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LATEST POSTS
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That's heartbreaking. I also did not tell my father certain things for similar reasons but thankfully those things that negatively affected me were not of that nature. I recently found out about a couple friends who were younger than me who were abused by an adult we knew and the guilt that I did not see it and help them is overwhelming. I wish such things had not happened to you or to them. -
To ThenNow, I'd bet there are many similar reasons ... not wanting people to judge their kid when accusing such an upright adult ... so sick that it can't be true ... don't want to be "that" family ... or the family that caused problems for their church, school, community ... or just don't want to be associated with it. ... family dynamics are large and ugly at times. ... And those parents were kids when pregnant women were not really to be seen in public and out-of-wedlock daughters would be shipped away to have their kid. ... Only in 1978 did it become illegal to fire a woman for getting pregnant. Though uncouth before, sexual harassment was outlawed around 1977. Things have drastically changed in the last fifty years. Wrong is wrong, but judging the past is hard. -
For my part, I offer two points: 1) I literally was looking at my dad and thought about telling him. I knew my dad would 'kill' my Scout Master so I said nothing. I did not want my dad to go to prison nor ruin the Troop I loved. There were 10 people in my family and we would't have survived without him, not to mention the pain it would have caused. I was 10 and never again thought of telling an adult, though it continued for 6 years; and 2) I became aware just a few years ago that other parents/adults, besides those complicit or tangentially involved none of whom had kids in Scouting, were aware. The parents/dads only challenged him as to their own boys: "Touch my kid and you're dead." -
I think the issue of "this could be libel" is much more of an explanation that supporters have tossed out there after the fact. The one recurring explanation I've seen from people involved all those years ago, and the one I find somewhat compelling is: "Who are we to instigate a police investigation into something when the victim (or their family) don't want the police involved?" Now, the view of this issue has changed over time with there being a view today that the victims right to anonymity is outweighed by the importance of getting a predator off the streets, but I still don't think you can hold the idea of respecting the victims wishes to be entirely wrong. Particularly not when evaluating the appropriateness of actions taken before the beliefs changed. -
Even decades ago if I told my father someone had tried to mess with me they would have been picking up body parts in three counties. Yes times were different and there was a higher threshold for some things then than there is now but the basic human instinct to snap a child abuser's spine has not changed. Except today things being the way they are we send lawyers to snap them in half. I was not an adult in that time period when most of these cases were alleged to have occurred but I have a very hard time comprehending how it could have been so widespread yet so ignored at worst or so incompetently handled at best.
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