Families of four children who died on Scout trips meet for first time to call for public inquiry
ITV Granada Reports correspondent Tim Scott met up with the four families to hear about their campaign
The families of four boys who died while on Scout trips have come together for the first time to demand a public inquiry into the association.
They say the organisation has failed to learn lessons each time a child has died and cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, as laid out in their Royal Charter.
Instead the parents want an independent regulator to oversee how they operate to prevent any more children dying in their care.
The four families, who each lost children between 1995 and 2018, met face to face for the first time in October.
Lee Craddock, who was 11, died in 1995 after falling nearly 400ft down a cave in Yorkshire.
His mum, Patricia, said the Scouts had failed to complete a risk assessment and had broken their own guidelines by taking more than the recommended number of children on the trip.
The Scout leader on the day died three years later, but Patricia was told by her legal team that he would have otherwise have faced corporate manslaughter charges over Lee’s death.
"I trusted you with my son," she said in a message to the association. "I sent away my son to have a really good time and it's your fault he never came back."
Sharon Collins’ son Scott Fanning, who was also 11, died in 1998 after falling off a cliff on a walk with the Scouts in Lancashire.
She has criticised the Scouts for their lack of planning for the trip and the ratio of leaders to children.
Jack Saunders, who was 21, died in 2017 after lighting a stove in his tent while camping alone in Lancashire, supposedly under the care of the Scouts.
Jack, who had autism, was given no instructions on how to use the stove and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
He lay for five days inside his tent before his body was discovered.
His father, Paul Saunders said: "We believe that under duty of care somebody should have been checking on Jack but unfortunately they left him deceased, or slowly dying, in his tent.
"We are giving them our children to look after, our faith is in them but it's not reciprocal."
One year later in 2018 Ben Leonard, who was 16, fell to his death from the Great Orme in North Wales while on a Scout trip.
His inquest found the trip should not have gone ahead as there was no qualified first-aider there.
Ben had been given no map or warnings about the cliffs on the Great Orme.
The Scouts' negligence was found to be a factor in Ben's death and the inquest verdict was unlawful killing.
The Scout Association and one of their senior management team are currently under investigation by North Wales Police for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over their handling of Ben's case.
Speaking about their campaign, the families said they were determined the same would not happen to anybody else.
"We believe as families we have been manipulated so their brand is protected," Paul Saunders said.
Jack's mum, Jane, added: "They had their own protections in law, parents have nobody really that can support them, so they don't know what potentially is the right thing, or right way of going about things."
"They will find somebody else to blame," Patricia Craddock said. "It's the child's fault, it's somebody else's fault, it's never theirs."
Sharon Collins added: “The inability of the scouts to be open and honest about what happened and tell us the facts about what happened to our children in those last hours of their lives.
“They have no corporate memory at all, they’re just forgotten children.”
The four families are now demanding the Government launch a public inquiry into the organisation’s “training and policies”, as well as establish an external regulator.
They also want any other families whose children have been harmed in the care of the Scouts to come forward.
Their campaign has been backed by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
He said “It was heart-breaking to hear what these families have been through, not just their tragic loss but how they've been treated over the years.
"It is clear to me that the conclusions of the inquest into Ben Leonard’s tragic death point to the need for a complete overhaul of the regulation of scouting in the UK and the culture around it.
"I will support the families in any way I can to bring that about."
The Scout Association said: “Keeping young people safe from harm is our number one priority.
"We are committed to learning from each of these cases, and since the start of the year, we’ve been making further changes to our approach to safety, including to our risk assessments, safety rules, training and enhancing the support we give our volunteers.”
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