OTTAWA, June 26 (UPI) -- Scouts Canada has reported 129 cases of possible sexual abuse to police, some of them decades old, officials said Monday.
The action was taken after a review of the organization's records from 1947 to 2011 by the international auditing firm KPMG that found 65 cases of accusation of sexual misconduct that went unreported and another 64 in which auditors could not tell from the records whether a report had been made, The Globe and Mail of Toronto reported.
About one-fifth of the first group occurred after 1992, when the organization changed its rules to make reporting mandatory in all cases of alleged molestation.
Steve Kent, the chief commissioner of Scouts Canada, said the cases occurred all over the country. He said auditors found no sign of a systematic effort to cover up abuse.
"We have decided to confront the good and the bad of our past," Kent told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.
KPMG said in a 51-page report that abuse charges were much more likely to be reported after 1992 and reporting improved in 2001 when the organization adopted a more centralized structure.
The audit was triggered by a sex abuse scandal within Boy Scouts of America and by an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. into the Canadian group's confidential list of several hundred suspected pedophiles.
