Chapter 11 announced

[yknot]

9 minutes ago, David CO said:

Yes.  My bishop does talk about that, and I find it a little bit disturbing.  If the statistics are true, (and I have no reason to think that they aren't) how should we intemperate this?

Do Catholic students actually prefer having on-line classes over in-person instruction?  As a teacher, I don't find that very flattering.

In my area, the private schools are open and the public schools are mostly online. Parents have migrated their students to private schools, including parochial, in order to have in person schooling. 

[Eagle1993]

4 minutes ago, yknot said:

In my area, the private schools are open and the public schools are mostly online. Parents have migrated their students to private schools, including parochial, in order to have in person schooling. 

Same here.  My son's friend and his sister are going to a local private school this year.  $50K between the two of them.   They plan to go back to public schools this fall when they are open.

[mrjohns2]

15 minutes ago, David CO said:

No.  BSA is not the victim.

I don't think that it is that clear cut. That is what makes the whole situation so hard. In some cases, yes BSA was a tangential victim. In others, it was an enabler. 

[walk in the woods]

9 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Mike Rowe?

Creek Stewart.

[Eagle94-A1]

I stand by what I said based upon my research on this subject matter. In the overwhelming majority of cases, BSA did everything they could legally do AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENTS (emphasis). Were some mistakes made? Yes. Was the system they had in place perfect? There is no such thing as a perfect system. The problem is that it appears to me that this lawsuit, with one case going as far back an circa 1939-1946, is using today's Mandatory Reporting Laws as the legal standard which did not come about until  circa 1988/89 nationally.

[DavidLeeLambert]

16 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

The problem is that it appears to me that this lawsuit

I agree 100% with your judgement that BSA's response was above-average and generally legally correct, by the standards of the time.  But please remember that the bankruptcy proceeding is not "the" lawsuit.  At the end of 2019, the BSA was the defendant in dozens of lawsuits (mostly abuse, a handful of wrongful-death, and the GSUSA trademark suit). The Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding allows the debtor (BSA) to invite everyone who has a claim to come forward and be treated equally.  It's sort of a reverse lawsuit, the debtor comes to the court and says "I know (or at least guess) that I owe all these people money, but I need the court's help to make sure I pay them all fairly."

[CynicalScouter]

43 minutes ago, DavidLeeLambert said:

It's sort of a reverse lawsuit, the debtor comes to the court and says "I know (or at least guess) that I owe all these people money, but I need the court's help to make sure I pay them all fairly."

Exactly. And to complicate matters, while SOME claimants may not have a valid claim NOW (e.g. victim is in a state/abuse occurred in a state where the statute of limitations ran out) they may in the near window if the SOLs are extended or repealed.

[ThenNow]

19 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

For those tracking, the look back windows on abuse claims have usually been limited in scope (e.g. only 1 year, or extending back only XX number of years).

[ThenNow]

There are approximately 860 cases pending in which at least one LC is a named defendant. These are locked and loaded if the Chapter 11 protective stay is not extended.

[ThenNow]

I am unsure what the Debtors and LC's are withholding in a death grip, but time is running out to turn it over to the TCC. Whatever it is/they are, the TCC is not playing. Fact. 

[ThenNow]

Noting the data withholding and cases is not to celebrate the pending cases, but to wonder why in the heck they aren't giving up the goods. It must be very significant to put the reorganization at risk. Personally, I don't believe the judge will overrule the TCC's desire to receive full disclosure, which appears to be the only thing that will keep the case on track and shelter the LC's and other entities. I could be wrong, of course. I think how she rules would depend on what the information is, how relevant she believes it to be in assessing the assets and whether the LC's have some legal right to withhold it.

[T2Eagle]

20 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Actually BSA IS a victim. With very few exceptions, BSA did everything it could legally do at the time the bulk of the abuse took place. People are forgetting that mandatory reporting laws did not affect the BSA until the late 1980s/early 1990s, about the time Youth Protection Training came about. Prior to that time, if BSA accused anyone publicly of abuse, they could have been charged with libel. BSA encouraged parents to press charges, because their hands were tied.

This simply isn't true.  First and foremost libel has to involve a false statement.  If Johnny's father comes to a BSA official and says Scoutmaster X molested Johnny, BSA official can call the police and say, Johnny's father said Scoutmaster X molested Johnny.  There can be no falsity in that statement.  The BSA CANNOT be held liable for any defamation even if Johnny and/or his father were lying.  

Outside of reporting to the police, BSA never would have to publicly accuse anyone of anything.  If they had any belief that a person might be a molester they simply had to remove him from the organization, they never would have had to give any explanation to anyone publicly as to why they did that.

Much more importantly, none of these lawsuits are about whether BSA called police after the fact.  They are about whether BSA was negligent in the selection or control of their leaders such that but for that negligence the molestation would not have occurred.  If Johnny's father told BSA that Johnny was molested, and BSA did nothing, and Scoutmaster continued to molest Johnny or other scouts, that would be negligence. 

Do you have any examples you can cite from your research where the BSA/Council declined to act specifically because they were afraid of being sued?  More importantly are there many/any actual lawsuits that were filed that would make that fear of being sued even a reasonable fear?  Then, probably even more so than now, it would have been rare for an accused molester to have wanted to publicly fight that charge.  

I have to add parenthetically that declining to act because you might have to defend your actions is a coward's response in the case of stopping the rape of children.  If that was someone's level of being Brave than they shouldn't, in my opinion, have been involved in running the scouting program in the first place. 

[CynicalScouter]

47 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

I am unsure what the Debtors and LC's are withholding in a death grip, but time is running out to turn it over to the TCC.

I am wondering, too. Wild speculation here.

1) There were last minute property shifts away from LCs just before (or just after) bankruptcy that would be exposed. That was the allegation leveled against Middle Tennessee Council and other Councils.

2) Obstinate LCs: I know there were some councils in early filings that insisted that they were not going to cooperate until it could be shown there was claims in their council. I wonder (again speculation here) if these councils think they can just go it alone and are betting on no future claims against them?

3) Longstanding and questionable financials. In other words, nothing to do with the bankruptcy, just some councils have had longstanding...questionable?....financial processes. They don't want any scrutiny for possible tax/legality purposes.

[ParkMan]

23 minutes ago, T2Eagle said:

This simply isn't true.  First and foremost libel has to involve a false statement.  If Johnny's father comes to a BSA official and says Scoutmaster X molested Johnny, BSA official can call the police and say, Johnny's father said Scoutmaster X molested Johnny.  There can be no falsity in that statement.  The BSA CANNOT be held liable for any defamation even if Johnny and/or his father were lying.  

Outside of reporting to the police, BSA never would have to publicly accuse anyone of anything.  If they had any belief that a person might be a molester they simply had to remove him from the organization, they never would have had to give any explanation to anyone publicly as to why they did that.

Much more importantly, none of these lawsuits are about whether BSA called police after the fact.  They are about whether BSA was negligent in the selection or control of their leaders such that but for that negligence the molestation would not have occurred.  If Johnny's father told BSA that Johnny was molested, and BSA did nothing, and Scoutmaster continued to molest Johnny or other scouts, that would be negligence. 

Do you have any examples you can cite from your research where the BSA/Council declined to act specifically because they were afraid of being sued?  More importantly are there many/any actual lawsuits that were filed that would make that fear of being sued even a reasonable fear?  Then, probably even more so than now, it would have been rare for an accused molester to have wanted to publicly fight that charge.  

I have to add parenthetically that declining to act because you might have to defend your actions is a coward's response in the case of stopping the rape of children.  If that was someone's level of being Brave than they shouldn't, in my opinion, have been involved in running the scouting program in the first place. 

Thank you for the context.

I am intellectually curious to know more about what happened, what the BSA did, and what the BSA did not do.  I've heard various anicdotal comments, but do not recall seeing an impartial authoritative piece. 

Yet - I've come to the conclusion that making an argument about whether the BSA did enough back then is a mistake.  The BSA and it's supporters will always lose an argument of whether the BSA did enough to prevent abuse.  Even one single case of abuse is too much.  

To me the better argument is that "we believe the accusers, we have learned,  we are working as hard as possible, and will continue to work as hard as possible to make sure abuse can never happen again."  Be recognized as the leader on this issue today.

 

[InquisitiveScouter]

39 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

I am wondering, too. Wild speculation here.

1) There were last minute property shifts away from LCs just before (or just after) bankruptcy that would be exposed. That was the allegation leveled against Middle Tennessee Council and other Councils.

2) Obstinate LCs: I know there were some councils in early filings that insisted that they were not going to cooperate until it could be shown there was claims in their council. I wonder (again speculation here) if these councils think they can just go it alone and are betting on no future claims against them?

3) Longstanding and questionable financials. In other words, nothing to do with the bankruptcy, just some councils have had longstanding...questionable?....financial processes. They don't want any scrutiny for possible tax/legality purposes.

I'll take 4.  All the above.

Edited February 26, 2021 by InquisitiveScouter