In May, prosecutors in Seattle charged a sheriff’s deputy with raping a 17-year-old girl. The deputy met the teenager while he was an adviser in his department’s youth mentorship program known as Explorers.
The victim, now 24, came forward in May to report the abuse, which she alleges took place in 2017 and 2018. The assaults allegedly began after King County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricardo Arturo Cueva told her she was cute and that he liked her while they were alone on a ride-along in his police SUV. Cueva — who is 15 years her senior — later kissed the teenager while they were on a separate ride-along at night. Prosecutors contend that Cueva’s abuse escalated, according to court records, to include sexual assaults in his sheriff’s vehicle and his home. The age of consent in Washington state is typically 16, but rises to 18 if the other person is in a position of authority.
Law enforcement departments across the country have Explorer programs — overseen by Scouting America, formerly known as Boy Scouts of America — and they have a history of sexual abuse and misconduct, as The Marshall Project reported last year. Ride-alongs, in which young people accompany officers on their patrol shifts, are a key perk of the Explorers program.
They are also a gateway to abuse.
The Marshall Project examined hundreds of abuse allegations in law enforcement Explorer programs and found that about a quarter of them involved officers on ride-alongs with teens — some as young as 14 years old.
“Mr. Cueva staunchly maintains his innocence, and we intend to thoroughly investigate his case and defend him vigorously,” Cueva’s attorneys, Amy Muth and Jennifer Atwood, wrote in a statement. Cueva pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Scouting America started Explorers decades ago and oversees programs in a number of different professions, including law enforcement, fire departments and EMS. Law enforcement agencies manage the Explorers programs, but Scouting America sets national policies and guidelines. The organization has two notable safety policies for all of its programming: a “two deep” leadership rule requiring two adults to be present with young people at all times, and a separate rule prohibiting one-on-one contact between an adult and a minor.
Until very recently, Scouting America had carved out an exception to these rules specifically for ride-alongs in law enforcement Explorers, allowing officers, often men, to be alone in cars with participants for hours at a time. The exception, experts said, bucked long-held guidance for preventing sexual abuse in youth-serving organizations.
But Scouting America ended its decades-old exception for ride-alongs this summer, while The Marshall Project was reporting this story.
Beginning on June 18, The Marshall Project reached out to Scouting America several times to request an interview. Representatives of the organization either didn’t respond or declined to comment. That same month, Scouting America posted a policy change to its website.
The new rules state that two adults must be present in all youth activities, including Explorer ride-alongs. The new guidelines also state that if an underage female Explorer goes on a ride-along, at least one of the officers accompanying her must be a woman.
The post announcing the policy change is dated June 10. But the organization’s web page shows a publication date of June 26. Scouting America officials didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment about the change.
Over the years, Scouting America has added other parameters for ride-alongs, including requiring a logbook documenting dates and times that Explorers accompany officers and restricting overnight rides to participants who are at least 18 years old.
Experts told The Marshall Project that young people are especially vulnerable to adults in positions of authority, and that cars are a common location for abuse due to their isolation.
“Oftentimes, what perpetrators rely on — whether it’s a church, Boy Scouts, a coach — is the appearance of authority because it makes them seem more trustworthy, but it also makes the victim feel as though they don’t have much of a choice. And just like a uniform, the police vehicle itself provides that air of authority,” said Nate Baber, an attorney representing a former Explorer who was allegedly abused by an officer in Connecticut.
Allegations of abuse, spanning different years and law enforcement agencies, often follow a similar pattern. A participant goes on a ride-along alone with an officer, who makes an inappropriate comment. His behavior progresses to inappropriate touching, and then, in many instances, sexual assault, according to The Marshall Project’s review. Some victims initially view the officers as a “crush” and believe the relationship is consensual. Others are hesitant to report abuse for fear of losing their chance at a career in law enforcement.
In the King County case, prosecutors allege that during one ride-along, Cueva “encouraged” the teenager — who is referred to as “A.B.” in charging documents — to give him oral sex. Prosecutors also allege that another assault occurred before an early morning Explorers event, in which Deputy Cueva suggested they sit in a police vehicle, where he requested the teenager have oral sex with him again.
Prosecutors also allege that Cueva anally raped the Explorer at his home in 2018. He continued after the teenager cried out in pain and told him to stop — he only did so when his wife and daughter returned home unexpectedly, according to court records.
The young woman described the deputy as charming and said that “everybody loved him.” But when she was alone with him, she alleged, Cueva acknowledged that his behavior was illegal, and he was afraid of getting caught.
“Then behind closed doors, he was doing so many things he wasn’t supposed to be, and you know, lying to his bosses about where he was and what he was doing on these ride-alongs. It just felt like nobody ever saw through it,” A.B. told a detective with the Seattle Police Department, whose investigative findings are included in the charging documents.
In May, A.B. told a King County deputy, who is also a former Explorer, about the alleged abuse and asked if Cueva still worked at the department. A.B. decided to report the allegations “in hopes of protecting others,” according to court records.
Sexual abuse and misconduct in law enforcement Explorer programs have persisted since Scouting America expanded the program to include female participants in the 1970s, The Marshall Project reported last year. The Marshall Project also found that lack of oversight by law enforcement agencies and Scouting America contributed to some abuse cases. Though many cases we reviewed led to officers facing criminal charges, only about half served time behind bars.
The Marshall Project began compiling a database last year of abuse and misconduct allegations in law enforcement Explorer programs from the 1970s to the present. To determine how many allegations involved abuse on ride-alongs or in vehicles, The Marshall Project reviewed court records, internal affairs investigations, lawsuits, and news articles for the 217 cases currently in our database. The review found that at least a third of the cases involved alleged abuses in an officer’s vehicle. More specifically, about a quarter of the cases involved officers grooming, harassing, or sexually assaulting young people during Explorer ride-alongs.
The Marshall Project analysis is the most comprehensive review to date of abuse in police Explorer programs and the role of ride-alongs.
Because we couldn’t identify the location where the abuse allegedly occurred in more than half the total cases, these numbers are likely an undercount.
Throughout the 1990s, police officers in California, Kentucky, and Missouri had inappropriate sexual relationships with Explorers while on ride-alongs, documents show. A 2003 report by the University of Nebraska at Omaha found that more than 40% of the cases of officers abusing teenage girls that researchers identified nationwide involved police Explorer programs.
The Washington case is one of four to go to court this year of officers across the country allegedly abusing Explorers in their police vehicles or on ride-alongs, according to court records. An officer in Texarkana, Texas, faces charges of sexually abusing an underage Explorer during overnight ride-alongs. In May, prosecutors in Yuma, Arizona, charged a Border Patrol agent with abusing an Explorer over months in multiple locations, including his vehicle.
Baber, the attorney, is representing an 18-year-old woman who says she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an officer in her Explorer post in Manchester, Connecticut, last year while she was underage. The officer, 33-year-old Ryan Moan, also worked as a school resource officer at the teenager’s high school.
Moan was arrested in early December in a separate case, which included a charge of enticing a minor. He killed himself shortly after being released on bond.
Earlier this year, Baber filed a letter of intent to sue on behalf of his client, and said that some of the alleged sexual abuse involving the student occurred in Moan’s police car.
He said more safety precautions in the program are needed. “To me, you take every precaution,” Baber said. “There’s no reason for a 40-year-old police officer to have a long car ride with a 16 or 17-year-old female.”
The Manchester Police Department did not answer questions about its Explorer program. A statement from the Manchester Superintendent of Schools and the town manager said an outside law firm will investigate the allegations against Moan.
Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, said that abuse on ride-alongs is a known problem.
“And it’s just like other types of police crime, we don’t see a whole lot of changes as a result of police reforms,” he said. “It seems to me that this would be an area that Scouting has a responsibility to tighten their policies, as do the agencies that sponsor these law enforcement Explorer programs.”
Stinson, whose research has largely focused on police sexual violence, expressed reservations about encouraging more young people to join, given the safety issues.
“If I were the parent of a teenage daughter who wanted to participate in a law enforcement Explorer program, I would discourage her from doing so because I’m well aware of the abuses that occur,” he said.
Stinson said a lot of law enforcement agencies are likely not well-staffed enough to assign two officers to a patrol vehicle — making the Scout’s “two deep” leadership rule challenging.
Donald Palmer, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, has studied how an organization’s characteristics can impact the nature of abuse. His work has helped inform numerous prevention guidelines, including the Australian government’s special inquiry into sexual abuse caused by the country’s religious institutions — most notably the Catholic Church. He said people first have to realize that youth programs are not inherently safe.
“Most youth-serving organizations are created not to protect kids but to provide some kind of service that they and their parents want,” Palmer said. “The Explorer program was not formed to keep kids safe. It was formed to introduce kids to law enforcement.”
Palmer cautions against a “one size fits all” approach — like requiring two adults to be present — and says it may not be effective for law enforcement Explorers because some departments may not be able to have two officers on a ride-along.
Elizabeth Letourneau, a professor and director of Johns Hopkins University’s Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, agrees. “That particular rule is really easy to violate. What if somebody calls in sick that day? Are you just gonna leave the kid by the side of the road? Are you gonna drive him home?” she said.
Letourneau recommends against law enforcement agencies having young people ride in cars with officers. But if agencies choose to do it, she said, they should conduct screenings for officers to gauge their understanding of adolescent development before allowing them to interact with youth, and agencies should follow up with participants after each ride-along to ensure that all behavior with youth participants was caring and professional.
“Two adults would still be a thousand times better than just allowing the one-on-one contact,” said Gilion Dumas, an attorney who has represented several victims of alleged abuse in Explorer posts.
One case Dumas is currently handling involves a man who says he was abused as a 16-year-old Explorer by a sheriff’s deputy in Eugene, Oregon, in the late 1990s. Dumas said the deputy built trust with her client by personally driving him to and from Explorer meetings.
“Then on the ride-alongs, they would be alone for hours and hours and hours and hours, giving the perp the opportunity to build trust over the course of weeks — until then he began to ramp up the actual sexual grooming with the typical hands-on knees, personal talk, sexual talk, all of that,” Dumas said. “And being alone in the car like that for hours and at night was just the perfect opportunity.”
Explorer advisers from other fields were surprised to learn about the Scouts’ rule exception allowing one-on-one contact in law enforcement programs.
Eric Matson, an adviser for the science and engineering Explorers post at Lockheed Martin, said his program has safety guidelines that adhere to both Scouting America and his company’s rules, including: prohibiting one-on-one contact, having multiple advisers present at all times and escorting participants around their facility in Syracuse, New York. He said parents are also allowed to sit in and observe the post’s meetings.
In 2020, Scouting America filed for bankruptcy amid mounting lawsuits alleging abuse in Boy Scout programs, including Explorers. As part of its bankruptcy plan, the organization has agreed to beef up its youth safety policies, including increased record-keeping and reporting requirements. While Explorer programs are included as part of these reforms, the organization’s rules around one-on-one contact are not mentioned explicitly.
Before joining the King County Explorers program as an adviser in 2016, Cueva was investigated just two years prior for kissing and touching the genitals of a family friend’s 10-year-old daughter, according to the current case’s charging documents. The King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the allegation, prosecutors say, and determined there wasn’t enough supporting evidence.
The King County Sheriff’s Office declined to answer questions about the earlier allegation, its Explorer program or Cueva’s employment, but said the deputy was placed on administrative leave in late May after turning himself in. Cueva’s case is set for trial in October.
Dumas said these recent cases show how much Scouting America is not willing to enforce its own policies or be transparent about the dangers of its program.
“The most important message is that teenagers themselves have to understand the risk and how to protect themselves,” she said, “because I don’t think the program is going to protect them.”
