fred8033

I love falling asleep and waking up to those sounds. It's the best part of camping.

We should all write such letters. I have a few powerful stories that could bring you to tears ... some tears of how moving ... show tears from how funny. All good.

That's a good representation of a good scout leader. Be there for the scout, but get out of their hair unless it's a safety issue or the scouts need to be coached on how to treat others.

Cameras everywhere ... that's NCIS syndrome ... It varies place by place. usually targets property security. ... it's rarely about protecting people ... I live right next to a huge sports center. Two blocks away. It's a hybrid of school / local sports center. 20+ baseball diamonds. 20+ soccer fields. etc. ... I've walked it many times. It has some security cameras, but no live web cams. All cameras protecting the property. There is nothing specific to fields to track which adults are being creepy. I'm betting most of the time no-one is watching the cameras. I'm betting a week or a month later the video is gone. School security ... Our local school is secured during school hours, but the school is wide open during outside hours (extracurricular). I'm betting that's very common. But I agree ... times have changed. My sports teams traveled only by bus and locally. Our ski day trips had kids sneaking off to the chalet bar. ... My academic teams did travel overnight several times a year. When those teams traveled, the coach went and the bus driver served as the chaperone. They ate with us and stayed in the same hotel, but that was it.

Perhaps baseball has changed over the years. Security cameras ... I've never seen surveillance cameras as standard fair on the fields. Maybe when covering a large area like 5+ baseball fields, but never focused useful cameras. Out of public view ... 90% is on the field, but groups I was part of (35+ years ago) did regularly have pizza meetings, gatherings at houses, stopping by the coaches house, etc. .. Heck, it was always fun to bike to the coaches house to visit. Away overnight ... Sports have "traveling leagues". Many are overnights. Many are just day trips that take an hour+ to drive. Even non-traveling leagues can still have regular trips. Thinking sports is so different is not really true. Yes BSA has more opportunities, but sports have other risk modes ... such as large locker rooms with no adult restrictions ... yet 17,000 assaults over four years. You might be comparing Little League which is more like Cub Scouts with parents and lots of public view. Where as middle school and high school sports are more like Scouts USA. At that age, there are significant risks introduced in sports similar to being introduced in scouts.

Mock the idea if you want. IIHS and NTSM focus on failure analysis and recommend improvements. In engineering, we often model problem patterns with FMEAs. The key point is too often failures are repeated over and over again across time and across organizations. We should be step wise learning from such failures to improve youth protection. Over time, this could only help protect children. BSA has what I'd often call an extremely good starting basis for youth protection in the G2SS. Specific points could be added, removed and modified, but it's a good starting point. Yes there are other failure modes such as oversight, enforement, etc. That's where the analysis could really be beneficial. The key is I don't see such standards and planned protection in other organizations. Establishing such analysis and recommendations for youth servicing organizations seems like a very basic idea.

I actually think it's a very good idea. We have IIHS for automobiles. We have NTSB for air travel. It's not about corporations running our lives. It's about outside, independent analysis of failures that then produce recommendations. Call it the NYSB, national youth safety board. As people want to fly, people also want their kids to be active, experiencing life. As people can't monitor airlines for safety, people can't monitor all the organizations their kids help their kids. An independent feedback loop of how soceity protects kids is a very important idea.

It's a great idea. Removes the this group vs that group challenge.

While it would prolong smaller cases, it would allow BSA to continue and scouting in many, many states to continue. It might also serve as a crucible shedding light on a rather sleazy solicitation of victims that exploded cases from 14,000 to 85,000. Sometimes it's best to call the situation and force the details to be worked through instead of accepting the facts on the face.

WSJ: "The Boy Scouts put forth an alternative chapter 11 plan that would resolve sex-abuse liabilities for only the bankrupt national organization, while leaving local councils spread across the country open to thousands of legal claims." Considering the current deadlocked situation, this seems like a good idea. It would move things forward which is probably the most important point. It would also weed out legal actions that are fishing for money instead of helping victims and helping create a better future. Most importantly, it would let BSA national continue to survive so that locally scouting units and councils have a coordinated program.

The more I think about this ... the more I'd 100% support Philmont National Park created to be used by youth organizations throughout the nation. It matches many of the core goals of scouting and at the same time preserves a real national treasure. If Summit is not reserved via the recent donation, I'd 100% hope we could have the Summit National Park.

Your anger is understandable. People have to put their anger somewhere. Statistically, scouts is not that much different than other organizations. We've been thru this. I don't see the 1000 reference you are producing and don't accept the premise. You say 1000. So high school sports has 17,.000 over four years. That's over 4,000 per year in high school sports. Perhaps it is best for kids to stay home and do nothing.

It's a bankruptcy. A demarcation line. Liabilities before bankruptcy would be gone. There would be no compensation for victims of 2010-2020 abuse. For BSA to keep a fund, BSA would need to acknowledge a continued liability for debts previous to the bankruptcy. If funds need to be reserved, it would need to come from the current pending settlement reducing payments for the currently listed victims.

The cheap, quick and reliable background check is a very recent concept ... 2003 ??? Before that, it was fairly labor intensive and costly. And yes, it would have been very hard for an organization to know if it was the same person again.

Your right. It can't be avoided. It's shameful and disgusting, but it can't be avoided. People want to blame someone for larger failures and the actions of a specific person. ... My actual view is it's about deep pockets and lawyers going after dollars to fund their lifestyles.

I think that's a great example ... So the CO employees gave your troop a key to go into their private building where they had direct ownership and insured it recognizing their liability for problems that happened there (fire, physicals injury, etc) ... but took no responsibility to keep you safe? Even in the 1970s, if someone fell on my sidewalk because of ice, I'd be liable. It's a direct connection. So law enforcement was called too. Did anything result? Was the person charged with a crime? I suspect your experience was probably more successful than what others experienced in the 1970s / 1980s.

It's the same argument we see all the time Defund the police because of police abuse. We improve oversight and promote cameras. End football because of the number of players that die or are crippled for life. Okay we get helmets, protection pads and concussion protocols. Stop selling ibuprofen OTC because it can be used to make meth and meth destroys thousands of lives We recognize the good that things do and at the same time work to improve putting structures in place to mitigate the problems.

Don't discredit a valid argument. The immediate actions were crimes. The extending liability to the larger organization may or may not have have been established cased law. Extending treating "volunteers" as legal agents of the larger organization is something relatively new too. More definitely, mandatory reporting laws did not exist back then. When incidents happened, in almost every case I saw there were discussions on how it should be handled. Many, many times involving the parents. Often other volunteer leaders too. If the parents knew ... why did they not call the police ! If other parents knew, why did they not call the police ! Other times, police or other groups were involved too and still nothing happened. So now we are blaming legally someone who was not legally responsible to escalate and ignoring multiple levels of those directly connected. I don't see anyone saying BSA should be proud. I'm saying don't cast the stone unless you are free of guilt.

I agree. This is not theory. You were failed by church, schools, law enforcement, family, society, medical profession, etc. This stuff wasn't unknown. It's not about a theoretical failure. If you apply a measure of distance (interaction with the people), who's actually to blame. The "volunteer" SM committed the offense. He's the direct responsible person. The other "volunteer" leaders in the unit are the 2nd level. The church that sponsored your unit is then the next level. You physically met there. Their "employees" probably had a closer connection. Parents who suspected and dropped their own kids off. Local law enforcement. etc. This is not theory. Guilt is far and wide on this. Pretending BSA is uniquely at fault is shameful. I have a friend who's dad was as medical doctor. When someone got injured on the sports field, the last thing he wanted was for his son to point out his dad was a doctor because it created liability. That's what's happening with BSA. Huge holes throughout society. BSA tried to put protections in place and it is coming back to haunt them. BSA tried to do drive a mission that has a massively huge good is now erased because society has never handled abuse like this well.

And society has someone to blame for what is pretty much a society wide issue. It's about blame and labeling a group while pretending everyone else is better. Shame. It's a modern day bigotry and hatred.

That is a mix of truth. When you add "monthly", then yes. Remove monthly and keep un-related adults, remote locations, without cameras, without public supervision, overnights and now BSA is common with most youth serving organizations. Each organization has it's risk in different areas. Camps - Almost every youth servicing organization encourages one or more camps per year (YMCA, 4-H, girl camps, etc). Private times - most organizations have similar quantities of opportunities.

Same behaviors exist in many organizations. Sports. Church youth groups. And in 4-H. Maybe 4-H is truly special. I'm not a 4-H expert. But then again, you can find incidents as you indicated earlier. https://www.deseret.com/2007/7/4/20028174/4-h-leader-in-tooele-is-charged-with-child-sex-abuse https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abuse-charged-at-4-h-summer-camp/ I am creeped out with several 4-H YP postings that emphasize volunteers are not mandatory reporters ... in their area. States are inconsistent with rules. I'm just surprised 4-H did not say all 4-H volunteers will act as mandatory reporters and MUST report. Others documents use the words "can" and "should" instead of must. https://www.udel.edu/content/dam/udelImages/canr/pdfs/extension/4H/club-management/Child-Abuse-Neglect.pdf https://www.extension.iastate.edu/4h/files/page/files/Child Abuse Awareness and Reporting (2).pdf https://www.clemson.edu/extension/newberry/4h/files/volunteer-files/Vol_Handbook 18-19.pdf Failure to recognize this as a broad society based issue is the real risk to kids. Putting it on BSA is less about protecting kids and more about finding someone to blame.

Yeah. That was standard of care back in the 1970s and probably even sometime into the 1980s. People sitting loose in the back of trucks. Station wagons with kids sitting in back (without the rear chairs). No requirement for seat belts.

Can you provide reference to CDC recommendation?

Yeah. I'd be surprised if 4H is statistically different than BSA. Lots of youth. Lots of private opportunities. If 4H is perceived to be significantly different, I'd want to ask why? More women leaders than men? (real difference) ... Not tracking such information (data management) ... Left it to the public community to track / handle (not a real difference) Right now I'm leaning to say 4-H did it better by not handling it and just letting it go to an outside organization. The major part of this situation is BSA is tracking the ineligible volunteers. It could be viewed as added value, but right now it is a legal night mare. BSA would have been better off to let everything go external at the direction of parents and other volunteers. We're talking problems that were crimes or after the fact became crimes. We're talking problems where leaders recently became mandatory reporters but often were not at the time of the incident. BSA tracking incidents adds a gold mine to fish decades later for legal opportunities to exploit. I just don't accept that BSA was statistically that different than other organizations.