Kelly Clark, Lawyer Who Won Boy Scouts Abuse Case, Dies at 56

Kelly Clark, a lawyer whose successful child molestation lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America in Oregon led to the release of a trove of documents containing thousands of accusations of sexual abuse, died on Tuesday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was 56.

The cause of death had not been determined, said Paul Mones, his co-counsel on the suit against the Boy Scouts.

Mr. Clark argued child molestation cases before the Oregon Supreme Court more than a decade before his 2010 lawsuit against the Boy Scouts. Two of those cases resulted in decisions that established a far longer statute of limitations for molestation and allowed for institutions to be held liable when individuals under their authority commit abuse.

The plaintiff in the 2010 lawsuit was Kerry Lewis, who said he had been molested by an assistant scoutmaster, Timur Dykes, in the early 1980s. Mr. Dykes, who had served time for child abuse, had admitted to a Mormon bishop that he had molested several scouts. The bishop alerted the families of Mr. Dykes’s victims but did not warn the other boys in the troop or the authorities. Mr. Dykes was soon able to volunteer with the Scouts again.

“They knew that their charismatic assistant scout leader Timur Dykes, to whom kids flocked like bees to honey, had admitted to molesting 17 scouts, including Cub Scouts,” Mr. Clark told NPR shortly after his closing arguments in the case.

Read more from this story HERE.