The leader of a Boy Scouts troop in Sunrise, Fla., was arrested on June 11 after police said he showed his group of young Scouts graphic pornographic videos, Local 10 reports.
Mark Kern, 48, was volunteering as a Boy Scout troop adviser for Boy Scout Troop 309, which is made up of boys between the ages of 8 and 16. According to the Broward Palm Beach New Times, Kern allegedly showed the boys porn on his cell phone while they were at a church fundraiser.
Kern faces two counts of distributing obscene material to a minor, which is a third-degree felony, for the incident which took place on November 16, 2014. The New Times also reports that a Broward Sheriff's Office deputy who also volunteers for the troop and is friends with Kern, declined to file a report with police even though he allegedly was urged to do so by other parents, a father of one of the victims said.
The police report states Kern was in charge of the troop, who were handing out drinks at the church fundraiser. After talking to one of the boys about girls, he decided to pull out his phone and show hardcore porn to the minors, according to the report.
"While inside the beverage trailer, the defendant became engaged in conversation with the group of scouts at which time he showed them a photograph of a naked adult female," the report reads. "The defendant then displayed several pornographic video clips of adults having sexual intercourse."
The report describes the type of porn Kern showed the children, which included oral sex, threesomes, anal sex and other explicit content. Sunrise detective David Lowenstein interviewed five of the boys who were shown the porn. All five had similar stories as to what they saw.
"[Kern] noticed one of the kids was looking at a Jamaican girl who was serving food," one of the boys told New Times. "And [Kern] said, 'Oh, that's what you like?' And then he started showing us some pictures of naked girls, and then he showed us the pornos."
Kern voluntarily gave a statement to the authorities, admitting he showed the children porn, and was arrested on June 11.
One of the fathers of the victims told the New Times he wants the Boy Scouts of America to file a criminal complaint. He also said he spoke with a Boy Scout deputy named Aaron Moore, who allegedly refused to go to the police about Kern because they were friends.
The New Times writes that the "Boy Scouts ended up dealing with it on their own, and in December, Kern was quietly told he could no longer attend anymore Boy Scout functions." The CEO of the Boy Scouts of America's South Florida Council, Brick Huffman, confirmed to the newspaper that Kern was told he couldn't attend Boy Scout related events.
"We dealt with it internally," he said.
In an email Kern sent to family members in May, he denied that he showed the boys porn and only admitted to showing them pictures of "girls in bikinis."
