SiouxRanger

Document No. 5971, "Massey Law Firm Claimant's Supplemental Objection..." is a good summary of the complex issues regarding claims and BSA's Plan. (Sorry, but I can't seem to figure out how to copy a link.) "All politics is local." Same applies to claims. Claimant A has a claim against Abuser B, Local Council C, and Chartered Organization D. Perhaps against Insurer E. Claimant A DOES NOT HAVE a claim against the AVERAGE of Abusers, Local Councils, Chartered Organizations, and insurers. It is a question of "mapping" the claim to the defendants. And, therein is the gorilla. As best I can make out, the BSA, in its haste to "exit bankruptcy" quickly, seems to propose lumping all claims into a single category, give all claims an equal vote, hoping to carry the day on approval of its Plan, and exit bankruptcy before it runs out of cash, leaving claimants to battle it out post bankruptcy exit through the settlement/claim evaluation/distribution/battle-with-insurers process. The Massey Supplemental Objection essentially argues that not all claims are created equal. Some are time-barred by statutes of limitation. Some arose in states with state law favorable to claimants, and others in states hostile to claimants. There are a number of other distinctions separating claims into different categories per Massey. Claims have differences among them. Those differences translate into greater or lesser likelihood of recovery and amount of recovery. Yet, BSA proposes all claims have one vote. Massey makes the point that a Claimant with a recent claim, not time-barred, in a state with favorable Claimant law, against a wealthy Local Council, and perhaps a wealthy Chartering Organization, should not be treated equally for bankruptcy purposes with a Claimant whose claim has none of those advantages. Why would an "advantaged Claimant" willingly subordinate their claim to the will (vote) of the average Claimant when holding an advantaged legal position?

@CynicalScouter Thanks from me and frankly, surely everyone, for tracking on the status of National's bankruptcy pleadings, and the procedural steps, past and pending, in the Bankruptcy case. And your commentary thereon. It is no small task to monitor, summarize, and report on the significance of pleadings filed. Your efforts surely enable many non-lawyers to meaningfully follow along on a largely otherwise indecipherable process. Thank you.

Thanks.

Would be interesting to see the IVF for those excluded for reasons other than sexual abuse-those excluded for political reasons only. And why would National be in the business of political purges?

Hey, I am OLD. I can hardly see. My hearing is worse. On good days, I can hear some, on most can't see much. Maybe due to too much meds, or too little-can't tell if my nurse is stealing mine or feeding me hers. Well, just won Bronze at the Tokyo Olympic Trivia Challenge, so, what was it, your concern...you a Scout, perchance? I was a scout once...can you tie a tautline? I can untie a Gordian knot. Well, I could back during the Bronze Age. Didn't need a sword. Used a laser-wasn't credited for my scientific innovation. Have a good Epoch. (I don't like to look stupid. Smile)

I have to agree with @yknot. Seems like @The Latin Scot is agreeing with you. I have trouble following the rest of the post of @The Latin Scot. The use of the word "chose" or "choose" in a discussion of "being gay" opens a whole level of discussion and debate that likely will never resolve until future Watsons and Cricks explain it to us. And, I don't really follow the notion of judging someone by how they seek to define themselves. Few think of Gacy as a benevolent, community-minded clown. Perhaps, "Do as I say, not as I do," becomes, "Judge as I do, not as I say." A friend whom I judge to be very astute once said to me, regarding the issue of "choosing" to be gay or not: "I never sat down and considered my alternatives, and what my orientation would be. I was hetero and I never thought about it. Who would make such an evaluation of their life? 'I can be hetero, accepted by virtually everyone and move along smoothly among my family and peers, or 'decide' to be gay, and be ostracized, shunned, ridiculed, live life in the shadows, cut off from family and friends and perhaps be strung up on a fence in Wyoming to die?' Hmmm. Some choice. For whatever reason, genetics, chemistry, ???, it seems to me that folks who are gay are born that way and have no "choice" in that matter. They do have a choice in whether they express their feelings at all, only openly among their good friends, or include their family, or include everyone (without regard to the societal consequences). Why is "outing" as gay so significant an event? Is anyone "outed" as hetero? In my mind, that raises the question of how should gays conduct themselves? And THAT, to me, is THE question. Should a gay person have to live their life to meet MY expectation of their acceptable behavior? To paraphrase Lincoln: I certainly don't intend to live my life to anyone else's expectation, and thereby can't expect them to live their life to mine. On the other hand, I am not interested in a person's orientation being the principal projected component of their personality whenever I encounter them or for the duration of the encounter. It is distracting and impolite. It is not the time, nor place, and not to an appreciative audience. One reason it appears to be genetic, chemical, or ???, to me, is that despite the profound societal ostracization, and concomitant emotional impacts, is that it appears that no manner of either internal or external pressures or influences, agony or grief, changes behavior. That gay behaviors are elicited among like-minded adults, well, they are adults. Child abusers, it seems to me, at least my working hypothesis, are subject to the same genetic, chemical, ???, influences. What else explains that many are repeat offenders. Even after being caught, exposed, punished-lose their jobs, their family, and move on to another locale, they abuse again-and the cycle repeats. I am not taking the position that they have no ability to control themselves-they do-but they don't. But whatever drives them, it is powerful and apparently cannot be changed. Subdued temporarily, but ever present. It resurfaces to ill-effect. But, child abusers, their activity is not between consenting adults. They target and damage innocent and vulnerable children. I have no doubt that child abuse severely affects the victim life-long. I have a crushed best friend for whom I just don't know what help to offer. I flew across the country to spend time with him once I learned, but now he has grown silent. Push or lay back? I am not sure what will help. There does not seem to be any statistically meaningful connection between gays and pedophiles. And in a world where statistics, mathematically sound statistics, are practiced, there are surely some, though very few, gays who are pedophiles, but when your faucet is leaking and the flooding Mississippi is headed to your basement, you address the Mississippi first-that's practical statistics. So, these are some of my thoughts. Not set in concrete, but working hypotheses, always subject to reconsideration and reformulation. I had a great friend, now passed, who at committee meetings was famous for saying, "Could you please say that again-I WANT to understand you." He had an uncanny ability to defuse and achieve consensus. I have said to many clients, "Most folks are just trying to get through the day." And finally, the ultimate arbiter of wisdom, "That which you do to the least of mine, you do to me." And few among us have claimed to stand higher than that.

This is a particularly devious and brilliant idea. The lawyer has the choice of standing by all the claims he/she filed, and perhaps losing a lot of money as claims are ruled to be invalid, OR, to protect his/her income, taking a position, on the (court) record, that a claim filed by him/her is not valid, thereby admitting to incompetence and/or fraud upon the court and subjecting the lawyer to court imposed sanctions), AND, at the same time, taking taking a position on the record AGAINST his/her own client! (Thereby violating ethics rules.) Catch 22.

Not having come across much about the basis of the insurers' position, is it more in the nature of: "that the insurers have a contractual obligation to insure over legally enforceable losses suffered by their insured, and that claims barred by a statute of limitations, not being legally enforceable, are outside the insurers' contractual obligation?" If that is the insurers' position, it is not a statement that the abuse never happened, only that the insurers no longer have a contractual obligation to compensate barred claimants. Frankly, that position would be understandable as surely insurance premiums are determined in part by the applicable statute of limitations to the risk being covered. It would not be surprising if claimants with enforceable claims would demand all the insurance coverage for their class, leaving barred claimants some fraction of the remaining. There is the argument that if enough barred claimants recover nothing, or disproportionately insignificant small amounts, legislatures may reopen the statutes of limitations in some states, thereby increasing the insurers' contractual liability. But has the crystal ball been created that can sift and weigh all the variables to put a number to that exposure?

So, are we likely to see required or elective merit badges fill in for the merged Citizenship merit badges? And if required, what would they likely be? (Surely, 21 will remain the number to earn Eagle?)

For political reasons largely dealing with questioning council finances or council procedures, troublesome volunteers were removed. The BSA process is more akin to Franz Kafka's The Trial, than the protections embodied in the Bill of Rights. Litigation contesting the BSA process seems to favor the BSA. I haven't come across any case where the volunteer managed to obtain a judicial reversal of BSA's revocation of membership If anyone has a citation, please post it..

I will make this brief, for informational purposes.. 1. At the beginning of COVID, c. early 2020, I did a ton of internet research on summer camps. My rough calculation is that Scouting camps about 10% of all youth attending a summer camp. Surprise to me. Now, some of those "camps" are music and sport camps and not in the same class of outdoor summer camping conducted by BSA. 2. Camp Gold Arrow in California charges $4,225 for two weeks. That is 650% (6.5 times) more than my council's camp charges for a week. That is not to say that Camp Gold Arrow is expensive or a bargain. It could be either, depending on the quality of program delivered. 3. My local camp has dropped from 1,300 campers to 550 campers in the last 4 years and reduced summer camp offerings by a couple of weeks. It is a large, full-service camp.. 4. Recruiting summer camp staff has been a huge issue lately as prospective staff can't accept a 5 or 6 week staff salary as they can't also find other summer work to fill in the work week gaps before camp and after camp. So, prospective staff take summer jobs that pay them for a full summer.. 5. Notwithstanding all the other issues, camps need to recruit staff that are knowledgeable about the merit badges they are to teach, and have teaching skills. This seems to be a huge challenge. My council has struggled with this. It has an INFANT program to engage knowledgeable adults with summer camp staff during staff week to help train them, both in knowledge and teaching skills. We call them 'Wilderness Counselors." 6. At an Area level conference, just pre-Covid, a national staffer commented in a session that I attended, that were all the scouts currently registered in the BSA (early Spring, 2020) to attend a week's summer camp, council camps had the capacity to accommodate all of them in just 2 weeks. "We have a lot of over-capacity."

It is very hard to believe. I marvel at how human organizations spouting and touting the highest principals on the public-facing side accept, tolerate and/or practice abhorrent principles. BSA and the KKK. The Founding Fathers as slaveholders, John Adams apparently a notable exception. "Janus-faced." The duplicitous nature of human organizations is simply appalling.. TRUSTWORTHY (Who saw Her last, and where would She now be in our times of trouble?) Likely all to protect a paycheck. How base. (And we now see that in the BSA situation-thousands of educated "commissioned professionals" all complicit in the big cover-up. "'We don't get paid if the stink does not go away quietly-not to mention losing a fat pension." Innocent and vulnerable children are sacrificed for a retirement. Call me OUTRAGED.

And, whether this is the proper thread, or not, moderators can determine and move, the number of registered and active posters on this forum, is miniscule compared to the number of claimants, and even micro miniscule compared to the number of registered adult scouters. My primary focuses are 1. What can I learn to be reasonably informed; 2. What can I do to educate (trying to give others the benefit of what I have seen and learned), and, 3. What do I do next to make change (NOW-why wait)? So, there are very few active registered members on this forum, and about 150 guests on this forum, and those numbers pale before the number of registered adult volunteers in Scouting who are largely NOT on this forum. (Just guessing, the forum's registered members and viewing guests are less than one thousandth of a percent of registered adult scouters.) And so the message of all this trauma and horror is not getting out to virtually all of the registered adult leaders. And if they don't learn here, given the few citations to public media about all of this, they know nothing.

"Acculturation" is another word too big in my estimation. "Assimiliation" is too strong-this denote permanent change. (Sexual predation is a single event, or a series of events which the predator does not see as permanent and the target as "subjected to." Nevertheless, "grooming" is far too benign to describe the nature of a sexual predator's activity directed at a target. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I (perhaps) remember Scout handbooks speaking of scouts engaging in "proper hygiene and grooming." Or those words, thereabouts. But in a positive posture.. WORDS COUNT, and I think it important to adopt terms that adequately describe the aspects of the predator-victim situation (crime scene).

I have not "settled" on a suggestion, but grooming can be done by both adult and apparently older youth, it is targeted, and with evil outcome for the target. And so perhaps a single word won't embody all the aspects of the activity.. "Predatory grooming" is my near term recommendation, but I reserve the right to change my my mind and modify this. "Acclimatization" and "habituation" are words from the world of psychology which tend to fit the grooming activity, but too wordy, opaque, and foreign to most folks. A word or phrase is needed that embodies the notions of predatory, targeted victim, relentlessness of pursuit, opportunistic, sexual abuse, vulnerability, among them. Not an easy task. But a noble goal.

All of this is now only known to me this moment. Unbelievable.

I heard the story of the Unknown Scout from a WD Boyce descendant who heard it from Boyce. It pretty much confirmed the romanticized version.: Lost in London, fog, Unknown Scout giving directions, tip refused.

Have you tried the Library of Congress? Was it copyrighted?

Your summary of "cultural norms differences" is what I thought it might be. Thank you. It comports with my sense of how those matters were treated then. And I wonder to what degree these matters today are still treated that way-or subject to those same societal pressures.. Even in these more "enlightened" times, look at the emotional energy expended by abuse survivors to overcome their own emotional inertia to step forward to be heard, and the push back from the alleged perpetrator, and the glare of the spotlight created by media exposure of their claim. I would surmise that not all "authority groups" have advanced at the same pace in their growing awareness of and response to such claims. Parents perhaps lag way behind, whereas law enforcement, social workers/counselors, legislatures, and the judiciary are further along in their enlightenment. It is a halting, uneven, and messy process.

If it would not be too much trouble, and I suspect this has been discussed at length long before my time here, could someone itemize the basic elements of the "cultural norms differences" back when as compared to now? A paragraph or two just setting out the basics-what is allegedly different now compared to then?.

That's my unwritten thought. Thanks for giving it expression. "Grooming" just sounds too benign.

I have read the 1965 book The Codebreakers by David Kahn-perhaps one of the finest pieces of work I have ever read (notwithstanding my library of Winston Churchill and Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru). Cutting off at 1965, Kahn's book is miles behind current technology. There is an update, I believe. (Never thought of reading it until this moment, my interest being WWII.) I can only assume the technology is out there to detect hidden surveillance cameras, but that camp staffs now are placed in this position of monitoring and the time involved. Perhaps we are at the point that 18 to 20 year olds, who are not only in the midst of grappling with their own emotional transition into adulthood, and all the emotional awkwardness that involves, but are also now burdened with monitoring and supervising adults 10, 20 or 30 years their senior.

Just to chime in on the side of safety and common sense.. I have studied "swiftwater rescue" techniques (in preparation for a raft trip on the Colorado). On a scale of 1 to 10, a lake (still water) is a 2 and floodwaters are a 27. Virtually NO amount of swimming strength, skill, strength, or experience will save you if caught in the current. And if then caught I a "strainer," a downed tree, chain link fence, mail box post, anything, you will become entangled there and you are doomed. A great outcome, and most likely, they would not have attempted rescue had conditions caused them pause, but this is not something that should be encouraged. All in all, everyone was lucky.

Good observation. A process: decide to act on predatory impulses; take steps to identify likely vulnerable youth; initiate precursor grooming activities looking benign to casual observers; identify malleable youth; intensify grooming activities; identify camping or other opportunities to follow through with abusive activities; engage in abusive activities as they opportunistically arise; engage in cover-up activities (as needed). And there may many other steps and sub-steps. Not my field but just trying to stimulate discussion. The point of this exercise is to identify steps and identify the types of behavior associated therewith, so that predators can be identified prior to actual abuse.