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If it actually saves time. Keep an eye on that. If adults are adding to meeting agenda because it’s two units, it’s better to split the committee.

Simple? Let us remember that it's a big country. So there will be no single outcome. Getting beyond stats ... National Program (which, let's not whitewash it, is driven by some of the elite businessmen and women of America who saw scouting as a key to their success) will have roughly the same facilities and materials. However, delivery of facilities and materials will be passed on to volunteers -- or they will pay more for services. Registration costs and fees will increase. Local program will have lost facilities, and some scouts will have to travel longer distances to summer camp, putting them at increased risk for vehicular accidents, dismemberment, and death. Premiums for insurance will increase. Troops who lose CO's will be dependent on individuals offering meeting places and storage for gear. That increases the probability of lost/damaged gear, making it more expensive for scouts. Training burden will increase, discouraging some volunteers. Without generous donations from the neighboring communities, undeserved scouts will be shut out. On a world stage, WOSM will become dominated by up-and-coming organizations. With less money from US sales of purple patches, it will be increasingly supported by organizations from burgeoning economies in Asia, Europe, and Africa.

I don't consider anything a threat if it engages youth. Based on reports from the participants who I know, TL\USA is a whole lot of fun. But, not being chartered by Congress, the organization is not beholden to report any statistics. Their website reports "over 30K" youth in 600 units. But that stat has not been updated for quite some time. Much of their leadership are former scout executives. Many of their troops are housed in institutions that formerly housed BSA troops. So, it's only a matter of time and legal talent before an ambitious representative of abused victims connects dots, finds chinks in armor, and takes aim.

One problem with intense litigation: … it discourages voluntary reporting. But, from what I’ve come to understand, it depends. Formidable predators (let’s consider the adult serial rapist) may get their start at an early age … but avoid getting caught at the time. Some (not all) homosexuals who’ve talked to me about their history became sexually active at an early age with young women or men just a couple of years older. It is taken as gospel by those with a permissive sexual ethic that young people either have sex or talk about it or share images/videos about it a lot … often with someone of a different age. There is a movement that encourages that dialogue. Inevitably, in this world view, we will find conversations one participant is just over 18 and the other just under. All of this puts young ASMs in a precarious position. What they might consider “normal” is extremely threatening to the organization. Moreover a real predator could be masquerading under the veil of innocence.

Not just minors, but adults. Some legal departments in major health systems have been examining policies that would mandate a chaperone in every office visit involving a pelvic floor or breast exam. Practitioners are pushing back because of two reasons: the cost to hire chaperones and the likelihood that more patients — especially those with a history of abuse — would be harmed by a second person in the room

Fighting insta-palms? I only rail at those who made that decision. Now, I’m struggling to get new Eagle scouts to do the paperwork to acquire them! As to the topic at hand, it might be worthwhile to have an entire child sexual abuse forum, of which bankruptcy proceedings and other collections of topics would be sub-forums. There may currently be a lot of churn specific to the bankruptcy, but in the long run we’re wanting to know how to keep kids safe and help adults who were abused in childhood succeed as leaders and parents.

Well, I guess if there were racial disparities in access to firearms, ammunition, and shooting ranges, that would be a good start. I think a great service project would be firearm safety seminars in underserved communities.

lion DL’s need to up their game https://text.npr.org/1030924211

@SiouxRanger, I agree that bygone bathhouses would not stand a chance against video devices of today. I just don’t know if modern shower houses have provided any long term advantage against determined predators. Good scouters staying educated may be all we can count on.

Welcome!

If only bird-study were required for Eagle, there would be some great synergy between scouts and this sanctuary.

We (as in me and maybe two other scouters) prefer the term insignia wonk. With registration fees skyrocketed, something’s gotta give. I got nothing but respect for thrifty scouters.

Strange. I haven't seen a whole lot of natural instinct for organization among girls. I challenge young teens to build crews, the first step being getting them and five buddies to show up at my door and tell me they want to get started. That first step is very, very, hard for them. Among Girl Scouts, on the other hand, they are cracker-jack organizers. It was a group of girl scouts who rebooted our crew and then handed it off to a next generation. If BSA wanted to draw a solid line in the sand, they should of kept "Boy Scouts" and added a stand-alone "Boy Scouts for Girls." They clearly wanted to market to parents and scouters who wanted a little less "separate, but equal" while appeasing the other troops who wanted girls to be a trebuchet launch away. My scouts (boys) are pretty much divided. We had some good campfire discussions a summer camp. (They only place our boys spend time with girl troops for any length.) I maintained back-channel conversations with one troop's leaders because some of our boys were making friends in the course of a week and I was concerned about any imposition. The leader said that, on the contrary, their girls were grateful to have at least a few young men in camp who treated them like fellow scouts. One of my older scouts, on the other hand, told me that he did not like the situation and that he said as much -- respectfully -- to a female staff who asked his opinion. I'm not sure if it was in the presence of other female campers. But, he's was not the kind of guy who would be obnoxious about it. But he clearly felt that guys needed their space to do well. The boys were willing to agree to disagree on the matter, so I encouraged them to keep up the good work and not sweep anything under the rug.

@ThenNow some councils are more tightly knit than others. Lots of reasons for this. But, I don't think the SE would be acting with a particular prejudice. In general they are shuffled around the country, a lot. The more urgent concern will be one of youth still being harmed. As mandatory reporters any evidence that a scouter might be an abuser has to be reported to the authorities. I would not be surprised if SE's were directed to review claims for names of any reported perpertrator who is still registered. None of us would be privy to such a directive. But, I also would not be surprised if an SE (or many SE's) would take this task on independently. Furthermore, I can't see how an SE could withhold this information from law enforcement. PA's law is written with current abuse in mind, but I don't know if the wording has any true limitations to that effect. In general, once these claims are verified, is there any reason why they should be kept from the scrutiny of law enforcement?

A good question for which I don’t think there will be a good answer. I don’t think disclosure to the police would be based on statute of limitations. That particular case might not be prosecuted, but it still could be used as evidence to solve another more recent case. But, the key part of your question: who’s hand is at the tiller, is unclear. The only potential case that I’ve ever had to deal with had already been conveyed to law enforcement, and I got a phone call from a council executive. That was regarding a possibly ineligible volunteer — for which there was an established chain of responsibility. It’s not clear at all who in the organization would be able to act on a claim from these proceedings.

Savvy predators like them too … it reduces the number of eyes that may spot the hidden cameras.

Definitely get some time in at a natural waterfront. Go over Safe Swim defense and Safety Afloat. The more your scouts prepare, the more they’ll enjoy.

Not required, either or.

Oh, numbers! So the Dube et. al. study gave no incentives for members of a San Diego HMO to report childhood sexual abuse, and came up with a rate of 16% in males and 25% in females. That's twice the average of some broader surveys of adults, but take it at face value. Large (some would say exaggerated) incentives were given to erstwhile scouts to report CSA and less than 1% of members (and that's after deducting an estimate of those who might have died and whose estates might not care to lay claim) came forward. If one were to make an ecological hypothesis based on the rate reported by a San Diego HMO, there should be over a million victimized scouts. Either: The TCC's methods of finding victims failed. A vast majority of victims want nothing to do with this litigation. The rate of victimization in scouting is ostensibly lower than outside of it. None of these possibilities are reasons for complacency among scouters. But, it is a chilling thought that discouraging organizations to support programs shown to reduce risk of abuse might have the unintended consequence of exposing America's youth to increased risk. BTW, Dube et. al. weren't really trying to estimate population rates of CSA. Their paper is very interesting because it examines the elevated odds of long term problems among folks who reported CSA. Here is their concluding paragraph (which is probably worth a whole topic in and of itself):

If I could thank and like and upvote at once, I would.

Ditto @jjlash. Take the course. Come back with questions. Have you met some of the scouters in your district?

There have been a couple of conversations like … Post: I/he/she did it this way … Reply: That’s dumb Post: I do it because … It works … I recommend it …. Reply: You are a terrible scouter if you do it that way … you’re ruining it for the kids … no wonder people don’t want to join scouting anymore. If you think this a healthy way to respond to a post, you couldn’t be more mistaken. It’s fine if you don’t like a strategy. It’s fine if you would rather scouters do something else. Tell us what that is. Let us know how it worked. Pro’s? Con’s? Historical references? Spell ‘em out. It’s totally inappropriate and not healthy for you to demean a scouter because they don’t agree with you. Look down on too many such folks, and the hypoxia from such an altitude must be suffocating. To save a scouter from such a dire fate, I’ll report such attempts to denigrate a scouter to the moderator, but I can only do so much after the fact. Instead, I am going to offer a method of resilience against scouters who suggest something you are sure is utterly stupid, will never work, and is emblematic of something wrong with society. Since these are rarely matters of health and safety. here’s what I suggest: Try it. If you really want to prove someone wrong, try their method. Let your scouts know you’re experimenting with uniform/patrol/outdoors/adult association or whatever and want to do one thing differently for a few months. Ask their evaluation after a good run doing it differently. Go back? Keep on? Tweak it for us? Then, let us know what your scouts/scouters/parents say. Then, instead of wasting your words trying to cut down a scouter, you will give us one more data point for us to decide what might actually help our unit. scout (v) = explore, observe, report

"Past" depends on your time frame. But over the past few decades, in some locations, BSA has networked with counseling services to make them available for any victims of trauma as a matter of course. I have seen it happen for non-CSA trauma, and received mixed opinions from the parents who tried to take BSA up on the offer. Only 50? That's less than 1% of the names in the IVFs. They must have found more who found a revolving door. If not, that would imply that the IVFs were >99% effective. On the other hand, it's hard to say how many of the 7.8K IV's would actually have been pedophiles. I think one of the sociology studies was going to look at how many "2nd attempts" were identified in the files. But I haven't seen any publications about it. (Press releases, but I give them little credence.)

IF you dig through some of the older topics, there are posts of erstwhile scouters summarily removed from the program asking about how to lodge appeals for reinstatement. (There was no such process.) We obviously would have no idea if posters of such topics were perpetrators of abuse, but those strangers on the internet were, by their own admission, thwarted. At least, other forum members were of no help to them, at the time. We haven't had a lot of victims posting about their experiences. Those who have were scouters themselves trying to make the world a better place. I only recall a couple of them, and I don't remember them telling any details about if and how they sought and got help. As a parent and a Crew Advisor, however, their testimony was very helpful and I think made a more attentive leader of me. I have heard of and known scouts who were victims of trauma offered help from our council. However, the trauma was not from CSA. As a policy, counseling from independent centers is made available, but my understanding is the wait times are much reduced by scheduling via one's health plan.

http://www.inquiry.net/uniforms/neckerchief/uses.htm lists 44 mundane uses on one page, and http://www.inquiry.net/uniforms/neckerchief/1st_aid.htm lists (albeit garbled) 47 uses in first aid. (Mods' feel free to branch in new topic.)