PORTLAND, Ore. — Again and again, decade after decade, an array of authorities — police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and local Boy Scout leaders among them — quietly shielded scoutmasters and others accused of molesting children throughout the country, including a case from 1964 involving a Rutland man, a newly opened trove of confidential papers shows.

At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting, a pillar of 20th-century America. But as detailed in 14,500 pages of secret “perversion files” released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers allowed sexual predators to go free while victims suffered in silence.

The files are a window on a much larger collection of documents the Boy Scouts of America began collecting soon after their founding in 1910. The files, kept at Boy Scout headquarters in Texas, consist of memos from local and national Scout executives, handwritten letters from victims and their parents and newspaper clippings about legal cases. The files contain details about proven molesters, but also unsubstantiated allegations.

The allegations stretch across the country and to military bases overseas, from Rutland to a small town in the Adirondacks to downtown Los Angeles.

The Rutland case was prosecuted in 1964. William J. Moreau pleaded guilty to “having lewd relations” with an 11-year-old Scout, according to a contemporary newspaper account. According to the files, the 11-year-old was one of a dozen Scouts who stayed overnight at Vermont’s Camp Sunrise.

The Scouts, as is demonstrated repeatedly in the files, talked to the parents about their concern for “the name of the Scouting movement” if charges were brought, but were rebuffed — the parents were insistent on filing charges.

Moreau, a 27-year-old insurance adjuster and assistant Scoutmaster, resigned his position, but a local prosecutor and the police department made sure the Scouting name was never publicly associated with the crime, despite the fact that the abuse was conducted by a Scoutmaster on Scouts at a Scout camp.

“The State’s Attorney with whom I talked late last night and the local police assure me they will do everything in their power to keep Scouting’s name and Camp Sunrise out of this,” a local Scouts executive wrote in a letter to the national council headquarters.

In newspaper clippings attached to the files detailing Moreau’s charges and his plea, no mention of the Scouts is ever made.

At the news conference Thursday, Portland attorney Kelly Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.

“You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children,” said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

Clark’s colleague, attorney Paul Mones, said the files “show how pedophiles operate, how child molesters infiltrate youth organizations.”

“These guys (abusers) basically were in a candy store, the way they thought about it,” Mones said.

The Associated Press obtained copies of the files weeks in advance of Thursday’s release and conducted an extensive review of them. Clark also was releasing the documents on his website: kellyclarkattorney.com

The files were shown to a jury in the 2010 Oregon civil suit, and the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the files should be made public. After months of objections and redactions, the Scouts and Clark released them.

In many instances — more than a third, according to the Scouts’ own count — police weren’t told about the reports of abuse. And even when they were, sometimes local law enforcement still did nothing, seeking to protect the name of Scouting over their victims.

The files released Thursday were collected between 1959 and 1985, with a handful of others from later years. Some have been released previously, but others have been made public for the first time.

The documents reveal that on many occasions the files succeeded in keeping pedophiles out of Scouting leadership positions — the reason why they were collected in the first place. But the files are also littered with horrific accounts of alleged pedophiles who were able to continue in Scouting because of pressure from community leaders and local Scouts officials.

The files also document other troubling patterns. There is little mention in the files of concern for the welfare of Scouts who were abused by their leaders, or what was done for the victims. But there are numerous documents showing compassion for alleged abusers, who were often times sent to psychiatrists or pastors to get help.

In numerous instances, alleged abusers are kicked out of Scouting but show up in jobs where they are once again in authority positions dealing with youths.

The files also show Scouting volunteers serving in the military overseas, molesting American children living abroad and sometimes continuing to molest after returning to the states.

But one of the most startling revelations to come from the files is the frequency with which attempts to protect Scouts from molesters collapsed at the local level, at times in collusion with community leaders.

It happened when a local district attorney declined to prosecute two confessed offenders; when a three-judge panel included two men on the local Scouting executive board; when law enforcement sought to protect the name of Scouting and let an admitted child molester go free.

Their actions represent a stark betrayal, says Clark, who won the case that opened the files to public view.

“It’s kind of a deal. The deal is, our society will give you incredible status and respect, Norman Rockwell will paint pictures of you, and in exchange for that, you take care of our kids,” Clark said. “That’s the deal, incredible respect and privilege. But there was a worm in the apple.”

With the deadline to disclose the files looming, the Scouts in late September made public an internal review of the files and said they would look into past cases to see whether there were times when men they suspected of sex abuse should have been reported to police.

The files showed a “very low” incidence of abuse among Scout leaders, said psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Warren, who conducted the review with a team of graduate students and served as an expert witness for the Scouts in the 2010 case that made the files public. Her review of the files didn’t take into account the number of files destroyed on abusers who turned 75 years old or died, something she said would not have significantly affected the rate of abuse or her conclusions.

The rate of abuse among Scouts is the not the focus of their critics — it is, rather, their response to allegations of abuse. In the case of the files released in Portland, most salient is the complicity of local officials in concealing the abuse by Scouts leaders.

Warren told the AP such complicity “was simply quite a natural desire to want to be somewhat protective over (the BSA).”

Over the years, the mandatory reporting of suspicions of child abuse by certain professionals would take hold nationally. Each state had its own law, and the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act passed in 1974.

The Scouts, however, wouldn’t institute mandatory reporting for suspected child abuse until 2010. They did incorporate other measures, such as a “two-deep” requirement that children be accompanied by at least two adults at all times, and made strides in their efforts to combat pedophilia within their ranks.

According to an analysis of the Scouts’ confidential files by Patrick Boyle, a journalist who was the first to expose about efforts by the BSA to hide the extent of sex abuse among Boy Scout leaders, the Scouts documented internally less than 50 cases per year of Scout abuse by adults until 1983, when the reports began to climb, peaking at nearly 200 in 1989.

Attitudes on child sex abuse began to change after the 1974 law, said University of Houston professor Monit Cheung, a former social worker who has authored a book on child sex abuse.

“Before 1974, you could talk to a social worker who could (then) talk to a molester and that could maybe stop abuse,” Cheung said, noting that most abuse happens within families.

But mandatory reporting made the failure to report suspected abuse a crime.

“That’s the change, that you’re no longer hiding the facts of abuse,” Cheung said.