On my Honor - Documentary on BSA Sex Abuse Scandal

[Eagledad]

9 hours ago, yknot said:

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.  

 

I don’t think so. I’ve had to balance many of your posts over the years because you present micro analogies. You basically take local data, which is a sliver of the overall picture and present a confident analogy as the overall big picture. It’s not. General references can only be interpreted as reflections of personal biases at best. That’s ok if the author starts their opinion with “In humble opinion” ………… . But, when the analysis is intended to sway general opinion, we’ll, you know.

Barry

[MYCVAStory]

Just sharing.  I have no connection: https://tribecafilm.com/films/leave-no-trace-2022

 

[InquisitiveScouter]

A second in-depth look at this...

BSA is about to face the next excrement wave just as they see the light at the end of the tunnel on bankruptcy proceedings.

[elitts]

On 4/30/2022 at 10:49 PM, yknot said:

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.  

 

Again I'll say, the total number of Catholics is not relevant for this discussion since the vast majority of Catholic youth have ZERO contact with any priest or deacon. (unless you can find some study identifying what proportion of that youth act as Alter Servers)

I know that I attended 3 different Catholic churches as a child (in a fairly large metropolitan area) and not a single one of those churches had more than a dozen or so Altar Servers at any one time.  So with roughly 17,000 churches you have a sample population of maybe 200,000 per year. 

 

[MYCVAStory]

2 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

BSA is about to face the next excrement wave just as they see the light at the end of the tunnel on bankruptcy proceedings.

If I wasn't going to be thrown off this forum I'd say this in a MUCH different manner.  But instead, please remember that for any Survivor telling his/her story your terminology is an insult beyond words.

 

[InquisitiveScouter]

14 minutes ago, MYCVAStory said:

If I wasn't going to be thrown off this forum I'd say this in a MUCH different manner.  But instead, please remember that for any Survivor telling his/her story your terminology is an insult beyond words.

 

Was not meant as any insult to survivors...  Please be careful, if you look for offense, you will always find it

Any castigation of BSA is deserved given the track record.  Ton of bricks, bad juju, heavy hand, iron rod, righteous sentence...choose any phrase you wish.

[yknot]

56 minutes ago, elitts said:

Again I'll say, the total number of Catholics is not relevant for this discussion since the vast majority of Catholic youth have ZERO contact with any priest or deacon. (unless you can find some study identifying what proportion of that youth act as Alter Servers)

I know that I attended 3 different Catholic churches as a child (in a fairly large metropolitan area) and not a single one of those churches had more than a dozen or so Altar Servers at any one time.  So with roughly 17,000 churches you have a sample population of maybe 200,000 per year. 

 

You inexplicably excluded many, many millions of touchpoints among children who attended Catholic schools,  participated in school or CYO sports, attended CCD,  or grew up in Catholic run orphanages as well as the many orders that do direct community outreach with youth. The vast majority of Catholic youth have quite a bit of contact with priests, deacons, and other leaders in the church community. Based on overall statistics which are widely available, there are far more kids historically and currently that have been involved in the Catholic church and yet the tallied abuse cases are lower than scouts. Not that that means anything at all to victims but the point remains is that the last organization I would look to as an expert on youth protection is BSA. On a numbers basis, it's the worst of the worst. Even now, right out of the box as part of the bankrutpcy reorganization plan, it has already recreated a historical conflict of interest for itself between growing youth membership and protecting youth. Whenever membership is a priority in BSA, youth suffer. 

[johnsch322]

Not sure why I was deleted previously but the Catholic Church vs BSA of who was worse in CSA is like:

"THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK"

Both are equally guilty of not protecting youth!!

[MattR]

2 minutes ago, johnsch322 said:

Not sure why I was deleted previously but the Catholic Church vs BSA of who was worse in CSA is like:

"THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK"

Both are equally guilty of not protecting youth!!

I was going to send you a PM but the image, that had nothing to do with the topic, was the problem as we've posted that images that are more sarcasm than useful commentary will be removed. I would have just removed the image but that's all there was. 

All these images do is raise the temperature without adding to the conversation.

[elitts]

4 minutes ago, yknot said:

You inexplicably excluded many, many millions of touchpoints among children who attended Catholic schools,  participated in school or CYO sports, attended CCD,  or grew up in Catholic run orphanages as well as the many orders that do direct community outreach with youth. The vast majority of Catholic youth have quite a bit of contact with priests, deacons, and other leaders in the church community. Based on overall statistics which are widely available, there are far more kids historically and currently that have been involved in the Catholic church and yet the tallied abuse cases are lower than scouts. Not that that means anything at all to victims but the point remains is that the last organization I would look to as an expert on youth protection is BSA. On a numbers basis, it's the worst of the worst. Even now, right out of the box as part of the bankrutpcy reorganization plan, it has already recreated a historical conflict of interest for itself between growing youth membership and protecting youth. Whenever membership is a priority in BSA, youth suffer. 

I don't know what Catholic church you attend(ed), but your concept of what priests are personally involved with is drastically different than anything I've seen in my last 40 years of being Catholic (including attending Catholic school). The precipitous decline in the priesthood since the 1970s has resulted in priests having little if anything to do with any of the non-liturgical or sacramental functions of Catholic functions.  I'm not saying there aren't any priests still in the schools or running youth community outreach programs, but they are few and far between.  The first time I saw a priest outside of mass or a baptism or funeral was when I was 22 and I was joining my fiance in pre-cana classes before we got married.

.

Quote

On a numbers basis, it's the worst of the worst.

Yes, It's the worst of all the nationwide organizations with 110 million plus participants over the last 110 years.  Current known abuse rate:  .076%

Of course, the only other nationwide case so far is USA Gymnastics, which I can't find abuse totals for because they haven't released records of all the accusations.  But we do know that 1 doctor all by himself was responsible for an abuse rate of .019%  (500+ accusations over 20 years, avg. membership of 130,000)  And then there's about 227 other people on the permanent ban list they publish.  Now, This study says 70% of abusers have 1-9 victims and 20% have 20-40 victims.  So if we calculate 70% of that 227 have an average of 4.5 victims that's another 715 cases.  Then 20% of that 227 have an average of 30 victims that's another 1362 victims.  I assume the last 10% have more than 9 and less than 20 (or more than 40).  Let's guess 15 victims then for another 340 victims.

So USA Gymnastics should have derived abuse rate of something like:   0.112%

 

[johnsch322]

2 hours ago, MattR said:

I was going to send you a PM but the image, that had nothing to do with the topic, was the problem as we've posted that images that are more sarcasm than useful commentary will be removed. I would have just removed the image but that's all there was. 

All these images do is raise the temperature without adding to the conversation.

I wasn’t really sure on the image. Thanks for letting me know. 

[yknot]

3 hours ago, elitts said:

I don't know what Catholic church you attend(ed), but your concept of what priests are personally involved with is drastically different than anything I've seen in my last 40 years of being Catholic (including attending Catholic school). The precipitous decline in the priesthood since the 1970s has resulted in priests having little if anything to do with any of the non-liturgical or sacramental functions of Catholic functions.  I'm not saying there aren't any priests still in the schools or running youth community outreach programs, but they are few and far between.  The first time I saw a priest outside of mass or a baptism or funeral was when I was 22 and I was joining my fiance in pre-cana classes before we got married.

.

Yes, It's the worst of all the nationwide organizations with 110 million plus participants over the last 110 years.  Current known abuse rate:  .076%

Of course, the only other nationwide case so far is USA Gymnastics, which I can't find abuse totals for because they haven't released records of all the accusations.  But we do know that 1 doctor all by himself was responsible for an abuse rate of .019%  (500+ accusations over 20 years, avg. membership of 130,000)  And then there's about 227 other people on the permanent ban list they publish.  Now, This study says 70% of abusers have 1-9 victims and 20% have 20-40 victims.  So if we calculate 70% of that 227 have an average of 4.5 victims that's another 715 cases.  Then 20% of that 227 have an average of 30 victims that's another 1362 victims.  I assume the last 10% have more than 9 and less than 20 (or more than 40).  Let's guess 15 victims then for another 340 victims.

So USA Gymnastics should have derived abuse rate of something like:   0.112%

 

Like many things on a national forum, people have had pretty varied experiences. In the northeast I would say my experiences are not unusual. Young active priests are less common today, and I've seen a rise in deacons taking on some of those educational roles, but they are still around. When my oldest was working on Ad Atare Dei not long ago he interacted with multiple priests and deacons as well as went on an overnight retreat and visited a seminary. They were part of that process because they were also very involved in youth outreach of all kinds in their home parishes. Many of the orders are very active in underserved communities and the main focus is youth. 

 

Edited May 4, 2022 by yknot

[clbkbx]

5 hours ago, elitts said:

Current known abuse rate:  .076%

Do you have a reference for this? I can’t seem to find anything online. 
 

My current theory is that CSA has not been well researched (not to say there’s not been a lot of effort in some studies) and that that is purposeful.

[DuctTape]

I agree that one does not prop up their organization by showing how much worse another one was/is. That said I do believe there is a significant difference between the Catholic Church and the BSA in regards to their responses to CSA.

No doubt the BSA failed to address CSA adequately, failed to notify authorities and their attempts to mitigate by having internal documents (IVF)  barring volunteers was not effective. 

This is in stark contrast to the Catholic Church who did not even attempt to bar known abusers but instead just moved them to a different parish.

Neither did well.

[Eagledad]

1 hour ago, DuctTape said:

I agree that one does not prop up their organization by showing how much worse another one was/is.

Even worse is using another organization to inflate the reputation well above the truth of the issue. There are folks on this forum that have proven their integrity through posts over several topics. And there are others who are obviously anti BSA. Which just makes no sense to me.

Barry