yknot

And boy. Those relatives.

I didn't take it personally at all -- no apologies necessary. I share what you are feeling. We are all so activated by current events, even the more more level headed among us. It is a struggle to discuss things and not instantly snap into reactive mode. I'm churned up every day despite not wanting to be and trying very hard to hit the pause and edit buttons.

I don't know what you're reacting to but I haven't seen much specific to scouting other than some COs that are hyper concerned about liability who may require it, at least of their adult leaders. I know some summer camps have required all staff to be vaccinated this summer. Have not seen anything yet about kids. This is just something we're all going to have to navigate in various settings from work to travel to schools and other activities as we (hopefully) head out of the pandemic. Just as I think anyone has a right to be vaccinated or not, I also think individual entities whether businesses

It depends on who is asking. HIPAA only applies in the healthcare setting and it merely protects against providers sharing your medical records against your will. An employer, school, business, or anyone who isn't affiliated with those entities can legally ask your vaccine status. They as of now can't mandate it, but they can make decisions based on whatever information you supply on whether or not they want to hire, serve, or admit you. In other threads it has been discussed that while BSA may not require a vaccine for scouting participation, a CO certainly can based on what they think their

Only N95 masks provide near total protection to the wearer but other masks depending on type provide some protection to the wearer ranging from 10% to 70%. Significant enough to help cut down on transmission and infection, especially when the ambient viral load is decreased by others also wearing masks.

I was about to click thumbs up on your post until I got to your comment about masks. That point is disputed. This is anecdotal, but I regularly monitor several high school district Covid dashboards as part of doing a regional Covid update. There have been multiple outbreaks among high school sports teams. There were several outbreaks in fall sports on teams that were practicing solely outdoors but had some degree of close contact, e.g., football. Keep in mind, no one is using the locker rooms this is just kids on a field and masked until it's time to run. When the winter season started and ma

Compared to other youth activities, scouting takes a massive volunteer effort. At the troop level, parents are committed to getting their scouts to Eagle so that sometimes motivates them to step up. At the cub level, the parents aren't yet that invested. Our membership decline has been drastic. Many people are expecting it to spring back up after Covid. I am skeptical. As you state, many families simply are not wanting to return to pre pandemic levels of activity and something has to give. Sports are easier to participate in and administer. Local nature centers and park departments also

Thank you. This is an excellent post. We have some great, very informative commentators on here but this is the best explanation I have seen of the insurance side of the equation.

Are you referring to the 700,000 scouts she cited? I believe that is a reference to what looks like the latest membership figures that were posted here a couple of weeks ago. It shows total membership of cubs and scouts is about 750,000. It seems numbers dropped a bit more in 2021 after all the paperwork cleared.

Look at the program. Other than troop level camping, little of it requires remote wilderness locations. Not that I like that, but you could easily use an urban base to funnel youth into more outdoor programming. Most urban outdoors oriented programs do the majority of their preparation in urban settings before they head out for camping adventures. We have several by me. I'm on the fringe of an urban area and there are millions of square feet of vacant warehouse space available for lease, including with parking lot areas. Brownfield areas as well that could be developed with an urban par

I don't see how any Chapter 11 reorg plan that doesn't seriously address YP issues going forward can be valid. Without better standards it's clear any continuing scouting entity will face additional claims and be unable to pay anything meaningful into any future settlement trust let alone survive. I have also not seen where any plans have addressed the issue of affordable liability insurance. Who will insure any kind of scouting endeavor post bankruptcy reorg at an affordable rate? The assumption that there will be 1 million scouters in 2025 doesn't address this issue. What if registration fee

Not to answer for UK, but I would imagine it was because it was a time when you only needed one dedicated adult to work with at risk youth. Couldn't happen today without paid staff. I know in the mists of time BSA tried to run some urban programs and I don't recall what happened. What I do know is that present day other youth organizations run showcase programs in urban areas and there is kind of an existing model. They know they can't replicate it in every area, but they pick a few high profile places and invest money in staff and facilities to run the program at those limited sites. At

The part of the BP quote that I liked was that religion is simply inherent in scouting in the way scouts are encouraged to live. In that vein, I think religion can continue to have a role in scouting but without beating people over the head with it all the time. I don't think, for example, that every cub scout rank has to have a core duty to God requirement. It's repetitive and overkill. It ought to be an elective that religious COs can encourage vs. something everyone has to do all five (?) years. To me the DOR is irrelevant because if you are following the scout oath and law then you are liv

For some reason your post quote says I said that, when I didn't. It was Qwazse. I agree with you. While on the one hand those 84,000 claims may represent the best hard data we have about incidence in scouting, the number is still very problematic. Some claims may indeed be fraudulent but it is also likely that there are many, many more incidents where people did not submit claims. It's partly why I don't understand why this discussion keeps popping up other than in the most general terms because the only thing we can say with honesty about youth abuse in scouting is that it happened a lot.

I've said such studies are useful for general opining, questions, etc., but you are discussing them in ways that position them as fact as you just did above. For example, the .07% figure is not a useful number for comparison. I believe it's an extrapolation you or someone else here came up with by doing some math based on claims and total historical membership. That is not valid because quite a large percentage of that membership is dead. If that came out of a study somewhere, though, please correct me. I think it's important to be very careful when discussing the scope of the youth abus

That's the takeaway point that I am getting as well and that is why I think this line of thought is so dangerous for the future health of any post bankruptcy BSA. It won't get another chance to get youth protection wrong. Pulling out studies and statistics that aren't comparable or are questionable in defense is simply not helpful. And the oblique message to past victims and any future victims that, despite the terrible things that happened to you, you were and are safer in scouting than anywhere else is just, well, ludicrous. That message would land DOA with most prospective new parents.

Qwazse, the global study is irrelevant for consideration in the US. You simply can't compare global experiences in different cultures with US experiences. We don't have child brides at the age of 12 or 13 or female circumcision. We don't have manhood rituals for boys at 13, etc., etc. If the truth is that we cannot conduct such studies in the US because of liability issue, that doesn't mean we get to make stuff up based on what we "think".

Thank you. More information is always good. However, I will point out that, once again, this report is extrapolating data from other secondary sources. It is just collating responses from three separately conducted surveys done among different age groups in different years. Even combined, it is a very small data set. Some studies like these are useful when they can provide a meta analysis of large groups of like reports. In this case, it's interesting but not very useful when making any kind of informed conclusion about scouting. I think that's fine for general opining, questions, an

I made similar points about that report as well in the Councils thread. There has been a significant amount of research done on child sexual abuse in the U.S. to confirm that there is in fact a significant magnitude of difference between male and female CSA. Some routinely cited figures report 1 in 5 girls vs. 1 in 20 boys. At that rate, or anything close to it, it means the study you cited is claiming that a vast percentage of American school girls would have had to have been assaulted at some point during their school day. Seems unlikely. It could be true, but my point is without a wel

Yes, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. Statistics such as this that include girls can't be used for comparison to abuse that occurred in boy scouts because it has with a few exceptions largely been committed against boys in our organization. While anecdotally believed to be underreported, the sexual abuse rate among boys is a fraction of what it is among girls. Finally, this is an international report and cannot be used to compare to US or European rates because of cultural differences, largely regarding girls, such as you see in parts of Africa and South America. It is possible

Without reputable sources, this opinion can pretty much be interpreted as demonizing as well because it belittles the position that victims have that the BSA was at fault. I think the only hard figures I have seen regarding child abuse are the claims made in the BSA bankruptcy, the Catholic Church lawsuits, and the U.S. Gymnastics cases. Most everything else has been someone's personal extrapolation or questionable one off sources.

I didn't comment on that study that you cited because the percentages completely defy other research but more importantly, common sense. Sexual abuse of elementary school students in a school setting is not as common as among older students (although that changes OUTSIDE the school environment). They are too well supervised. That means a much higher rate of abuse occurs among middle school and high school age students. There are high rates of abuse among high school AGE students, but not in a school setting. To victimize say 15% of high school students, means that about 35% of girls in any giv

In my opinion, one large mistake BSA keeps making is believing that it is on a level playing field with other organizations when it comes to youth protection needs and refusing to acknowledge that it is not. 1) There are some pretty consistent statistics that show 88% of all child abusers are male and BSA, even today, is largely male based. Girl Scouts is mostly female run. Sports, even when segregated by gender, are generally run in settings that include a lot of women. 2) BSA is the only youth organization that promises a higher standard of character and morals and has designed

We've kind of been over this a couple times before but you can't compare sports to scouts. Rank and file sports kids are not going on campouts once a month with unrelated adults in remote locations and staying overnight. Most sports practices and games are conducted at facilities in public view, which parents attend. Other officials are often there. Most school and municipal facilities generally have security cameras. Most schools now have security cameras everywhere except bathrooms and locker rooms. I don't know of any travel teams other than college where parents don't routinely travel wit

Parental accountability is part of the problem. BSA, when marketing to increase membership, routinely articulates that scouting is good for all boys and now, with the addition of girls, all children. It does not market itself as a program that is only good for children of vigilant parents. Scouting certainly tries to encourage parents to be involved, but in a weird and not always successful way. BSA wants you on the camp out, but you need to stay 100 yards away from the kids. There are some very mixed messages in scouting and some program elements that make it very porous for predators to ente