Closure (hopefully) to a Previous Story

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Holiday Greetings,

Some number of weeks back I sent a message to SCOUTS-L asking for advise and des
cribing a situation in which a 16 year old scout was accused of sexually molesti
ng an 8 year old girl in an outside of scouting situation. It was brought to my
attention as Scoutmaster by the girl's mother because both families involved we
re from our Troop.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who responded both t
hrough this list and by direct email. Your advise and comments were wise, thoug
htful and are greatly appreciated.

Since I am one who hates hearing about things like this and then not knowing how
things turned out, I just thought I would let you all know what the resolution
was concerning this issue.

I had reported the situation to Council immediately upon hearing about it and wa
s later told that it was not a direct Scouting problem, and therefore any action
must come from the Troop Committee. Accordingly I brought the situation before
the Committee without actually revealing the name of the families involved or t
he boy. (Not easy, but I managed since several people later said "Is it XXXX?"
and they were wrong.) The Troop Committee appointed a subgroup (SM, CM and 3 ot
her members) to address the issue. (Actually there was a bit more involved sinc
e I also got advise from a close friend who is an attorney.)

The subgroup met with the boy and a parent (the second parent never comes to any
thing) to discuss this issue. To summarize that meeting: the boy and the parent
admitted that an incident had occurred; they indicated that the boy was not doi
ng any weekend Scouting activities until some "other problem" was straightened o
ut; the parent made it clear that had I (the SM) not been informed of the probl
em by the other family he would not have told us that any problem existed. Afte
r the parent and boy left the subgroup than debated the issue. The more we disc
ussed the situation the more we realized that, even if this issue had not occurr
ed, we should have long since taken some action concerning this boy due to his b
ehavior in regular Troop meetings. We slowly came to the realization that only
because the father was a well meaning active ASM we had allowed the boy to conti
nue with the Troop (although he had made some great strides in the past year wit
hin a Scouting context). We finally came to the conclusion tha
t we should be taking action, but that the action should be based on what had be
en happening in a Scouting context. As one ASM put it, we had done a lot for th
is boy, but he has gotten all he is going to get out of Scouting and for us to a
llow him to continue puts the adult leadership in an unacceptable position of li
ability.

The subgroup recommended to the Troop Committee that, as a result of the boy's a
ctions in the Troop, the boy's membership in the Troop be suspended for the rema
inder of the "charter year" (which ends this coming Jan.) and that he not be inc
luded as part of the Troop when we recharter. We have informed the boy and his
parents of this decision.

So there you have it, the story to date. I won't say "the end" because unlike t
he movies, in real life these things have a tendancy to resurface when you leas
t expect it.

YIS,
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******************MESSAGE FROM******************************
Bruce K. Rosen Voice: 301-975-3299 FAX: 301-926-3696
Computer Scientist
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Bldg. 820 Room 509
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
email: brosen@nist.gov
http://speckle.ncsl.nist.gov/~rosen/rosen.htm
*************************************************************

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