A Colorado man who abused scores of children during his time as a Boy Scout leader in Boulder decades ago is back in custody after authorities say he sent and downloaded child pornography.
Floyd David Slusher, 69, of Aurora, was charged in February with sexual exploitation of a child as a habitual sex offender against children, court records show.
Slusher, who is also accused of violating his parole, pleaded not guilty to all three counts and is scheduled to stand trial in December.
He remains in the Arapahoe County jail.
Police say a computer found at Slusher’s home contained a host of videos and movies showing young children performing sex acts on adults.
Asked by investigators who could have been sharing the child porn, Slusher allegedly stated “that he did not know” but that “if he did know, he would not share that information,” according to an arrest affidavit filed in Arapahoe County Court.
Slusher’s name is one of thousands to appear in the so-called “Perversion Files,” an internal, previously secret Boy Scout list of volunteers who had been banned on suspicion of sexual abuse dating back to the 1940s.
The documents, made public through court hearings and published in the Los Angeles Times a decade ago, showed how the once-beloved youth organization was lax in handling molestation incidents, leading to repeated child abuse by its leaders.
The Boy Scouts in recent years admitted for the first time that sexual predators were allowed to return to scouting even after credible accusations of abuse.
Slusher was one of these leaders.
He was sent back to the U.S. after molesting a boy at a Scout camp in Germany, but was allowed to continue working with Scouts after returning to Boulder, the Perversion Files show.
One victim told The Denver Post in 2019 that Slusher, then a University of Colorado student, plied the 12-year-old with alcohol and sexually assaulted him.
“At the time, I didn’t know it was abuse,” Tod Berryman told The Post. “I knew something wasn’t right, but I was told not to talk about it.”
Slusher molested at least eight boys in the Boulder troop, according to a 1977 Boulder County Sheriff’s Office report included in his file.
“Almost every Boy Scout in Troop 75 and Troop 73 has been approached sexually by Slusher on one time or another,” the Boulder detective wrote. He added that the victims were “too numerous to interview.”
Slusher was convicted of sex crimes twice, in the late 1970s and late 1980s, and spent years in prison. But he was later released and placed on Colorado’s sex offender registry.
Berryman said Wednesday that news of Slusher’s re-arrest is not surprising.
“I’m just frustrated with our judicial system,” he said. “Something has to be done that’s serious. Because he’s not gonna change.”
A bankruptcy judge earlier this month approved a $2.46 billion reorganization plan by the Boy Scouts, which would compensate tens of thousands of men who claimed they were abused during their time in the organization.
The Scouts faced an avalanche of lawsuits, leading to the drawn-out bankruptcy proceedings over the past few years in a Delaware courtroom. It will likely take months before claimants will see the money.
