On my Honor - Documentary on BSA Sex Abuse Scandal

[qwazse]

2 hours ago, johnsch322 said:

… I get the above "800,000 expected victims have not come forward".  So I guess the 82,000 is acceptable because 800,000 did not come forward.  …

It depends.

• If indeed 800,000 were actually abused but 720,000 were somehow hushed (maybe because all of those advertisements had the reverse effect and suppressed survivor turn out), then the legal threats driving this bankruptcy should be considered an utter failure. If an identified survivor would get X, then it amount should be X/10 until all of those others are identified and duly compensated. The wholesale liquidation of BSA would be in order.
• If the 720,000 found healing from abuse, then we need to find them, figure out what worked for them, and  purchase and promote it to the other 80,000.  Then, we need to warn parents that scouting is no better than background at mitigating CSA risk and any further revisions to YP should be considered to be experimental at best. This especially important because if BSA’s programs for girls attain parity, the reasonable expected future rate of CSA could be from 10 to 20%. Meanwhile, we need to promote any other organization that has a verifiable lower rate of CSA.
• If the 720,000 were successfully protected from abuse as a result of their participation in BSA, we need to aggressively promote BSA, underwriting costs of further improved YP so that we can reduce the National rate of CSA below 1% … hopefully for both boys and girls. This might include federal funding of all background checks, training materials, and quality improvement.

Morality has nothing to do with anyone’s feelings or personal pride. The moral way in light of the pain revealed by CSA survivors is to act so as to promote healing in those who need it and increase the percentage of Americans who never experienced CSA.

Strategies that provide solace to some survivors but deny the opportunity for kids to live 10 times safer than they would be elsewhere are patently immoral.

[johnsch322]

9 minutes ago, qwazse said:

If the 720,000 found healing from abuse, then we need to find them, figure out what worked for them, and  purchase and promote it to the other 80,000.

So sad to say something like this.  We are not talking about a cut on a young persons knee.  

 

11 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Morality has nothing to do with anyone’s feelings or personal pride. The moral way in light of the pain revealed by CSA survivors is to act so as to promote healing in those who need it and increase the percentage of Americans who never experienced CSA.

What does this actually mean?

[yknot]

16 minutes ago, qwazse said:

It depends.

• If indeed 800,000 were actually abused but 720,000 were somehow hushed (maybe because all of those advertisements had the reverse effect and suppressed survivor turn out), then the legal threats driving this bankruptcy should be considered an utter failure. If an identified survivor would get X, then it amount should be X/10 until all of those others are identified and duly compensated. The wholesale liquidation of BSA would be in order.
• If the 720,000 found healing from abuse, then we need to find them, figure out what worked for them, and  purchase and promote it to the other 80,000.  Then, we need to warn parents that scouting is no better than background at mitigating CSA risk and any further revisions to YP should be considered to be experimental at best. This especially important because if BSA’s programs for girls attain parity, the reasonable expected future rate of CSA could be from 10 to 20%. Meanwhile, we need to promote any other organization that has a verifiable lower rate of CSA.
• If the 720,000 were successfully protected from abuse as a result of their participation in BSA, we need to aggressively promote BSA, underwriting costs of further improved YP so that we can reduce the National rate of CSA below 1% … hopefully for both boys and girls. This might include federal funding of all background checks, training materials, and quality improvement.

Morality has nothing to do with anyone’s feelings or personal pride. The moral way in light of the pain revealed by CSA survivors is to act so as to promote healing in those who need it and increase the percentage of Americans who never experienced CSA.

Strategies that provide solace to some survivors but deny the opportunity for kids to live 10 times safer than they would be elsewhere are patently immoral.

Some of your comments are based on broad assumptions that are so three dimensionally flawed it is hard to know where to start trying to parse through them. 

BSA and the Catholic Church, apart from all other youth organizations and institutions, historically have had documented, high profile, long term, issues with child sexual abuse, predominantly among boys. This is not really debatable. It is an Alice in Wonderland moment to read of someone who thinks that BSA was actually a safer place for the nation's youth than the general population. The incidence of CSA in the Catholic Church was much lower than that of the BSA and yet no one there is proposing that the Catholic Church is somehow a safer haven for the nation's youth given their track record to date. Such a claim would be laughable if aired to the general public. 

[Eagle1970]

11 hours ago, ThenNow said:

The first time it was posted, I couldn't watch all the way through. I felt like it was too sensationalized with the Hitchcockian score, over wrought camera angles and typical American film schmutz. Decided to watch it through 10 minutes ago. I still despise how American filmmakers and TV producers troll the bottom for easy enticement and dramatization, but was taken off guard during one snippet. It really threw me. It was when the abuser was in a dark family room with the boy. They sat side by side on the sofa. The man put his arm around the boy and it was like someone sucked the center mass out of my body. "Just like that..." I could literally feel the negative energy impact and and the air left me. Wow. The Body Keeps the Score. To state the obvious, I was abused in my SM's home, in addition to Summer Camp, camping trips, Scouting events, and other interactions at diverse locations. 

Yep, I really didn't need the audio at all.  It was over the top.  But the video was so on target, I thought for a moment it was my camp.  

[qwazse]

12 hours ago, yknot said:

… It is an Alice in Wonderland moment to read of someone who thinks that BSA was actually a safer place for the nation's youth than the general population. The incidence of CSA in the Catholic Church was much lower than that of the BSA and yet no one there is proposing that the Catholic Church is somehow a safer haven for the nation's youth given their track record to date. Such a claim would be laughable if aired to the general public. 

@yknot, I will gladly send my grandkids to Catholic programs in a heartbeat. Compared to the “Me Too” moments my mom had with orthodox priests a century ago (nobody believed her either), the dioceses in our area have a striking increase in level of accountability. Protestant programs can be described as shoddy at best. Secular programs … well let’s see their public records of CSA rates before pretending that they are a safe haven.

Once again, my boots-on-the-ground experience with abuse victims is one of predators being family, peers, sports coaches, clergy, and school teachers, in roughly that order. I’m certain that some of the abused in scouting are nearby. They just haven’t arrived on my doorstep yet.

I’ll agree that one would have to live in a perverse world where 0.5% CSA might be considered an improvement in safety. But I would rather my kids understand that we live in a perverse world than pretend that keeping away from organization Y will be safer than going to the mall with their mates.

[johnsch322]

31 minutes ago, qwazse said:

They just haven’t arrived on my doorstep yet.

If nothing else, please take from those of us that are survivors that those you love and cherish may be victims but will in most instances not tell anyone.

[qwazse]

1 hour ago, johnsch322 said:

If nothing else, please take from those of us that are survivors that those you love and cherish may be victims but will in most instances not tell anyone.

Granted. But there are two other possibilities:

• Such people are more rare than my friend who was raped by her grandfather, the neighbor who remembered an assault by his dad at age 3, the teacher who left town in disgrace, the institutionally raised man who was propositioned by an instructor as soon as he turned 18, etc. ...
• Something about being preyed upon as a scout makes it less likely to disclose abuse from that sphere of one's life than if a person is preyed upon as a family member, student, etc ...

I warrant that I'll eventually meet a friend/family who discloses that their CSA happened at a scout camp, but based on the numbers published so far, I'm likely to meet many more survivors who were betrayed by home, church, or school.

To be clear, that doesn't mean that the abused in scouting stories aren't important. I have paraphrased them when talking with scouts because when they understand the magnitude of the problem, they can appreciate how we adults are trying to be accountable to one another.

[Eagle94-A1]

Thanks for the letter. That does not answer everything I wanted, but is a start.

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Eagle94-A1

[johnsch322]

4 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Granted. But there are two other possibilities:

• Such people are more rare than my friend who was raped by her grandfather, the neighbor who remembered an assault by his dad at age 3, the teacher who left town in disgrace, the institutionally raised man who was propositioned by an instructor as soon as he turned 18, etc. ...
• Something about being preyed upon as a scout makes it less likely to disclose abuse from that sphere of one's life than if a person is preyed upon as a family member, student, etc ...

I warrant that I'll eventually meet a friend/family who discloses that their CSA happened at a scout camp, but based on the numbers published so far, I'm likely to meet many more survivors who were betrayed by home, church, or school.

To be clear, that doesn't mean that the abused in scouting stories aren't important. I have paraphrased them when talking with scouts because when they understand the magnitude of the problem, they can appreciate how we adults are trying to be accountable to one another.

My point is that you most likely have met someone and they never revealed it to you. If you had met me 5 years ago I would have told you about my abuse. My not telling is more common than survivors who told when the abuse occurred or even 10 years later talking about it. 

[sierracharliescouter]

17 hours ago, johnsch322 said:

This is the great "tell" in how so many feel about the abuse.  If not you it would have been someone else or should I say so many feel that someone would be abused and better them than me?

This is not at all a "better them than me" statement, it is just a statement about the raw statistics of CSA in our society. We can't run from reality, but we can work to improve it.

[ThenNow]

5 hours ago, qwazse said:

But I would rather my kids understand that we live in a perverse world than pretend that keeping away from organization Y will be safer than going to the mall with their mates.

From whence cometh these seemingly off-handed assertions and phantom statistic? Is your last quip stating children are at an equivlanet risk of CSA while wandering around in the mall with a friend as they are within an organization lead by adults? I may be misreading, but here are some statistics. Having a brain misfire. I'm trying to say avoiding creating potentially dangerous adult acquaintances means a reduction of CSA risk. Is that the ideal to separate oneself? Probably not, but just trying to figure out what you're saying and on what basis.

https://www.rainn.org

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by ThenNow

[yknot]

2 hours ago, qwazse said:

Granted. But there are two other possibilities:

• Such people are more rare than my friend who was raped by her grandfather, the neighbor who remembered an assault by his dad at age 3, the teacher who left town in disgrace, the institutionally raised man who was propositioned by an instructor as soon as he turned 18, etc. ...
• Something about being preyed upon as a scout makes it less likely to disclose abuse from that sphere of one's life than if a person is preyed upon as a family member, student, etc ...

I warrant that I'll eventually meet a friend/family who discloses that their CSA happened at a scout camp, but based on the numbers published so far, I'm likely to meet many more survivors who were betrayed by home, church, or school.

 

Statistically, they might be more rare in your personal environment but that's only because virtually every US child has had parents or a parental figure. Virtually every US child has attended school. When looking at the broader US population, you are including females, who are abused at 4-5 times the rate as males. Scouting proportionally has been a very small percentage of the US population of kids but it still has demonstrated significantly high numbers of cases SA, espeically considering the fact that it largely excludes the historical experiences of girls.  

[PaleRider]

10 hours ago, johnsch322 said:

My point is that you most likely have met someone and they never revealed it to you. If you had met me 5 years ago I would have told you about my abuse. My not telling is more common than survivors who told when the abuse occurred or even 10 years later talking about it. 

Took me 36 years to finally tell my folks.

[elitts]

On 4/27/2022 at 8:11 PM, yknot said:

Some of your comments are based on broad assumptions that are so three dimensionally flawed it is hard to know where to start trying to parse through them. 

BSA and the Catholic Church, apart from all other youth organizations and institutions, historically have had documented, high profile, long term, issues with child sexual abuse, predominantly among boys. This is not really debatable. It is an Alice in Wonderland moment to read of someone who thinks that BSA was actually a safer place for the nation's youth than the general population. The incidence of CSA in the Catholic Church was much lower than that of the BSA and yet no one there is proposing that the Catholic Church is somehow a safer haven for the nation's youth given their track record to date. Such a claim would be laughable if aired to the general public. 

 

On 4/28/2022 at 3:01 PM, yknot said:

Statistically, they might be more rare in your personal environment but that's only because virtually every US child has had parents or a parental figure. Virtually every US child has attended school. When looking at the broader US population, you are including females, who are abused at 4-5 times the rate as males. Scouting proportionally has been a very small percentage of the US population of kids but it still has demonstrated significantly high numbers of cases SA, espeically considering the fact that it largely excludes the historical experiences of girls.  

You are making assertions that simply have no support.

A 2004 report estimates that roughly 4% of priests and deacons between 1950 and 2002 were abusers.  Additionally,  you can't know if the BSA abuse rate is "proportionally " (which is the only relevant number here) higher that the Catholic Church without knowing what the population size was.  It certainly wasn't simply "every boy that grew up Catholic".  The vast majority of Catholics have little to no personal contact with a priest.  Most contact is with Altar Servers and those few schools where the priest is a school employee also.

Also, when talking about statistics, whether or not something is "Significantly High" can ONLY be determined when it's being compared to similar studies of similar data.  Since you have no other data sets to compare it to, your "Significantly high numbers of SA cases" really just means "a number I find to be subjectively objectionable". 

It's like saying "OMG! High School A has a significantly high number of teenage pregnancies at 26 girls! High School B only has 5" Without noting that H.S. A has a school population of 3900 while H.S. B has a population of 250.

[yknot]

24 minutes ago, elitts said:

 

You are making assertions that simply have no support.

A 2004 report estimates that roughly 4% of priests and deacons between 1950 and 2002 were abusers.  Additionally,  you can't know if the BSA abuse rate is "proportionally " (which is the only relevant number here) higher that the Catholic Church without knowing what the population size was.  It certainly wasn't simply "every boy that grew up Catholic".  The vast majority of Catholics have little to no personal contact with a priest.  Most contact is with Altar Servers and those few schools where the priest is a school employee also.

Also, when talking about statistics, whether or not something is "Significantly High" can ONLY be determined when it's being compared to similar studies of similar data.  Since you have no other data sets to compare it to, your "Significantly high numbers of SA cases" really just means "a number I find to be subjectively objectionable". 

It's like saying "OMG! High School A has a significantly high number of teenage pregnancies at 26 girls! High School B only has 5" Without noting that H.S. A has a school population of 3900 while H.S. B has a population of 250.

With 70 million Catholics in the US today even in membership decline, it's a number significantly higher than scouting. No one can know specifics. But when you are comparing numbers that are many orders of magnitude above the other, you can make some general inferences.