elitts

Just because I think the point is fairly important (though not central to your argument): 2 Deep Leadership is NOT about having 2 adults watching everything or watching each other or anything else along those lines. It's about having a backup on site in case of an emergency. I realize various statements occasionally reference this point as being about "keeping kids safe" but that's just because it sounds good. While this is entirely speculation, I'd guess it's because developing statistics of this nature is fairly time consuming and expensive. In particular, trying to go backwards and get printed historical data transcribed into data points in a database is prohibitively expensive for most non-governmental organizations.

While I disagree with them, there are a couple main arguments put forward by those pursuing these cases (huge generalization, I realize, but I couldn't think of another way to phrase it). The first is that since the BSA had information from almost the beginning of the program that pedophiles were attempting to access boys though the program, they should have done more to screen them out in advance rather than banning them after the fact. Basically they are arguing that "risk of sexual abuse" was a known danger to participants that needed to be mitigated rather than treating each pedophile as an unknowable and unpreventable danger. This is a hugely dangerous notion of course, because if you follow that line of thinking, every organization dealing with youth becomes liable for every act of bullying or violence committed between the youth by virtue of the fact that "everyone knows kids bully each other and can be emotionally unstable". The BSA was somehow "covering up the problem" because in some instances they left the choice of reporting to the police up to the victims and their families rather than reporting accusations themselves. (before mandatory reporting laws) And finally, the BSA is liable because they hid the extent of the problem and didn't warning parents to "watch out for pedophiles".

Personally, I think the most crucial thing the BSA could do is actually restructure the whole G2SS and fix all the problems with whole monstrosity. The primary issue at this point is with compliance, not with having rules that address the primary issues. And while getting people to follow rules is always tough, BSA makes it much much worse by committing several major rule making errors that I think lead directly to a lackadaisical response to the rules in general. If you need more than one or two clarifying sentences for a rule, it's a bad rule. This means that word choices become critical and a word should only be used if ALL of it's meanings are relevant. (So for example, a major issue with "2 Deep Leadership is the use of the word activity" because the word is much larger in scope than how the BSA intends it to apply) If a rule doesn't work across the board, it's a bad rule. (like attempting to require adherence to the Scout rules outside of Scout interactions) There should be clear lines between rules, guidelines and best practices. (A rule is a rule, a "best practice" is how we'd ideally like to see things done, a guideline is an explanation of how decisions on where to land between the rule and the best practice should be made.) There must be a single, clear explanation for the existence of each and every rule and you need to get your people all "on message". (Using a whole paragraph to essentially tell us "Because we said so" as with the rule requiring a female adult when female youth are present isn't productive) You can't have "stupid" rules without a clear reason why it exists. (If there is an insurance carrier that says "you can't let 7 year olds use a paint brush", that explanation needs to be given. That way people understand it's the insurance company that is ridiculous, not the BSA. Because if people think it's the BSA coming up with stupid rules, it makes it easier for them to decide on their own "Well if this rule is stupid, maybe this other one I don't like is stupid too".) And then the other thing that needs to happen is when rules change, they need to actually publish a change log saying "We are changing the wording of "X" to read "This way" because there have been questions on the issue and we think this clears it up.

Scouting is not based upon the idea that "A Scout is Trustworthy" or that "Boys can be trusted" like it's a promise. Scouting is based upon the idea that boys are "capable of being trusted" and that by utilizing the program we can help the boys/girls develop the leadership skills and personality traits to live the Scout Law and Oath. People like to parrot "A Scout is..." phrases from the Law like it's a magic spell of some kind, but the assumption inherent in having a "Scout Law" is that failures are going to happen; if that wasn't the case, the Law wouldn't be needed because those traits would be baked in to the youth upon birth. I trust the boys in my troop to be generally able to handle a camp-out without anyone getting injured or being disruptive to others, but I also know that even with the absolute best of kids, there will always be instances of emotions flaring up, or lapses in judgement. Of course, part of the confusion here will be over what someone considers "clean and wholesome". When I hear that phrase I imagine people think of a Church carnival or kids sitting down to a rousing game of Uno and then singing Kumbaya around the campfire together. Which contrasts somewhat with say, the game called "Nutshot" the scouts invented a couple years ago where they threw a rope up over a tree branch and then they would swing in an arc one by one, while one of the other boys attempted to throw a frisbee from 30' away and hit the swinger in the nuts. (they were good about asking each swinger if they wanted to play though and letting people opt out of having a frisbee thrown at them) The vast majority of everything I've seen ThenNow post has been constructive and thoughtful and I've found his viewpoint to be informative in a number of cases. I don't always agree with his views, but I certainly wouldn't view his overall purpose as being one bashing the BSA or Scouting in general. What people are generally talking about with regard to "using the standards of 40 years ago" is not in judging the abuser's actions, but rather in judging the responses by officials. In particular the independent reporting of the abuser to the authorities and efforts to screen applicants. Now, the belief is that people in positions of supervision and authority should automatically report every accusation to the police. (though even this has nay-sayers because it can discourage people from coming forward) In fact, it appears now that most people view not reporting an accusation to be tantamount to hiding or covering it up. But decades ago the belief was that since a criminal conviction was extremely unlikely unless independent proof of an assault existed, it should be up to the victim (and his/her parents) to decide if they wanted the accusation made public. Often, parents genuinely thought that it would be best for their children to "just try and forget it" rather than have to recount things to police, and then prosecutors and then in court. All the while dealing with the social stigma that DID attach itself to rape/abuse victims in that era. So when I am talking about "judging based upon the standards of the time", I'm simply saying that if the response of the BSA was reasonable given the standards of the time, they shouldn't be considered negligent simply because we believe differently now. Fortunately, most of the people here actually think about context rather than simply jumping at the chance to try and excoriate someone for a perceived error.

I'm sure that's one of the core arguments for liability; the problem with conducting this analysis, as I see it, is threefold: It appears to be very difficult for most people to consider the issue in the context of the time in which it was occurring. I regularly read comments and posts (not necessarily on here) from people talking about how "The BSA should have always been doing background checks" or "There's no excuse for not letting other agencies know someone was a pedophile". This of course ignores the fact that until the 1990s, there wasn't really such a thing as a background check (outside of the government) because electronic data storage and retrieval wasn't a thing. And even then, most government agencies didn't start being able to effectively share data until the 2000s. Many people, including some on here, tend to operate from a standpoint of thinking "Any cases of sexual abuse are too many and mean someone hasn't done enough", and so when they consider steps that might/should have been taken, everything that was done and is being done is automatically insufficient, because if any child is still at risk, we aren't doing enough. But in reality zero cases of abuse is an impossible goal and any evaluation of preventive measures must take that into account. The ONLY way for any youth serving program to guarantee no child is ever abused "on their watch" would be to shut the program down. So any rational standard for evaluating abuse will HAVE to allow for the idea that sometimes someone will still be sneaky enough to slip through the cracks. We don't actually know what the incidence of abuse was over the past 100 years within other youth serving organizations in order to know how the BSA compares. From what I've read, most other organizations didn't even bother to collect and consolidate data on abuse allegations until 20-30 years ago.

Unfortunately, your scenario simply doesn't track with reality. Scouts was never 100% safe. Just like sports, the promise is only "this program is as safe as it reasonably can be while doing dangerous activities and deliberately having scouts interact with a variety of other adults on both group and individual levels". Scouts has never (at least since I became involved in the 1980s told parents "please drop off your kids and leave, we'll take care of everything". In every troop I've ever been a a part of they've been desperately looking for adults to stay and get involved. (barring of course the parents who can't watch or help without going overboard) Fees paid for entry and services are very clearly identified as going to pay for administrative operations, program development and materials, NOT a robust system of safety checks and other measures to keep the kids safe as a bug in a rug. I've never seen Scouts advertised as "Clean and wholesome". They advertise that a good Scout should strive to be Clean (and everything else in the Scout Law) and that those are the ideals we try and instill in the youth, but in day to day practice? Only a complete idiot would think you could do anything with a group of boys, with limited parental involvement, and have it be strictly "clean and wholesome". At the very least, I would hope no parent is that naive. (You've been listening to a certain other user's rants about organizational "hypocrisy" too much) The BSA doesn't "anoint" Scoutmasters or other leaders, they merely do a basic check for obvious problems with a person and then put their name on the list. This is also fairly clearly spelled out. The BSA doesn't regularly recruit "staff" for direct involvement at the troop level. The local council may occasionally direct a volunteer without a home to a troop in need, but it's still strictly voluntary. As for what happened to you and others in your troop, well, that was a horrible situation that I'm sorry you went though. And if you reported the person to the BSA and they took no action, then your case would be one of the limited number where I would agree that the BSA actually has some liability (the other major area being situations where someone was abused by staff at summer or H.A. camps) since they had been informed of a risk/danger to scouts, but didn't take reasonable and prudent actions to mitigate the risk. (And if our laws permitted us to take every single thing the perpetrator owns, then spend a nice long time subjecting the person to every single abuse they inflicted upon someone else before finally castrating them and dumping them into shark infested waters while still bleeding, I'd be right there to hold the door while you pushed him in.) But if your abuser wasn't known and the abuse went unreported, how could it be anyone else's fault? From everything I've heard, serial pedophiles are usually very careful about creating a veneer of respectability and reasonableness around their actions, so even if adults are generally "on their guard", the person most likely to get overlooked is the pedophile.

The BSA is in a tough spot when it comes to balancing the fact that they "care about survivors" and the practical issues surrounding the operations of an organization. Frankly, the ultimate duty of the BSA Board and top management is to the organization and the members it serves, NOT to survivors; so I never expected this bankruptcy process to be anything but adversarial and acrimonious. If they had simply sold everything and given every dime to the lawyers, they would have failed in their responsibilities. The PR implications of the situation mean that actual honesty isn't really possible since basically no one in the public is willing or able to actually respond to emotional issues in a balanced and measured way; so you get statements that don't match up with actions because there isn't really any other option. The "real truth" of this situation is that most people wouldn't support the kinds of liability that are being argued in many of these cases if it were applied to them; but this can't be pointed out publicly because it's "insensitive" and because we are talking about people who were children. (And won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?) I mean, let's imagine that you are hosting a party and one guest you invited rapes another one. Is that your fault? What if it's a caterer you hired? Or the entertainer who is doing magic for the kids? If someone is a Scoutmaster and one scout is bullying another scout in private and it doesn't get reported, is the Scoutmaster liable? After all, we all know that bullying happens regularly in middle and high school, so shouldn't the SM have been watching more closely?

These are all very specialized properties because Philmont at least is too large to sell to a single buyer outside of a government; getting maximum value out of them would likely take years. They could probably get one of the major logging companies to buy it, but it would be at a fairly steep discount. Other than that, it would need to be broken up into pieces to truly maximize the sale price. There has been a trend in many places across the country when it comes to tax exempt property to allow some commercial use of tax exempt property IF the for-profit use is solely to subsidize the "non-profit" operations. On of the big drivers of this has been Goodwill pursuing tax exempt status for their stores. So as long as the commercial use of the property can be clearly tied to covering required expenses, they'll probably be ok in many states. But as far as I'm aware, most, if not all, of the settlements thus-far have been funded by insurance policies. On the plus side, local councils will have a much stronger argument for retaining their local camps as integral and irreplaceable business components than the National BSA does. So even if they go for a re-organization under the bankruptcy laws, it may not be a doomsday scenario. Attorneys like him make me want to find some way to burn up every single cent fighting before the end. Which I realize isn't awesome for the victims, but still. I would really really LOVE for there to be a way to limit the attorneys to a strict reimbursement of time and expenses rather than a massive chunk of any award.

So, the Academy of Pediatrics is classifying some behaviors as "abnormal" solely because the behavior is demonstrated by less than 1.5% of children. But how exactly can they think they have accurate information on those rates of prevalence? Most parents are relatively oblivious to their children's activities in the first place, and now you think those parents are going to be both willing and able to accurately report behavior that their children are likely to be deliberately hiding? And how exactly do they square up the idea that sexual behaviors are "highly abnormal" and less than 1.5% of children engage in them, when over age 6 when 12% of 12 year olds have had intercourse? While I certainly don't have personal knowledge outside of my own life, I would imagine children have been "playing doctor" since before that phrase even existed; but in most cases it just got discovered by a parent at some point and dealt with without making a big fuss over it. This just looks like an article by someone desperate to publish with essentially zero reasoned analysis involved.

The best studies I was able to find put the transmission rate of COVID at around 5% for a close contact (and 10% for a household member). They've also reviewed studies and concluded that the apparent transmission rate outdoors is about 18 times lower than it is indoors. So that puts the outdoor transmission rate for a close contact at about 0.27% (about 1 in 37,000). And even then, that 18 times lower number includes gatherings that were primarily outdoors, but that included indoors components and didn't factor out actual physical contact or surface related transmission. Given that math, I'm disinclined to be particularly strict about masking outdoors, unless the scouts are going to be in a "close contact" situation. (within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes) ____________________________________________________________________________ From the standpoint of getting an adjustment to your troop's policy past your committee, I wouldn't broach the subject as "eliminating the requirement", I would suggest you handle it by requesting a "clarification of the current policy". Then phrase it along the lines of "Scouts, Scouters and parents must wear masks outdoors whenever they are within 6 feet of another person for more than a minute or two". And if asked why the issue needs to be reviewed you can simply say that you've had a question about whether someone needs to wear a mask outdoors when there is no one else around. ____________________________________________________________________________ From a practicality standpoint, I'd suggest getting your scouts something like these: Mask Lanyard They make it much easier to have a mask ready at hand and therefore more likely to be used. As opposed to the standard youth method of "cramming the mask in your pocket", then having to pull it out and unfold it in order to get it on.

All of the regulations regarding masks under OSHA (and related orgs) are going to be about protecting the person wearing the mask. The point of widespread masking isn't about keeping the person wearing the mask from contracting the virus, it's to keep the exhalations of infected people from spreading as much. So while members of the public regularly wear their masks in such a way as to not protect themselves, the general purpose of widespread masking is still being achieved because even without a tight seal, the dispersion radius of exhalations are still significantly reduced. And unfortunately, while frequent handwashing, social distancing and awareness training may be more effective in general, with adults; those areas are much more complicated to beat into the heads of 6-25 year olds. (and particularly the 12+ kids)

My mistake, that article confused me because it said the district court and the court of appeals both overturned the Bankruptcy court.

I suspect they'd have lost that one because the Supreme Court would have denied a hearing and let the two other court rulings stand. But your point is valid that the lookback period is a little bit murky. However, the fact that it's murky doesn't mean the attempt isn't worth it. Regardless of whether or not they thought they were going to be included in the lawsuits, it should have been a heads up to get their ducks in a row. Practically speaking, any organization that is subject to lawsuits should have all of their major assets protected from civil liability. This is why you'll (almost) never find say, a white water rafting company that owns their own property, even if they've been in the same spot for 50 years. Instead the business will be owned by the ACME WWR LLC and the property will be owned by the WWR Land Company LLC and the business will lease the land and building and equipment from the Land Company. So that if someone dies and they sue, (ignoring the liability waiver) there are no assets readily available to forfeit.

Personally, I really hope the local councils mostly took the hint a couple years ago and started protecting their assets back then. If, in 2018, councils started putting conservation easements and deed restrictions in place on their properties, or transferred them to trusts, they should be pretty well protected come 2021-2022 if they start having to file bankruptcy. Obviously some did not because there are a bunch of councils selling their camps now, but I'm hoping that's a minority. Realistically, I suspect that most of those LCs selling camps now are doing it because they couldn't afford to keep them anyway, no matter if they say "it's to fund the settlement". Because selling them in advance of an agreement being reached is just foolish if creating a pot of money is the only purpose. Sadly, I never thought there would be much hope in finding an actual agreement without knowing what the insurance contributions would be. Perhaps a cramdown might still be possible, but I know I'd be reluctant to agree to a settlement with the BSA if there wasn't something clear including the insurance payoff. And of course, it's entirely against the interests of the insurance companies to offer up numbers at this point because if they can get some claimants to go away with just contributions by the BSA they save a boat-load of cash.

I don't actually doubt the severity of many of the claims, or that there were cases of negligence. Where my doubt really comes into play when it comes to actually prosecuting lawsuits, is in the area of direct liability. If an abuser had been accused and the BSA failed to act, I think there should be liability. If the BSA admitted a known abuser due to negligence (as opposed to being deceived), I think there is liability. But I don't think that the simple fact of a pedophile (who hasn't been caught) being a registered scouter means the BSA should be held liable for the rapists actions.

They included sexual harassment in the definition, and with as broadly as some folks think that extends, it becomes easier to imagine. It's much like the whole 1:4 women will be sexually assaulted statistic. (they included stuff like any kind of kiss without consent as a sexual assault)

The intellectual property is owned by National, but what makes you think they don't have full control over it the way any other entity would; including the right to license it? I will grant you that if the organization goes away, there would no longer be anyone to do ongoing licensing, but that doesn't mean they couldn't make it all "public use", or license it to the WOSM, in perpetuity and have that hold up past their liquidation. And yes, I realize without an agreement the LCs and COs aren't covered. Ideally I'd like to see a settlement that leaves BSA intact and functional even if some of the property was scraped away. But my sympathy for abuses survivors doesn't extend to the point of being willing to see the BSA as a program go away, or even to selling off the local camps; and I know that if cases had to be filed against local councils and COs ONLY, many of them (definitely not all) would wither up and blow away. Between having to file and litigate the case in the state/district the abuse took place in and it being easier to actually argue against vague/unreliable allegations from decades ago with a smaller number of cases; I think most of the cases wouldn't stand a chance in actual litigation. Plus, as much as the lawyers (and some victims) would like to get LCs and COs on the hook for this, in reality they are a much harder target if they have to be sued directly. The primary justification for most of the liability against the BSA is "You had all this data that showed pedophiles were infiltrating your program but didn't tell anyone". But that's not going to be true with the LCs and especially the COs. I don't think there is any disputing the fact that the BSA didn't advertise their data on abuse accusations, even with the LCs, let alone the COs. So while each LC might be aware of accusations made locally, that's it. At that point, a defense against liability of "This person had never been accused or convicted of a crime so how would we know to screen them out?" becomes much stronger, particularly given how good most pedophiles are at disguising themselves.

I would hope it's not worded that way. Clearly the intention of such a clause is to make sure that the local council can't "go rogue" and take assets that have been paid for by leveraging the BSA name and go start another organization. Or alternately, to make sure that if a council goes belly-up, the BSA can make sure any major assets get transferred to whoever is taking over the area. But it would be quite a stretch for someone to argue that a clause like this was intended to be interpreted to allow for assets to be siphoned back while the LC was actively functioning. And beyond THAT, I would certainly hope that if the BSA was forced to go into liquidation, they would back out of bankruptcy long enough to get out from under a trustee's control in order to structure administrative things without court oversight. They may not be able to sell assets without them being reclaimed once they went back into bankruptcy, but they could certainly do things like make all of their patents and trademarks and materials free-use "for any organization associated with the World Association of Scouting" and alter existing charters to eliminate the reversion clause in order to enable local scouting to continue.

I only brought up the HA bases because they are directly controlled by the BSA. Plenty of troops go on weekend backpacking and canoe trips (with the BSA's encouragement) into the wilderness (or at least semi-wilderness) and there's no extra liability waiver for those, that's just "going camping". Absolutely. You tell them "Well, we don't have a structure nearby we can go into, so lets double-check our rain-flys, make sure everything is tied down and then hunker down in our tents." You certainly shouldn't be saying "OK, I need you all to call your parents to come pick you up, the camp-out is cancelled because there's going to be a storm in 2 hours." (not unless the storm is predicted to last for the next 16 hours or something) Yes, a storm can be dangerous. So are fires, axes, hatchets, knives, biking down a 55mph road and virtually every other "adventure" type activity scouts do. But we don't stop doing those things because there is some risk. As far as getting surprised by the weather, well.. I live on the West side of Michigan and the weather here is somewhat more capricious than in some other parts of the country. If we were going to change plans because of the risk of a storm, we'd never be able plan a camp-out.

Of course we think about the risks before hand, but it's important to keep in mind that the BSA program isn't about maintaining a "risk-free" environment. In Scouts, risk-mitigation and safety are considered, but they aren't the driving focus of the program because many of the things we are doing have a certain amount of danger inherent in the activity. So the question becomes, what level of risk is acceptable for scouts. Clearly, the BSA thinks being in a tent during a storm is generally an acceptable risk, even if it's not the "safest possible" way to weather a storm; otherwise Philmont and Northern Tier wouldn't still be operating. So, now that we've established that staying in tents as an acceptable risk under normal circumstances, the only time we need to be making modifications to our camp-outs to mitigate risk are when the circumstances surrounding a trip aren't normal. And when it comes to weather monitoring and action plans, the only time I'd be concerned about those is when there is a significant risk of an acceptable risk scenario turning unacceptable. For example, if I'm camping in Louisiana and there is a hurricane over the water but it's headed towards Florida, I'd keep weather monitoring on to make sure I know if the storm has shifted and is heading at us now instead of Florida. I suspect you are correct that your being a meteorologist colors your thinking on this. Most people tend to be hyper-aware about areas where their experience has focused their attention, particularly on issues of danger or risk. I know that to this day, I still don't enjoy going swimming with the scouts because after spending 9 years as a lifeguard when I was younger, I can't relax enough to enjoy myself because I'm busy noticing all the dangerous things everyone is doing.

Seems like a good example of why crowding a bunch of people under a "shelter" isn't always a great option. I agree with the idea of hunkering down and not being out "doing stuff" during a lightning storm. Certainly I'm not going to be the guy standing there holding a baseball bat in an open baseball diamond with one going on or sailing across a lake in a Sunfish. But you don't see many places actually cancelling events because there is a forecast chance of a storm, they just deal with it when it happens, then move along. And I'm not even saying scouts shouldn't go hop into cars if they are adjacent to the campsite. My only argument is that moving people any kind of distance because of a storm isn't a good choice given the risk of injuries from that vs the extremely low risk of a lightning strike. For example, Camp Gerber's storm plan is to have everyone gather in the dining hall. Which on it's face seems like a reasonable idea. Except what it actually means is that the people in outlying campsites are hiking almost 3/4 of a mile through the woods, in the rain, at night, in order to get to the dining hall, because it's "safer".

How exactly does that work? Do you just not allow your troop to do any sort of backwoods camping? Or you just switch the camp-out from a backpacking/canoe trip to a plop-n-drop camp-out any time there is a risk of a storm? I'm not trying to be an ass, but if that's truly how you operate your troop, I can't help think you are doing them a disservice. Sometimes tragedies happen; and while reasonable precautions are worthwhile, there is such a thing as over-reacting. Basing your camping decisions on the 0.000015% risk of dying from a lightning strike seems like a good example of such an over-reaction. I mean, you are running a significantly greater risk of death for your scouts just by allowing them to prepare their own food and running the .00055% (36 times greater) risk of food poisoning.

This concern over lightning strikes seems like nothing more than yet another case of "We got sued, so now we have rules for it". The death rate in the US for lightning strikes is around 50 per year. To put that in perspective, 17,000 people in the US die every year from slipping or tripping and falling down. And yet, we have guidance from the BSA telling us that "safety" requires dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night and then hustling them through the woods over uneven ground to shelters because they might get struck by lightning. So yeah, I'm not getting my scouts out of bed for a thunderstorm. Now, if you tell me there is a storm from coming with anticipated straight-line winds of 50+ mph, that's a whole different story. However, I did have a mate get electrocuted on a high adventure when I was a scout. He set up his tent over some tree roots and ended up with a couple of nice stripes across his chest where the lightning arced over his chest. (he was fine, don't worry) So if I thought storms were coming, I would do a safety check to make sure no one was immediately under a really tall tree or a tree with branches that didn't look healthy. ________________________________________________________________ Other things with a similar mortality rate in the US: Death by bees, hornets and wasps: 62/yr Death from dog bites: 30-50/yr Death from flood: 101/yr Death from skiing: 38/yr Death from bicycling: 84/yr

Completely different active age group for the most part. The vast majority of active Scouts are aged 10 - 14, with an even more drastic drop off at 16. Sea Scouts and Venturing doesn't even start till 14. It's exactly that 10-14 age group that tends to get the most "weird" around girls. By 15 or 16 they start to figure out how to "chill out" around girls. But can you pull a sword out from down-under at the drop of a hat?