WATERBURY, Connecticut (AP) _ A man who says he was sexually abused by a Connecticut scout leader in the mid-1970s won a $7 million jury verdict against the Boy Scouts of America. Lawyers for the man said the decision handed down Friday in Waterbury Superior Court was the largest verdict for compensatory damages against the Boy Scouts’ national organization. The jury also found the organization liable for punitive damages, with the amount to be determined by a judge. The man, known only as John Doe in court documents, alleges he was a member of a New Fairfield Boy Scouts troop when its leader, Siegfried Hepp, sexually abused him three times. Messages seeking comment were left Monday at phone listings for Hepp in New Fairfield and Lady Lake, Florida. He wasn’t a defendant in the lawsuit. The plaintiff’s lawyers, Paul Slager and Jennifer Cohen Goldstein, said evidence at the trial showed that another boy in the troop accused Hepp of molestation, and that Hepp pleaded guilty in 1999 to unlawful sexual touching of another minor and was a registered sex offender for a decade. In Friday’s verdict, the jury also cleared the local Connecticut Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of […]
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