elitts

9 hours ago, ThenNow said:

MYCVA nailed it, per usual, but I need to respond even though he effectively made moot the discussion. 

Have you listened to the members of the TCC talk about this topic? Read what they’ve written? Do you think this isn’t a part of the bankruptcy - a big part for them/us - and something they only started thinking about on 2.18.20? Who hosted Michael Johnson on their weekly town hall? (Hint on that one. Not the Coalition.) I think you totally misapprehend the situation. Also, not a jab, but I don’t believe you’re a survivor who has thought about how and why you were able to be abused for 50+/- years, like some of the members of the TCC.

Oh, I'm certain an advisory group is important to the TCC and the establishment of one is a central part of what the TCC wants out of the bankruptcy.  Though what the TCC is looking for isn't so much an advisory group as a watchdog. (which I don't find fault with either)  What I was trying to get across is that even if we were looking at a working group that was everything the TCC desired, once that group is created, the bankruptcy and the acrimony involved, the struggles of the people who pushed for it... none of that should be relevant to operation of what is intended to be an independent advisory/watchdog group.

In a really simplistic way it's much like raising self-sufficient kids.  You put in tons of effort, try and shape them based upon your beliefs and past history, possibly bicker and fight with your co-parent, and then when they are ready they go off to live.  But once they do, the past history of the parents that shaped their strategies, the fights they may have had, the goals they may have had; none of those are really relevant to the ongoing life of the child. (if you did it right)

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And, I think you greatly underestimate the men you’re talking about and who I imagine you do not know. John Humphrey stated he has a new mission in life and it revolves around youth protection and advocacy for survivors. The BSA is a great place for these guys to start, given all their collective knowledge, poise and passion. I just think your missing it here. By a mile. 

Anyway, it’s a ruse and a distraction so it’s immaterial.

It's not a matter of underestimating specific people, its just knowing how people work.  Very very few people I've ever met would be able to set aside their animosity towards someone/thing that they viewed as having destroyed their life and work with them with an open mind and heart.  And frankly, those people I have met who could do so were so dispassionate that they'd be unlikely champions of anything in the first place.  I have no doubt that John Humphrey is sincere about his stated purpose in life, I just think expecting anyone who has been in his place to stop viewing everything related to the BSA with suspicion would be asking a miracle.

4 hours ago, ThenNow said:

Perhaps. However, if none of the TCC members are invited, that is neither wise nor easily explained away. Those 9 men were selected by the US Trustee to represent ALL BSA child sexual abuse survivors for a reason. That selection and appointment came after a fairly rigorous application and interview process. They have been intimately involved in this case since they were seated. Who, among survivors, knows more about the workings and machinations of this case? No one. Period. I also challenge anyone to say other survivors know or understand more than they do, collectively, about BSA youth protection and YPT. Also, they are the survivors who were instrumental in forwarding and insisting upon the non-monetary YP and YPT demands. My honest opinion, and the media has assisted with this, is the Coalition has co-opted and hijacked TCC work and initiative for their own benefit. They are assuming roles and achievements they should not be granted and have not accomplished (at least not on their own, as they claim).

They were selected to represent survivors as one side of a fairly contentious bankruptcy proceeding.  But nothing about the "Survivor Advisory working group" is directly related to bankruptcy other than the fact that something of it's nature was desired by the TCC.  Knowledge of the workings and machinations of the case isn't relevant to what the group should be working on and shouldn't really be viewed as an asset in my mind.

Now I'll grant you that their knowledge of BSA Youth Protection probably IS a benefit, but if it were me, even if the coalition didn't exist, when it came time to fill positions the actual members of the TCC wouldn't be anywhere on my list of desirable candidates.  Not because I'd be looking for stooges that would let me get away with anything, but because I truly don't think any actively involved victim could come out of 2 years of emotionally taxing contention in a bankruptcy case and be able to switch to a "lets work together to make it happen" role instead.  I can see letting the TCC pick some of the survivor members of a group, but not take the positions themselves.

3 hours ago, fred8033 said:

  I like it because some parents chase bling way out of balance of others.  Others just want to have their kids active.  It's hard to balance things.  Our pack at one time had pack buying rank and the parents buy the others awards.  

LOL!  You aren't kidding!  I remember my first awards night as Asst. Cubmaster.  We had one new Tiger getting awarded like 22 belt-loops, 3 months after joining; with the average for every other scout being about 3.  Cubmaster's comment after handing them to the scout was "Wow, mom and dad you sure did a great job of signing his book!"

The next meeting we had a conversation with all the parents while the scouts were out playing a game about what it means to complete requirements.  In particular about how "Oh, we all did this once as a family 3 years ago" is not the same as completing the requirements him/herself.

11 hours ago, Muttsy said:

Mods, I’m mad. You killed the brightest star in this forum’s constellation. I don’t care what you have to do. Groveling is a start. Get him back. Or maybe it was your intention all along to snuff out his voice. 
No disrespect to the other posters but I think I speak for everyone. 
 

This time is critical and desperately needs high altitude analysis. 

I initiated the last action against CynicalScouter because he had become abusive towards others, was posting replies that were entirely irrelevant to the comments he was replying to and was doing so in such volume that it was functionally the same as spamming the forum.  I'm not certain what triggered the change in his posting from the fairly cool and concise analysis that he had been offering but no forum moderator can allow someone to behave that way and retain any legitimacy as being impartial.

I even reached out to him via direct message when the 1 week pre-approval began and explained that it was temporary and that we were not attempting to make him change his message in any way and asked him to continue participating in a civil and thread relevant manner, but he declined.

However, I know that he has been absent for several months in the past and returned so there is still a chance that he'll return at some point.

14 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

8-12 members of the Coalition.  I’m a BSA supporter but I wouldn’t trust the Coalition to represent victims well.  
 

Let’s see the names they add before we say this group is useful.  If they add only survivors who support the plan, I question the entire proposal and expect it is nothing more than a marketing ploy to try to get votes as KR has not been able to double the cash as he committed.   

If the group starts talking about the case in any way, I'd become skeptical really fast, but I certainly wouldn't expect them to be putting people into a working group that are openly antagonistic to the BSA (for whatever reason).

12 hours ago, MattR said:

Is it just me or did anyone else get the vibe that this is advertising for the plan?

TCC not at all part of this. Duration ends after voting is over. Regular meetings and probably regular reports. It will turn into the organization that the bsa and coalition agreed upon. Again, no TCC. No information about voting. While there is a fixed number of survivors on this board the bsa side has "at least 6".

Disappointed again but still not surprised.

Why disappointed?  

The TCC isn't even technically an independent organization it's just a temporary collection of people involved in a bankruptcy with a sole focus on the bankruptcy; I wouldn't expect any activities occurring outside the bankruptcy to include such a non-entity until such time as there is a likely agreement and the group becomes likely to have ongoing authority based upon the discharge. 

As far as the group size goes, I don't think you are seeing everything that is being said there.  The group size is 15-20 with 8-12 survivors.  So survivors will compose 40%-60% of the group with the remainder being made up either BSA officials or outside experts.  I'd fully expect there to be some manner of independent CSA expert added to the group so that leaves 6-11 spots for BSA officials; so it's not like they can pack the group with sycophants to drown out the survivors.  But the important point here is that the stated plan specifically names the positions that will be a part of the group rather than leaving it open.  So you will have an advisory group with either a large minority or an outright majority survivor membership with direct access to:

The CEO, the Chair of BSA's Safe Scouting Support Committee, the Executive Vice President and Youth Development Officer, the Director of Membership Standards, the Chair of BSA's Audit and Risk Management Standing Committee of the Executive Board

Essentially they'll have all the levers of power relevant to Youth Protection within the BSA sitting in the room with them.  In less desirable circumstances you'd see a working group like this made up of survivors and then various executive assistants or assistant VPs and you'd just be hoping that any recommendations actually made it in front of the top brass.

On 10/29/2021 at 2:09 PM, johnsch322 said:

 

Another reason not to vote for the current plan:

Press Release | Press Releases | Newsroom | #childabuse | #children | #kids - Parent Security Online

A proposed federal law for no SOL in civil cases of Child Abuse.

Except that the federal government has no jurisdiction over the Statutes of Limitations in Child Abuse cases in state courts.  Even if this passes, it would only be relevant to cases that could be filed in federal court.

7 hours ago, yknot said:

You do see that you are doing the exact same thing? 

You are unilaterally making up language on your own here that is not in this article. I quoted the article exactly, aside from punctuation, in my comment. You are claiming because the statement disagrees with what your interpretation of what one on one means that it must be... wrong? ...  So this article is somehow wrong on that but right on other things that agree with what you think? 

The portion of the article I amended I did so because the author is evidently making a misstatement.  He says ["no one on one" specifically states that adult/youth interaction is not appropriate without another adult"]  The term "specifically states" is used to indicate a direct quote.  However, there is no portion of the G2SS that says what he claims to be quoting; therefore I looked for the closest possible piece of text and found a very near match, one that is in keeping with the rest of the author's points.  The only other explanation that makes sense is that the author was referring to rules regarding social media/phone/internet interactions where the G2SS now explicitly states that another adult must be included on EVERYTHING.

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The below statement, also from the same article, contradicts your interpretation of alone:

Question: One adult with two or more scouts. 

BOS response: That depends on the situation. For example, traveling to and from program activity, scouting meetings, and especially outside of scouting it is not a good practice to have one adult with two scouts, as the sexual abuser can and will use this as an opportunity to have singular access to scouts. 

Clearly, BOS considers travel, scout meetings, and outside of scouting situations in which an adult can be considered "alone" with a scout even if another scout is present. Clearly, BSA seems to contradict itself.  But if you don't go with the most definitive language on the topic, that's an awful lot like a loophole.  

Most everyone over the age of 9 or 10 knows the difference between being told "This is not allowed" and "This is not a good practice".  I'm not sure if you just can't tell the difference between the wording or if you are just trying to go with the gist of these statements and getting it wrong.  So just to make it super duper clear.  When an authority figure is asked "Is X allowed?"  if the person responds by saying "NO.".  Then that action is against the rules.  If they respond by saying "We Recommend", "We Suggest", "We Prefer" or "It's not a good practice", then they are saying "It's technically allowed".

And just to confirm that this person BOS is quoting was indeed offering "best practice" advice rather than a "rule", here is what the BSA says first hand about travelling in a car:

36 minutes ago, yknot said:

One adult leading multiple scouts on a hike IS breaking the rule.

 Try reading all of the article instead of ignoring the parts that don't support your position.  You are currently arguing that a lone adult is breaking the rules even though the author references THIS EXACT SITUATION by saying:

What about if there are only two adults present on a campout of eight Scouts, and one group wants to go hiking while the other stays at camp to fish?

While Youth Protection policies don’t expressly forbid it, it’s not the recommended approach because of health and safety concerns.

36 minutes ago, yknot said:

This is what I'm reading in this article:

"While similar to two deep leadership in some ways, "no one on one" specifically states that adult/youth interaction is not appropriate without another adult -- preferably a youth protection trained leader -- being present." Obviously, this article predates the registered leader requirement. 

That's either poor phrasing or a typo.  I inserted the missing text for you.  ["no one-on-one" specifically states that one-on-one (inserted text) adult/youth interaction is not appropriate without another adult...]  Since several points earlier in the article explicitly state that there ARE times when adult/youth interactions are appropriate as long as another scout is there.

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There is also this from the FAQs on scouting.org: 

"Adults should not be alone with scouts who are not their children." 

You understand what "alone" means right? 

So, by definition,  if multiple scouts are present, an adult is not "alone" with with any scout.

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"Notwithstanding the minimum leadership requirements, age and program appropriate supervision must always be provided." Program appropriate is two deep and no one on one. It is impossible to provide two deep and no one on one unless two adults are in the same physical proximity as a scout or scouts

No, that's not at all what they are talking about.   "Program appropriate supervision" means that you have someone knowledgeable enough about the subject matter to provide appropriate supervision.  ie: a Lifeguard when swimming, a climbing instructor when climbing.

"Age appropriate supervision" means having the correct ratio of adults to youth depending on the age of the scouts.  ie: Lions and Tigers must have a parent/guardian present.  Cubs at summer camp must have a youth:adult ratio of no more than X scouts per adult.

You can tell that this is what they are talking about because "Program appropriate supervision" must vary depending on the program and "age appropriate supervision" must vary depending on the age of the scouts.  Otherwise they are using meaningless descriptors to talk about the types of supervision needed.

3 hours ago, yknot said:

 No one on one requires that two adults be present. If safety alone was the consideration, then being alone in an open door room with a scout or scouts in a building where other scout activities are taking place would not violate YP, but it does.  Furthermore, from a liability standpoint, it seems more than problematic.  

"No one-on-one contact" has NEVER required two adults be present for anything.  Here's the Scouting.com article that explicitly describes the purposes of the two rules and states clearly that you do not need 2 adults supervising at all times, as long as they are present at the event.  It even explicitly states that while sending one adult off to hike with a group of scouts isn't the preferred option, it's not a violation of the rules.

3 hours ago, T2Eagle said:

Being alone in a room with other scouts where other scout activities are taking place is not a violation of YPT.  If there is a troop meeting, and the scouts break out in patrols and one adult is in a room with each patrol that's fine.  The rule is "no one on one contact".  You never want to be alone, that is just yourself, and one scout.  But if you are the only adult but with multiple scouts at a scout activity that satisfies the two deep leadership rules, that is there are other leaders present but not necessarily in the room with you that's OK.

One-on-one contact between adult leaders and youth members is prohibited both inside and outside of Scouting.

• In situations requiring a personal conference, the meeting is to be conducted with the knowledge and in view of other adults and/or youth

Clearly, if you can have a personal conference that can be held "in view of other youth", you can be in a group setting with a group of youth.  The same logic applies to explain being able to drive a number, but never a single, scout (except your own child).

Just wanna be clear, being the only adult with multiple scouts satisfies "No one-on-one contact" not "Two Deep Leadership".

45 minutes ago, yknot said:

That's the loophole that people use. I think some common sense has to apply when you have an individual adult walking over to the health office or some other such task. On the other hand, people use that loophole to have only one adult in the camp site or to go off on a hike or take a bunch of kids to a swimming hole, etc., The rationale will be that there are "dozens" of registered adults present and the entire camp facility is the activity. The issue with the 72 hour rule is that it can inadvertently result in an unregistered adult being that sole individual supervising the camp site. I think if you are engaged in any kid related task, you need two adults. Not glimpsed walking through the trees or somewhere in the vicinity but where the kids and other adult are. Most abuse happens at either summer camp or on camp outs so if you want to apply stringent YPT where it will do the most good, do it there. I am frequently incredulous at the people who will leap out of an open door troop meeting if they find themselves 50 feet away but alone with a scout or two in a room for 30 seconds, but will be belligerent about taking a group of scouts for a day hike at summer camp because "camp is the activity". If YPT is supposed to be based on actual safety measures, the logic in those situations does not track. Then we are simply doing YPT for show, not effect, if it's somehow OK to be hiking alone with kids at summer camp.  IMO.

That's not a loophole, that's the designed purpose of the rule.  Two-Deep leadership is about emergency response, not protecting kids from the adults.  You regularly conflate these even though they serve separate purposes.  Most critically, Two-Deep Leadership does NOT require that the 2 adults be within sight of each other.  If one is sleeping and one is awake, Two-Deep is maintained.  If one is running to grab a soda at the trading post (a minute or three away) and one is in camp, Two-Deep Leadership is maintained.  If one runs to the store 20 minutes away, Two-Deep has not been maintained because the second leader is not accessible in the case of an emergency.

You can "think" there should be two adults present and watching at any kid related task, but that's not now, nor has it ever been the rule, and your thinking that's the way it should be doesn't mean everyone else is exploiting a loophole.

I will grant though that a hike can be a grey area depending on where the hike goes and how far the scouts would be from help in an emergency.

With my old pack we ended up finding that being flexible on how things got paid helped a lot.  We ended up allowing Paypal (they pay the fee) or Venmo or Cash App (I think the treasurer just collected payment and then transferred it to the troop).  Once we did that, it helped a ton.  There's a lot of people for whom just remembering to bring the checkbook or cash is the biggest issue.

Also, think about a better fundraiser.  My pack used to sell christmas wreaths.  We bought them for $11, sold them for $20.  And we sold about 1100 per year.  I did put together a prize package for the kids and we had a roller skating pizza party for everyone who sold. (though everyone was invited in the end)  I think my expenses ran to about $1200 off our $9900 profit.  My troop has also had good luck with selling Lilys for Easter.

18 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

We actually already don't allow single adults at our campsite.  If you are at our campsite, you need a 2nd adult present.  We identified that years ago as a potential risk (many years before I became SM).  We also tell scouts that they need to find a buddy when coming back to camp.

Do you allow a single adult to go anywhere with groups of scouts?  Or is camp your concern because there are private places (tents) where someone could attempt to get a scout alone?  A troop requiring 2 adults in camp is a more achievable goal than requiring adults always be paired for everything.  We always have 4 adults at summer camp, and try desperately to have 6, but sometimes 4 is the best we can do for some days; and only being able to accomplish 2 things at once because the adults need to remain paired would be a problem.

I know the way we (or I at least) handle a single scout straggling into camp is by either removing myself if I'm not doing anything useful, or simply telling them to "go over there and stay there" until other folks return.  A nutcase could still argue I was grooming a scout from 70 feet away by sharpening tomahawks while the scout tried to get a bottle of water to land bottom down, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

18 hours ago, yknot said:

What you see as a dream is the only way we attend camp. A lot of units somehow don't follow the two adult rule at summer camp, I think because it is not expressly ordered by BSA, which is to my mind a problem. Perhaps it's no coincidence that many of the abuse cases seem to be linked to summer camps. 

You mean Two-Deep Leadership?  I'm not sure how you could not comply with that rule at summer camp given the fact that there are literally dozens of registered adults all over the place.  Even if you are a single scoutmaster with a troop, by showing up to summer camp you would automatically be in compliance with the Two-Deep requirement.  After all, "Summer Camp" is the activity, not "my campsite".

2 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

How do you determine this?  Kids don't report issues for possibly decades.  Do you wait until 20 years from now, see that a large number of girls were sexually abused in our program and realize we let a someone in due to the 72 hour rule?  

I  think we need to look at outside experts and they are indicating this is an issue/concern.  I would rather not wait to find out this was an issue and we did nothing.

I would imagine you'd need to go back through existing case files and try and determine retroactively whether having that rule in place would have had an impact.  If you find cases over the last 30 years where some unregistered adult (who would have failed a background check) abused scouts in the first 71 hours of being on an overnight, you have evidence that the rule needs to be changed.

I apologize because I'm sure I could go back and dig up this info, but I dread the amount of time it would take.

What was the estimate of time-barred vs non-barred claims and what does the averaged $/victim look like if all the time barred claims are figured at the "quick-pay" amount?

14 hours ago, MYCVAStory said:

Don't know if you saw the last TCC Town Hall.  Kennedy took the online YPT training and besides it saying that 25% of abuse is youth-on-youth, when the former head of Youth Protection who has seen the reports says it's actually 50%, he was allowed to take the test and get his YPT certificate without completing an entire module on bullying.  I'm just tired of shaking my head over the constant breakdowns in youth protection.  "$h*t happens" isn't good enough when it comes to the safety of the nation's youth.

Personally, I don't think bullying should be included with the CSA training anyway.  If you give people two different areas to think about, they'll default to thinking the most about the one they view as "most likely" or most common and give much less attention to the other one. 

1 minute ago, johnsch322 said:

I think I understand what you are saying but can we agree to having zero tolerance for CSA. Please. 

Absolutely.  Where I get hesitant with zero tolerance is in areas where they violated the letter of the policy but not the spirit.  For example, I'm the equipment coordinator for our troop.  I said to the QM and Asst. "Hey, lets go out to the trailer to do something" then we headed off with me in the lead.  But on the way, the Asst. (unbeknownst to me) decided to go to the bathroom and I didn't notice cause I was lost in my own thoughts about what we were about to organize.  I was out there alone, in the dusk, with just one scout for a good 5-10 minutes before I realized there wasn't enough noise outside the trailer for 2 scouts and checked and I sent him back to wait till the other guy was ready.

Now, a rational look at it would make it clear I hadn't intended to violate no one-on-one, but in a "zero tolerance world" that would result in me being referred to the SE as a YP violator and then who knows from there.

But if you were talking about someone clearly attempting to violate YP rules by say, inviting a single scout over to his house without anyone else being present, I'm all for kicking them out and even referring them to the police for good measure.  Regardless of whether or not any abuse happens.

11 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

I think it just means knowing which building is the shower house...at least that's what it seems to be for our Scouts.

We incentivize the behavior we want...take a shower on Wednesday, get an ice cream!  And yes, for some we have to define "shower"... but never "ice cream"

That's actually a brilliant idea.  and it's definitely happening next summer at our camp.  Maybe on Tuesday and Friday (for the car ride home).

2 hours ago, johnsch322 said:

And what is wrong with having zero tolerance?  Do you have a figure above zero that would be tolerable?  would you be able to get a room together of 100 youth and tell 1,2,3,4, or 5 of them that they would be sexually abused but that is within our tolerance levels.  Could you stand in front of me and say sorry about your abuse but it is within what we expected for abuse levels?

You are talking about something different.  Zero Tolerance Youth Protection policies refer to requirements that any and all infractions be handled officially and penalized fully, regardless of circumstances.  The problem with policies of that nature is that you pretty much always end up with innocent people getting caught up in formal actions over unintentional mistakes.  Examples abound but include things like school suspensions or expulsions for forgetting you have a jackknife in your coat pocket after a weekend camping or kids being penalized for using "finger guns" when playing on the playground.

Completely different from having "zero tolerance for CSA".

Normally I wouldn't discuss user issues, but given his profile pic and signature I'm going to make an exception:

Regardless of the impression given by his profile picture and signature line, CynicalScouter is NOT banned from the forum, or even blocked from posting.  He merely received a 1 week penalty that requires his posts be approved by a moderator before they are visible as a result of posting behavior that was un-scoutlike and very near abusive/spamming.

Normally I wouldn't discuss user issues, but given his profile pic and signature I'm going to make an exception:

Regardless of the impression given by his profile picture and signature line, CynicalScouter is NOT banned from the forum, or even blocked from posting.  He merely received a 1 week penalty that requires his posts be approved by a moderator before they are visible as a result of posting behavior that was un-scoutlike and very near abusive/spamming.

Alright folks, I know the issues get emotional but we need to stay focused on the conversation specific to this thread.  If someone says something in this thread, reply in the context of this thread, please do not turn a comment here into a generic response to a user's previous postings or the conversations happening in other threads. 

I've hidden a bunch of posts, and I'll be going back and hiding a few more.  If you think I've hidden something unfairly, please email the moderator staff and other eyes can review my decision.

11 minutes ago, johnsch322 said:

So guess what friends having curious private discussions is not sex abuse and I am 99.9% sure that no one has called that as such.  But this is what I mean by minimalizing by alluding to curious private discussion as being part of a 50% figure.  

In a world where a large chunk of the US population still doesn't think kids should be taught anything about sex other than "Don't do it" I am certain there's parents who would assume the ONLY way such a conversation could happen would be if their "precious innocent child" was having knowledge of sex forced upon them by another youth.  This is how we get prosecutions for rape when 13-15 year olds are having consensual sex.