On 19 August 2026, the High Court handed down judgment in the case of TWG v The Scout Association [2026]. Christopher Wilson, Partner in Keoghs Abuse and Social Care team, takes a detailed look at the decision and considers its implications.
TWG v The Scout Association involved a claim for personal injury arising from a series of sexual assaults committed against the claimant, identified as TWG, while he was a 10-year-old member of the First Midsomer Norton Scout Group between 1966 and 1969. The perpetrator, Leroy Grubb, was an Assistant Cub Scout Leader within the organisation.
The claimant alleged that, after weekly Cub Scout meetings, Grubb would follow him on his walk home, intercept him in a secluded area and subject him to repeated sexual assaults. Grubb was subsequently convicted in 1969 of multiple indecent assaults against other boys, but it was asked that an assault on the claimant be taken into consideration during sentencing.
The claim was issued in 2024 and was pursued solely on the basis of vicarious liability. The claimant contended that Grubb’s role within the Scout movement enabled him to gain the claimant’s trust, identify his vulnerability and repeatedly access him for the purpose of abuse. The Scout Association accepted that Grubb had been an Assistant Cub Scout Leader but denied that his assaults were sufficiently connected to his scouting role. It argued that the abuse occurred away from scout premises, after meetings had ended, and while the claimant was making his own way home. The defendant therefore maintained that scouting merely provided the opportunity for contact and not the close connection required by the authorities to make them vicariously liable.
A further issue arose concerning limitation. At the time of the trial, the claim was approximately 44 years out of time and the claimant sought relief under section 33 of the Limitation Act 1980. However, before judgment was handed down, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 came into force, introducing sections 11ZA and 11ZB into the Limitation Act 1980 and effectively abolishing limitation periods for claims arising from child sexual abuse, unless a fair hearing was impossible. The defendant accepted that a fair hearing could still take place.
As the limitation argument had essentially dropped away, the central issue, therefore, was whether the Scout Association was vicariously liable for Grubb’s intentional sexual assaults.
Mr Justice Sweeting noted that the first stage of the two-stage vicarious liability test was undisputed: Grubb’s relationship with the Scout Association was sufficiently akin to employment. The dispute concerned the second stage, namely whether the assaults were so closely connected with Grubb’s entrusted role that it was fair and just to impose liability on the Scout Association.
Mr Justice Sweeting concluded that the close connection test was satisfied.
Although the assaults occurred away from Scout premises and after formal Scout activities had ended, the Judge found that these factors were not determinative. The crucial question was whether the abuse represented an exploitation of the authority, trust, power and opportunity conferred on Grubb through his role as Assistant Cub Scout Leader.
Mr Justice Sweeting accepted the claimant’s evidence that Grubb had used his scouting position to gain trust, identify the claimant as a vulnerable child, learn his movements and present himself as a trusted adult who would “make sure” the claimant got home safely. The claimant was targeted because he was a Cub Scout under Grubb’s supervision. The abuse was repeated, followed a consistent pattern, and arose from a relationship cultivated through scouting activities.
The Judge distinguished cases where employment merely provided an opportunity for contact and instead found the facts closer to authorities such as Lister, X v Wandsworth, and FZO, where abuse was facilitated by relationships of authority and trust created by the defendant organisation. He concluded that Grubb had misused the very position entrusted to him by the Scout Association and that the assaults could fairly be regarded as having occurred in the course of his quasi-employment. Accordingly, the Scout Association was held vicariously liable.
This judgment introduces a potentially broader application of the close connection test in cases involving youth organisations and voluntary activities, when previous judicial guidance on vicarious liability had narrowed the circumstances in which the stage 2 test would be satisfied.
The decision indicates that vicarious liability does not solely depend upon the abuse occurring on organisational premises or during authorised activities. The Court placed far greater emphasis on whether the abuser’s organisational role conferred authority, trust and access to the victim, and whether those features were instrumental in facilitating the abuse. Where a claimant can show that the abuser exploited a relationship of trust created through an entrusted role, liability may arise even where the abuse itself occurred away from the organisation’s premises and outside formal activity hours.
The judgment also highlights the continuing influence of Lister and related authorities while illustrating how courts may distinguish more recent restrictive decisions such as BXB. The key distinction remains whether the abuse arises from a personal relationship independent of the role, or whether the role itself created and facilitated the relationship that enabled the abuse.
On a hypothetical spectrum of positions involving responsibility for children, the judgment arguably now places the role of a scout leader closer to that of a teacher as opposed to more peripheral or incidental volunteer roles, such as a football coach. For example, in TVZ & Others v Manchester City, the High Court found the abuse did not occur in close connection with a volunteer football coaches’ duties as the abuse (which occurred at the football coaches’ house) was not the abnegation of any positive duty allocated to him by the Club. The court’s reasoning in this case now emphasises the trust placed in scout leaders, their supervisory responsibilities, the conferral of authority by the organisation, and the extent to which children and parents are expected to rely upon them, to render them vicariously liable.
Finally, this judgment may prove controversial because it appears to push the boundaries of the “close connection” test in a direction that sits uneasily with the restrictive approach adopted by the Supreme Court in both Trustees of the Barry Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses v BXB [2023] UKSC 15 and Various Claimants v Morrisons Supermarkets plc [2020] UKSC 12. The Supreme Court in those cases emphasised that it is not enough that a defendant’s enterprise merely creates the opportunity for wrongdoing. Rather, there must be a close connection between the tort and the functions entrusted to the wrongdoer. In Morrisons, Lord Reed stressed that “but for” causation is insufficient; the mere fact that employment provides the opportunity to commit a tort does not justify the imposition of vicarious liability. Likewise, in BXB the Supreme Court rejected liability notwithstanding that the elder’s religious position had facilitated contact with the claimant, holding that the rape arose from a personal relationship rather than from the exercise or misuse of authority conferred by the role itself. The Court repeatedly warned against treating mere status, opportunity or causal connection as enough to satisfy stage 2 of the test.
The judgment therefore arguably represents a more expansive application of Lister and FZO (which the Supreme Court Judges in BXB said appeared to have been wrongly decided) than the narrowing approach favoured by the Supreme Court in Morrisons and BXB.
It remains to be seen whether there will be an appeal.
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