Dozens of boys say they were abused in a Christian scouting program that vowed to raise godly men

[Jim Burton]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ro ... rcna247409

This article is part of “Pastors and Prey,” a series investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God.

The boys had been taught to obey their elders, and how to pitch tents and build campfires along the creek-lined woods of western Oregon. They could dutifully recite the motto for the Royal Rangers, a Pentecostal version of the Boy Scouts. “Ready for anything,” they chanted in unison.

But no one had prepared them for this: Adults sometimes do bad things to children. And when people in power find out, they don’t always act.

Travis Reger learned that hard lesson around 1984, at age 10. That’s when, he says, a Royal Rangers commander from his Assemblies of God church in Albany, Oregon, fondled him and another boy at a sleepover.