vol_scouter

So who paid for the Summit? The pledges were commonly to be paid by a life insurance policy. The BSA had to borrow the money.

The Summit was purchased with borrowed money that has never been fully paid off. That has been some of the debate about having the Summit. The BSA still owes a large amount of money.

The Summit is encumbered.

Assuming that the Hartford and other companies have a maximum payout, then that should determine what they pay. I know that attorneys have made insurance companies pay more but that is wrong. J. P. Morgan loaned money for the Summit, there should be no lawsuit. Once again, it is wrong. The CO's had agreements that the BSA was to provide insurance, suing them is wrong. Being wrong may have nothing to do with anything. Our justice system seems to have little to do with justice and seems broken.

We are all guessing as to the limits of coverage. I could just as easily posit that the maximum is $650 M and they are offering the maximum. My point is that no matter how much the attorneys want to get enormous pay checks, the companies involved have a finite amount of money. The BSA has little more to offer. It is giving up its building in Irving, Texas, supply (which makes several million dollars every year) with its buildings and stock, oil and gas holdings, the Norman Rockwell paintings, and other things. The high adventure bases are valued at about $60 M for Philmont, Sea Base, and Northern Tier whereas the $350 M for the Summit looks good until one considers that J. P. Morgan has a lien for the loan to purchase it that is probably more than $300 M. So the BSA made a reasonable offer. The attorneys are disappointed but it is not a bad offer based upon its resources.

Wikipedia has the operating income of the Hartford Insurance company to be $2.82 B so the $650 M is about 23% of that. Seems like a reasonable offer to me.

So the NC could liquidate while the charters are in force. As stated before, some states will contest the transfer of assets. Councils could contest the transfer of funds since the NC had to liquidate. Each council is an independent 501(c)3 corporation that could quit offering the BSA program but continue to serve youth. While BSA items could be expected to be sent to the NC, other assets could be used on the new youth programs. The LC Executive Boards can make these changes. Such strategies may or may not be ultimately be successful but would require time to work through.

So how can assets from a Local Council (LC) go to the National Council (NC) if the NC has been liquidated? That seems nonsensical. Another point is that some states may contest assets going to the NC if the charter is not renewed. Mine might be one. Can the judge in this bankruptcy case actually have the authority to link the assets of a LC to the NC if the state disagrees. Not trying to be argumentative since I am not an attorney but wonder if these are not impediments.

My understanding is that the BSA employed the insurors and applied it to the membership who paid dues to the BSA. So I would think that such a settlement would allow the insurance companies to pay now and absolve their responsibilities. Just my opinion for what it is worth on this topic.

Without a national council to cover liability issues and the unpopularity of Scouting with many people, I am not o certain. It might return in the future but my opinion is that it dies for now.

My fear is that all of this is occurring in the backdrop of the tremendous membership loss that is hopefully driven mostly by the covid pandemic. This new course of action will likely force a new model because chartered organizations will withdraw swiftly. Currently, that will quickly tank membership and lead to collapse of the movement. Even if a new model is swiftly put into place, meeting sites will become hard to find. Though lawsuits could stretch out for some time, I foresee relatively rapid failure of councils if the CO's withdraw and there is no place to meet. Hopefully, this is an overly gloomy vision but I believe that kosnoff will be successful.

What seems 'stupid' with our 2021 eyes seemed commonplace in the 1960's and 1970's. One should not judge people's actions in the distant past unless they consider the norms of the day. In the mid 1960's, my parents bought a Ford Falcon. It did not come with seat belts but my father had after market ones added (that in no manner matched the car) because he sold insurance and felt that seatbelts were important. Should all the people who went to the showrooms and saw no cars equipped with seatbelts and knew of no one who had a car equipped with seatbelts as all stupid? Or should we understand the norms of the day?

The CDC has setup NCANDS: About NCANDS | The Administration for Children and Families (hhs.gov) This is a voluntary database that the BSA has been lobbying to make mandatory for youth serving organizations. It would provide cross organizational tracking and would obviate the need for the BSA to maintain a separate system as they would report incidents to this database. The BSA and its consultants have supported the establishment of NCANDS as well as supporting mandatory reporting.

Excuse me if I were not clear. The CDC is now saying that youth serving organizations should keep a list of people who are thought or known to be child abusers. The BSA di it decades ago. The BSA spent considerable time and money to engage the national leaders (not Scouters, nationally recognized leaders in child abuse) to develop the current Youth Protection Training (YPT). This has made the BSA once again the leader in protecting youth. In the previous thread, the Department of Education sponsored a review of the literature published in 2017 entitled: A Case Study of K–12 School Employee Sexual Misconduct: Lessons Learned from Title IX Policy Implementation. The first sentence of the report states: “An estimated 10% of K–12 students will experience sexual misconduct by a school employee by the time they graduate from high school.” According to Fast Facts: Back to school statistics (372) (ed.gov) [https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372], there will be 50.7 M K-12 students in public schools in 2020-2021 school year or 56.4 M total which means over 5 million abused (clearly, an estimate as every year children are graduating high school and others are reaching kindergarten but it should be a good approximation). The BSA reports that there have been 130 million participants in Scouting since its founding and there are 83,000 persons who claim to have been abused. While my personal belief is that this number has a significant number of claims that would not stand rigorous scrutiny, let us accept the number and roundup to 100,000 to account for old cases never reported. Then the incidence of abuse in Scouting since 1910 is 83,000/130,000,000 = 0.000638 = 0.0638%. Comparing 0.0638% of Scouts to 10% of schoolchildren would argue a much less risky environment in Scouting. Scouting has been and is the leader in youth protection. Many other organizations have done far less well. That does not excuse any abuse but the BSA is a leader. The plaintiffs attorneys wish to paint the BSA in a poor light even though it is not correct. It is part of the legal crisis that the nation faces.

Please inform the CDC that what they are now recommending to prevent abuse in youth organizations is an incompetent effort. It would seem that the BSA was decades ahead of the times. It seems to me that the problem is with the manner in which the legal system handles such things.

That is nonsense! If no local councils, then no Scouts and camps for them to use. If National didn't value the local council highly, they could have pushed the liability down to the councils from the beginning. Almost all abuse has occurred in the councils save a few possible incidents at a high adventure base. So the national council has tried to protect the local councils where the crimes occurred.

The local councils are independent 501(c)3 corporations with independent executive boards. If the BSA liquidates, the local councils could no longer be chartered by the BSA but could certainly continue to serve youth in some manner and would not force a liquidation of the local council. How that happens will depend upon who owns the BSA intellectual property. As to the agreement that assets of a local council that ceases to exist is also dependent upon the state in which the council resides. In my home state, the state maintains that the BSA will not be allowed to be given the local council assets but they will stay in the state. Whether that is common or even if it would be successful in preventing the assets to leave the state. This is all to say that the local councils are independent and that everything is complex.

I cannot see any advantage to the BSA to hold the meetings at a BSA facility other than some possible cost savings. The TCC wants to force the sale of the high adventure properties so why show the property off? For someone who was molested on BSA property, it is not a good place and could garner bad publicity too. Hold it in a neutral site.

Different databases. Your local council records could have been destroyed as in a fire or expensive and difficult to access. Our council had a fire a long time ago and some records were lost. Like most councils, older records are stored with a records storage company and accessing those records takes time and costs the council. Some councils absorb such costs while others charge. They may have a policy about the reasons that are considered reasonable to access records. The paper record keeping before computer databases is known in general to have more issues with completeness. The rank of Eagle Scout is awarded by the National Council, not the local council. An Eagle rank advancement is filed by the local council to the National Council who verifies dates, ranks, et cetera. National keeps its own record of Eagles and, to my knowledge, those records have never been destroyed. Most (all, I believe) of the National records were digitized some time ago. So requesting membership in NESA was easy to verify. Providing local information, more difficult.

The BSA has stated ~130 M individuals have been Scouts since the founding in 1910. The only number that we have are the claimants now as there were few cases before recent years so that number is low. Also, the BSA number is likely not accurate but should be close to correct. So for ~100,000 claimants out of 130,000,000 participants, the ratio is 0.000769 or ~0.08 %. While no level if abuse is acceptable, one must realize that the BSA has served many youth and that the prevalence of reported abuse is very small.

Neither is the correct answer. CBCs are contracted through a company who specializes in this process.

Strange, the CDC is now recommending exactly what the BSA did in creating the Ineligible Volunteers File created about 100 years ago. So volunteer XYZ suddenly is no longer coming to the unit meeting and it is published that someone was removed. People link the two together. XYZ actually had health issues and then sues. That is not the way. A Clery style report, maybe end of the year that is available makes sense.

It has to be a balance between national experts and wisdom from the field. The people whom I know working in this area are trying to take the best lessons from all without making a mistake. All want no children to ever be abused.

CS, if it makes you feel better then they were told that they will leave Scouting forever, that they are banned from all Scouting for life, and that they cannot participate in our council or any other council or any unit. That is what they were told - it was definite and clear. Since people are removing from Scouting for YP violation accusations, it is not reported outside a very small group at the council. It is not right to create a bad reputation for someone if it did not rise to the level of a crime. So volunteers likely are not aware of people removed from Scouting. I have been involved in my council since ~1990 and have been on the Executive Board since 1994. So use whatever label that makes you feel better. Sorry for stating it nicely.

So first thing is to understand that those of us in the field may believe that we have the absolute best method to do something. However, people on a national level have a broader and more in depth knowledge and can get more in depth Health and Safety and Legal information. Also, the BSA had help and contributions from the nation's experts on YP. They are the same people who the CDC and others call upon for advice on YP. So the BSA has what the experts believe to be the very best YP program available. That said, the folks at the BSA and the volunteers whose committee governs are evaluating the program (at least they were last November). Why YP was not part of the plan, I could only guess so will not provide an uninformed opinion.