NEWS STORY
UNPREPARED
A lawsuit settlement last week raises questions about the Boy Scouts' commitment to safety at its Oregon summer camps.

BY MAUREEN O'HAGAN
mohagan@wweek.com

 

On Friday, Christopher T. Horton, a 15-year-old Boy Scout, died during a swim test at a Scout summer camp south of Florence. The Associated Press reported that "for the first time in 46 years of the Boy Scout summer camps, the Scouts had lost one of their own."

Not true. Four years ago this month, a West Linn Eagle Scout, Adam Clark, 17, fell to his death while teaching other Scouts to rappel at Camp Baldwin, in the Mount Hood wilderness. Last week, Adam's family settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the national Boy Scout leadership and the local Scouting office, known as the Cascade Pacific Council.

Though the details of the settlement are confidential, the family's lawsuit, filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, claims arrogance, naïveté and irresponsibility on the part of an organization that, since 1916, has guided young men on a righteous path.

Court documents indicate that Scouting officials have refused to take any responsibility for Adam's fall from a 70-foot rock face--despite a state investigation that revealed three serious safety violations as the cause of the accident.

"The [Scouts] took advantage of our son's generosity and enthusiasm, paid him less than it took to even purchase the uniforms and equipment, about 50 cents an hour, and then put him in a position where he lost his life," wrote Adam's father, Larry Clark, in an affidavit. "They should be ashamed."

It appears that they aren't and have instead blamed the victim. State OSHA inspector Larry Lee says the Scouts' risk manager, Portland lawyer Akin Blitz, told him, "Adam was stupid. My dog knows better than to do what he did." Blitz denies making the statement and adds that he was acting as the local Scouts' attorney at the time and was trying to make a legal argument about a fine Lee imposed on the council.

There is no doubt that Adam made an error in judgment on Vulture Rocks, the rock face at Camp Baldwin. But the state investigation showed the Scouts shoulder much of the blame.

According to court documents, Adam was strapped into a harness and tied to a safety rope while helping his young charges rappel down the rock face. Standing on a ledge, he realized that his rope had too much slack. He unclipped his harness from the rope to fix the problem and slipped on some gravel. At least 12 other Boy Scouts watched him plunge from the ledge.

"I saw something falling from the rocks," Jeff Sohlstrom, the head rock climbing instructor, said in a deposition. "I realized it was a person. He made contact with the rocks approximately three times before he hit the bottom and he then rolled another approximately 50 feet down into the ravine." Adam died before reaching the hospital.

The accident is not so cut-and-dried as it may appear. John M. Pinckney IV, director of the First Ascent Climbing School, was asked to investigate the mishap for the state. In a letter to state inspectors, he wrote: "This accident was a culmination of many errors in judgment, not just Adam's fateful decision to unclip at the edge of Vulture Rocks." In fact, the roots of this tragedy go back to the day Adam was hired, four months before his fall.

In February 1994, after a five- to 10-minute interview with Scout management, Adam was selected to be a rock climbing instructor. According to his parents, he was an outgoing and ambitious teen and a lifelong Scout who had worked at Scout camps before. But it's difficult to understand why the Scouts chose him for this dangerous position. Adam had no teaching experience and only minimal climbing experience, most of which was in a rock gym, not outdoors. At the time, Adam's parents weren't concerned about their son's safety because they trusted his judgment and the Scouts. "He was supposed to be a helper, not an instructor," Larry Clark says. "Usually they're the ones that pack the rope and do the grunt work."

That was not the case. Adam Clark, then 17, was one of three instructors who directly supervised up to 15 boys. The Scouts' own rules say the head rappelling instructor must be 21. In this case, the job fell to Sohlstrom, who was just 18 and had never before instructed in this dangerous sport. The third instructor was also a teen-ager.

The Clarks said they were told their son would receive proper training. Instead, the Scouts paid for Adam to attend an afternoon rock climbing class at a climbing gym.

Nor did the Clarks have any idea that their son would be required to climb so high. "In my opinion, it's ludicrous to put a child on a 70-foot cliff," says Karen Clark. "Who in their right mind would do that?"

The Clarks say their son was also forced to work so many hours that he was exhausted--another factor that may have contributed to the accident. In a letter to his parents shortly after he arrived at camp, he described how he was out at midnight during a hailstorm because the camp director required staff to replace flagpoles. He fell asleep before finishing that letter.

According to the lawsuit, the Boy Scouts' own inspection process for the rock climbing program--ostensibly designed to ensure the safety of all camp attendees--was "a sham."

Both the local and national Boy Scout leadership sent inspectors to the camp with lengthy checklists covering a wide variety of items relating to health and safety. Both inspection teams certified that the rock climbing program met safety standards. They did so even though none of the team members had ever rock climbed before. At that time, the inspection team never looked at Vulture Rocks or the equipment the Scouts would use. They didn't see, for example, that there weren't enough helmets to go around. Because of the shortage, Adam wasn't wearing a helmet at the time of his fall.

Stephen Bauer, a Portland lawyer who was involved with the Scouts for many years, said in an affidavit that this wasn't unusual. Although the inspectors had the authority to close or refuse to accredit all or part of any camp, he had never seen it happen, he said.

Summer camps in general slip under government safety inspectors' radar screens. There are no laws requiring a summer camp to be accredited or inspected by any government agency. State OSHA officials say that many of their inspections are complaint-driven, so they don't often make rounds at summer camps. The County Health Department inspects summer camp kitchens as it does restaurant kitchens but doesn't inspect any other camp programs. The state Child Care Division, which licenses day-care providers, says that summer camps are exempt from any licensing requirements.

After the tragedy, OSHA visited the site and conducted its own investigation, which included a consultation with two rock climbing schools. It found several deficiencies.

According to OSHA documents, the Cascade Pacific Council did not ensure that workers were properly instructed and supervised; did not adequately protect workers from fall hazards; and did not supply helmets to instructors. The council was assessed a $11,250 penalty--stiff by OSHA standards. (The Scouts argued the fine and got it reduced to $2,500.)

The climbing schools that helped in the investigation of the death agreed that Adam was put in a dangerous position for which he was not qualified.

"Adam Clark, though seemingly well-intentioned, would not qualify as a professional 'rock climbing' instructor by any stretch of the imagination...," wrote Pinckney of First Ascent Climbing School. "He was selected for the job by a panel that interviewed approximately 300 candidates in one day. How could this constitute an adequate appraisal of his climbing skills, credentials and ability to teach rappelling to groups of adolescent males?... I would not even consider hiring Adam for the job in which he worked."

Cynthia and John McDaniel, the owners of Vertical Ventures, concurred. "None of the 'rock climbing instructor staff' had sufficient knowledge or experience to make judgments related to safe climbing and rappelling," they wrote. "Adam did not have the ability to judge what was safe and what wasn't safe due to his lack of experience, and the [local and national Boy Scouts] did not provide the guidance and expertise required to conduct a safe program.... It is clear to us that Adam's death could have been prevented if industry and Boy Scouts of America's instructional, practice and safety standards...would have been adhered to," the McDaniels wrote to OSHA.

The Scouts' own investigation, conducted by Blitz, turned up no wrongdoing, concluding the incident "was an isolated and uncharacteristic case of poor judgment on Adam's part which resulted in his fall.... The risk management committee was unable to identify any change in policy, equipment, training or supervision that would have prevented this accident."

Don Cornell, the director of field services for the local Boy Scout council, says its programs are safe. "We deeply regret that it happened," he told WW. "We work very hard to ensure the health and safety of our participants. We camp over 10,000 youth every summer and send 10,000 home safely.... We have health and safety standards that we follow, and we work hard at making sure that we do those things that are going to make sure it's a safe activity."

Larry and Karen Clark, longtime Scout volunteers, say that after they lost their son, they saw another side of the Scouts. Although the local troop leaders offered their condolences, the Clarks say the response of Scout management was inappropriate. For a year after Adam's death, they continued to get postcards inviting him to ceremonies, suggesting he apply for scholarships and asking them for donations.

"I think this was a totally preventable tragedy," says Larry Sokol, the Clark family's attorney. "The Boy Scout's conduct which preceded this child's death and the way that the Clark family was treated after his death took my breath away. I suppose if you practice long enough, you'll see just about everything. But I'm amazed with a case like this."

 

originally published July 22, 1998