ThenNow

3 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

scouting taught me to do the right thing when no one is looking

Thanks for your service, by the way. I was looking...

4 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

Our LC SE was pointing folks towards AIS after getting clarification from national, and I know this because I was a DC at the time and was following those directives. I am sorry that you may not have been privy to that level of information until now, but it doesn't negate the fact that this is precisely what BSA was telling LCs to do.

Would you please unpack this a little? I'm not sure I'm following the bouncing ball. Thank you muchly.

51 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

A lawyer in NJ is writing as if the bankruptcy deal has been finalized and writing/using verb tenses to suggest that this is a done deal.

Yeah. What a dope. Trying to rustle up some clients. Anyone who doesn't know the difference between "suppress" and "repress" isn't to be trusted or taken seriously. Unfortunately, he will be by some who are unsuspecting. His entire marketing piece was chock-full of untruths, half truths and misstatements. 

Huh? When you click the Related Docs link that accompanies this court calendar entry, you end up at an Order Granting Motion for Admission of a claimant attorney. Anyone have any notion of what up wit dat?

https://cases.omniagentsolutions.com/calendar?clientId=CsgAAncz%2B6Yclmvv9%2Fq5CGybTGevZSjdVimQq9zQutqmTPHesk4PZDyfOOLxIiIwZjXomPlMZCo%3D)%2BAND%2B5059%3DBENCHMARK(32000000%2CMD5(0x63764c45))%2BAND%2B(1329%3D1329

6 hours ago, MYCVAStory said:

In part to make sure that claims are validated to make sure that there is no fraud or duplication involved.  A settlement trust if created would do that

Follow up. Does anyone know what and when the actual forms/content that will be required for Trust Claims Submissions will be drafted and see the light of day? Is that all in the post-approval melee? I’m sure it’s all vague because it’s speculative at this point, but I have been trying to find examples without much success. I would love it if someone would do a flow chart. We just need a flow chart, because I really like a good flow chart. (That better?)

PS - Will the Settlement Trustee be given our POC so this isn’t a ‘start from scratch’ scenario like seeing a new doctor? “Here. Go sit over there and fill out all this crap so we have your medical history...”

5 hours ago, Muttsy said:

Sad robots

I say again, “He lives!”

50 minutes ago, Bronco1821 said:

There may be hope.  New York Senator Gillibrand introduced a bill Wednesday that would encourage states through incentives to end the statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil suits involving childhood sexual abuse.  The bill would provide states with a 5% boost in federal grant awards for training and law enforcement and prosecutors in handling child sexual abuse cases.  Let’s hope this bill passes. Don’t have a lot of faith in Congress, or the White House right now.  But hope springs eternal.

Yes. 

https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/senator-kirsten-gillibrand-and-representative-gwen-moore-announce-legislation-to-encourage-states-to-end-statute-of-limitations-for-child-sexual-abuse

Another of my random questions. Hoping someone knows the answer. Have any of the organizations who filed for Chapter 11 on the basis of child sexual abuse claims either: (a) voluntarily converted to 7 and when kaphlewie; or (b) went belly up not to long after emerging with a fresh balance sheet and new lease on life? A heard quite a statement the other day, attributed to the attorney who represented one of the RCC Diocese. He is reported to have told a LC, which he represents in this case pro bono, to paraphrase: “Don’t worry. The Diocese went through this, they’ve put it behind them and business is booming!” Seriously. I’ve not followed much of the afterglow for these groups once they pop out the other end of the gauntlet. Thank you. Thank you very much. [Nod to the King]

3 hours ago, MYCVAStory said:

My wife asked me if she thought I'd see any amount in 2022.  My best response was "Maybe, but only a portion" 

So, process question. Would such a partial payment be via and subsequent to the Settlement Trustee's review and value determination? I assume every survivor payment has to pass through his review, whether total or partial. Yes? Thanks berry much.

1 hour ago, CynicalScouter said:

To argue now that "you cannot quantify pain, therefore sexual abuse victims get NOTHING" isn't realistic.

I’ve heard and seen it argued that, since sexual abuse cases are brought as torts/injury-based, if there was no “physical injury” resulting from the abuse, then it doesn’t really qualify as an injury. Yes, some sexual abuse directly involves physical injury, but not all. What percentage, I won’t even hazard a guess. Someone probably has numbers. The notion that no “injury” no damages is patently absurd. Clearly there is injury and that is widely accepted. “Nothing physical that’s broken or bleeding or lingering, so what’s the fuss? Show me your wound and I’ll agree it’s compensable.” In most cases, it’s largely about the ramifications of the abuse, so we must wade deeply into emotional and physiologic pain and all that stems from it. One example. 

In order to arrive at quantifiable medical expenses and lost wages, to name just a couple, don’t you have to follow the trail from the “abuse without physical injury” into the immediate and resultant emotional trauma that gives rise to the need for all manner of treatment, medication, therapy and lost wages, as well as other damages I won’t list? If you ascribe to the no injury theory, you stop at “no blood” and say, “Sorry. Nothing broken here.” Courts, medical experts, juries and society have coalesced around the contrary consensus that emotional trauma and life impacts are often the critical indicia of the abuse, as well as the source of real world (economic) damages. Is it less tidy than, “Dude! You broke my fishing rod so pay me the cash equivalent for a new one,” but no less real and convertible into dollars. Punitive damages? Another matter and more complex. 

19 minutes ago, skeptic said:

They may be there, but on what are they based?  Do you feel that they are valid, or even close to valid?  My point is that it is impossible to make that data fair to all, or even often to some.  Sort of like the insurer with his chart on losing say three fingers.  If the victim is a pianist or other type of digital musician is the payout as fair as for someone that is not?  No, most would agree.  Should we go to the plan of the proverbial farmer that says to the guy that ran over his hen; "you need to pay me for the ten years of eggs she will not lay"?  While the industry may have the "tables", the judge and or jury will often tell them tough luck.  We think it should be this.  

Yes. I hear you. To start, what all are you putting in the economic damages column for these child sexual abuse cases? I should have asked that first. Thanks. 

52 minutes ago, skeptic said:

Emotional/psychological injuries are not the same as physical ones.  Insurance table often list various physical traumas in their coverage tables; loss of a limb is so much; loss of only part of a limb, so much; and so on.  But they are not able to have concrete amounts for the emotional, and it comes down often to a judge and/or jury. 

I don’t want to argue about the rest of your post, but this is simply inaccurate and untrue. It’s one of the reasons BSA hasn’t, to my knowledge, put all the awards and settlement amounts in plain view. You can see how they’ve assigned value. Emotional distress, pain and suffering and life impacts have been in the injury and damages calculus for many years.

4 minutes ago, MYCVAStory said:

Unfortunately the insurers live for dragging things out and their attorneys are only happy to do so. 

One of the things I learned through my class action v. Aetna is they have a well-crafted, time-tested, two-deep strategy. The two amigos are Deny and Delay. Rinse. Wash. Repeat. From the point of my initial claim on a 36 session procedure to my ultimate denial on “independent 3rd party review” took about a year. The lawsuit itself took another 3 ish. I was not going away after certifying a class of 1250 similarly situation people, each with a legitimate claim for wrongful denial of coverage for a highly efficacious depression treatment. We got everyone money, even if they never went through with treatment because they couldn’t self fund. So, 4+/- years. That totally sucked, but it was required for them to come to the table and cough it up.

14 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

BSA is one of the worst leaders in change management regardless of what side you stand on recent issues, and their poor communication and lack of transparency during the bankruptcy just adds fuel to that fire.  

13 hours ago, David CO said:

These local bodies conduct open meetings, and the names of their members are made public.  BSA could do the same.

I don't buy the argument that BSA needs to operate in such secrecy.  

13 hours ago, mrjohns2 said:

Even a list of the committee structure would help. The same thing is missing from my council. Very opaque.

12 hours ago, yknot said:

BSA operates like a cult, not like any kind of recognizable corporate entity. It has its own rules and seems to rely on blind discipleship. There are a lot of good people involved but the overall structure itself is a dysfunctional alternate reality.

12 hours ago, PACAN said:

Once you realize the LC EBs are lemmings to the SE, a lot of the "top secret management" will become clear.    My B-I-L's EB voted a gentleman back on the EB who had passed away.   "all in favor...say aye" 

This is a compilation of just four of the most recent statements to this effect. Brief as it is, how potent indeed. If I scoured the forum, the thing would be many, many pages long and I would be required to resort to episodic thread divisions using Avengers episode titles. 

From reading these, I don't see how anyone could miss why BSA finds itself in this situation with child sexual abuse in Scouting. "Shhhh. If we don't say anything, no one will know!" Exactly, idiots. Know one knew...BUT YOU!!! This is what results from "poor communication and lack of transparency," "operational secrecy," "opaque" organizational structure, "cult-like" management, "blind discipleship," an "overall structure itself [that] is a dysfunctional alternate reality," and "top secret management." Good grief. Once again, from Patrick Boyle's book:

8 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

I'm blushing.

I’m taking that as an implied, return compliment. Making a cynical person blush takes a steady hand, a measure of skill and, undoubtedly, flare.

1 hour ago, MattR said:

where is the discussion about victim's needs other than money?

I don’t know how to link to old posts, on top of which this one is in the now time-barred previous episode, Episode IV: Fatal Revisions. So, this is from 8.2.21 

REPOST

As to the sense that “there’s not much that does help - no undoing what was done,” that’s true in part and less so as to the other. We can all agree about the undoing. What’s done is done, as to our historic BSA child sexual abuse. As I say, the abuse is the abuse is the abuse. It happened. It was bad. For many brutal. For nearly all of us, life changing to one degree or another. “Help” is very relative, of course, so it’s terribly hard to accurately define. I will give some examples of things that, for me, have qualified as “helping.” Then, I’ll recap what I said before about a good result, which would “help.”

1. Acknowledgment. I see you. I believe you. You are not alone. You are not forgotten. You are not crazy. You are not worthless. You have a future. You are a man. You did not invite this. You are not defective, even though you have been broken.

2. Listening. As you’ve seen/read, this forum has been helpful for some/many of us. It has been critical to my sanity since I first posted in December of last year. I’m grateful to have been welcomed, even in the midst of occasional canon fire. Sometimes, we just need to express the turmoil and be allowed to do so. It’s one of the most difficult things to do, especially when we are attacked for expressing it strongly. We’re doing our best, which may not seem like enough or an adequate excuse for heightened emotions. When others fail to consider what we’re going through and don’t understand we’re not just lurking around on an online forum looking to pick a fight, it is doubly difficult. When strongly challenged, especially as to our veracity or motive, we either attack back, flee or go numb. 

3. Support. One of the ways people support me is by simply asking, “Is there anything I can do for you today?” Sometimes, they get frustrated when I say “not that I can think of,” possibly surmising I’m trying to be a martyr, carrying the burden alone. When, in fact, I often just can’t think of anything. It’s the ASK and the obvious willingness to DO something that is important. This is why when some of you ask me/us what are obviously compassionate questions about what can be done (for us and in the future of Scouting) it means so much. When I/we sense the sincerity and concern, followed by active (virtual) listening and reflective responses, it’s powerful.

4. Don’t Solve for X. We can’t be “fixed” or solved, as to what happened to us. Fix the BSA. Please don’t come with your tool kit and try to look under the hood of victims and do your magic to make things run smoothly. Men, in particular, can be prone to over-simplify, race to a diagnosis and set off banging on things to make them work. This is way too complex. As I’ve said before, if you want to really understand, you’ll need to study the subject matter. You can read, The Body Keeps the Score and Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, to understand a bit about impacts. I can suggest others, as well. I could go on, but I’ll leave it there and other guys can add.

I did this in a previous post about a “good outcome” and may have forgotten a couple points, but what would help at this stage, relative to the BSA drawing us out and into this would include:

1) YPT improvements (with all the elements I, MYCVAStory and others have noted); 

2) Full disclosure and accountability;

3) AG investigations;

4) As much money as we can get; and

5) An actual apology, not just “We are so saddened...that some were abused while a part of Scouting.” 

11 minutes ago, David CO said:

Feel free to start a separate thread.

If you recall, there are specific, non-monetary components to this case that are very much appropriate to this discussion. Further, if you want to understand why so many people filed claims and why we are so vocal and descriptive about the life impacts of child sexual abuse  — which has brought BSA into this situation — you’d want to know. Money? Yes. Compensation? No. Recompense? Yes. Accountability and acknowledgement of not only the abuse but the years of torment? Yes, most definitely. [Exclamation point] Your myopic opinion is pretty much just that. That’s not a judgement, rather an observation. 

1 minute ago, David CO said:

Bankruptcies are about money.  Period.

Not exclusively, in this case. Exclamation point. 

28 minutes ago, MattR said:

Not a chance. Aren't you the one who said they tended towards verbose?

You got that right. You’d have to find me and then make your way through my security to shut me up. Fat chance my droning will in any anyway be curtailed, other than by my bodychecker friend. 

28 minutes ago, MattR said:

Anyway, since we've been picked up by the AP and we still have lots of pages to go where is the discussion about victim's needs other than money? I recently heard a discussion about trauma, ptsd, shame and the neuro biology behind it. I understand a little better what people have been through and their comments here make sense. Maybe we can get a page out of it.

Do you mean “where is the discussion...” here or in the press? If you’re inviting the neurobiological discussion and research articles, you may get more than one page. Lots more. Was the discussion you heard live or video? Want to go first? 

Also, I put together a pretty decent list in response to the “needs” question some time ago. As I recall, I answered a post by “WIMomma?” (forgive me if I got that wrong).

24 minutes ago, vol_scouter said:

I would not expect an attorney to be publicly or professionally - or any of us.

I appreciate the limited correction, but in the main CS has been a great source. Also, he sure ain’t gonna quote someone who doesn’t reinforce his position. I was also suggesting, but didn’t say clearly, that in addition to CS’s knowledge and volume of posts, I doubt TK is reading every line in the thread. He’s referenced CS’s posts before, who is often critical of National and LCs, though not with attribution, as here. Watch him and there are things to Tweet.

As to the the point quoted above, haven’t we come to expect the unexpected from him? Know any other people with a lot of money and a passion (real or projected) who sorta feel they can Tweet with impunity. Morality and code of ethics aside, why not? He’s doing the Tweet thing as an influencer, actual or self-anointed. I’ll take this over someone who sings raunchy songs, wins Grammy’s and talks about political and social matters on which they aren’t qualified to speak and when they do it’s a hot mess.

If it’s of any benefit, the LCs have full access to the POCs implicating them, without redaction of the survivor claimant’s identifying information. The Ad Hoc Committee of Local Councils was allowed access to the redacted versions only. Also, once they are in the hands of the LC, their interpretation of “mandatory reporting,” per the Confidentiality provions of the POC, moderated or monitored in any way. That’s what I am being told. Once they have them, they can use that information as they see fit ONLY as to reporting and law enforcement. 

57 minutes ago, Sentinel947 said:

He's quoting random, anonymous strangers off a web forum. It's possible that any of us do not know what we claim to know, or aren't who we claim to be. Not exactly trustworthy sources. 

If you noticed, the source he quoted from this forum is someone who has demonstrated an enormous breadth of knowledge of this case, BSA National, Local, Scouting on the ground and the law, generally. I doubt it was a random pick out a hat.  

20 minutes ago, MYCVAStory said:

Yeah, that candid conversation is important but sometimes you have to watch what you say.

I have a friend close to the case on the victim side. He has occasionally body checked me if I seem to be going down a path that could be detrimental either to our case, overall, or the morale of our cohort. It’s been enormously appreciated, as I am prone to both verbosity and a quick trigger. Interestingly, he is a distance guy and I a sprinter. When we had to run the “440 yard dash,” the 100 and 200 guys buried ourselves amid the pole vaulting pit foam. I don’t like it, but he’s helping me realize I can’t even see the tape at this point. Don’t even get me started on avoidance measures when we were supposed to time on the half mile and mile. Called in sick that day.

41 minutes ago, Sentinel947 said:

If Kosnoff is reading here, who knows what other parties are watching?  

He definitely is or via a surrogate. Count on it being a broad sampling of people involved or interested in the case, either personally, professionally or institutionally. Without question. 

29 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Appears so. 

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