So, what are the LC's and COs being sued for?

[yknot]

27 minutes ago, MattR said:

I'm not sure comparing rates is much help. Youth were/are being abused and the number is significant. I did a search on school districts sued for child abuse and the exact same subject came up for a few districts as for the bsa. In the one case I saw teachers were passed around much like priests in the Catholic church. Maybe a better question is when/how will what we see at the bsa turn up in school districts.

Except a lot of teacher abuse claims are for all abuse, not necessarily sexual. I do think some assessment of order of magnitude would be very useful.   

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, CynicalScouter said:

From a legal standpoint, it does. The court will look at BSA's negligence (and that of LCs and COs.)

The fact that OTHER organizations may ALSO have been negligent will never, ever be allowed into evidence or as part of the trial because it is irrelevant to the question at hand: was BSA (or the LC or CO) in negligence in caring/protecting for the minor and/or in the supervision of the abusive adult leader.

Or, as I said more directly: to darn bad that other groups were bad, that doesn't mean what BSA did was OK.

Again, I'm not the lawyer, but there is liability for damages and negligence for not exercising ordinary care.   Defining the ordinary expected exercise of care at the time does go to defining negligence ... especially as we talk cases from 40 / 50 years ago.

[CynicalScouter]

14 minutes ago, fred8033 said:

 Defining the ordinary expected exercise of care at the time does go to defining negligence

And again, the fact that OTHER organizations were negligent does NOT waive or forgive BSA's negligence.

[MattR]

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

From a legal standpoint, it does. The court will look at BSA's negligence (and that of LCs and COs.)

The fact that OTHER organizations may ALSO have been negligent will never, ever be allowed into evidence or as part of the trial because it is irrelevant to the question at hand: was BSA (or the LC or CO) in negligence in caring/protecting for the minor and/or in the supervision of the abusive adult leader.

It was the "to darn bad" comment I was referring to. You could have just left that out. 

I agree that "just because others are doing it" is not a good defense, mostly on moral grounds as I don't understand the law.

[ParkMan]

On 4/22/2021 at 6:13 PM, Owls_are_cool said:

Fixing one wrong with another wrong might be legal, but there is a point where scouts will not see the value in the program and cut their losses. 

I fear that people all around miss that fact.  My child joined a pack and later a troop to experience scouting (lower case).  Yes, the BSA program is good and nicely developed.  But most people are not in the BSA because of the organization.  At some point the continual increase in funds to defend lawsuits will only lead to declining membership.

On 4/22/2021 at 7:42 PM, CynicalScouter said:

So as I said, if you truly, truly believe paying a penny for the sexual abuse victims means "we'll move to another organization or quit scouting", then there's the (metaphorical) door. Those payments have already been made and it is 100% certain more payments will be occurring.

Leave.

Just as in the bankruptcy thread, it will be impossible to discuss this topic because none of us can leave emotions and beliefs out of this.

Edited May 13, 2021 by ParkMan
clarified a thought

[MattR]

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

My child joined a pack and later a troop to experience scouting (lower case).  Yes, the BSA program is good and nicely developed.  But most people are not in the BSA because of the organization. 

 

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

Just as in the bankruptcy thread, it will be impossible to discuss this topic because none of us can leave emotions and beliefs out of this.

Maybe not. What is it that your child needs/needed to enjoy scouting? I'll answer for me but I'd like to hear your and other people's opinions on this.

My son needed a camp that was big enough for a bunch of scouts and not too far away. He needed a bunch of like minded kids and adults that also enjoyed the outdoors and the ideal of scouting. Finally, the adults that did all the work needed a program that they could follow. I'm not sure there's any priority to this list. One more thing that needs to be added to this list moving forward is a YP protocol that will keep us from ever coming back to where we are now.

For us, the camp we most used was the biggest but the rest, as far as we were concerned weren't nearly as important. They made it easier to put on a monthly camping program. That was nice but we spent most of our campouts at one place. It was an easy place to go camping and big enough that we could do a lot of activities at. We camp in a lot of places but many have nothing to do with scouts, so occasionally traveling to find new places is also in the mix.

Those were hard assets. The people and program were soft assets but they made it much easier to create a calendar.

If we can keep a nearby camp, can still attract families and have a documented program that we can argue about here, then we'll do okay. We don't need HA bases. We don't need OA. A district would be nice but we certainly don't need council other than taking care of the camp. We don't need a lot of things. Put the scout store on Amazon. We also will continue to have the same problems we had before all of this came about. Kids still want to do more than be lectured at. Adjusting or tweaking the program will do a lot more good than saving Summit or preventing the loss of some of our smaller camps.

 

[CynicalScouter]

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

Just as in the bankruptcy thread, it will be impossible to discuss this topic because none of us can leave emotions and beliefs out of this.

My point was that if you are going to claim this.

On 4/22/2021 at 6:13 PM, Owls_are_cool said:

We'll move to another organization or quit scouting.

Then you'd have already left scouting given that abuse claims, dozens if not hundreds (most were settled out of court and BSA won't release the details) have already been paid out.

There's no debate as to whether or not the abuse claimants will be paid: they will. The only questions are how much and when.

[vol_scouter]

5 hours ago, fred8033 said:

Again, I'm not the lawyer, but there is liability for damages and negligence for not exercising ordinary care.   Defining the ordinary expected exercise of care at the time does go to defining negligence ... especially as we talk cases from 40 / 50 years ago.

This is not to argue whether the BSA has done enough to protect children but to give a comparison to standards that society is seemingly accepting at this time (likely from ignorance).  For the 84,000 claimants and the estimated 130 M alumni of Scouting the rate of abuse would be 0.07%.  As I have noted before, that calculation is fraught with problems.  Depending on your view, 84,000 could be too large or too small and, likewise, the BSA estimate of 130 M alumni is likely too generous.  It is the best that we have at this time.

Looking to the US schools in a paper entitled: "Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of PreK-12 Students by School Personnel", Grant, Billie-Jo; Shakeshaft, Charol; Mueller, Jessica, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (J CHILD SEX ABUSE), Jan2019; 28(1): 2-6. (5p)

"School employee sexual misconduct, the abuse of students by any K-12 school personnel, which may include contact or non-contact sexual misconduct, continues to be woefully understudied. Yet, cases appear daily in our media outlets, making this an everyday experience for too many students. The field's only generalizable prevalence study was conducted in 2000 and reanalyzed in 2004, and it estimated that 9.6% of the students, or 5 million students, will experience sexual misconduct by the time they graduate from high school (Shakeshaft, 2004)."

The reference is: Shakeshaft, C. ( 2004 ). Educator sexual misconduct: A synthesis of existing literature. Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Education, Doc #2004-09.

So in our schools, the rate of abuse is 9.6% while in Scouting it has been 0.07%.  So a child in school is ~148 times more likely to be abused than in Scouting.  

This does not absolve Scouting of criminal acts but it does provide some perspective.  

[qwazse]

10 hours ago, vol_scouter said:

... As I have noted before, that calculation is fraught with problems.  Depending on your view, 84,000 could be too large or too small and, likewise, the BSA estimate of 130 M alumni is likely too generous.  It is the best that we have at this time.

I divided 84K by 110M and got 0.07%. It’s imprecise for many obvious reasons, not the least of which being false claims on one hand and victims who would not be party to the TCC on the other. It also may be unfair to compare that to the 9.6% estimate. The hours a youth would spend in school vs. an extracurricular would be a factor.
That said, my boots-on-the-ground experience is with victims abused by family, peers, and clergy. Outside of these forums, I’ve never met someone who was victimized by a scouter.

But, if using rough calculations similar to those in fighting contagion, BSA’s abuse-prevention strategy over the past century seems to have been 99% effective.

[vol_scouter]

1 hour ago, qwazse said:

But, if using rough calculations similar to those in fighting contagion, BSA’s abuse-prevention strategy over the past century seems to have been 99% effective.

That is 99.93% effective 

[CynicalScouter]

Just now, vol_scouter said:

That is 99.93% effective

Oh goody, then it is ok that those others got sexually abused. I guess they don't matter because they are a rounding error?

[DuctTape]

29 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

Oh goody, then it is ok that those others got sexually abused. I guess they don't matter because they are a rounding error?

I do not think think this response was called for. You certainly know that no one here, including the person you quoted believes any abuse is "ok". You are better than this.

[MattR]

Has anyone considered that .07% is a really bad number when it comes to quality? That's 1 in 1400.

If 1 in 1400 cars had serious failures, to the point where it goes to court, people would be really upset.

We should do better for our children.

When it comes to quality there is no acceptable failure rate. There is, however, an acceptable change in failure rate. 

 

[Owls_are_cool]

I did state this before: the BSA does take youth protection much more seriously today, than organized sports and schools. When I coached baseball and basketball, there are no two deep adult requirement, nor are players required to have a buddy to go to the bathroom, etc. 

All these organizations do require background checks, but we all know that these checks are not 100% fool proof and will not detect anyone that has not committed their first sexual crime (or multiple crimes if their victims do not report). It is bothersome to me that the BSA seems to get all the blame, yet very little energy is being spent on getting sexual predators into prison.

[yknot]

2 hours ago, Owls_are_cool said:

I did state this before: the BSA does take youth protection much more seriously today, than organized sports and schools. When I coached baseball and basketball, there are no two deep adult requirement, nor are players required to have a buddy to go to the bathroom, etc. 

All these organizations do require background checks, but we all know that these checks are not 100% fool proof and will not detect anyone that has not committed their first sexual crime (or multiple crimes if their victims do not report). It is bothersome to me that the BSA seems to get all the blame, yet very little energy is being spent on getting sexual predators into prison.

We've kind of been over this a couple times before but  you can't compare sports to scouts. Rank and file sports kids are not going on campouts once a month with unrelated adults in remote locations and staying overnight. Most sports practices and games are conducted at facilities in public view, which parents attend. Other officials are often there. Most school and municipal facilities generally have security cameras. Most schools now have security cameras everywhere except bathrooms and locker rooms. I don't know of any travel teams other than college where parents don't routinely travel with their player and generally stay in the same hotel rooms together. It is not comparable. Scouting has to have more policies because of what it is and does with kids. Frankly, I've been involved in scouts and sports for years and there isn't really much difference. Yes, I've yet to see a coach run out of a gym because he suddenly realized he was the only adult in the room with a bunch of kids the way I have seen an ASM run out of a troop meeting. However, in the coach case generally the gym doors are open, there's a custodian around somewhere, an administrator is sticking their head in the door... it's different.