CHICAGO – The Boy Scouts of America and Chicago-area Scouting officials failed to protect children from a convicted pedophile, even though he had been banned from scouting in Indiana, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Chicago.

The suit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of an anonymous former Scout who said he was molested by Scoutmaster Thomas Hacker in 1985. Hacker, now 75, was convicted in 1989 of molesting three boys and sentenced to two concurrent 50-year prison terms.

But recently released documents show that the Boy Scouts had a confidential file on Hacker in 1970 based on reports that he'd been arrested in Indiana for sexually assaulting boys in Scouting and at a school where he taught, the lawsuit claims. The arrest led to a felony conviction, yet Hacker resurfaced as a Scoutmaster in the Chicago suburbs in 1971 and by the end of that year had been arrested again.