‘It’s such a horrible thing’: devastating film examines sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts

‘The men in our film tell us that what happened to them has cost them jobs, it’s cost them marriages, it has cost them drug and alcohol abuse’ … Leave No Trace. Photograph: ABC

For John Humphrey, childhood used to mean having fun in the backyard of his home in New Jersey. “We had a rule that we couldn’t go any farther than the bell or the sound of my mother’s whistle,” he recalls. “I was always digging and playing.”

Then Humphrey went to a school that offered a Boy Scout programme. “I just loved the outdoors and this particular troop camped 12 months a year. It didn’t matter – winter, snow, ice, hot – I loved that part of it.”