Ex-Scout Leader Gets 8 Years for Molestation

Aformer Northridge Boy Scout leader pleaded no contest to two counts of child molestation and was sentenced to eight years in state prison, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Tuesday.

Under a plea arrangement, six other molestation charges against Dennis Walter Schult, 55, were dropped. Schult, who was sentenced last Friday in San Fernando Superior Court, was accused of molesting two boys, aged 8 and 12, over a period of several years at his Northridge house.

Prosecutors said Schult, an insurance agent and a car buff, often had young boys at his home. “They would work on cars . . . ,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Ipsen.

But Schult also gave the boys “alcohol and showed them videos and magazines of a sexual nature. These things were used as tools to seduce and gain the cooperation of these children,” Ipsen said.

Schult met one of the boys through a church scouting program. Schult was arrested last April after the two boys “realized what had been done to them. They also expressed concern about protecting other young children,” Ipsen said.