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That will be a whole different can of worms then won't it? Everyone will get hit with negligence, including the parents of the victim. We have packs that have been doing this as well. I am just saying that the new program is designed around facilitating this and it's now part of the program literature. If this is the case council and national are going to hang that leader out to dry SO hard. Again every council is probably watching this.

Didn't I already?

Perhaps you can hazard a guess why...

Interesting the CO throught the COR there maybe an other layer of fault. If the adults leadership has a repeating problem. Sad it happen even sadder it likely will be settled with a non disclosure agreement. So no one learn from bad judgement.

My non attorney guess is that the defendent is the issue of one of the leaders. They all share the last same initial. Could be a coincidence, but it's not unusual to hear stories about leaders' kids who never seem to be at fault or or made to deal with any real consequences.

So if that is true, it is a known repeating abuse. There should already be a police report for the first event involving a scout. All leadership are required reporters. Looks like multiple failures to protect and follow state law. Reporting to the Scout office is required under BS youth protection. So, the council may already be aware of the problem from prior events. And they took no action. May non-attorney guess it will be settled for at least 7+ figures or more. Should be a child protective service investigation against all parties involved with charges as needed.

With my long beard (not reaally, it will not grow long), I have the imagined perspective of a seasoned adult. And that is the point. How many of the issues we see posted here would simply solve themselves if we, you know, "act" like adults? Hmmmm!

What I describe has been going on in my area for over 25 years. This is nothing new here. But it definitely shocked me when I first got here.

The (fairly) recent revision of the Cub program was meant to facilitate this kind of den/pack structure/meeting scheme. With the dearth of adult volunteers, it allows one leader to oversee multiple dens and/or ranks and all meet at the same time. The achievements were also better coordinated among the ranks so that it's easier to have multiple ranks work on similar achievements.

Depends. In my neck of the woods, the entire pack meets every week. They will do a joint opening, then split into dens. Sometimes den meetings are done as a pack instead of individual dens.

I think Erie Shores is the chartering organization for that pack. There were also prior incidents with the older child attacking the younger child.

Our school district was celebrating a couple of years ago that in a student high school survey, only 50% of the respondents identified as heterosexual. Now the same people are professing surprise that the number of students in the district is collapsing and claim to have no idea why.

That's not how garrisons work. Just not. I guess another non-military non-veteran thought on something this week. The West Point camporee presents a unique situation where cadre and cadets put so much into it because so many have a connection to scouting back home and get to invite their home troop. Not even GSUSA can replicate that network and process. No other scouting organization will have that relationship, it took half a century and literally millions of past members of BSA to create that network and connection to the academy. If Scouting America gets kicked out of the West Point camporee it means the camporee is dead. I highly doubt any other scouting organization will have a relationship with the military like Scouting America. Congress no longer issues charters for some reason; I've seen how this affects newer veterans groups, too late to the table and unable to fill the same space as the older groups like AL or VFW; those groups become niche organizations that are mostly filled by politically hungry people unwilling to put their time in to get district or state level leadership positions in the older groups. Trail Life in itself has some other issues that will keep it on the outside, Right now the political arm of the military is VERY protestant and pushing a very protestant position towards things; however, most of the military historically doesn't practice religion outside of boot camp (lots of "no-religion" people suddenly become "Non-denominational Christian" in boot camp when they realize the church goers go to mass on Sunday while the non-church goers scrub floors and garbage cans). Then toss in that the overwhelming largest religious group in the military is Catholic and you have a big problem (The Catholic church endorses Scouting America as it's partner group through NCCS, and Trail Life is anti-Magisterium).

I have also heard that there are a large number of councils under conditional charter; that came out of last years NAM and was related to some sort of discussion related to the financial health meeting. I believe the number was somewhere between 20 and 50 councils left the NAM being told that they might be placed on conditional charter before the end of the year. As I understand things national is looking at a handful of metrics: rolling 90 day cash-on-hand, unrestricted endowment contributions/growth, membership in relation to total-area-youth, and an amalgam of safety. Based on the councils that got merged out last year and so far this year the trend seems to be that if a council is surviving off of their endowment national puts them on transitional or if a councils membership shrinks below some ratio they are put on transitional. A good example of the financial is Suffolk Council in Long Island and their financial situation. A good example of the membership was Ohio River Valley (who had everything going good except the whole council was basically a district in membership).

In our society, that is the United States of America, the legal systme is so twisted that it does not protect most of us and can be rigged or leveraged to generally put the onus on those with the least ability to fight it. And personal responsibility too often is brushed aside by the "corporate", especially the insurance industry. Meanwhile, ridiculous payments continue to be made when someone can leverage the system effectively. And, when the insurance is forced to pay, it is likely the insured will be priced out of future insurance of dropped all together. Even small claims can lead to increased cost to the insured, whether or not they have had others. If somebody has no claim for ten years, yet pays on time and fulfills that obligation, why is it legal or seen as acceptable for the company to then drop them or raise their rates drastically? It is a Catch 22.

Awesome, you know you're wrong so trying to build something out of nothing now. Go read the article, get informed, follow the rules or get burned. You're welcome for my warning.

These numbers are highly suspect; except for the past 10 to 20 years in the United States universally transexuals have been a fraction of a percent of the human population across all cultures and ethnicities. Similarly the historic gay population has always been roughly 5% across all human populations regardless of culture or ethnicities. The United States is in a weird state. Personally I think it's all the medication and the agency producing power of the situation driving the increase. I have a teenage relative that was all in on being gay, using they/them, living an extremely alternative lifestyle and as soon as "they" stopped taking a cocktail of anxiety and depression medications "they" became "she" again, and suddenly had a boyfriend. I know it's anecdotal and 1 case, but watching it happen and hearing her mother describe the sudden change as soon as the medication was out of her system was an eye opener for me. Normally the supreme court only takes cases that have a national implication. I would suspect it's going to apply universally.

The lawyer and family are fundamentally reading the division by age stuff wrong. Cub scouts meet roughly weekly 2-3 times a month in dens (which can be but might not always be divided by age due to leader or program limitations); once a month cub scouts meet as a pack where all dens participate together. This will get ripped apart by any competent defense/litigation attorney. The lawyer and family are also misunderstanding the reporting requirements. The council is not at fault for the unit not following reporting rules. The fault is going to fall on the registered adult leaders (most likely the key 3 will get hit by the bus), and then the charter organization. This is simply logic, how can council be in the wrong if they were not notified because the unit was violating the reporting procedures? This right here is why our YPT/Safeguarding is online only; the councils lawyer will point out the youth protection training part that mandates reporting and will show negligence by the leader(s) and not council. Again the council cannot be at fault for the leaders not following the guide to safe scouting and allowing a prohibited event. The councils lawyer will again reference the mandatory youth protection training segments. Erie Shores and national are going to spend a bunch of money redirecting everything to the charter organization, unit leaders, and parents (involved that night). The entire organization is going to get a lesson in how everything is siloed and compartmentalized post settlement. The only risk to Erie Shores council that I can see is if the plaintiffs attorney can show that the council has a chartered obligation to ensure all leaders are trained and that the leaders present were not trained past 90 days so the council is at fault for some sort of oversight in ensuring trained leaders. If that happens it might actually help the rest of the program and force all councils to protect themselves by washing out all the F grade leaders who can't be bothered to do free online training.

This incident occurred in December when it is very possible to have 12 year old 5th graders at the AOL rank. By February, most of them will have crossed over.

This feels like more than a big kids vs. little kids issue. Accidents happen, but the police report noted 2 punches, a push, and a stomp. That has a lot more to do with the aggressor than it does the age gap or the game they were playing.

Saw a clip on local (to the unit) news yesterday. In that report it stated several times that the person who caused the injury was 12 years old. If that is actually the case then the part of the original article stating that the older kids should have been separated from the younger kids makes a little more sense, particularly if this was a case of a pack and troop meeting together for some reason, or of an older sibling being present and joining the banned activity.

The core issue is trying to do activities with kids ranging in age, size, and maturity from 5 year old kindergartners to 10 or 11 year old fourth and fifth graders. Scouting really forces all these ages together at pack meetings and other events and really doesn't work too hard at differentiating them as much as you would typically see in other environments like school, sports, etc. A too broad age range is also sometimes an issue at troop levels. Scouting asks volunteer adults to supervise situations that people who supervise children professionally typically try to avoid. Lions were not a helpful addition to this mix but National did it anyway for membership and marketing reasons. The lawsuit shouldn't be a surprise and I'm sure there have been plenty others.

It's all yours! It's a common phrase it my region used to question whether a benefit is worth the effort. In the case of Scouting, I think we can all agree the juice is really sweet, but our hands occasionally get sore from squeezing.

Exactly. I think the cooler heads at National understand their entire program would die if they lost the support of adult volunteers en masse, if they threw one adult involved in a situation to the wolves, and then lost control of the narrative surrounding the incident. Bad PR = loss of adult volunteers = loss of program = loss of Scouts = loss of Boy Scouts of America doing business as Scouting America = loss of their paycheck This is already happening in other areas, forcing Scouting America into survival mode (make no mistake, that is where we are right now). And I, too, often question whether "...the juice is really worth the squeeze." (Love that phrase, and I'm gonna use it, and not even give you credit )