For a long time, I’ve leaned on this particular experience to justify the general — whatever bad apples might be found in other troops, mine was proof that the organization was good at heart. The Boy Scouts have done the same, in reverse. After the Dykes trial, a Boy Scouts spokesman said, “The actions of the man who committed these crimes do not represent the values and ideals of the Boy Scouts of America.”

That may be true. But in 2020, it’s beside the point. Too many bad apples raise unavoidable questions about the orchard they came from. And while the Boy Scouts has done an admirable job of reform — owning up to its failures, admitting openly gay scouts and leaders, planning a compensation fund for victims — it still doesn’t feel like enough. Even if the Boy Scouts manages to get through this crisis financially, what possible reform could win back the public trust?

Is it possible to have scouting without the Boy Scouts? Of course it is, just as we don’t need the N.F.L. to play football.

Scouting began in Britain, under the leadership of Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, a career army officer. In 1908 he founded the Boy Scouts; two years later he and his sister created the Girl Guides.

The movement spread quickly, with national organizations sprouting from North America, where the Boy Scouts of America opened in 1910, to Southeast Asia — today, Indonesia has by far the largest, with some 17 million members. Each national organization had to follow some basic parameters set by Baden-Powell, but otherwise was free to set its own rules. Some, like the Boy Scouts of America, exclude atheists; many don’t. Others have always been coed; the Boy Scouts didn’t admit girls until 2018.

The Boy Scouts is by far the largest scouting organization in America, but historically, it hasn’t been the only one. The same year it was founded, a rival organization, the American Boy Scouts, began under the leadership of William Randolph Hearst (it folded in the 1920s). More recently, the Baden-Powell Service Association has emerged as a coed, nonreligious alternative to the Boy Scouts. And of course there’s the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., founded in 1912 as the American branch of the Girl Guides.