could be an issue with a character-style that is related to itself…
in a german scribus-forum there was a report of a file that crashed in newer versions while it opened normally in older ones. the file had the following style-description:
<CHARSTYLE CNAME="text_sans_hfett" CPARENT="text_sans_hfett =>
a style can not be its own parent! (even if it worked in older program-versions…)
i don't know, if it's this problem, but a check of the code in a text editor (searching for 'PARENT') might be worth trying…
utnik