Chapter 11 announced

[skeptic]

36 minutes ago, qwazse said:

@ThenNow, thanks for the perspective.

It sounds like step 1 was recognizing that you didn't do enough to stop an nefarious person. Step 2 is to recognize that nefarious people know how to avoid being stopped. They game the system, and that's intimidating to a young person who barely understands how the system works. That means that, yes, you didn't do enough, but that does not mean you weren't good enough. To get the kind of victory you're thinking of, you needed a lot of other people around you to be open and brutally honest. But, the culture was not standing by the young people who would do that.

BSA was part of that culture. I think the biggest problem was that they were arrogant enough to think they had a solution.

Do not think it was arrogance as much as simply not completely understanding.  It was, as we keep coming back to, a different era, and the public responses to those things were very different, and families often chose to deal on their own while authorities were too willing to believe the "known good guy".  Just as society still does, though it is getting better, people tended to make the victim even a bigger victim with the approaches common then.  Yet, they still have issues with female abuse, including spousal, being somehow the fault of the woman.  Do not forget, in the case of the IV files, nobody else even did that, and while it did not solve the issue, it can be shown to have at times stopped some of the predators.  Sadly, we really cannot know the depth of the issue due to the time span.  YP is in place and that is our responsibility, to adhere to it with NO excuses, no matter how much we may feel there is a misconception or something.  

 

[TAHAWK]

44 minutes ago, David CO said:

 Sure.  Some people might feel that my entire football program was abusive.  Others might say it was abusive to make my gym students take group showers.  But that's not my point either.  I'm talking about actual abuse.

ON Friday evenings, the Summer Camp "week" at Camp Clendenning ened with a lengthy campfire program.  Afterwards, we returned to Camsite 8  for our own brief campfire.  Suddenly, two younder Scouts not in pout troop ran into our campsite.  One was obviously frightened.  The owther was trembling and had wet himself.   You could hear his teeth rattling from ffiteen feet away.  His eyes weer rolling and he was hyperventilating.  "What's wrong?"  "Someone tried to kill us!"

In a couple of minutes, a diminutive adult and two older Scouts appeared into the light of our campfire from the same direction as the first two Scouts - the path to the most remote campsite, much further back in the woods of this 2400 acre camp.  They were obviously amused, and indictaed that the two "cowards" were members of their troop.

The adult, the Scoutmaster, expalined that Troop 161 had a "tradition."  All week, those in the know regaledfirst-time summer campers with blood-chilling tails of the "Green Man," a recluse who kidnapped and murdered Scouts if they did not meet his expectations as to keeping the camp clean and not promiscuously cutting foliage.  They weer warned that the camp staff would deny knowledge of the Green Man lest it casue Scouts not to come to camp.   Then, the new Scotus were "ditched" after the Friday night campfire, and left to find their way alone back through the tunnels of vegitation to their camp, preferably without a flashlight.  Those "in the know" hurried to camp and donned coustumes to look like the notional  "Green man."  Then they ambushed the new Scouts  to surprise and terrorize - jumping out at them with loud yells in the most densely foilaged, part of the lonely, dark  path to their site.  This, I was told, made "men" out of the 10-11 year-olds.  

One of the boys, it developed, was under a psychiatrists' care for severe anxiety.  The SM and two older boys laughed loudly over his wet trousers, and they pointed at him.  "Look, he peed himself!!!"  

One of my Scouts was a very large, muscular specimen, Juan.  When he growled and started for the SM, I grabbed him by the back of his belt.  He dragged my 225 pounds several feet until the SM realized that his little "Joke" was about to receive a physically negative review frmo a 235 pound 17 year old.   At that point, he and his adolecent co-conspirators ran away.  

After I escorted the two Scouts to the Camp headquarters, we had a good discussion about what we had just witnessed.

Both sets of parent promptly took thier sons out of Scouting.  They did not "go to the law."

The SM was descommissioned - permanently.  The Troop Coommiteee was replaced by the "Charter Partner, a church.  The new SM and Committee were told in no uncertain terms that the "tradition" was ended - permanantly.

Actual abuse.

[yknot]

4 hours ago, ThenNow said:

Many times as I've considered a response or making a point, I realize it may not help the process for you men, given your ongoing roles. As always, I offer this to add personal history and context, however anecdotal you consider it to be. Maybe my stories allow you to put a 'face' on the anonymous survivors. 

Years after I left Scouting, having achieved my goals and weathered the storm, my youngest brother told me about a close friend who was going through the same drug and alcohol mess I did. He was also a high achiever and suddenly fell off the cliff at pretty much the same point in high school. By then, my brother knew about my abuse and asked his friend about it. He quietly acknowledged, but would not come forward or speak further about it. He drank himself to death. 

I am now aware, through friends on the inside of this case, of multiple men who have filed claims against our mutual abuser. All of them are younger than I. My assumption has always been I was the first in our Troop. Our SM likely molested and abused other boys prior. Well, he almost certainly did. I hinted at it with a girl I dated years later and she all but confirmed. She was his first cousin and they shared a last name.  

All this is a segue back to an earlier topic. Namely, I emphatically forbad my two younger brothers from joining Scouts and gave no reason. I did not help anyone but them. Self-forgiveness has never come for that failure to act. I did not protect myself by reporting it nor the boys who came after me. My brothers are grateful, which is some consolation. To be candid, I too often look at their lives and wonder what mine would have been if someone had stopped him, including me. 

Put that in your psycho-babble pipe and try to smoke it. Tell me when you decipher the signals that emanate therefrom. 

I am not sure what you mean by the pipe part but I think your story shows the tragically complex and long lasting effects of abuse.   

I have occasionally in the course of trying to recruit scouts encountered immediate, visceral and terse reactions from men about how they would never allow their sons to be involved in scouting. Before the abuse scandals really broke, I would persist and maybe try to talk to their wives because some of them were dads and families who seemed ideally suited for scouting. Now I wonder if some of them may have been victims and no longer persist. 

This was an interesting article in the wash post if you can open it. Surprisingly, it doesn't talk about scouting much, but it does talk about how pervasive abuse of boys seems to be. So sad. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/02/22/why-we-dont-talk-about-sexual-violence-against-boys-why-we-should/?arc404=true

 

[David CO]

45 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

 

The SM was descommissioned - permanently.  The Troop Coommiteee was replaced by the "Charter Partner, a church.  The new SM and Committee were told in no uncertain terms that the "tradition" was ended - permanantly.

Actual abuse.

I can't remember the exact details, since I haven't re-watched the series is many years, but I kinda recall something similar occurring on Spin and Marty, which was serialized on the Mickey Mouse Club, and later combined into a video.

It had something to do with an old abandoned mine.  Boys pretended to be a ghost to scare other campers.  Maybe a ghost miner protecting his gold mine, or something like that.  Who knew that the Mickey Mouse Club was such a hotbed of child abuse?

 

 

[ThenNow]

2 hours ago, David CO said:

3 hours ago, qwazse said:

 

Well, if that is true, then he has certainly come to the right forum.  

If it is, may I please order a heapin’ helpin’ of honest, hold the brutal? 

[RememberSchiff]

Breaking... The BSA files a reorganization plan with Bankruptcy Court.

"The plan calls for a $300 million contribution from the Boy Scouts’ 250-odd local councils into a trust for abuse victims, although the form and timing of those contributions remain up in the air. The Boy Scouts also say any unrestricted cash above the $75 million the organization claims it will need for operations when it emerges from bankruptcy will go into the trust fund. The BSA also has agreed to contribute its collection of Norman Rockwell paintings to the fund, and to sell a warehouse facility in North Carolina, a Scouting University facility in Texas, and rights to oil and gas interest".

More details at source links:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boy-scouts-submit-reorganization-plan-to-bankruptcy-court/

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/boy-scouts-offer-sex-abuse-settlement-aiming-for-end-to-bankruptcy

Edited March 2, 2021 by RememberSchiff

[MYCVAStory]

Allow me to provide the statement from the Official Tort Claimants Committee to the BSA proposed reorganization plan.

The Official Tort Claimants Committee (the “TCC”), appointed by the Office of the United States Trustee and the official representative of all sexual abuse survivors in the Boy Scouts of America  bankruptcy case, opposes the Boy Scouts of America’s (“BSA”) chapter 11 plan filed today in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.  Under the plan, BSA seeks a release for itself and its 253 local councils for the sexual abuse of more than 85,000 individuals from 1930s through 2019.  As a fiduciary to all sexual abuse survivors, the TCC has thoroughly investigated the assets and liabilities of the BSA and its local councils and concluded that the BSA’s reorganization plan woefully fails to adequately compensate sexual abuse survivors or provide any enhanced systematic protections for future generations of Scouts.

 

John Humphrey, the TCC chairman stated, “This plan reflects BSA’s ‘business as usual’ attitude to abuse survivors and does nothing to make Scouting safer.”  “The plan contemplates BSA will fund a trust of approximately $220 million including illiquid property for 85,000 known abuse survivors, in addition to an assignment of insurance policies.  Mr. Humphrey observed that BSA’s contribution and the Local Councils’ contemplated property and cash contribution averages a mere $6100 per survivor.  “The BSA and its local councils are not making the effort necessary to provide a modicum of compensation to men and women whose lives were changed forever by BSA’s and the Local Councils’  failure to protect them as children.  Instead, BSA and the Local Councils are putting the onus on survivors to fight with the insurance companies and walking away from their legal and moral duty to these men.  The plan violates every word and the spirit of the Boy Scout oath that each of us took as kids.” 

 

The plan seeks to force abuse survivors to release the Boy Scouts Local Councils even though not a single local council has filed its own bankruptcy.  Throughout the BSA bankruptcy case, the TCC, as a fiduciary for all abuse survivors, has sought complete disclosure of the local councils’ assets and liabilities to ensure they provide, as they must, adequate compensation in exchange for release of the sexual abuse they are trying to avoid. “Getting information from the local councils has been an uphill fight” observed Douglas Kennedy, co-chair of the TCC, adding “they want to force us to release the local councils but have not provided the financial transparency that is necessary for survivors to make an informed decision on whether to release the local councils where the majority of the abuse occurred.”

 

The plan makes no systematic changes to the Scouting program to better protect children.  Humphrey said, “BSA claims to have the best child protection program in the country.  That arrogance is belied by the thousands of claims filed in the bankruptcy since the inception of this so-called platinum standard program.  The protection of children seems to be an after-thought in a plan that tries to get BSA and its councils off the hook for minimal compensation to abuse survivors.”

 

The Official Tort Claimants Committee consists of 9 abuse survivors from all parts of the country and whose members range in age from their early 30s to mid-70s and reflect  broad range of ethnicities and occupations.  The TCC was appointed by the Office of the United States Trustee and is the fiduciary representative in the BSA bankruptcy case of all abuse survivors.

 

[David CO]

BSA expects to keep the camps.  Fat chance.

[Eagle1993]

7 minutes ago, David CO said:

BSA expects to keep the camps.  Fat chance.

Agreed.  BSA better be ready to survive for the long haul while in bankruptcy court if this is their best offer.  This is no where near enough to get an early settlement. 

[CynicalScouter]

Documents:

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

AMENDED CHAPTER 11 PLAN

Kosnoff's already weighed in. Still demanding liquidation.

 

[Eagle1993]

6 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

Documents:

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

AMENDED CHAPTER 11 PLAN

Kosnoff's already weighed in. Still demanding liquidation.

 

 

6 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

Documents:

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

AMENDED CHAPTER 11 PLAN

Kosnoff's already weighed in. Still demanding liquidation.

 

This is terrible.  The national narrative is that BSA is asking sex abuse victims to settle for $6k each (even with the reduced number of victims).  The TCC also says this is DOA. A Sex abuse survivor is quoted saying BSAs payment won’t even cover their cost of therapists.  TCC states the land is worthless as the leases are more than they oil revenue.  

Yes, I hope we keep everything of true value to scouting, but I’m very concerned by attempting to save Summit we lose everything. 

 

[CynicalScouter]

24 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

This is terrible.  The national narrative is that BSA is asking sex abuse victims to settle for $6k each (even with the reduced number of victims).  The TCC also says this is DOA. A Sex abuse survivor is quoted saying BSAs payment won’t even cover their cost of therapists.  TCC states the land is worthless as the leases are more than they oil revenue.  

Yes, I hope we keep everything of true value to scouting, but I’m very concerned by attempting to save Summit we lose everything.

Yeah, the USA Today coverage is, well, brutal. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/03/01/boy-scouts-bankruptcy-reorganization-plan-woefully-inadequate/6872981002/

And much of the focus is on the idea that Councils have the biggest piggy bank and are "subsidiaries" of National who need to be forced to give up those properties/assets.

Quote

Victims’ attorneys are fighting against Boy Scout’s assertion that the councils are discreet entities, noting that they operate hand-in-glove with the national organization and the councils have significant liability for their part in allowing child abuse to continue unabated for decades. They’ve also accused Boy Scouts of using the division to shield assets from survivors since a majority of the organization’s wealth lies at the local rather than national level.

So far, I've said that I thought the end state was going to be a crippled, hollow, BSA with no assets (or not much, BSA is looking to keep $75 million PLUS all the "restricted assets" worth $667 million).

However, now that I've seen their best offer, I really do not think BSA survives this. I know this is where the negotiation starts and the judge gets ahold of the issue, but I think liquidation just became the more likely outcome.

Edited March 2, 2021 by CynicalScouter

[qwazse]

Quote

As a result of the violent sexual abuse he alleges he suffered as a kid in Scouts, Gayle said he spent $125 to $150 an hour on therapy for 26 years, which was rarely covered by insurance. The Scouts’ proposed settlement would barely reimburse him for that cost alone. 

So the proposed settlement would cover the costs of therapy.

[RememberSchiff]

Much to read here and even more not here to read, blank page holders, e.g., Charter Organization contributions.

$300M from independent local councils?

[RememberSchiff]

Belated welcome to @MYCVAStory from the moderators of scouter.com. Please scroll (8 posts?) back and check his post.