yknot

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 partnership. You can be outdoors in the city. I'm in the mid Atlantic. Tons of places that could It's a failure of imagination not to see how this could work.

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 fees have to be $500 to cover insurance?

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 very least, they learn a lot about how to serve these kids, families, and communities. From what I know, although maybe someone else has better info, in scouting it seems to be these attempts have been very one off. Someone in a district or council gets an idea they want to organize one, and they mostly do it on their own. A different model, in a post bankruptcy world if we ever get there, might be to ask every council to sponsor an urban unit somewhere in their territory and every unit has some assigned responsibility to help. We've got something like this in our regional sports league. The various member clubs each adopt a special needs facility. The various teams all take turns running practices and games. Another organization has a facility in an urban area and has "brother" or "sister" groups who are formally affiliated and help funnel money, expertise, and volunteers to the urban program. Scouts does a lot of service in the community. In the future, in order to survive, it might need to look at ways to funnel some of those service hours into the support of scouting. Instead of food drives, drive to the city a couple times a year to help staff events for urban units. Edit: I guess my point is, BSA is fighting to retain expensive HA bases but why don't we also have Urban Adventure bases in places like LA, NYC, Chicago and Atlanta for example?

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 living a spiritual life. I'm more worried about the kids who somehow get passed through to Eagle without really understanding the oath and law regardless of what religion they declare.

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 abuse issue in scouting and be careful to be as factual as possible.

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. Again, I think the issue is that any statements that rely on anecdotal reports, such as the ones you outline, aren't useful. Studies that don't compare apples to apples aren't relevant. In the vacuum of relevant studies, we do have some hard numbers such as the BSA bankruptcy. I agree that that those numbers need to be viewed carefully, however, I think it's also a mistake to think you can compare actual claims, where someone has had to put themselves out there in public to some degree, with answers to anonymous surveys. Had BSA ever done comparable surveying, who knows what the percentage would have been. You cannot say the level of abuse in scouting is .07% because that's not true. We don't know what it is. We don't know if it's less or more than the norm. All we can say with honesty is that we know it's a lot.

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, and rumination, but when it rises to the level of someone trying to somewhat absolve BSA or claim that it is safer for boys or does a better job of protecting boys, that is not honest at all. We don't know that at all.

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 well crafted study comparing apples to apples it's not that useful or factual.

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 that boys are actually safer in boy scouts, but there are no valid studies that actually compare the rates of abuse among boys in scouting to abuse rates among boys in the broader world and can support that. Until there are such studies, the only hard numbers we have to go by are what has been reported to the places I noted.

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 given school would be affected. Teachers would have to be tackling them in the hallways to produce that. Which brings me to another point. In scouting, we are myopically focused on boys. In child sexual abuse, boys are actually abused at significantly lower rates than girls. So you are not comparing apples to apples when you throw out rates of child abuse as comparisons if you don't separate it by gender. There have been studies and reports that have shown that abuse rates among boys may be higher than thought because of the male culture to just get over it, but then that would also apply in scouting. The 84,000 claims reported in scouting is likely a minimal number. Even with weeding out possibly false claims, there are many victims who have died or are not yet ready to talk about their abuse. There is a lot to youth protection in the scouting setting that BSA has really never looked at or examined. There are now thousands of claims, and hundreds of letters, that will be full of useful facts that can be analyzed and perhaps used to improve it.

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 its whole program around those core laws and beliefs. Parents, children, and the broader community all expect a higher level of behavior from anyone involved in scouting. That message is inherent in its marketing and it infers to parents that your kids will be safer with scouts. BSA has also made concerted efforts to recruit all kids, not just the ones with vigilant parents. It encourages the view that scouting can be good for boys who are troubled or in need of a father image -- attributes that we know make such boys more vulnerable to predators. 3) BSA is the only youth organization that routinely takes youth into remote locations out of general public view with unrelated adults for overnight activities, many of which require some personal situations. I don't know of any other organization where kids are visiting back country latrine ditches with a buddy for example. There are other factors but these are some of the unique characteristics to scouting that require it to have higher standards for youth protection at a minimum. Just as in the workplace, physical safety standards are on one level for a retail establishment and at another more stringent level for a welding shop. Scouting is in the same kind of situation but it keeps trying to equate itself with team sports or 4-H or Girl Scouts.

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 with their player and generally stay in the same hotel rooms together. It is not comparable. Scouting has to have more policies because of what it is and does with kids. Frankly, I've been involved in scouts and sports for years and there isn't really much difference. Yes, I've yet to see a coach run out of a gym because he suddenly realized he was the only adult in the room with a bunch of kids the way I have seen an ASM run out of a troop meeting. However, in the coach case generally the gym doors are open, there's a custodian around somewhere, an administrator is sticking their head in the door... it's different.

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 enter and operate..

Except a lot of teacher abuse claims are for all abuse, not necessarily sexual. I do think some assessment of order of magnitude would be very useful.

This stupidity strategy is employed quite a bit. A lot of financial institutions play it. I've encountered this kind of nonsense with personal accounts, trying to administer estates, and in business.

Before anyone can answer that question you would have to consider at least two additional things: Scale and comparable time periods. There are 3.5 million teachers in the US and 57 million school children creating many opportunities for abuse. There are far fewer scouters and scouts. For example, in 2014, there were 1 million adult volunteers involved in scouting and 2.6 million scouts, creating far fewer opportunities for abuse. A useful comparison of incidents would also have to select for comparable time periods. I think the one good thing that might come out of this mess is better data sets and societal awareness regarding the incidence of child abuse. Do I think BSA, given all the other aspects of this issue that we know, should be held less accountable? No. BSA was near custom designed to be a pedophile buffet and did not recognize the warning signs or effectively act on warnings, many of which were issued from its earliest inception.

Let's just agree to disagree on BSA. I think individual scouters' views of BSA have much to do with personal experience. If you had my experiences and saw things from my perspective, you might agree with why I wrote that. And perhaps if I'd had yours, I'd think differently than I do.

One of the valuable things about this thread, in addition to the excellent legal information and analysis, has been the perspectives from people who have actually been abused. I can go to any scouting venue, forum or friend, and hear hundreds of opinions from people who know a lot about scouting but a lot less about child abuse, which is the single biggest crisis ever to face scouting. This is the only place that I know of where a handful of people have been willing to give firsthand accounts of some of the incidents that have all but destroyed something that we love. They've given their opinions. They've asked and answered questions. I can't imagine the kind of courage it took ThenNow, for example, to make his first post here in what he had to know was hostile territory. I thank him for being forthcoming at the cost of what seems at times to be great personal pain. I've learned a lot from his voice. And while this isn't really our role in this forum, one thought keeps coming to mind for me as I peruse the letters that were posted -- and I could only read a few, they were so gut churning: So many of these abused children, because that's what they were, will probably never get their day in court to tell their story. And so many of them want and need that to help them heal. This forum has at least given a handful of people, who represent thousands, to tell their story to a group of, hopefully, sympathetic scouting peers. BSA will never do that, but we can.

Earlier in this process, people had speculated whether the Biden administration would step in to aid scouting and I pointed out the existence of that foundation and the family history. I was just being consistent in doing the same in light of the fact that now there has been some federal involvement. Sorry I should have provided that background.

https://www.beaubidenfoundation.org/ I'm not surprised there might be federal interest in ensuring justice for CSA survivors based on this: https://www.beaubidenfoundation.org/

I got a donation request yesterday from council that insisted all funds stay local.