Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America’ on Netflix, an Exposé Documentary That Inspires Outrage

Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America (now on Netflix) is among a growing documentary subgenre that could be titled Survivors Speak. Director Brian Knappenberger (of several other Netflix docs and nonfiction series, including Web of Make Believe and The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez) digs into the Boy Scouts of America’s sexual abuse scandal, specifically honing in on the public disclosure of damning documents that revealed how the organization covered up tens of thousands of sexual abuse cases for nearly a century. And as expected, it’s sobering, revelatory and frequently disturbing.   

SCOUTS HONOR: THE SECRET FILES OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Boy Scouts of America was a sacrosanct American institution ��� please note the past tense. It was the biggest youth organization in the country, and purported to “give young men a role in life” and teach things like strength, honor and morality. But the past decade revealed significant moral rot after more than 82,000 Scouts reported having been sexually abused by BSA volunteers and Scout masters; to put that in some context, that number dwarfs the number of people who reported abuse within the Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. And it turns out that the BSA kept secret files, dubbed the Perversion Papers, detailing how organization leaders, fearing everything from public-relations backlash to loss of membership and sponsorships, turned a blind eye to allegations, sweeping reports under the rug. The BSA turned out repeat abusers – when pedophiles were expelled from the organization, they were never reported to law enforcement, and in many cases, they moved away and rejoined the organization in a different part of the country. A serial abuser, who was convicted for multiple offenses in the 1970s, said he kept coming back to the BSA “because they made it so easy.” 

Among the key commentators in the film are: Journalist Patrick Boyle, who acquired the Perversion Papers and made their contents public. Former BSA Youth Protection Director Michael Johnson, who was hired in 2010 and ended up blowing the whistle on the organization’s coverup. And Steven McGowen, BSA’s General Counsel from 2013-2022, who as the Scouts’ lone representative in the movie, functions as Johnson’s foil. Boyle states facts. Johnson criticizes the BSA’s shoddy policies – he says the organization didn’t want to spend the money or time to run background checks on volunteers and Scout masters – and deceptive practices. And McGowan, facing Knappenberger’s tough questions, deflects, engages in whataboutism and passes the buck. 

We also meet a handful of survivors, who share, sometimes in great detail, what happened to them, what their lives have been like since they were traumatized and the often raw, fragile state of their emotional selves. Men like Mark Eaton, Doug Kennedy, Christopher Haywood and Tom Krumins reveal, sometimes tearfully, how they had their childhoods torn away from them, or kept their traumatic experiences secret for decades. By 2020, the BSA faced such a deluge of sexual abuse lawsuits, the company filed for bankruptcy, halting civil litigation. But that’s when those 82,000 people came forward.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Scouts Honor is of a piece with similarly harrowing Netflix docs Victim/Suspect, which detailed how police officers can be complicit in rape culture, and Athlete A, about the Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics sexual abuse case.

Performance Worth Watching: The survivors are a significant piece of this documentary, and as ever, should be lauded for bravely sharing their stories publicly.

Memorable Dialogue: Krumins holds his father’s Scout master trophy, a ceramic eagle, in his hand. He points out how it’s been broken and glued together – there were times when he was so angry, he smashed it. “This is why I’m speaking up,” he says. “It’s what an Eagle would do.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Considering how frequently the subjects of documentary exposés so frequently decline to participate, Knappenberger lucked out a little bit when he managed to get a sit-down with McGowan. It allows the director to contrast McGowan’s defensive, unconvincing posturing with the survivors’ wrenchingly effective testimonials. That’s key to the potency of Scouts Honor, which efficiently summarizes an upsetting story of systemic corruption, hypocrisy and grotesque moral indifference. It adheres to the talking-head/archival-footage documentary template, its simple, straightforward style helping render it a rock-solid piece of journalism with an appropriately sober tone.

Knappenberger’s assemblage of the usual array of attorneys, journalists and other experts gives the story crucial context and analysis, the intellectual heft to balance the contributions of survivors, who are, appropriately, the heart of the film. Scouts Honor isn’t a deep dive as much as it’s a necessary and informative rundown of the story’s key bullet points; it’s a sprawling saga that incorporates everything from religion to homophobia and public perception, three sub-stories that could become their own documentaries. But in a greater context, the film fits in with a larger narrative about sexual abuse coverups which collectively reveal the need for societies to significantly change the manner in which we address these problems. 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Scouts Honor is modestly revelatory, but nevertheless necessary – and crucially, doesn’t depict outrage as much as it shows us why we should feel it, and express it.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.