Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Kim Christensen--who died last year--takes on one of the United States' oldest youth organizations in On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America, unraveling the abuse scandal that stretched for decades through the history of the Boy Scouts. Christensen's journalistic style makes for an approachable, if harrowing, narrative. Tracing the organization from its founding, On My Honor gives voice to those who have been hurt through this multigenerational trauma. And still, the extent of the abuse (its perpetration and the cover ups, handled internally, without being reported to the appropriate officials) is almost unfathomable: more than 82,000 former Scouts have filed claims against the organization, which, as Christensen notes, is seven times the number of allegations put forth against the Catholic Church over recent decades.
On My Honor outlines the problems as institutional, while it also thoroughly traces the political reach and impact of the organization. Christensen calls readers to examine not only how the Boy Scouts of America was complicit in youth harm for generations, minimizing accountability of perpetrators and enforcing a culture of silence, but also how other formal and informal cultural and political institutions have helped to legitimize this cover-up culture.
Never professing a personal view in the text, Christensen instead gives space to facts, historical context, and personal experiences of survivors willing to speak to him. On My Honor is a long-overdue reckoning, right down to what it truly means to live out the last condition of the Boy Scout Oath: to keep morally straight. It poses big questions about the future of the BSA. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer