On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America

by Kim Christensen

Overview

From a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, the shocking rise and fall of an American institution.

Since its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America has been the nation’s premier youth organization, espousing self-reliance and honor. More than 100 million Americans have been Boy Scouts, from Bill Gates to Martin Luther King Jr. Today, however, Scouting faces an existential threat of its own making: more than 82,000 former Scouts have filed claims alleging they were sexually abused—seven times the number of similar allegations that rocked the Catholic Church two decades ago.  

On My Honor untangles the full story of the Boy Scouts of America, tracking its creation, growth, influence, and the massive generational trauma it has caused. Using the iconic institution to tell a story of American values over the last century, the book grapples with America’s changing understanding of what it means to “make men.”        

This riveting story of power and abuse, religion and politics, scandal and justice, is brought to life by groundbreaking research and an unforgettable cast of characters.    

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538726730
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Kim Christensen spent more than 40 years writing for newspapers, starting with the Dayton Daily News in his hometown in Ohio and capping his career as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, at the Oregonian in 2001 and at the Orange County Register in 1996, for investigations of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and of fertility fraud at University of California, Irvine. He lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife Christina, a former newspaper and magazine editor.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/06/2025

The discrepancy between the Boy Scouts of America’s wholesome image and its decades-long reality of rampant sexual abuse is uncovered in this harrowing, posthumously published debut account from Pulitzer-winning journalist Christensen. Beginning with the organization's founding in 1910, Christensen tracks how, as the Boy Scouts became increasingly tied to “American boyhood and masculinity,” there was a parallel development within the institution: the emergence and maintenance of the “Ineligible Volunteer files,” a “closely held blacklist intended to keep suspected sexual predators out of the ranks.” Through analysis of the files and interviews with abuse survivors, Christensen proves this list was a failure as a safeguard: “time and again... men who were booted from Scouting for molesting boys found ways to get back in.” Gaming the files was as easy as changing a name—as in the case of Thomas E. Hacker, the Boy Scouts’ “most prolific known abuser” who molested more than 100 boys from the 1960s to the ’80s. Christensen also reveals how the organization would refuse to alert authorities about predators, instead helping them resign with such "bogus explanations” as “chronic brain dysfunction” and “duties at a Shakespeare festival.” The book’s most distressing revelations are drawn from letters written by survivors that were filed in the organization’s recent bankruptcy proceedings (Christensen calls the trove “a compilation of heartbreak and human wreckage strewn across generations and all fifty states”). It's an unflinching and stomach-churning exposé. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

12/20/2024

Upon its founding in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America established the longstanding tradition of building the skills and talents of young men and boys across the country. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christensen (1952–2024) argues that it also prioritized its own public reputation over the lives of boys destroyed by the alleged sexual predators who reportedly used the organization to gain access to them. His book indicates his assertion that protecting the former meant suppressing the latter, and that, he argues, is what led to what is now an irreparably damaged youth organization. Christensen tells this bifurcated history concisely yet unsparingly and dives deep into the secret side of the organization. The scale of the injustices done to these boys for generations is shattering to read, but Christensen does them a great service by shining a light on it in his final work. VERDICT A deeply unsettling book that is well suited to readers of books about social injustices and history.—Brett Rohlwing

Library Journal

2024-11-23
Thoroughgoing exposé of the Boy Scouts’ long-unacknowledged history of sexual abuse and subsequent bankruptcy.

Working with a fellow reporter, Christensen knocked on doors and examined hidden archives in order to find himself “peering into a Pandora’s box of sexual abuse involving thousands of Boy Scouts victimized by their leaders and betrayed by the nation’s preeminent youth group.” That number grew as advocacy groups, formed along the lines of support groups for victims of clerical abuse, entered a complex legal fray: In the end, some 82,000 former Boy Scouts sued, and to date, Christensen writes, the adjudicated payout has amounted to a mere $7.9 million. He writes that the Boy Scouts had long known of sexual abusers among the ranks of its adult leaders, keeping files, most recently, on more than 5,000 “ineligible volunteers,” many of whom were nonetheless able to sign on as scoutmasters; these “IV files,” he adds, predominantly concerned cases of “perversion.” These secret files—“secret,” he writes, being a term the Scouts shun, preferring the legalistic “confidential”—are incomplete, since they were purged to ostensibly “protect the privacy of victims, witnesses, and anyone falsely accused of sexual abuse.” As the instances of provable sexual abuse grew, Christensen writes, the Scouts lost a huge number of members, despite the organization’s reversal of long-standing prohibitions against gay and female Scouts (agnostics and atheists still need not apply)—a reversal that in turn cost the organization the support of the Mormon church, the leading contributor of both Scouts and money, such that “425,000 Mormon Boy Scouts had decamped, likely never to return.” Though the Scouts’ parent organization tested many legal maneuvers, the courts finally ruled against the group, forcing bankruptcy—even though, Christensen reckons, it still has “net assets of nearly $1 billion.”

A vigorous takedown of a supposed moral exemplar.

Kirkus Reviews

Christensen’s powerful and troubling On My Honor chronicles how the Boy Scouts of America for generations portrayed itself as a hallowed institution that transformed boys into men — even as it secretly let child molesters operate unchecked within its ranks, damaging tens of thousands of children it claimed to be helping.”

—Cameron McWhirter, co-author of American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15

“Kim Christensen helped bring accountability to the Boy Scouts of America for its decades-long cover-up of sexual predators within its ranks. In On My Honor, Christensen deploys the exceptional investigative and narrative skills that won him multiple Pulitzer Prizes, delivering an absorbing, dismaying and meticulously researched account of how what was once a revered American institution betrayed tens of thousands of boys in its care.”
 —Martin Baron, retired top editor at the Washington Post and the Boston Globe

“Christensen’s masterful reporting leads to a disturbing but unavoidable conclusion — the Boy Scouts of America must take its place in the Hall of Shame alongside tobacco companies, the Catholic Church, Purdue Pharma, and the NFL for burying a dangerous truth just to protect its brand. On My Honor is a devastating indictment.”—Martin J. Smith, author of The Wild Duck Chase and Going to Trinidad

"On My Honor is a withering tour de force by one of America’s best investigative reporters. Kim Christensen is in top form as a storyteller in full possession of the facts as he lays out the decades-long child'sexual abuse scandal in the Boy Scouts of America. Christensen gives inspiring accounts of victims seeking elusive justice as well as infuriating revelations about the methodical coverup by top officials. On My Honor is unsparing in exposing how U.S bankruptcy courts served as a labyrinth shield that killed the hopes of victims to confront their abusers.  A must read."
 —Gerald Posner, author of God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

“Kim Christensen has written the definitive account of the sex abuse scandal that triggered the downfall of the once-venerated Boy Scouts of America. Christensen's meticulous reporting uncovers the true scope of abuse and neglect by multiple bedrock American institutions that traumatized tens of thousands of boys across generations.”—Roxanna Asgarian, author of We Were Once a Family, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

"A vigorous takedown of a supposed moral exemplar."—Kirkus

"An unflinching and stomach-churning exposé."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A long-overdue reckoning...poses big questions about the future of the BSA."—Shelf Awareness

"Fans of deep reportage like Dave Cullen's Columbine (2009), David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon (2017), and Beth Macy's Dopesick (2018) will enjoy this David-versus-Goliath story that offers a much-needed megaphone to the most vulnerable population among us: kids."—Booklist

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