Santa Monica Sex Offender Listed in Boy Scouts' 'Perversion Files'

A fugitive living in Santa Monica in the 1970s with a lengthy criminal record of sexual offenses was listed by the Boy Scouts of America in its confidential register, dubbed the "perversion files."

The recently released files include the names of more than 1,200 people from across the country—including Alan David Peter Bagration, a former scoutmaster of Troop 222 in Santa Monica—whom the organization suspected might be child abusers.

They were made public Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. They were used as evidence in a 2010 lawsuit against the Scouts in a molestation case that resulted in a jury awarding $20 million to a man molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

Because many of the men listed in the "perversion files" have not been charged or convicted of crimes, some media outlets have refrained from naming them without further investigating the allegations. 

Bagration, however, was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, according to his file.

Two other Santa Monica men are also listed in the files. 

The files are publicly available, and you can find them here.

Bagration used as many as six aliases, and he was registered as a scout in Troop 222 in December 1976 under the name Michael Ross, according to his file. Before his arrival in Santa Monica, he had been arrested five times between 1960 and 1971 in New York on suspicion of child molestation. He was convicted three times and acquitted once. His fifth arrest was pending when he was taken into custody in Santa Monica in spring 1977, because he had "jumped" bond and fled to California.

That the Boy Scouts allowed Bagration to be a scoutmaster nettled Santa Monica police as they investigated accusations against him.

The officer "felt the organization had a responsibility to insure that the Scouts maintained the 'American flag, apple pie, all the good impressions that the public has of Scouting,'" the Scout's then-field director wrote in a letter to his supervisor in May 1977. The officer "stated that in view of the fact that we knew about [Bagration] two years ago and did nothing about it left us open to criticism. I told him that I was not aware of any such notification."

According to a court affidavit included in the case file, Santa Monica police began their investigation into Bagration on a tip from an informant who had found slides in Bagration's home of young boys engaged in sexual acts. The detectives wrote in court documents that some of the images were of boys who Bagration had picked up near the Santa Monica Pier. He would pay to take nude photos of them at his home.

Another boy was identified as an 11-year-old who Bagration had met at a Scouts meeting in the summer of 1976. He took the boy to Magic Mountain and to see The Bad News Bears at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The boy told detectives Bagration orally copulated him "a couple of times and sucked on my toes once."

Another victim, a 10-year-old who was too young to join the troop, was selected by Bagration to be "mascot" instead. During Monday night meetings at Franklin Elementary School, he would take the boy to the back of the room while others played in the front, unzip his pants and rub his genitals for "one or two minutes, while telling him how much he was going to like being a Boy Scout."

Bagration was sentenced in connection with the Santa Monica crimes in November 1977 by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who ordered him to state prison without probation on three counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a child. He was to be extradited to New York to face charges there before serving time.

"The defendant has a long history of criminal offenses and is a fugitive from another state," Judge Charles II Woodhansee said during the sentencing. "He's attempted to avoid discovery by changing his name and he misused a position of trust for his own purposes at the expense of young, impressionable boys who were mistreated and injured and defenseless at an emotional age." 

The Boy Scouts of America file does not reveal where Bagration is currently.