Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Thanks for starting your week with us.

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What do you think of when I say the Boy Scouts? Is it campfires, outdoor adventures, and adorable young people?

Participant: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Founded in 1910, with the mission of preparing young men to "make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes, by instilling in them the values of the scout oath and law," many think of the Boy Scouts with warmth and respect. Since its inception, more than 130 million young people have taken the scout oath and more than 35 million adult volunteers have served as scout mentors. Today with approximately 2.2 million participants, it remains one of the largest youth organizations in the country, but that is not the only story of the Boy Scouts.

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Participant: I can't tell you how frightening it was to have to go on a boy scout camp.

Participant: Those tents, those campgrounds, those church basements, you won't think about it. It's horrible.

Participant: I refuse to believe that this is something I can just place on one person because it was a culture that allowed for the worst things to happen since the moment they were founded.

Melissa Harris-Perry: These are just a few of the voices of the tens of thousands of people who've alleged experiences of physical and sexual abuse committed by adult leaders of the Boy Scouts. They were speaking here in an NBC News special back in May of 2021. More than 82,000 survivors of alleged abuse have filed claims against the Boy Scouts during the past decade. Fearing financial ruin, in February, 2020, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy.

Late last month, a bankruptcy court approved most aspects of the Boy Scouts' plan to establish a 2.7 billion trust to pay restitution to victims. 2.7 billion. It sounds like an enormous amount of money and it is, but given that there are tens of thousands of claimants, the restitution paid to each person would be quite modest. An average of about $33,000 each. For many, it will be far less. Victims can take a payment of $3,500 or they could ask to be considered for higher amounts depending on the severity of their claims.

Surely, it will take years to review all of those cases. While a judge approved most of the details of the plan last month, some are still in question. If it goes through, no further claims of past sexual abuse can be brought against the Boy Scouts of America or its chapters. In this moment, there is a fiscal question the Boy Scouts are facing, where to find the money to fund the settlement trust. At least part of that answer is land.

Molly Osberg: My name is Molly Osberg. I am a freelance writer-reporter.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Molly Osberg's recent piece for Curved is titled The Great Boy Scouts' Land Selloff, and it details why 250 or so local boy scout chapters are selling off about 2,000 camps around the country.

Molly Osberg: When all of these suits sort of got rolled into the bankruptcy, there were a set of agreements that were part of the bankruptcy agreement. Part of that was that there was a set amount that local chapters were required to pay into this victim's compensation fund. Now you have really the only assets that the Boy Scouts have at this point are these lands. Often, they have a very clear incentive to let them out to the highest bidder.

It's interesting because it's actually been very difficult to figure out exactly how much land local chapters own across the country because they're so distributed and operated on a local level, but we're talking about beautiful lakefront property, huge tracks of ranch land, very desirable land all across the country. We don't know exactly how much land. An estimation from one of the attorneys that I spoke with in the course of reporting this story estimated that that land could be worth anywhere between 8 and $10 billion.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, the land came to many of these boy scout chapters as gifts, philanthropic donations that trusted the Boy Scouts to conserve and to preserve this land in ways consistent with the highest ideals of scouting.

Molly Osberg: In some cases, developers are buying it, in some cases, off-road courses are buying it. I think there are a couple of things going on here. One is that a lot of people are really attached to these spaces. People who had grown up near them or attended camps there. Another is that the wealthy industrialists and ranchers who often donated this land 100 years ago had written into the deeds that these were intended for young people to enjoy the outdoors. In some cases, local chapters have gone to court to fight the terms of those agreements.

In some cases, state governments have filed lawsuits against local boy scout chapters in order to stall the development of these lands and try to get them into land trusts. It's this interesting vector between government interests, private interests, and conservationists.

Melissa Harris-Perry: One of these properties is Deer Lake.

Participant: You can put some real challenges and excitement into your summers. Deer Lake comes about Webelos summer camp. Deer Lake covers 253 acres in Killingworth, Connecticut and every inch is designed to add fun to your outdoor adventure. It's the perfect place for Cub Scouts and Webelos to take their parents camping. At first, Deer Lake may look like a typical New England farm, but your camp experience here will be more like an exciting outdoor adventure filled with memories of the green outdoors.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Deer Lake is owned by a local boy scout chapter, the Connecticut Yankee Council. Now the council already paid its 2.6 million share of the settlement to the national Boy Scouts of America with funds from its endowment and by handing ownership over of the camp that it owned. Still in February, citing fiscal responsibility, it announced its intention to sell Deer Lake to a real estate developer called Fortitude Capital for 4.6 million.

Two other conservation-minded groups reportedly made smaller bids. Now the announcement sparked public outrage. Locals launched a Save Deer Lake campaign and the Connecticut Attorney General launched an inquiry into the legality of the sale. Conservationists filed a lawsuit.

Keith Ainsworth: My name is Keith Ainsworth. I'm an environmental lawyer based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Keith Ainsworth also serves as chair of the Connecticut Council of Environmental Quality, which advises the governor, state legislature, and state agencies on environmental policy. Keith is also an Eagle Scout.

Keith Ainsworth: Scouting was a big influence on me as a young man. It was a noble organization. My scoutmaster was actually an ACE drill Sergeant from World War I. Even then in the early '70s, he was a very fit man. He could outrun and do more pushups than most of us, but he was very much into teaching us to be good patriotic citizens and not in the current modern sense of patriotism, but in the classic sense of just being a good citizen of your community and being an officer and a gentleman kind of thing. He was raising us to be men of good character. I think I learned those lessons and I've carried them with me. In fact, I still have my scout handbook.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Following the Connecticut Yankee Council's announcement of his intent to sell Deer Lake to Fortitude Capital, Keith filed a lawsuit. At the center of the suit was a bird sanctuary on the property, which Keith says the Yankee Council had a legal obligation to protect and preserve.

Keith Ainsworth: The lawsuit triggers two different concepts that are fairly nationwide, but they're based on Connecticut concepts of law, which is the law of charitable trust. Basically, that if there is a charitable use that's been established, it must remain so in perpetuity. The idea being of course that people tend to donate toward those causes and you want them to feel comfortable that if they're donating toward a charitable use, that it stays that way.

The second concept is the concept of public trust law or the public trust in the environment, which every citizen of the state, in fact, in the nation has an interest in lands and the natural resources. You can't just do anything you want with your property, but you have to do it within zoning or within the rules that apply. Here, we said that once there was a bird sanctuary established that that created both a charitable trust and also it triggered the public trust in protecting bird habitat. I had never seen a suit combining those two concepts because it's kind of a rare combination of events, but both of the concepts have been around for a long time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Keith believes that this legal strategy could be used to protect other boy scout camps being sold in other parts of the country as well. Local Boy Scout chapters have either sold or announced intentions to sell camps in Arizona, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Even beyond the legal consideration, Keith, as an Eagle Scout feels that the Boy Scouts of America has an organizational mission about ethical and moral choices over a lifetime, and that those choices mean not selling land to a real estate developer.

Keith Ainsworth: You don't compound one ethical lapse with another. The scouts have a very deep relationship to conservation. In fact, if you look on the website, they even say scouting is a long, proud tradition of conservation service to the nation. They have a scout oath, they have an outdoor code, they have Leave No Trace, they have the outdoor ethics program, and they have incorporated outdoor ethics at all program levels according to them. I can understand why they would say, "Well, we really have to make sure we survive, we need to maximize our revenue." That's a very short-term decision, and it betrays their conservation ethic.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I feel like there are so many competing ethical concerns. The conservationist in me says, do all we can to ensure that the land itself which is a value, which is a good is as publicly and widely available as possible, whether for bird sanctuary or for human use or simply for a pure conservationist aspect. The justice for sexual assault survivors, ethic, sort of competing with that says, sell this land to the highest bidder because this organization, charitable, private, whatever is in debt to generations of those who were harmed by their actions. They owe a debt and they have an asset, they need to sell that asset in order to pay that debt. How do we manage those competing and I think both highly valuable concerns?

Keith Ainsworth: They have more assets than they need to pay off that debt. It's not as though that debt wouldn't be paid if they did the right thing and sold this for conservation. Now, they're short about $2.6 million worth of assets, which they would have otherwise had. That financial pressure then requires them perhaps to consolidate or puts more pressure on them to do that, which then results in this sale. They are now trying to, of course, maximize their revenue because they're a little short and they're trying to make up for that. It's not as directly related to that, these sexual abuse suits were certainly a founding cause or pressure that resulted in all this but it's then the next choices that they make.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay, quick break. When we come back, we'll hear from the attorney who represents Boy Scouts survivors.

Tim Kosnoff: I really don't care about the woes of these local councils. It's just too little too late. They've been on the road to perdition for 75 years and now they've arrived. You're in hell, welcome. It's where you deserve to be.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay, we're back with our discussion of how the Boy Scouts of America are making money to fund a victim's compensation fund they're establishing as part of ongoing bankruptcy court negotiations. The Boy Scouts of America have mandated that local boy scout chapters around the US make contributions to this fund. Local chapters are selling off camps in several states to raise those funds. In many cases, this is highly desirable land, desirable both to developers and to conservationists.

Tim Kosnoff: My name is Tim Kosnoff. Currently, I'm individually and co-jointly representing 17,000 men who have filed claims in the boy scout bankruptcy, alleging that they were raped in the organization. They range in age from 8 to 93.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tim is a lawyer based in Seattle, Washington. He's part of a group of law firms calling themselves Abused in Scouting. They make up the largest block of claimants in the bankruptcy. Now, Tim has heard some of the many stories of former boy scouts who allege abuse. The individual stories that can get lost in the numbers of 82,000 victims.

Tim Kosnoff: The stories are our heroine, they wear me out. I can't listen to but a couple a day. It's just you can't help but internalize it. They live it again, as they tell it in front of you. It's really something, when you talk to a man, he's 87 years old, and he's crying on the phone about what happened to him in 1937, and it still has wounded him so painfully that all these years later, it can just reduce him to weeping and sobbing, telling it for the first time to a stranger or a lawyer over the phone. When you sit back and you consider that, that tells you everything you need to know about the catastrophic nature of these injuries. They call it a wound that won't heal.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tim believes the biggest priority here should be fair compensation and justice for victims, not whether Boy Scouts land gets sold to developers or conservation-minded organizations.

Tim Kosnoff: My responsibility is to obtain justice in the form of financial compensation on behalf of my clients. I can't really can't weigh in on conservation. I know what goes on but I want it to go to the highest bidder. If some conservation organization can go out and find a patron who give them the money, whether it's the federal government or some billionaire to save this thing, I don't care as long as the money is green. I'm not going to sacrifice my client's interests so that people that live in some place near the ocean in Connecticut can have access to this place. If they were concerned about that they should have jumped in and forced the Boy Scouts of America to address its problems long ago.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Others are looking for compromised solutions. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told the AP back in June that he was looking into the possibility of using federal funds from the National Park Service's Land and Water Conservation Fund to help buy Deer Lake and other boy scout properties that are up for sale around the country. In Maine, the State's Land for Maine's Future Program has put up half the purchase price to help conservationists buy a 95-acre boy scout camp called Camp Gustin, but using public funds from the government raises other concerns.

I asked Keith Ainsworth, a Connecticut environmental attorney, about these issues. Are there ethical concerns here with using tax dollars to buy land, knowing that those resources will likely go to pay for the debt incurred from the claims of sexual assault?

Keith Ainsworth: I've actually heard that sentiment before. That would be the take of the guy at the end of the bar, "Hey, I don't want my tax dollars paying off guys who abuse kids. That's the last thing I want my money going toward." That's actually the wrong way to look at it. If we're having this national fire sale for camps across the nation, there's many of them, tens of thousands of acres. This is the same opportunity that we faced as a nation in the late 1800s and early 1900s when we established the National Forests when they were being torn down by logging interests.

It's not paying off the people who did bad things, the people who are paying off these judgments or these claims, they're not taking money directly from the government and having it paid, the government's getting something in return. As long as the government's getting fair value, they're getting something of value, which is public lands that people can use and generations of people can enjoy, it's a different thing if you were saying, "Well, we're going to put federal dollars straight into the trust fund to pay off the claims." That would be then a valid critique.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's return to the Deer Lake camp in Connecticut. The Connecticut Mayor reported earlier this month that the Connecticut Yankee Council had received a better offer and would sell the land to a local non-profit called Pathfinders which runs camps at Deer Lake. The sale was for a reported $4.75 million. Now the Connecticut Yankee Council was facing pressure from the state attorney general, the public and the lawsuit filed by Keith Ainsworth.

They decided to give Pathfinders time to raise enough money, to top the commercial offer that was made from fortitude. As of right now, it's unclear whether any taxpayer dollars will be used to help fund the sale. For following this development, Keith Ainsworth dropped his lawsuit against the Connecticut Yankee Council, believing the sale accomplishes most of its goals. As for the Boy Scouts, Keith says he'd ultimately like to see them survive.

Keith Ainsworth: I feel sympathy for them. I really do because the organization is a fundamentally-sound organization. Its purposes are still very valid today as they were when the program started in the early 20th century. We need Boy Scouts to be there for the next generation of young men, and these days of young women.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For Tim Kosnoff, it's different. He actually does not believe the Boy Scouts of America ought to survive this.

Tim Kosnoff: The Boy Scouts have exhibited such a disgraceful, outrageous, and despicable disregard for the safety of children. I believe that it should be burned to the ground. Maybe somebody else can come up with a scouting program but these rascals, no, they need to be gone. They need to be gone.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We should note here that we did reach out to the Boy Scouts of America, the Connecticut Yankee Council, and Senator Blumenthal for comment. We didn't receive responses from any of them by airtime but if we do, we'll post them on our website. I want to thank Molly Osberg, Keith Ainsworth and Tim Kosnoff for their participation in our story.

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