AwakeEnergyScouter

My husband thought we'd get eaten by alligators when we went camping at a lake with them, so I don't think I'll be showing him this news story 😂

Our pack pays all adult fees and in-person trainings for this reason. (Out of popcorn money.)

What does being part of a conversation mean to you?

We're testing having all the den meetings on the same evening to both help with YPT requirements and to make it possible for leaders to try to run more than one den meeting at a time. I can let you know how that goes shortly. We have very uneven leadership coverage, so while it's a bit crazy, it's not as crazy as it might sound at first. Some dens have two leaders with active parents that could step in to supervise something ongoing, and one den has no one. So, the plan for the leaderless den is basically tag-teaming.

"ALBANY — It’s been five years since girls nationally could join the Boy Scouts — and troops across the Capital Region are booming. The Twin Rivers Council, which includes the entire Capital Region, has 700 more youths overall enrolled this year than last year. Girls are still very much in the minority, but that’s growing, too. “It is continuously on an uptick,” Twin Rivers Director of Membership Tory Carman said. “We started off with maybe 30 or 40 girls and we’re now over 400. About 13 percent of the membership overall is girls.” " https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/upstate-boy-scouts-troops-boom-five-years-girls-18301362.php

We had an Eagle do this very thing last Saturday. It was very sweet. And it reminds current scouts of that there is a wide lineage that they're part of. May I ask, what were the adults angry about? That's very unseemly of the adults, no matter what it was. Even the Russian ambassador gets only a cold shoulder. And especially to attack youth directly is not ok. The time it happened to us I was very grateful that my scout didn't put the underlying message together and was simply confused about why the man was so agitated.

Just read through this thread, and I'm surprised no one brought up the other (to me) obvious example - boating, especially sailboating. Maybe it's because I'm from a country whose name in a whole slew of languages means "the rowers", but I associate knots with boats and ships. You're not going to Velcro your boat to a pier or your sails. Only if you're in a very small personal craft with no sail that you pull up onto land when you arrive won't you need any knots. I got myself one of those reminder/practice cards for knots at the gift shop of the Vasa Museum (museum containing entire original warship from the 1600s) last summer. My troop wasn't a sea scout ship (although it was in my dad's time), we still had sailboats and used them. Knowing knots is, in that way, also a link to our past, at least for me. I would think that the long history of knots in scouting alone should make it similar for other old scouts too, even if they aren't from a place where boating is prominent. Change is inevitable, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't select some old ways to teach the next generation like others have already alluded to.

Thank you, @T2Eagle!

Absolutely! My bad, I should have thought of that. I can't delete the post, and I can no longer edit it. Perhaps a mod can help? It would be fine to just delete it.

Yes, we've had non-parent guardians accompany scouts. Formally, we track this through who's connected to the scout in Scoutbook. Several adults can be listed, and not just parents. Informally, we also make sure we know our scouts' adults, of course, but that's in addition to YPT.

You beat me to it, @InquisitiveScouter. Because of where trying to save face led, I feel honor-bound to ignore BSA's face completely at the only way to save the BSA's face and be loyal to my scouts that I have a duty of care towards, should I get wind of any CSA around me. The scout has to come first, and to heck with what people will say about BSA. When a child under your protection needs help you just do it! Nobody will say anything good about the BSA if we're a bunch of hypocrites. Values first. Be morally straight and keep your honor intact before you do any PR. This pattern is also not at all unique to BSA. There are so many examples of sexual abuse scandals in religious communities that have ripped organizations apart, and the bigger the face-saving effort the bigger the blowup has been. Even sports organizations have this very general pattern - my husband is suspicious of CSA in scouting, but also gymnastics. My scout's gymnastics studio hands a long anti-abuse policy checklist to new parents for a reason. That it's a pattern of wrecking the organization's reputation (a little hyperbolic, all of the organizations affected still are operating and are held in fairly high esteem, but in the context of sexual abuse scandals they all have a black mark) because of what you did to protect it has repeated so many times I have no doubt that this is a situation of if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. The only way to save the reputation is to ignore it completely when sexual abuse is discovered in an organization.

That's absolutely true, 100%. The question is, what is the next best thing that can actually be done? And if that can't be done, what's the next best thing to the next best thing? And so on. Nowhere in that tree of potential actions do I see "survivors stop pursuing legal claims against tortfeasors" popping up. The argument being given for it isn't to create justice for survivors, it's pitting current scouts against survivors, which is a framing of the situation that I don't think is fruitful. And then future-looking, like the mandatory reporting laws. That's a start, but undoubtedly sexual abuse still doesn't always get reported and prosecuted, especially when the survivors are men. So we should ask what else can we do? We can consider the data that it is actually typical for CSA victims to never tell anyone until decades later, perhaps we should consider much longer statutes of limitations. We can remind ourselves that men are also raped, including by women, and that male rape victims deserve 100% of the support we offer female rape victims. We can demand that police believe survivors and really do everything they can to effectively clear rape cases. No years of old rape kits languishing, and so on. But again, in no case is it helpful for survivors to stop what little legal action is still possible.

This isn't how cause and effect work, though. In the abstract, this sounds reasonable. But this is because that is, and that is not because this is not, and this ceases to be because that ceases to be. Multiple causes come together to give multiple results, like an infinite net of jewels that reflect in each other. Telling survivors to not pursue justice with the means the justice system in the abstract provides for them to use just because scouting is for kids is considering just a few jewels in the infinite net. It's also ultimately not moving towards the goal of eliminating this painful situation, because only actions rooted in great compassion for all sentient beings - both current scouts and survivors in this situation - can heal this. Is this really a zero-sum game? The way to truly moving on involves, as a necessary part, survivors pursuing justice to the fullest extent possible within the legal system. We should be grateful for them doing it. One of the causes of this painful situation is precisely that the survivors' cases haven't already gone through the legal system. And had they, there probably wouldn't have been so many of them in the first place. Our speech reflects through the net of jewels, too. We actively shape the situation just by talking here. Speech is a kind of action.

I read about this, but didn't think of how it would apply to the pack! Good call. Thanks for reminding me! First park is in two weeks so just in time 😄

Our pack planned our calendar for 2023-2024 to create the opportunity for our scouts to earn this badge! We're hitting up all the NPS parks within driving distance plus a few printable junior ranger awards that relate to our nature in this part of the country ♥️

Isn't this a pretty common practice? Sounds like a general legal system problem to me. I've certainly read more than a few articles that mention that the reason the suit in question was filed in that jurisdiction was some perceived advantage. Perhaps this is me being from a small country where the laws are the same everywhere and no one thinks that's objectionable, but I personally agree that it's a bit distasteful. However, it seems to be the result of having different laws in different bits of the country; either the legal system is exactly the same everywhere or there's going to be incentive to "shop" if you can. Unless you can write an enforceable federal law against it somehow, although that sounds incredibly hard.

There's no real way out of the tradeoff between ease of signup and thoroughly vetting and supervising volunteers. Yes, more vetting of all volunteers in direct contact with scouts may well make it harder to get volunteers. But there's not really a frictionless, free way to vet them, either. Background checks for all scout-facing volunteers is kind of an obvious way to keep the super-obvious pedophiles out. I mean, keeping kids safe from CSA 101 is don't accept convicted pedophiles into your organization, no? It's not covering all the bases, but not insisting upon it is... less smart, shall we say.

I haven't followed the legal play-by-play - could you give some examples? Does US law generally require the use of legal philosophy from the time of the crime or infraction?

I'm definitely starting to think that the time when COs made sense is past. Many reasons, but assuming that the explanation you got is true, one is that BSA isn't really in control of their volunteers. That's just a hard way to operate. Too many cooks in the kitchen. And I'd say scouting in the US cleared the credibility hurdle a long, long time ago!

That's us, too. We also have grandparents. Adults can outnumber scouts sometimes. Probably related is that most (but not all) adults were scouts themselves. All grandparents that have come have at least one person in the couple who was a scout as a child. Everyone wants to share scouting with their children and grandchildren.

Apologies for the lack of clarity - I'm referring to @HICO_Eagle when he kicked this tangent off with

It's taken me quite a while to respond, because I went to watch all the available documentaries about CSA in the BSA and read a large number of articles about it so that I can be more precise and accurate. I want to return to this: In order to be kind, friendly, helpful, courteous, trustworthy, and loyal towards our fellow scout and now scouter survivors, we need to have the bravery to live through some (very minor compared to that of survivors') pain. It hurts to see an organization you hold dear fail ethically and fracture due to the fallout of the ethical failure. It does. But let's be loyal to our brothers and sisters in scouting first - and process our own pain around the organization fallout in a way that doesn't detract from the survivors' pain. Serious crimes were committed against our fellow scouts en masse. That really happened. That is the real problem. (And I'm glad you did acknowledge it in a sentence.) Everything else is secondary. For us who aren't survivors, the secondary problems move up to the mental primary slot easily. (That's how "first world problems" arise.) But the survivors are here, this isn't a private conversation between non-survivors with "first-world problems." So when the conversation goes in a the-lawsuit-is-all-just-a-malicious-attack direction, the implication from a survivor point of view could very well be "I care more about the BSA as an organization than my fellow scouts and scouters". I can't speak for the survivors, but that's what I take away from what you're arguing. You're really mad about "leftists", but apparently not pedos because you spend your time typing about the conspiracy. Presumably this is only an appearance, right? You are actually really mad at the pedos? Make sure to say that out loud then, please, so that the survivors can be 100% clear on that you do believe and support them. Why that's important brings me to the next thing: I have no reason to disbelieve that your family says this, but it is far from clear to me that this is some general "leftist tactic". You mentioning it is the first time I've heard of it (and I'm pretty sure I hang out in a lot of what you would consider "leftist" circles and have for years), and I cannot pull up any instances of "BSA" or "Boy Scouts of America" on the same page as "rape culture". But having reminded myself of the definition of rape culture, it does seem to describe parts of the BSA. "Rape culture is a setting, studied by several sociological theories, in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.[1][2] Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual violence, or some combination of these.[3][4] " (from Wikipedia) Scoutmaster CSA jokes are shocking to me exactly because this is absolutely not normal and frankly not funny because they're trivializing rape. (Same problem as with adult rape jokes - and that's exactly how I perceived them as a teen.) Obviously they aren't a thing in all of the BSA. But we can't "round down" to say it's not indicating any problems because it's not present in the entire BSA. It does indicate a general pervasiveness of CSA problem in parts of the BSA - and pretending it doesn't is in and of itself part of the definition of rape culture. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/08/how-rape-culture-shapes-whether-a-survivor-is-believed/ Rape is the nation’s most underreported violent crime, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics, as survivors fear that juries will believe the perpetrators, not them, and if they pursue justice, they may suffer further physical, economic, or social harm. This stacked deck, known as “rape culture,” is the set of social attitudes about sexual assault that leads to survivors being treated with skepticism and even hostility, while perpetrators are shown empathy and imbued with credibility not conferred on people accused of other serious crimes, like armed robbery. If you say "rapists gonna rape, all you can do is protect yourself" or "the BSA did try to keep pedos out" in a policy discussion to argue that nobody needed to do anything differently in the past, you're declining to deal with a specific crime at a society level. In a policy discussion, you need to be talking systems - systems like policing and how to catch all criminals without falsely convicting innocent people. Talking about the BSA's reputation, it being attacked, about the perpetrators' reputations, instead of crime prevention and prosecution does match the definition of rape culture. It isn't that you can never talk about those things. But in order to make it crystal clear that you do not condone crimes and therefore want the perpetrators prosecuted, tried and convicted, and that you aren't accusing your fellow honorable scouts and scouters of lying about the abuse they report, you need to say those things out loud. And since this attack on the BSA is clearly not universally experienced, it would be better to make that a whole separate topic because that alone will hijack the conversation. Much like, @InquisitiveScouter, mentioning Soros will. Guaranteed derail. You have to frame those conversations so much before getting into your real point (I acknowledge hundreds and even thousands of scouts were sexually abused in BSA scouting, I believe the survivors, the perpetrators should all have been prosecuted; I don't believe in conspiracy theories, I am aware that Soros is the subject of a lot of anti-semitic propaganda, I fact-checked this, etc) that you can't expect to just drop them in as a small part of some other discussion. Since you're not clearly blaming criminals either, this comes off as... blame-shifting onto "socio-political forces". Can we agree on that the primary problem is criminals in the BSA? That this is, even if it were very rare, a problem that requires us to sit up straight and DO SOMETHING as part of being kind, friendly, helpful, courteous, trustworthy, loyal, brave, and morally straight? Even if it happened to a single scout one time? SiouxRanger is right about the following as well: What the BSA should have done in each case of alleged abuse is file a police report and let them investigate and worry about the prosecutability of each case. That's the "do more" that people think they should have done. (Including me.) It isn't the BSA's job to prosecute crimes, so while you're correct in that the BSA was in parts indeed trying to keep scouts safe (and sometimes succeeded, as detailed in both documentaries and as people here on the forum know cases of), the responsibility of enforcing laws and ensuring public safety lies with police. When you think a crime has been committed, you call the police and you help them as best as you possibly can. This is the principle, including but not limited to when the crimes involve the BSA and/or pedophilia. If you honestly believe a crime has been committed and you report it to police, they investigate, and they find that this isn't the case, you haven't defamed anyone. You haven't even given a false police report. What stopped the BSA from reporting? Sounds like you're saying it was right to go soft on the rapists because "it was complicated". If this isn't what you mean, please do clarify for everyone's sake. As for the civil tort lawsuit and blame - the crime was CSA. The BSA is not being prosecuted criminally for CSA - ergo, they are not being blamed equally with the perpetrators. Rather, they are in civil court for tort of negligence. I read up on the history of tort law in both common law and civil law systems, and not surprisingly the legal philosophy of economic compensation to crime victims is very, very old and very, very widespread. There is no possible way you can claim that current US tort law is a leftist blame-shifting conspiracy to ruin the BSA. From https://www.forbes.com/advisor/legal/personal-injury/tort-liability/: "A tort is a civil wrong. This may sound complicated, but basically a tort happens when a person or company, called a tortfeasor, violates someone’s legal rights (other than by breaching a contract). Under tort law, the tortfeasor can be held liable for that violation. Tort liability arises in a number of ways, including the tort of negligence. (...) What Is Tort Liability? Tort laws govern the rights of victims to pursue legal claims against tortfeasors. When a victim is harmed or suffers damages, the victim can pursue a claim in civil court under tort laws. If the court finds the defendant liable under tort liability laws, the defendant is required to compensate the victim. In civil court, there’s no risk defendants will go to jail. The purpose is to determine if they committed a civil wrong against someone and if they should be required to make that victim whole–usually by paying monetary compensation for damages. Types of Tort Liability There are different legal rules that can result in a tortfeasor being held liable for committing a tort. These include negligence; intentional torts; vicarious liability; and strict liability. Tort of Negligence Negligence is extremely common. The tort of negligence occurs when a tortfeasor harms someone by failing to fulfill a legal duty to act with the required level of care. In negligence claims, a victim does not have to show a tortfeasor harmed them intentionally. Instead, they must show: The tortfeasor had a duty to them. This could be the duty of a doctor to provide professional care for a patient or the duty of a store to offer customers a safe environment or the duty of a driver to exercise reasonably safe behavior on the roads. The tortfeasor failed to live up to the duty and was considered negligent. In some cases, a reasonable person standard is used, and a tortfeasor can be held liable for failing to exercise the level of care a hypothetical reasonable person would have. In other circumstances, a different standard is used. For example, in medical malpractice claims, a doctor’s acts or omissions are compared with what a similarly-trained medical professional would have done under the circumstances. The plaintiff was damaged as a direct result of the tortfeasor’s breached duty. The damage must have been a direct and foreseeable consequence of the negligent behavior. The plaintiff suffered compensable harm. This means showing actual losses occurred as a result of the negligence of the tortfeasor. (...) In other words, in every case - and again, let's be clear, such cases really did happen - in which a scout was a victim of CSA by a scout leader (who had a duty of care), reported it, and the BSA didn't successfully (even if they tried) boot the criminal from the organization and file a police report (excepting cases where parents were fully told and requested the BSA not to) the BSA seems legitimately liable for tort of negligence. We know that in some cases, the BSA did go to police, police investigated, prosecuted, jury convicted, and criminal went to jail. Those cases of CSA were handled appropriately. We know that in some cases, parents did not want to pursue a case with police. That was their right, and so in those cases lack of prosecution was handled appropriately. In some cases no police report was filed, but the BSA did successfully bar pedophiles from re-entering scouting with the IVF files. But there's a whole other set of cases in which not even one of these things happened, and again we can't point to the complete and partial successes in doing everything possible to protect children from pedophiles to excuse the cases which were completely and totally mishandled. Those, very unfortunately, also really happened, and some are nightmarishly egregious like Adam Steed's case. After you mentioned rape culture, I realize that Frank Vandersloot jumping to defend the perpetrators and the scouters covering up their crimes is a prime example of rape culture. He ultimately admitted that he made a mistake in trying to defend the undefendable, but before he realized it he put massive resources behind going after victims and the journalist drawing attention to the rape culture in the Grand Teton Council. It's blindingly obvious that for example Kim Hansen and Brad Allen were negligent in preventing further CSA. For example, Steed said "I can tell you directly what I know: in a camp where I'm being sexually abused by a man, and he's abusing other kids, there was an entire subculture of 'it's OK,' and when it wasn't OK, I tried to get them to turn him in. They called their leaders, and they talked to me on the phone, and they tried to get me to not come forward, not talk about it, make me promise I wouldn't tell my parents, and make me feel guilty that I'd destroy all the good in the organizations if I came forward." How is that not rape culture? Your relatives seem to be on point, even though I hadn't thought about it like that before. Unless you're calling Steed a liar despite his abuser Brad Stowell confessing (which would also seem like more rape culture), this really happened. And it is, of course, absolutely ^&%*(& ^%^#$&^ (&%&%^$&^% unacceptable. Stowell is a criminal, but Hansen and Allen are by the same token tortfeasors. USA Gymnastics had a single pedophile on their hands, and they are also defendants in a negligence tort lawsuit because Larry Nassar's abuse was also an open secret. Like with the BSA, had USA Gymnastics gone to the police as soon as they got the first allegation there might not be any tort at all to pursue against them, and even if they weren't 100% perfect about it, it wouldn't be anywhere near the monster of a lawsuit that it is now. Same thing with a number of other sports bodies. There's even a federal law requiring certain sports organizations to get on handling sexual abuse cases. The existence of CSA outside scouting - at any rate comparison to scouting - does not make CSA inside scouting ok, or not a problem. All CSA everywhere ever is a problem. In other words, there is absolutely no ideology of either left or right or a BSA-specific attack involved in the mere existence of a negligence tort lawsuit against the BSA given the facts of crimes that were actually committed by scout leaders and both actively covered up as well as not effectively prevented from being committed again. And, more importantly than being right on the internet, it isn't helping either survivors nor the BSA to talk about leftist conspiracies instead of straight up accepting responsibility - down to each one of us scouters here - to make gosh darn sure every single report of CSA gets handled 100% appropriately and compassionately from now on. You know what really going to stuff a sock in critics' throats? No further cases of CSA connected to the BSA. Hard? Sure. Our moral duty? Absolutely. At least, I see it as mine. What about you?

What value is the CO supposed to bring? Free meeting spaces? I don't quite understand why they exist, it seems extra complicated with relatively little payoff.

Strategies you can't execute don't help.

They're right - I didn't appreciate the importance of logistics until I was well into another career. Sounds like a fun program! But I don't know that one needs major sponsors for scouting... Unless one has a lot of overhead. While this program sounds fun, it's not core scouting.