O.C. Scout Camp Chaplain Admits Abusing 50 Boys

A Garden Grove man, convicted recently of molesting two young boys, has 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, was sentenced last week to five years in prison on charges that he molested an 11-year-old and a 12-year-old at Cherry Valley Camp.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officials said they hope that other boys will contact detectives so additional charges can be filed.

Sheriff’s Detective Doug Blaydes said Nguyen targeted the Boy Scouts because the Catalina Island camps, which are attended by Scouts from across the country every summer, allowed 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 on his background are sketchy.

He had worked with the Roman Catholic church and youth programs in Vietnam before coming to the United States several years ago, said Ron Schoenmehl, assistant executive with the Boy Scouts’ San Gabriel Valley Council. Nguyen 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.

He pleaded no contest to molestation charges involving two youngsters, and was sentenced Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court in Long Beach.

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 campers are safe, but Nguyen was “very clever and slipped through the cracks. All the background checks we did showed he was considered a wonderful man,” Schoenmehl said.

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.”