The True Story of Best Friends Trapped in an International Boy Scout Sex Ring
Two best friends. One hidden network. A childhood stolen under the cover of Scouting.
From 1964 to 1967, Kenny Tipton and Greg Connor were barely teenagers when men they had been taught to trust groomed and sexually exploited them through Boy Scout camps, trips, and activities.
What began at Lost Valley Boy Scout Camp outside St. Louis grew into an organized network that carried the boys through more than twenty states and into the hands of businessmen, law-enforcement officers, politicians, priests, educators, and other powerful men.
To survive, Kenny and Greg depended on each other. They made rules, kept secret records, negotiated with predators, and used intelligence, loyalty, and dark humor to hold on to some measure of control. As the danger escalated, they became caught in blackmail, betrayal, violence, and crimes that would haunt Kenny for decades.
Lost Valley – Lost Innocence is Ken Tipton’s firsthand account of stolen childhoods, institutional failure, buried secrets, and the lifelong consequences of survival.
But at its heart is something the men who exploited them could not take away: the friendship between two boys who protected one another when the adults around them would not.
Decades later, Ken finally breaks the silence.
Told with brutal honesty and unexpected humor, this is a survivor memoir about friendship, resilience, guilt, and the courage required to confront the past.
Some stories are difficult to believe because they are too horrifying to imagine.
This one happened.
Lost Valley – Lost Innocence is available at Amazon.
╰┈➤Book Details
🏕 Title: Lost Valley – Lost Innocence
🏕 Author: Ken Tipton
🏕 Genre: Memoir
🏕 Sub-genre: Sexual Assault/True Crime
🏕 Language:English
🏕 Pages: 365
🏕 Paperback ISBN: 979-8234067685
🏕 Publisher: TBRIS Media, Inc.
🏕 Publication Date: June 22, 2026
🏕 Price: Hardcover $27.99, Paperback $18.99, Kindle $7.99, FREE with Kindle Unlimited
In 2020, more than fifty years after I left the Lost Valley Boy Scout camp, I returned to the woods west of St. Louis, near St. Charles, Missouri, in search of a small yellow suitcase called the "Banana," which I hoped would prove my story.
That sentence may seem straightforward: an old man returns to a childhood camp to search for something his best friend buried when they were boys. It sounds almost sweet and nostalgic—like the kind of harmless story people share at reunions, once the pain has faded with time and memories have mellowed.
But memory doesn’t behave the same way for me. It lurks, it hides, and it resurfaces when I least expect it.
Lost Valley was never merely a camp to me; it was both my prison and my sanctuary.
– Excerpted from Lost Valley - Lost Innocence by Ken Tipton, TBRIS Media Inc., 2026. Reprinted with permission.
Ken Tipton is a serial entrepreneur, author, composer, screenwriter, award-winning filmmaker, and Air Force veteran whose life has taken him from building unconventional businesses and producing films to confronting a childhood history he kept largely buried for decades.
His memoir, Lost Valley – Lost Innocence, tells the true story of Tipton and his best friend, Greg Connor, who were groomed and sexually exploited as boys through a network connected to their experiences in Scouting during the 1960s. Told with candor, emotional honesty, and unexpected humor, the book examines childhood abuse, institutional betrayal, friendship, survival, and the consequences that can follow victims long after the abuse itself has ended.
Tipton has spent much of his life creating—building businesses, developing film and television projects, writing screenplays, and telling stories drawn from extraordinary experiences. In his seventies, he turned that storytelling toward the most difficult subject of all: his own past.
Through Lost Valley – Lost Innocence, Tipton hopes not only to document what happened, but also to give voice to survivors who spent years or decades believing that silence was their only option.
He lives in California with his wife, Darlene, and continues to write and develop new creative projects.
Ken’s latest book is Lost Valley - Lost Innocence: The True Story of Best Friends Trapped in an International Boy Scounts Sex Ring.
Visit his website at https://lostvalleybook.com/.
Connect with him on social media at:
╰┈➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LostValleyFilm
╰┈➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lostvalleybook
╰┈➤ BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ken-tipton
╰┈➤ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lostvalleybook
╰┈➤Substack: https://lostvalleybook.substack.com/
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