Chapter 11 announced

[fred8033]

5 hours ago, ThenNow said:

This is an excellent point and, begs another comment. As a survivor, I don't quite understand how someone could remember little or nothing about their abuse/abuser to a degree that they can't provide sufficient detail to allow it to be even limitedly corroborated. I understand it theoretically from the standpoint of repressed, suppressed and faded memories. Personally and experientially, not much is faded or foggy or cloudy or forgotten. 

A lot of that has to do with your age at the time.  Memories are often vague or clouded for experience under 10 years old.  Definitely more clouded / vague the younger you are.

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by fred8033

[ThenNow]

1 hour ago, fred8033 said:

A lot of that has to do with your age at the time.  Memories are often vague or clouded for experience under 10 years old.  Definitely more clouded / vague the younger you are.

 

Excellent point as to details of abuse. As to the surrounding facts to establish, timeframe, place and actors, I would still think these elements would be known or discoverable, based on where the claimant lived, the location of the local Troop, and the Troop and LC rolls. Hopefully, someone will at least perform that level of due diligence. 

[skeptic]

Odd that this quote from a comment on the Texas HS football player that took an official down with a blindside because he was kicked out, seem to fit this too .  "You can't condemn the the entire team for the actions of 1person."

[David CO]

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

"You can't condemn the the entire team for the actions of 1person."

Sure you can.  That's what it means to be part of a team.   We win as a team, and we lose as a team.  

[Mrjeff]

I'm with the folks who believe we can carry on!  Nobody knows what is going to come out of this but Scouting can survive.  The national office may lock their doors, large and valuable pieces of property may be sold, the entire professional staff may be abolished and there is not one little thing that I can do about it.   What I  can do is get a couple of adults together and take a bunch of kids camping. I can teach lashing, firebuilding, cooking, and other grand "outdorsey" things.  I can teach and demonstrate good citizenship, leadership and honesty.  That sounds like Scouting to me.  I may not be able to get to New Mexico or West Viirginia but I bet farmer Jones will let us camp out in his field!  It just depends on how hard the dedicated grass root Scouters are willing to work in order to survive.  And I do believe it will be up to us and not a corps of professionals who will be standing when this whole situation fades away.

[David CO]

1 hour ago, Mrjeff said:

I'm with the folks who believe we can carry on!  Nobody knows what is going to come out of this but Scouting can survive.  The national office may lock their doors, large and valuable pieces of property may be sold, the entire professional staff may be abolished and there is not one little thing that I can do about it.   What I  can do is get a couple of adults together and take a bunch of kids camping. I can teach lashing, firebuilding, cooking, and other grand "outdorsey" things.  I can teach and demonstrate good citizenship, leadership and honesty.  That sounds like Scouting to me.  I may not be able to get to New Mexico or West Viirginia but I bet farmer Jones will let us camp out in his field!  It just depends on how hard the dedicated grass root Scouters are willing to work in order to survive.  And I do believe it will be up to us and not a corps of professionals who will be standing when this whole situation fades away.

If the parents will allow you to take their kids camping (without a scouting organization), go for it.  I wish you luck.  I know a few families who would let me do that.  They have enough trust in me that they would let me take their children on outings.  Most of the families would not.  It's not that they have misgivings about me.  That's not it.  They don't allow anyone to have that kind of access to their children.  Not anymore.

So I agree with you that we can carry on without BSA.  But I wouldn't expect a lot of families to carry on with us.  I think the vast majority of families would give up on scouting and find some other activities to do.

[FireStone]

1 hour ago, Mrjeff said:

I'm with the folks who believe we can carry on!  Nobody knows what is going to come out of this but Scouting can survive.  The national office may lock their doors, large and valuable pieces of property may be sold, the entire professional staff may be abolished and there is not one little thing that I can do about it.   What I  can do is get a couple of adults together and take a bunch of kids camping. I can teach lashing, firebuilding, cooking, and other grand "outdorsey" things.  I can teach and demonstrate good citizenship, leadership and honesty.  That sounds like Scouting to me.  I may not be able to get to New Mexico or West Viirginia but I bet farmer Jones will let us camp out in his field!  It just depends on how hard the dedicated grass root Scouters are willing to work in order to survive.  And I do believe it will be up to us and not a corps of professionals who will be standing when this whole situation fades away.

I know I'm a broken record with referring to the BPSA-US, but I truly believe they are the case study that proves that this is all possible. They have been doing exactly this, running a volunteer-led grassroots scouting program, getting some adults together to teach kids traditional scout skills, and doing it with some creativity in finding places to go and camps to use.

It is entirely possible, maybe inevitable, certainly proven to be a workable model of scouting.

[TAHAWK]

BPSA-US has no units in Ohio or in any other location within 250 miles of me.   In contrast, there were 99 troops and independent patrols in Cleveland and its suburbs before BSA arrived, in 1912 -  based solely on Scouting for Boys.. Now THERE was a workable model.

[Mrjeff]

I can guarantee that with a few phone calls I could get 2-3 parents and 20 kids together and go camping right now.  I am also quite sure that there are those in every community that could do the same thing.  In my neck of the woods there are several Scouters who are active, skilled, and trustworthy and their units are plugging along. It's tragic that the BSA has suffered through this, but I  still think we can survive.  We must work very hard to restore this broken trust and to restore confidence in the unit leaders.  Parents don't give two spits who the District Executive or the National Commisdioner is.  They do care who the Scoutmaster, Cubmaster, or Den Leaders are.  This is where we need to focus within our communities.  Once 5 or 6 units are on solid ground we can worry about districts or councils and the units are run in communities by members of those communities.

 

 

[TAHAWK]

On 12/4/2020 at 7:43 AM, ThenNow said:

I do believe the accused have the right to face their accuser(s) and defend themselves. When dead, that's obviously impossible. Here is something you may or may not find interesting or relevant. This is a theoretical framework hatched in my little brain, based on studying psychology, Complex PTSD derived from long-term child sexual abuse and some elements of the law. See what you think.

Statutes of limitations are critical to ensure stale claims/allegations aren't brought to court after witnesses are dead, documents shredded, memories faded, physical evidence tampered with, crime scene contaminated, and the like. In the case of murder, we consider the crime so heinous that we impose no such limitations. We consider the possibility that one human being willingly and maliciously took the life of another is sufficient basis to overcome all of the objections summed up in the notion that too much time has passed.

In 1991, Leonard Shengold published his important book, "Soul Murder." To distill, he posits that child sexual abuse, and other severe abuses, result in "psychic and spiritual annihilation." As I consider statutes of limitations on bringing claims and prosecutions for child sexual abuse, when I equate those acts with "soul murder," I feel completely justified in calling for lifting those limitations. Although I am obviously alive and able to think and function, if you knew my story you wouldn't completely dismiss out of hand the comparison of these two crimes. My story is by no means the worst. Not by far. I'm not too proud to say that an objective person could look at periods of my life and use the word "annihilated" to describe what they see.

Taking the theory a step further, if the abuser is equated to a "soul murderer," those who participate in, facilitate, hide, obfuscate or even fail to report the crime are, in fact and by law, accessories to that crime, to one degree or another. Enter other adults who tacitly consent or passively condone such acts, like Local Councils, Chartering Organizations and BSA National. Under my theory, they are accessories before and/or after the fact. They are not only a convenient target with money, they have some measure of responsibility. HOWEVER, I agree that times have changed and we know SO much more about the behavior of predators, the need to train and protect kids, monitor and qualify leaders, and all that's being done in Scouting and other youth organizations. I merely share this to lend my perspective on how the BSA situation might be seen through a different, and perhaps new, lens.     

I have no answers on the topic at hand, but I have observations and questions.

Is it not our system of justice that the  accused is the" accused," social stigma aside,  not a "murder," until  he or she is convicted by a jury (unless jury trial is waived) in a court with subject matter and personal jurisdiction.?  That does not seem to me to be a trifling distinction, even in the "Me Too" age.  

The asbestos cases were just getting rolling when I graduated law school  in 1973.  They are still advertising for clients this evening., forty-seven years later  Politicians, effectively, eliminated statures of limitations for such claims.  They now run 2-4 years after you know or reasonable should know a given exposure allegedly caused your disease, even if generations ago.  Expert witnesses are for hire to testify that the date of "discovery" occurred 2 -4 years before you sued. 

The plaintiff's bar donates significant sums of money to political candidates - $160,000,000 for elections in 2018.   One estimate for 2020 is over $260,000,000.  The contributions are overwhelmingly to democratic or "liberal" candidates.

Other experts will testify that abuse victims rarely give false accounts of abuse.  There are  a range of expert opinions on that issue. 

Persons accused of child molestation  have been effectively destroyed, with little or no evidence of guilt, including at least one who could prove beyond any doubt that he could not have been in the state where he supposedly molested children at some of the times when he was accused of having done so.  After five years in jail and two trials in which he was not convicted, the State finally released him, without any concession that he might have been innocent. Some jurors told the press he was guilty in their eyes , and he was overwhelmingly  "convicted" by the media, when no rational person could have concluded that he acted as accused, much less found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  McMartin Preschool Case.

I have listened three times to "shrinks" testify that whatever their patent told them - such at the CEO of AT&T literally  piloting to kill him - "had to be taken as true."  This "expert" testimony was allowed in state court twice, and the jury instructed in federal court to disregard it was "mere hearsay."   (The plaintiff who said the CEO was out to kill him had imprisoned his wife in their garage for two weeks and purchase a revolved to get the CEO before the CEO could get him.  Placed on psychiatric disability, he sued for racial discrimination after his release from a psychiatric hospital.)  So "experts" impress me less than they might impress others.

It is awful to imagine being a victim of such horrific treatment as is the topic here and  being unable to obtain recourse. 

Now try, however difficult, to to imagine you face accusations of child sexual abuse from ten - twenty - thirty - forty years ago, and the claim is that there was just the two of you there - victim and abuser.  No other eye-witnesses.  No physical evidence.  No incriminating diary or photographs.  Just your accuser's testimony and the expert(s) hired by claimant's lawyer.   Whatever happens to you will be ""OK" to some  despite the abandoning of centuries-old legal rule intended to protect defendants  from "stale" claims.  Why "OK"? Because of the horrific nature of the alleged crime.   You will never get your day in criminal court because no prosecutor would dream of prosecuting due to the risk of a lawsuit for malicious prosecution.

It very much literally depends on one's  point-of-view. 

We  SAY - or once said -  that we weight the system in favor of letting the guilty escape to prevent a few innocent being punished.   What is the counterweight of nine-figure political contributions, unequally spread about the political landscape?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by TAHAWK

[David CO]

On 12/4/2020 at 6:43 AM, ThenNow said:

In 1991, Leonard Shengold published his important book, "Soul Murder." To distill, he posits that child sexual abuse, and other severe abuses, result in "psychic and spiritual annihilation." As I consider statutes of limitations on bringing claims and prosecutions for child sexual abuse, when I equate those acts with "soul murder," I feel completely justified in calling for lifting those limitations.

There is an obvious difference between murder and "soul murder".  There is usually proof that a murder actually took place.  We have a body. 

 

[ThenNow]

3 hours ago, David CO said:

There is an obvious difference between murder and "soul murder".  There is usually proof that a murder actually took place.  We have a body. 

 

I understand your point, temporally. I wonder if you know someone well who was repeatedly sexually abused as a child and told no one for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. If you knew me, for example, I assure you, you’d see a “body.” There’s enough evidence and wreckage, as I said previously, to render a speedy verdict.  

[David CO]

1 hour ago, ThenNow said:

I understand your point, temporally. I wonder if you know someone well who was repeatedly sexually abused as a child and told no one for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. 

Actually, I do.

[ThenNow]

I wish them well and pray they have less of a ‘body of evidence’ than I and many others do. I’m sure you’re of great support and comfort to them. 

[ThenNow]

6 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

What is the counterweight of nine-figure political contributions, unequally spread about the political landscape?

 

 

 

 

 

Is this the question?