are some law firms who are handling lots of the lawsuits against Scouting for allegations of abuse. They have tried to compile as much as they can. But if you want to search a deeply comprehensive public database to try to see the extent of this abuse, one does not exist.

In fact, the analysis that we did to gain better insight into how much of this abuse and misconduct was occurring on ride-alongs is the first of its kind. So this is work that we have tried to do in some ways from scratch to understand the prevalence.

GILGER: OK, so tell us then why, Lakeidra, are ride-alongs so prone to abuse?

CHAVIS: Yeah. So for this reporting I spoke with a lot of experts who focus specifically on preventing child sexual abuse in youth serving organizations, which is an organization like Scouting. And two of the points that they made is that in order to prevent this type of abuse, you need one, for the activity to be observable, for an outside party to be able to see what is going on. And the second is for that activity to be interruptible.

So when a participant is on a ride-along with an officer, no one can see what is happening in that vehicle. It is not immediately observable. And second, no one can intervene if something is happening. It’s not interruptible.

GILGER: Right. So as you described, there was up until recently a carve-out in Scouting America’s kind of rules about how adults and children can interact for this program. That no longer exists.

Is there now any kind of oversight of cases like this by Scouting America?

CHAVIS: Yeah. So the rule change that was put into place while we were reporting this story, Scouting declined to do an interview with us. They did not respond to our questions, but they did update their policies to say that they’re looking into them, they are changing them.

And the rule that they have put in place now for law enforcement exploring and for ride-alongs is that two adults must be present, including during these car rides. And that if one of the participants is an underage female Explorer, then at least one of the officers accompanying her must also be a female officer.

GILGER: Is Border Patrol still connected to this program?

CHAVIS: Yeah. So Border Patrol again has a lot of these Explorer programs, and I am not aware of them ending this program because of these allegations against their former officer, Ramon Marquez. I did reach out to Customs and Border Protection, and they declined to comment.

GILGER: What should parents of kids in programs like these know? Should they allow their children to be involved in your opinion?

CHAVIS: In my opinion — I will give you the opinion of a researcher that I spoke with who again looks at preventing this type of sexual abuse. And when I spoke with him and I shared findings, he was one, not surprised. He felt like abuse on ride-alongs was a known problem. And then he went on to say that if he still had teenage daughters, that he would not recommend that his daughters participate in law enforcement exploring.

And that was very similar with other experts that I spoke to, this real hesitancy to have youth involved in this type of program. They felt there were better ways for young people to learn about law enforcement that did not involve things like ride-alongs.

Broadly speaking, what I would tell parents, from what I have learned looking into this program, is, if they are able to, to be very involved in the program. Try to sit in on the type of training that their teenagers have as Explorer participants. Go to the competitions, and to just be very present, to ask for, to see the paperwork.

There’s a memorandum of understanding that agencies have to have with Scouting. Ask to see that. Ask to see the rulebook that agencies have created to understand what the policies are and what the accountability measures are and to what extent they exist. How will your department not only protect the participants, but hold that officer accountable?