CynicalScouter

Part of the bankruptcy notice was that if you have ANY claim against BSA you had until November 2020 to speak up/file your claim. I suspect that would be used as res judicata: you had your chance.

I am not sure. The insurance companies may offer a settlement now to the time-barred in order to buy stability. As you noted, LOTS of states are opening look-back windows. If the insurance companies don't settle now, they'll be answering suits for decades to come.

I just do not see how BSA is going to get 66% OR a federal judge to "cramdown" against sexual abuse victims/claimants. The optics would be horrific. USA Gymnastics' bankruptcy judge is (I believe) currently considering a motion on whether to order a cramdown after 99% of claimants REJECTED that organization's Chapter 11 plan.

Yes, this is just the BSA portion (or BSA and Council) portion of the conversation. The insurance side of the conversation is just a whole other thing entirely. This is the operative language from page 58 of the plan and the Cramdown language on page 51

It is my understanding that is yes. There are two groups here and I am rounding. Group 1: 20,000 claims that are within the statute of limitations. Group 2: 57,000 outside the statute of limitations. BSA is offering BOTH groups a choice: Group 1: You may have a valid and "live" claim against BSA, but a lawsuit will take years. Take $6100 now and be done with it. Group 2: Maybe, someday, your currently time-barred claim could possibly become live again. Take $6100 now and be done with it. BUT here's the messy part. Because this is in the context of a bankruptcy and NOT tens of thousands of individual lawsuits, Group 1 and Group 2 get lumped together. All 77,000-80,000 people get 1 vote. There are then several different scenarios that come out of that mess. Scenario 1 - Acceptance: If 67% (51,000-53,000) of those people approve the $6100 plan, it moves ahead. BSA waives any defense in those cases and claimants waive any right to sue in the future. Any Councils who want to participate in the settlement fund also do the same: the council waives any defense and the claimants waive any right to sue in the future. Scenario 2 - Rejection and Return to State Courts: If 33%+1 (25,000-26,000) of those people reject the plan, it fails. The bankruptcy judge lifts the stay on state litigation and thousands of lawsuits proceed or are filed. BSA and local councils spend the next several years/decades defending against such suits. The end result is likely BSA comes back into bankruptcy in a few months or years (a "Chapter 22") and is likely liquidated at that point (Chapter 7). Many/most local councils go into bankruptcy as well. Scenario 3 - Rejection and Immediate Liquidation (the Kosnoff Plan): If 33%+1 (25,000-26,000) of those people reject the plan, it fails. BSA decides it simply cannot proceed to any kind of Chapter 11 plan, converts to Chapter 7, and everything up to and including the staplers in HQ is sold. Similar to Scenario 2, state court lawsuits against local councils are allowed to restart and many/most local councils go into bankruptcy as well. Scenario 4 - Cramdown: If 33%+1 (25,000-26,000) of those people reject the plan, it fails BUT the bankruptcy judge will overrule them and order a "cramdown" forcing them to take the $6100. BSA waives any defense in those cases and claimants are stripped of any right to sue in the future. Any Councils who want to participate in the settlement fund also do the same: the council waives any defense and the claimants are stripped of any right to sue in the future.

Interesting. I was told that the pilots (National Capital Area Council) were deemed failures and that virtual IOLS was sent back to the drawing board. Looks like yours was a success, glad to see it.

Yep. I have told my folks that every section of YPT and probably 90% of all of Guide to Safe Scouting is "BSA National and/or a local council got sued for this, so, never do it again."

Here's the problem: I WISH it were heads on pikes. We don't even have THAT. Instead, YPT is thrown out there and (fingers crossed) adhered to. There's no effort whatsoever at followup, follow-through, or anything. Heads on pikes at least has the benefit of being a clear public message: we are NOT going to tolerate non-compliance and units deciding to interpret YPT into nothingness.

Yep. A version what are called Clery Act Reports (institutions of higher education) that are reported for review. For example, right now I can pull up data on Murder/Non-negligent manslaughter, Negligent manslaughter, Rape, Fondling, Incest, Statutory rape, Robbery, Aggravated assault, Burglary, Motor vehicle theft, and Arson. I can find this out for a particular college OR a particular campus of that college. I can then see how many resulted in arrests, disciplinary actions, unfounded crimes, and fire statistics (?) https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/

Just about. Cub leaders in 2017: 337k. Cub leaders in 2020: 173k (51%) Scouts, BSA leaders in 2017: 450k Scouts, BSA leaders in 2020: 273k (60%)

This is the horrible part about this. This is pain. This is suffering. These are people who have been abused. And this is also math. If $6100 isn't the right answer, what is? There's a reason bankruptcy courts usually aren't in this mess: this is for civil juries to deal with 1 person/case or claims adjusters/special masters to wade deep into thousands of claims for decades of injuries of varying degrees. Is $1,000,000 "equitable"? That's probably too high, now we are talking BILLIONS. BSA has, maybe, $1-1.5 billion and that's with complete liquidation. So, $100,000? $10,000? This sucks. This is people's lives. But this is also math. The judge so far has not ruled on the numerator: BSA assets available for disbursement MINUS amount BSA needs to keep to survive which BSA pegs as $75 million. The judge so far has not ruled on the denominator: total number of eligible claimants/estimated number of eligible claimants. Answering EITHER is going to be necessary for "equitable". 1) If the judge rules only 10,000 claims are eligible, then a settlement or bankruptcy trustee can work backwards to figure out the assets BSA has to come up with. 2) If the judge rules BSA has $750 million in assets eligible for disbursement - $75 million for BSA to survive, then a settlement or bankruptcy trustee can work backwards to figure out how much each claimant gets. But until we know one or the other number, "equitable" is just guess work.

The argument is that scouting = scout led (true) which means scouts allowed to be out on their own completely reliant on themselves and the older scouts. That's not YPT compliant.

It means registered leader who have not even taken YPT. Take a look at the December 2020 Key Performance Indicators. 2018 = 67.1% 2019 = 87.1% 2020 = 99.9% In other words, as recently as 3 years ago. 33% of registered adults in all BSA programs hadn't even taken YP training. So, yea, it is an issue. You can tout BSA's youth protection all day long, but if leaders were not actually REQUIRED to take it and if that requirement wasn't actually ENFORCED, they the YP isn't all its cracked up to be. For example as Roman Catholic catechist, I literally wasn't allowed to SPEAK in my position as a catechist until I had a copy of my Virtus training in my hand and turned it into my parish. BSA didn't take YPT seriously if it was OK with 33% of registered adult leaders not being YP trained (the absolute bare minimum for compliance).

Well the first part was that 20%+ of leaders were not even YPT compliant until last year. Second, I suspect we are going to find out soon when we start to get the reports from the TCC about the failures in YPT.

They are about to get laid off if they haven't already with the new territory system to replace areas and regions. And it makes no sense anyway. Regions (and now territories) are massive swaths of land. Asking them to go drive hundreds of miles all around to sign off on charters? Such visits would be short and cursory. But let's game that out. The latest data says 51,594 units NE Region: 12,150 units Southern Region: 15,450 Central Region: 15,194 Western Region: 8,800 The latest report (2019) was BSA National had 4026 employees. That was in 2019, before the MASSIVE layoffs. But let's say we assign 100 units per "regional" person. That means you are hiring (and paying for travel expenses for) 515 people. To do what? Come to a unit for 1-3 hours. Talk about YPT and sign off on their charter every year? And since recharter happens around the same time every year, what the really means is having the 500+ people visiting 100 units in a 3 month period (October/November/December). And it isn't like a business that is open 5 days a week. Those 100 visits would have to be scheduled for committee meeting days or unit meetings. So you are packing DOZENS of trips in a matter of a few weeks for what? So they can sign a piece of paper? As I said, if you want to do this, the answer is making the DE's enforcers OR creating YPT enforcer positions in councils. Not "YPT champions". Not volunteers who encourage. Hired compliance people (think health/safety inspectors or inspectors general) whose purpose is to come in and be the bad guy. That's hard enough to do when the people involved are ALL EMPLOYEES OF THE SAME COMPANY and therefore compliance is a condition of employment. You think a SM is going to give two rips if a regional person or DE or Council enforcer tells them they are doing it wrong? Of course not. The only way this works is heads on pikes. SMs removed. Charters not renewed. It will only take a few to get the message across.

Two problems. 1) My district hasn't had a DC in years, much less a unit commissioner. Not everywhere has commissioners coming out of the ears. 2) The entire idea of the commissioner corp is they are there to assist where they are welcome. Granting them (a volunteer) authority over a unit is fundamentally altering the deal. They already have a bad reputation as Council's spies and enforcers. This would codify it. That said, district executive or other paid professional might take this on but it creates a conflict there as well. But it may be better than trying to overhaul commissioners into enforcers.

Three MAJOR caveats here: 1) What gets reported on the IRS 990s is often assets MINUS depreciation. 2) There's shell games getting played. So yes, XYZ Council doesn't list Camp on their IRS 990s. That's because they shifted it to some Trust and the Council leases it for $1 a year (looking at you Middle Tennessee Council). 3) Council "Foundations". LCs can and will absolutely bury the $$$ in those and pretend they don't control it when, for all intents and purposes, they do. Not to pick on Circle Ten, but they are an example. Circle Ten Boy Scouts Foundation EIN # 75-6026210 has over $50 million in 990 reported assets. Meanwhile the Council EIN #75-0800615 itself has "only" $35 million in 990 reported assets.

And when I've had this come up I simply point to the BSA bankruptcy and how much councils and national have to pay for insurance nowadays. The rules are there because of mistakes in the past. Failure to follow them is a 100% surefire way to ensure there's no future program.

That's been his push for 4-5 years. His avowed purpose is BSA's demise.

"Do it, or we get sued out of existence." or "Do it, or your charter will not be renewed." It is going to take that heavy of a hammer for some units. I don't care if you love or loathe Council. Some units need to get the message that they won't have a BSA if they don't get into line.

Sorta. What needs to start happening is enforcement. That means when volunteers don't do what they are suppose to, they should be reported up and out. What's going to mean that some parents and registered adult leaders are going to be put on report. It is also going to mean some heads rolling. 1) BSA never took this seriously. Want to know how I know? First, take a look at the December 2020 Key Performance Indicators. Take a real, real hard look at Youth Protection Trained. 2018 = 67.1% 2019 = 87.1% 2020 = 99.9% Second, take a look at last year's Churchill Plan report on Council standards. Are you kidding me? YPT has been around for what, 25 years now? 30? And only NOW is YPT over 90% in the KPI report? Only NOW is the standard going to be 98%? (It will never be 100%, there will always be 1-2% of people who just signed up/registered on Monday and and haven't YPTed until Saturday night). IF BSA was serious about YPT it would have been 90% or 95%+ DECADES ago. 2) There is, to my perception, an attitude among many older/longer term scouters that things like two-deep leadership and no one-on-one have killed scouting. I've seen it in troop meetings, I've seen it here on these forums. 3) That things should be overlooked because BSA is being unreasonable. YPT gets in the way. Therefore, YPT needs to "bend". Take what happened with Scoutbook and the MBCs recently. In short, until February 2021, any Key-3 could add a MBC to their unit roster and it was not required that they actually file the paperwork with Council ever. Ditto Committee and other positions (although Scoutbook is about to end that on March 15). You'd have thought that the world was caving in on people or that this was something BSA announced for the first time in December 2020. Registered adult leaders (including YPT) is what 25 years? 30 years? And yet people act like BSA is a bunch of SOBs. 4) Finally, and I don't have a better term for it, is the question of degree. YES, if an ASM saw an adult actively molesting a child in a tent I believe they would report it up and out. But what happens when the SM takes 7 scouts and one (unregistered) parent out for a hike? YPT violation? Yep. Should that hike happen? Nope. Is anyone like a ASM going to tell the SM no? Especially given how hard it is to keep SMs around? And besides, he/she is the SM. They are the ones who should be the exemplars on this. If the SM thinks it is OK, then it is OK, right? As I previously alluded, I cannot ever recall a SM or other registered adult leader bounced for YPT violations. It is possible they were forced out and it was done quietly so as to avoid problems, but I've been around long enough that if that had happened there would have at least been rumors of SOMEONE that SOMEWHERE got benched because of it. What it is going to take is a dozen registered adults (I keep picking on SMs here, but CMs, ASMs, Den Leaders, whatever) being told their registration has been revoked for failure to comply with YPT.

I already hear enough yelling and screaming about how YPT is making scouting impossible, additional enforcement will go over like a lead balloon. That said, I will say that YPT enforcement is a complete and utter joke. I've never, ever seen anyone bounced or reprimanded for failing to adhere to YPT protocols. Perhaps it will take some heads rolling/SMs removed from position to get the message through. I come back to a previous point: I believe that the reason National's not getting this isn't National. It's the LCs either a) playing shell games with assets b) flat out refusing to acknowledge assets or c) not trying to hide assets by trying to hide their general overall poor financial management. I also acknowledge d) some combination of the above I know, for example, at least one Council in a state that requires all not-for-profits (like a BSA Council) to register with the state's department of charities. They haven't done so in years. Yeah. The number 54,000 was previously tossed around. And again, I can utterly see the insurance companies saying telling the 60,000 time barred claimants to go away and come back when the claims are valid/live. I can also see an insurance company wanting stability and closure and willing to pay now to ensure/insure no future liability. Subject to the general proviso that a federal judge rules precisely when he/she wants to. No sooner. No later.

It absolutely is: 1) If BSA is forced to pay and big it will be more on an incentive to allow for such lookback windows to compensate victims. 2) If BSA is forced into liquidation and killed, it may mean slowing these effort down. Unlike the Catholic Church/dioceses (which at the end of the day aren't going anywhere) if BSA is liquidated it would be used as the "see, you'll just kill these programs!" warning. Either way BSA's the test case for the next 10 years

I would simply add... For now. This really does make me think there are a LOT of councils who are going to roll the dice and not participate in the bankruptcy in the hope that their statutes of limitations never get reopened.

There was a LOT of legal argument over this, including trying to sue Pope Francis, but the short version is this: 1) Dioceses are both INDEPENDENT and AUTONOMOUS from the Vatican. 2) Dioceses are both INDEPENDENT and AUTONOMOUS from each other. 3) Even if you are able to jump over hurdle #1, the Vatican, as a separate international entity and government, is not touchable for any of this either due to international law in general or the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in particular. So, each Diocese was out there, on its own. In some ways it looks like BSA but for one thing: how much does National control and direct Council operations, rules, and practices? Plaintiffs are going to do everything to say the LCs are neither independent nor autonomous. BSA is going to do everything to say the LCs are both independent and autonomous.