Leaderboard

Success comes from implementing a program that works toward a successful vision. The BSA lacks leadership that believes, much less understands the vision of developing moral and ethical decision makers. I get it, I struggled convincing many parents that giving scouts the independence to learn from their decisions in an outdoors environment is a successful path for building citizens of character and leaders of integrity. But, if organization leaders don’t believe it, how can the users believe in it. Barry

False alarm. I confirmed today that this award is NOT discontinued. The medals are available for purchase and National was called to be sure they are available. Confirmed- the National Medal of Outdoor Achievement is still available. (Apparently some medals were collected and destroyed and a new medal produced- but I cannot confirm this.).

Perhaps I’m not a good choice to initiate or in any way facilitate this conversation. I am clearly biased, having been physically abused in my home and variously sexually abused by non-family men in authority positions. I can see the faces of each of them. Only one, my dad, ever showed any remorse. All had complicit actors. (Sorry, mom.) My SM abuser stood in camp, in the presence of another ‘adult’ (20 or 21 years old), and told his Scouts to “line up for a soft hands contest.” The winner, yours truly, being directed to his tent. No sneaking around or secreting me off to a hidden locatio

Some of the cases seem to me to have been difficult at the time for the BSA to find. But cases such as @ThenNow and @Eagle1970 seem to be impossible that someone would not have known that there was at least something happening that demanded more investigation to something obviously wrong. It is sickening that Scouting professionals and volunteers failed to protect the Scouts.

This is what he was told by other Scouts. That's what he said. I can't speak for my fellow, but the subject "accused" is/was an adult BSA volunteer who abused a young boy. Period. The end. Nothing further, your honor. What's the point of this line of questioning? He was quoting someone else to make his point about potential foreknowledge going to the topic of concealment. Those words were incidental to conveying his point and not the substance of his specifically stated experience. I, for one, am not going to respond further on this baiting. It's irrelevant here and likely pointless, based upo

Yeah, well, I'm old enough and was involved in theater. I auditioned for a professional company and the 'diverse' sexual 'hits' I took kept me away. A good thing. Anway, in some areas of culture and society - I'm not saying Scouting - there was celebration of the new and emerging 'freedom' fueled by the sexual revolution. You're being hugely over broad and making a stereotypical faux pax of your own. (See below for more.) Did you really miss this entirely in your rush to jump to down his throat, based on certain hot button words that are simply a reciting of his actual, perso

I never said I called my abuser a queer or pervert. These days, I'm very aware of LGBTQ+ issues, as one of my children identifies as such. And they are not an abuser in any way. What I said is that other scouts who had already been at camp referred to my abuser as a "pervert" and "queer". In the 60's, queer was defined a little differently, than today. My recollection is that it typically only meant a male who likes males. Let me beam myself back and tell my 13 year-old fellow scouts that they should have actually referred to him as a "serial child sexual predator". Next, t

Really? I bare my soul and you "struggle" with it? I don't come on here to be questioned. But for what it's worth, I have the names and addresses of 2 scouts who told me that. How about you go troll elsewhere?

As I have posted elsewhere, my BSA summer camp abuse occurred after several weeks of prior campers clearly experienced my abuser's tactics. When I arrived and signed up for his merit badge, other scouts (who were attending multiple weeks) told me that he was a pervert and queer. He was quite comfortable at his little hideaway in the woods. If BSA didn't know, they certainly should have known his actions were inappropriate. They did not remove or reassign him. I don't know what that means, legally. But had they not concealed his behavior, I would not have been abused.

If anyone wants to connect more "personally" regarding the victim/survivor/claimant perspective, please feel free to DM me. That's an open invite to survivors and non-survivors. Not looking for sabre rattle, though.

There is a lot to unpack here. I am going to assume that you were a scout in the 60's and 70's based on your alias; and assuming that is true I struggle with your narrative. Those of us old enough to remember how perverts and "queer" folk were treated prior to the 1990s know that toleration would have been a dream for them compared to the outright romper stomping and GTFO of town treatment they took from everyone in society.

We literally just wrapped up LGBT "Q" + month. Q = Queer, and the point of everything about last month and the panels, discussions, wokeness was to recognize people who identify as that were treated in the past. There are all of these narratives around the abuse where these queer folk were supposedly ignored, covered up for, etc ... but at the same time roughly 5% of the population just held rallies and parades where part of the whole thing was to bring the other 95% of the population to task over how we brutalized and had absolutely no toleration for their existence let alone presence. Th