Victims of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts were encouraged to come forward. Hundreds responded.

A lawyer who has worked for years to bring allegations of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America to light says that as of Thursday he has gathered about 220 new clients who allege they were abused while participating in the program as children. The new allegations add to an already extraordinary tally of such claims against organization dedicated to fostering the leadership and personal growth of young people.

Tim Kosnoff, the attorney who has gathered the claims, has worked on sexual abuse cases involving the Boy Scouts as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - also known as the Mormon Church - and said he felt a "moral imperative" to bring their stories to light.

"Kids are still being abused in scouting," Kosnoff told The Washington Post in a phone conversation Wednesday. "This is not historical."

His team says the allegations they've received span from 1953 to June 2018. The accusers are as old as 75 and as young as 15, and come from 33 states. The crimes alleged range from showing lewd photos to scout members to molestation.

The Washington Post reviewed a partially redacted document, compiled by Kosnoff and his team, that tallied 150 of the people who have signed on as clients. The document contains details for about 110 of them, such as their age, the age at the time of the alleged abuse and what they say happened to them. The list was not yet updated with all the clients who had signed with Kosnoff when The Post viewed it.

They have not yet filed a lawsuit, and Kosnoff said he was still gathering information from new clients and was waiting to see whether the Boy Scouts would file for bankruptcy.

Kosnoff was spurred into action by reports in December that the Boy Scouts, which have rebranded as Scouts BSA, have considered filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would significantly narrow the window for accusers to file claims and ensure those claims remained confidential.

"It can be a tool that these institutions use to shield assets and avoid having to reveal some information," Michelle Simpson Tugel, a lawyer who has represents sex-abuse survivors, told the Associated Press. "In many ways, it's a disservice to victims."

As another incentive, the statue of limitations for childhood sexual abuse had also been extended in states such as California and New York, giving many victims a new path to having their cases heard.

This year, Kosnoff, in collaboration with the Eisenberg Rothweiler law firm and San Diego attorney Andrew Van Arsdale, began running television ads and launched a website, abusedinscouting.com, where victims could contact the lawyers with their stories.

The Boy Scouts did not respond to a request from The Washington Post for comment.

The Boy Scouts of America kept extensive records about sexual abuse of scouts for decades, but only in the past few years have those documents become public.

In a separate announcement this week, attorney Jeff Anderson released a January testimony from Janet Warren of the University of Virginia, who had been contracted by the Boy Scouts for five years to pore over their "ineligible volunteer" or "perversion" files from 1946 through 2016. Her team identified 12,254 victims and 7,819 perpetrators in those documents.

The revelation came as Warren provided expert testimony for a case that centered on allegations of child abuse at a children's theater company in Minnesota. Anderson's firm represented the plaintiff in that case.

Anderson also released a list of offenders in New York state, which recently voted to extend its statute of limitations for cases of childhood sexual abuse. Those names were collected from "perversion files" that had been published by the Los Angeles Times in 2012.

"We care deeply about all victims of child abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed during their time in scouting," the Boy Scouts said in a statement to the New York Times. "Nothing is more important than the safety and protection of children in scouting, and we are outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our programs to abuse innocent children."

The Boy Scouts also have a helpline for members to report abuse.

In 2010, Boy Scouts of America was forced to pay $18.5 million in punitive damages in a case brought by man who said he was assaulted by an assistant troop leader in the 1980s, when he was about 12 years old. That lawsuit led to the partial disclosure of the files. In 2012, the Oregon Supreme Court ordered the full release of files after the lawyers for accusers and media organizations fought for access to the documents.

Also in 2012, the Los Angeles Times published a multipart investigation into the perversion files, obtaining documents that spanned from 1947 to 2005. They published a database containing information of 5,000 men and some women who were ousted from the organization because of suspected abuse during this time.

Several of the cases collected by Kosnoff in recent months did not appear in any of the perversion files. He described the new allegations he had discovered as "rich in detail," and that some clients broke down when they recounted their stories to his team. As part of the vetting process, they asked alleged victims questions such as their age at the time of the assault, their troop number and location, and details about what had happened to them.

While Kosnoff said the claims have not yet been verified with the Boy Scouts or in discovery, he was requiring accusers who wished to retain his services to sign a document saying they were prepared to give a sworn statement to law enforcement - as it would be a crime to do so falsely. But he was not surprised that so many had kept their stories secret for so long.

"It's humiliating, kids don't tell, they carry the secret into adulthood, their coping strategy is not to tell anyone," Kosnoff said. "Many of these men have indicated that they have suffered and struggled their entire lives with this burden."