PeterHopkins

1 hour ago, johnsch322 said:

30, 40, 50 plus years ago they weren't just allowed to slip in because the door was open wide for the abusers.  The BSA had no safeguards in place for prevention period.  Anyone could be a volunteer unless the name you were using was in the files and you hadn't changed your name from your previous time when you had been caught. 

No disagreement about how wide the door was open. That's why we're here. Nevertheless, those who perpetrated these crimes were anomalous. That's a hard thing to say, when there are 82,000 survivors who have become claimants, and we know the true number is larger than that. Given the number of youth that went through the program and may still be living, the percentage of instances of abuse is very small. Anomolous does not equate to acceptable. One instance of abuse that could have been prevented is unacceptable. But folks like Mr. Kosnoff fail to see that there is a huge baby that has done so much good for society and for former youth participants that they want to throw away with the bath water.

I don't want anyone to feel as though I am trivializing the horrific experience they had by calling it anomolous or analogizing it to bath water. It is heartbreaking to me that so many were unable to rely on their Scouting experience to be a safe one as I was.

2 hours ago, David CO said:

I think some people came into scouting with an unfair expectation of us.  Yes, we always strove to be safe.  Teaching about health and safety is an important part of scouting.  My unit never promised to be their safe place, as you put it.

My pack and troop never promised to be safe places either, at least not within the context of how you're using the term. Scouting activities were simply a place to go that got me away from what was happening at home at the hands of both of my parents. No conscious effort to design Scouting to meet my needs was required. When I used the term safe place, it was a simple comparison to home. Every single Scout who has ever gone through any BSA program had the right to expect Scouting to be safe. Sadly, that has clealry not happened.

I internalized nearly everything. I didn't start to openly deal with what happened to me until I was 41. The only thing I did in my youth was call New York City Child Protective Services when I was 17 and had been thrown out of the house. My sister was 16 and had run away, since I was no longer there to protect her from the violence. The person with whom I spoke asked whether we were safe just then, When I said we were, they told me that they would not open a case given our ages. They suggested we call back, if we were in danger. An entire childhood of abuse and neglect was invalidated, because we escaped it.

Had I grown up in the 1990s and 2000s instead of the 1970s and 1980s, my parents likely would have served time in prison, but they both died free people with no felony convictions. I can never get justice, and I have no one to sue. My mother died second and wrote a will leaving my sister and me nothing. We're contesting it, since neither of us ever remember a time when she was of sound mind.

Scouting played a larger role than any other childhood experiece I had in helping me shape my moral compass. For that, I am eternally grateful.

I've been involved as an adult in Scouting for many years at the pack, troop, crew and district levels. While I agree we are not Bog Brothers, Big Sisters, I am always mindful that I have no idea what is going on in the lives of Scouts I serve when they leave. I don't know whether they see Scouing as their safe place. All I can do is make sure they are safe while I'm responsible for them, be alert and be willing to listen.

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

This is a 1926 Troop Charter Renewal

http://www.troop17bsa.com/uploads/4/5/8/4/4584404/1926.pdf

Interesting. On the last page of the PDF titled General Information, we see this question and answer:

9. What part does the head of the institution take in the work of the troop? Inspirational

On 7/21/2021 at 9:05 AM, Eagle94-A1 said:

I know the pack I was with did not implement the December 2016 changes until May 2017, once the School year ended.

My daughter attended a six-night Cub resident camp in 2019. At departure, we got a list of adventure requirements she completed. When I tried to enter the data into Scoutbook, some of the requirement numbers on the list did not exist. I realized they were still using the 2015 requirements, and I had to map them to the 2016 requirements to figure out what to sign off.

3 hours ago, ThenNow said:

For you active Scouters, I hope this doesn’t put a damper on the candid discussion here.

I'll be watching my words. I think Kosnoff is primarily interested in seeing this converted to a Chapter 7 case. The youth of today deserve the opportunity to have a safe, high quality Scouting experience, regardless of what happened in the past. Today's children had nothing to do with it. Kosnoff isn't on board with that.

I decided not to post what I originally had here. I'm unwilling to provide Kosnoff with any bullets.

@Eagle1993 - So, we're feeding the beast here.

6 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

First, I am not talking about audited financial statements. (You have made the legally objectional assumption of a "fact not in evidence.")

Not at all. I understood your use of the term "financial statements" as a technical term of art. As I said, financial statements would not include the level of detail you wanted to see. From your last post, it appears you meant this to be understood in a much broader sense.

6 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

Are you saying to me that the members of the Executive Board of a Council are NOT ENTITLED to know if major programs of the Council are losing their "donkey," month-to-month, year-to-year?

Not at all. Instead, I said:

8 hours ago, PeterHopkins said:

Management's evaluation of the entity's operations should encompass far more than the audited financial statements. The council's internal accounting staff should have information concerning indiviual programs and should have made it available to members of the executive board, if it was requested.

Serving on a non-for-profit organization's board carries a responsibility that is often underappreciated by board members. I think it is absurd that the professional staff would deny requests from the council executive board to seee detailed internal management reports. It is simply not supposed to work that way.

3 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

But, from my years on the Executive Board, I felt that the council financial statements handed out to us intentionally obfuscated content.  It was impossible to determine if the camp made a profit or lost money, or Cub Day Camp, etc.  Not GAAP, I think.  We NEVER received any kind of profit/loss statement for any program or camp.  All smoke and mirrors. 

Summaries of the "net income or loss" (not terms used in the not-for-profit context) would not be included in the audited financial statements. The objective of an audit is to express an opinion about whether the financial statements reflect the entity's financial position, results of operations and cash flows. Drilling down to individual programs is not necessary to for that opinion. The cost associated with having the auditors express such an opinion would outweigh any individual benefits.

If some programs operate in the black and others operate in the red, it matters little to users of the financial statements. They will evaluate the entity based on its overall results.

Management's evaluation of the entity's operations should encompass far more than the audited financial statements. The council's internal accounting staff should have information concerning indiviual programs and should have mad eit available to members of the executive board, if it was requested.

@ThenNow I was raised Catholic as well. Pubic school for kindergarten and then 12 years of Catholic school. Undergraduate and graduate degrees were from the same state instituttion.

I was an altar server for nine years and quite serious about the faith as a child. I began questioning as a senior in high school. I was quite fond of the priest who signed the religious letter of endorsement attached to my Eagle application. We had lots of time alone together. I was shocked to see is name on the list of abusers for my childhood diocese. He was listed as having offenses in three different parishes but not in mine. Although he had plenty of opportunities, he never did anything that even made me feel uneasy. Thinking back, there was usually a nun in the sacristy with us.

I found it disgusting that this priest appears to have been transferred to another parish in the diocese each time he committed a crime.

Having grown up in the 1970s and 1980s with both Scouting and Catholic experiences, I agee with you that pre-1990 Scouting offered perpetrators more opportunities to commit abuse than the Catholic Church did and does.

The thing that differs between how Scouting handled reported cases of abuse and how many Catholic dioceses handled it is that Scouting made an attempt to track ineligible volunteers. In the days befor ethe widespread use of databases, the sysem was less than perfect, but, at least, an attempt was made. Since the barriers to abuse in Scouting were low, the movement attracted those with a propensity to carry this out. In contrast, the Catholic Church simply relocated offenders and provided them fresh opportunities to abuse other children. The church treated these children as collateral damage associated with employing a priest.

@ThenNow I agree. Boneheaded would be a good way to describe it.

Again, I was speculating as to what the calculus might have been. I compared the BSA's bankruptcy with cases in which I have been involved professionally. I've never had one that had creditors other than employees, vendors, lenders and tax collectors. The character and objectives of the creditors here is vastly different, and that is the first thing that sticks out for me. I've seen lots of creditors take something less than they otherwise might have gotten just to bring the matter to a swift conclusion. Were there BSA people who believed (or were advised to believe) that such a factor could help pave the road to ending this quickly? I have no idea. I can only speculate. If they did, it was clearly boneheaded. If they didn't, the massaging from a year and a half ago makes no sense.

I don't know whether rates of abuse in the Catholic Church is a good predictor of abuse in the BSA. First, Catholic priests who perpetrated abuse were routinely reassigned to other parishes. Scouters who perpetrated abuse were made ineliible to continue volunteering. That single factor should have made abuse less common in Scouting than in the Catholic Church. Of course, Scouting may have provided more opportunities for abuse given that troops typically camp overnight monthly. But how do you measure it?

We, as a society, don't really now what percentage of boys suffer sexual abuse. Clearly, reported cases do not tell the whole story. But how do you estimate the unreported cases? Some studies have concluded that the rate at which boys are sexually abused may be as low as 5%.

The CDC estimates 16% of boys are sexually abused. That perccentage is widely quoted. If we assume it's reasonably accurate and apply it to the BSA's number of youth members estimated to still be living, I think we get a number much larger than 82,000. So, what does that mean? First, we can assume there are victims who did not file claims. That was probably taken into account at the start in estimating the number of claims there would be. Second, it could mean that abuse is less common in Scouting than in other walks of life. Given the distribution of the claimants, that appears to be true from 1990 forward.

I'm pretty sure there is no magic formula into which numbers could have been plugged that would have produced a reasonable estimate of the number of claims. But whatever model they used and whatever their reasons for using it were very far from reality. I don't think a number approaching 82,000 was even in their worst-case sceanrio projections.

22 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Even now, councils need to be careful.  I would think their messaging should flow along the lines of ...

• Apology to claimants, statement along the lines that no amount of money could undo damage done.
• That the terms have not been finalized and there are still unknowns; however, based on the current plan:
• How much we are being asked to contribute.
• Did we agree to pay.
• How we plan to pay that contribution.
• What is the impact on scouting locally.
• How we are making sure we are doing everything possible to prevent the abuse from happening again.
• Again ... plans can change and this is the status as of today.

This shouldn't be a cheerful message. It should be somber.  It shouldn't lead into a recruiting/fundraising pitch.  

The Key 3 Fireside Chat conducted by my council last week was somber in tone at the start. They were clear on the point that the abuse which took place can never be undone and no amount of money can erase it.

Nevertheless, my impression was that there was a total number the National Council wanted to hit to make a splash and encourage the survivors to support the plan. They plugged in a total contribution for all local councils in order to get there and then used a multi-factor formula to allocate it among them. They did mention that the financial health of the council was one of the factors, and that surprised me. Nevertheless, financially healthy councils that have relatively few claims and operate in states in which the statute of limitations is limited seem to be able to manage their share of the local council contribution, even if they are theoretically punished by the formula fo rbeing financially healthy.

Last week's presentation (on Tuesday) gave the impression that it is a near certainty that the council's three camps were not at risk. That means they anticipated approval of the RSA as it was, including cancelation of the agreement with The Hartford. The truth is that we are likely a lot further away from the finish line than they thought last Tuesday.

After discussing the bankruptcy, they moved on to popcorn sales and recruiting. Although I agree with the sentiment of @Eagle1993 that this is not appropriate, this message was being delivered to Key 3 members and no to the general public. All three of these things are necessarily intertwined, and the entirety of the address to the Key 3 was more about the survival of Scouting in the council than about compensation of survivors. They made the point that, although the assets to pay their local council share were available, the council would be much leaner after making the payment. The council is now serving fewer registered youth than at any time in its history. No one can ever really know the impact of individual factors that have caused drops in the number of youth:

- Radio ads about filing abuse claims that ran last year and were designed to reach more than 90% of adult males in the United States

- The departure of the LDS church (the only factor for which the direct impact can be measured)

- Media coverage leading up to the bankruptcy and since

- The actual filing of the bankruptcy petition, which erodes public confidence in the organization

- COVID-19 (I'm a Cubmaster, and I believe I lost 65% of my pack to this)

During the chat, they addressed rechartering issues concerning the United Methodist Church. They were reassuring that they believed they could iron out any issues. All units in the council are on calendar-year charters. However, there is probably a better than even chance that the RSA will be rejected by the creditors, and there will be no deal in place to protect chartered organizatons by the end of the year. That could cause another significnat loss of membership given statements the church has made.

9 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Regardless, I know of no one on the victim claimant side who intended to give LCs a free pass to financial exoneration. None. That was clearly the intent. You’re saying National didn’t know that after who knows how many pre-filing talks with state attorneys?

I actually think there may have been some thought that this outcome was achievable. I think it's unlikely the messaging was intentionally misleading. What would have been the point of doing that? If they knew all along that this would affect local councils, kicking the can down the road and not saying so from the start only sets them up for what came later, which hasn't been well received, and that was completely predictable.

It's not possible to know what was inside anyone's head, but one factor is the number of claims, as @CynicalScouter mentioned. Underestimating that number could have resulted in folks projecting that they could reach equitable settlements out of the National Council's assets and insurance coverage.

Another factor is the timing, logistics and mechanics. Often, a creditor in a bankruptcy would rather get $x earlier instead of waiting for the possiblilty of $x+ at some unknown point in the future. The creditor might end up with the same amount or even less and wait longer to collect it.

The nature of these creditors differs greatly from those seen in most bankruptcies. They aren't vendors, lenders or employees hoping to recover as much of some fixed and determinable amount owed to them as they can. I think those who initially thought this could be made to go away by the end of 2020, failed to recognize the emotional element attached to the claims of the survivors. They didn't realize that this is not just about the money.

2 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

Other councils were sending around the "all funds will stay local; all is well!" emails.

That's right. When the BSA entered bankruptcy, there were posts indicating that local councils were not in harm's way financially and that Scouting, for the most part, would continue as normal but with higher registrations fees. FAQs released indicated none of the local council camps or other assets were at risk. We were led to believe that the BSA's bankruptcy filing would consolidate all claims using only assets of the National Council and its insurers, and that the restructuring plan would release local councils and chartered organizations from liability for claims.

That isn't exactly how they said it, but that was the tone they used.

I wondered from the start why a bankruptcy court would agree to release a local council or chartered organization that was paying nothing and wasn't a party to the proceeding. I thought that perhaps there were people far more clever than I working on this. It turns out that wasn't true.

4 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

"Honey, we're going to have a huge tax bill this year. Watch my Facebook posts over the next few days for the amount. I promise, we shouldn't have to sell your car or wedding ring."

Their intention was to give reassurance that none of the camps would need to be sold and to praise those who had made good financial decisions on behalf of the council in the past, which put the council in a position to meet its obligations.

At the time of the call, they were not permitted to disclose their share of the amount in the RSA.

My council conducted a Key 3 Fireside Chat over Zoom last week. The council reported that it has the ability to pay its share under the RSA without selling any camp properties. They said they could not tell us the number, but we should be prepared to hear a very large amount reported in the media in the near term.

15 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

But let me say this for third time: the Catholic dioceses do not have a single "boss" (other than Pope Francis) who can make a universally binding decision on all of them. They can't all agree on something as mission-critical as when the appropriate age for the Sacrament of Confirmation is.

Agreed. The USCCB could suggest a strategy or plan regarding rechartering, but each bishop or archbishop will make his own decision (or do nothing).

Although the United States Conference fo Catholic Bishops doesn't appear to have any authority to bind any individual diocese regarding chartering BSA units, it's possible it or one of its committees could consider the matter.

https://www.usccb.org/about

The wearing of the Explorer Award knot for the Young American Award is mentioned in the 1995 but not the 1996 Insignia Guide. The 1996 Insignia Guide also no longer mentioned that the knot can be worn to represent the Explorer Scout Ranger (1950-1951) and Air Scout Ace (1950-1954) awards after these awards first appeared on the list in 1995. So, the fact that the Young American Award was dropped should not mean that it cannot be represented by the knot. Since the Ranger and Ace knots have not been available from the BSA for many years, should Scouters who earned those highest ranks/awards in the Explorer Scout and Air Scout programs not be permitted to wear a knot?

An argument could be made that the Young American Award was included on the 1995 list by mistake. After all, it co-existed with the Explorer Achievement Award from 1981 to 1995, and with the Explorer GOLD Award from 1995 to 1999. Since it has always been nominative, it doesn't fit in with Explorer Silver, Ranger, Ace, Explorer Achievement Award and Explorer GOLD, which were the top awards or ranks in their respective programs during their existence. However, the Young American Award was one of the highest recognitions an Explorer-age youth could get from the time the BSA took over its administration around 1970, until the authorization of the Explorer Achievement Award in 1981, since Exploring had no top award that could be "earned" during that time. Perhaps, that was the logic behind including it in the 1995 Insignia Guide.

Unless Scouting magazine or some other official outlet lets BSA members know that inclusion of the Young American Award in the 1995 Insignia Guide was an error, which has not happened as far as I know, it seems to me that holders of the award are entitled to wear the knot.

HOWEVER, later issues of the Insignia Guide dropped the Explorer award knot. When it reappeared, the description said the knot was only for awards earned prior to August 1998 (the dawn of Venturing). Therefore, someone earning the Young American Award in 2004, when this thread started, should not wear the knot to represent that award.

Although 15 years have passed since anyone commented on this thread, I just stumbled across it and thought it might be worthwhile to answer the question. At the time this thread was started, National was still presenting the Young American Award to five recipients annually. That has ended, but councils may still present the award, and some do. The knot is no longer stocked by National Supply, because it can no longer be earned.