Chaplain Admits He Molested 50 Scouts : Courts: Seminary graduate is sentenced to five years in prison for abusing two youngsters at Catalina summer camps.

A convicted child molester from Garden Grove admitted having sexual contact with more than 50 Boy Scouts while working as a chaplain at summer camps on Santa Catalina Island between 1991 and 1993, authorities said Wednesday.

Khamh Van Nguyen, 24, a Vietnamese immigrant, was sentenced in Long Beach Superior Court on Friday to five years in prison on charges that he molested an 11-year-old and a 12-year-old at Cherry Valley Camp.

But Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officials said they hope some of the dozens of other boys who were molested will contact detectives so Nguyen can be charged again.

Sheriff’s Detective Doug Blaydes said the man targeted the Boy Scouts because the Catalina Island camps, which are attended by Scouts from across the country every summer, gave him discreet contact with the boys.

“He preferred the isolation of the island,” Blaydes said.

Nguyen was a graduate of St. John’s Seminary College in Camarillo, but other details of his background are sketchy.

Ron Schoenmehl, assistant executive with the Boy Scouts’ San Gabriel Valley Council, said Nguyen emigrated from Vietnam. “As I understand it, he had a difficult arrival here in the States. There was some dramatic instance that happened that allowed him to get into the country. . . . He told a real tear-jerking, sad story.”

Nguyen had worked with the Roman Catholic Church and youth programs in Vietnam, Schoenmehl said. He applied to work for the Boy Scouts locally and passed background screening and a six-day training program before he was accepted as a camp chaplain.

Nguyen also taught for about a week in September at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, but was suspended when the school discovered that he was being investigated on the molestation charges.

Blaydes said Nguyen told him he had been attracted to boys from a young age. “He was extremely graphic,” Blaydes said.

The two boys who pressed charges, both California residents, are traumatized and are in counseling, Blaydes said.

Schoenmehl said the organization did not know Nguyen had confessed to abusing so many boys.

“We know he had contact with a great many people,” Schoenmehl said, “but the information we had from police was that it was just these two victims.”

Richard Walker, a national Boy Scouts spokesman, said the organization gave the police a list of more than 500 boys with whom Nguyen had contact.

The Boy Scouts does the best it can to ensure that campers are safe, Schoenmehl said, but Nguyen was “very clever and slipped through the cracks. All the background checks we did showed he was considered a wonderful man.”

Blaydes said this was one of the worst cases of child molestation he has investigated.

“Given the position (Nguyen) had as a teacher and a leader, he did everything in the world against his own personal beliefs and violated the boys and everything they understood,” Blaydes said.