FormerCubmaster

On 4/28/2023 at 12:21 PM, Eagledad said:

What many folks don't understand about the LDS is that scouting is part of their youth program. For them, the doctrine of scouting is an official doctrine of their church. Or so I'm told. So, they had no option but to back out. We had several LDS familes in our troop.

 Many churches are struggling with the gay issue for the same reason. It's one thing to accept homosexuality as a sin among sins and still love and respect your neighbor, but to accept the sin as a doctrine of normalcy challenges how they can accept one part of God's doctrine of sin, but not others. In that context, it's not about respect or fairness of loving your neighbors, it's about turning away from their god.

Barry

From the LDS standpoint—I don’t know that I’d phrase it *quite* that way.  The LDS stayed in the BSA when it was announced that it would admit LGBTQ boys; it was when it announced that it would admit LGBTQ leaders that the church drew the line.  Even then, I think this was less of a “red line” in and of itself than a straw that broke the camel’s back after a number of perceived problems and slights including:

—perceived shabby treatment by the BSA national leadership, which had apparently promised the LDS that certain agenda items would *not* be brought up at board meetings that the LDS delegates couldn’t attend and then rammed those items through in the absence of the LDS delegates;

—a perceived pattern of dishonesty by BSA national leadership by, for example, assuring GSUSA that the BSA wouldn’t start accepting girls and then doing it anyways;

—a resultant inability to trust BSA National’s assurances that Mormon units would still be able to set the conditions for membership and/or leadership in their own organizations;

—the BSA’s long-standing practice of treating the LDS like a cash cow (many councils would impose quotas on LDS troops for the annual Friends of Scouting drive, knowing that—when push came to shove—Mormon bishops would ask their congregants to open up their checkbooks, and that Mormon congregants would pay up);

—perceived BSA bloat, financial profligacy, and mismanagement (for example, the BSA national leadership were paid over ten times the annual salary of the LDS Church’s global leadership, whose salary is a little less than your average council executive.  And how on earth could shirts, patches, and booklets be THAT expensive?!?);

—the overall financial costs of the Church’s BSA involvement, especially as compared to the relatively low costs of the Church’s in-house program for its elementary- and teenaged girls (and uncomfortable questions about why the Church was spending so much more on its boys than on its girls); and especially in conjunction with the perception that the Church’s programs for girls were just plain more effective at engaging and retaining youth into adulthood than the BSA was.

—with the benefit of hindsight over the past 5 years, I wonder whether the Church felt it was going to be expected to subsidize claims against the BSA arising from non-LDS units, claimants, and/or perpetrators.

—broad frustration with council red tape and nit-picking of local programs and the incessant recruiting demands for numbers, numbers, numbers; and the way local initiatives were frequently stymied by council-level naysayers.  It was a popular sentiment among den leaders that the council was where good ideas went to die.

I think the LDS and BSA could have worked through the LGBTQ issue if there was a modicum of trust among the stakeholders, and if BSA involvement was still fundamentally “working” for the LDS Church generally.  But, those core elements just weren’t there anymore.  

19 hours ago, fred8033 said:

Referring to future court cases.  LDS & scouting was tightly integrated.  I don't see how court cases can be cleanly scouting or church.  ... It feels like a future court case nightmare.  ... I'm wondering how lawyers interpret liability if in one view has bankruptcy protection and the other doesn't.  

I should think it depends on whether joint and several liability is deemed to apply, which would differ by state.  At the risk of grossly over-simplifying:  If “pure joint and several liability” applies, then it’s easy peasy—the defendant who can pay (the church) pays the entire sum of damages, and the defendant who bankrupted out (BSA) walks away cleanly.  If it doesn’t, the the jury has to allocate proportion of fault between each defendant; the award is allocated amongst the defendants in equal proportions, the church pays its portion and the bankrupt walks away with the plaintiff a haircut on his award.

Given the way LDS units used to run, I would think they’d have to be deemed well over 50% liable for cases of sex abuse within each individual unit; maybe as high as 90-95%.  It was the church that selected (and, at its discretion, removed) the unit leaders; and I’ll bet well over 90% of the claimants were LDS kids—they participated in those units not primarily because of the appeal of the BSA name and curriculum; but because that was the youth program that their own church congregations happened to be running.

7 hours ago, malraux said:

They announced a name change right around the time they exited the BSA.

Sort of.  It’s had the same formal name since 1837-ish (“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”).  The issue has always been that the full name is kind of a mouthful and lends itself to shortening; and there’s been some back-and-forth from the church leadership over the years about whether “Mormon” was an appropriate short form since the term as an appellation both was coined by detractors of the church and tends to distract from what we see as our commitment to Jesus.  About every twenty or thirty years we get direction from church leaders saying “please, lay off the ‘Mormon’ thing”, and we spend a few years trying to change our ways, but we never quite pull ourselves out of the inertia,  

The most recent initiative has had a bit more “oomph” as church institutions like the former “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” and “Mormon Youth Symphony” have been been officially renamed and members have been asked to avoid even the “LDS” acronym.  While the gesture of many on this forum (and the bankruptcy court) who have substituted “TCJC” for “LDS” is very much appreciated, I don’t see “TCJC” getting any traction within the church itself. 

5 minutes ago, fred8033 said:

.  .... FYI ... I periodically have to look up TCJC.  It's not a common abbreviation for LDS without LDS tacked on.  

Yeah, I’ve frankly never seen it outside of discussions of the BSA bankruptcy.  But, when in Rome . . . 🙂

On 8/2/2022 at 11:17 AM, fred8033 said:

Question #1 - TCJC has deep pockets but do those pockets extend to incidents that happen at a specific church temple / specific troop?  I compare it to Catholic churches where collectively they have huge assets, but legally they are very separate.  Diocese are individually incorporated.  Many of the local churches are even not legally owned by the diocese.  Is that similar with TCJC?  Or is there a stronger legal ownership connection to the national TCJC ?  

Yes.  There is a single corporation sole out of Salt Lake City that holds the deed to every LDS meetinghouse [actually two or three, but they are all indisputably under the control of the church’s central governing body].  All member donations are forwarded to Salt Lake City each week, and the central church leadership then turns around and funds each congregation’s annual operating budget on a per capita basis.  All congregational bishops, too, are individually formally approved by Salt Lake prior to their ordination.

(That’s how it works in the LDS Church within the USA, anyways.  Other countries may run a little differently depending on laws governing nonprofit operation, restrictions on international funds transfers, and so on.  But to the extent legally possible, the church’s operations up to and including its financial holdings are very tightly controlled out of Salt Lake.  A financial judgment against one congregation is effectually a financial judgment against all of them.)

On 8/5/2022 at 12:44 PM, skeptic said:

Today there is a fairly extensive piece on the LDS in Bisbee and so on.  This is only conjecture or poking for clarity, but I find myself wondering if the BSA officials that appareently made the under the carpet choice ordeflected were mostly LDS, since at the time they were huge influences on the National Council?  No accusation, only curiosity.

I think Kosnoff has suggested at times that the LDS church was the “power behind the throne” with the BSA and should be jointly and severally liable on every single claim against the BSA.  If he has evidence of that, then I suppose it will come out through the legal system in due course.

But the specific instances cited in the new article have to do with very narrow circumstances in which perpetrators made a confession to an ecclesiastical leader which, depending on the legal jurisdiction where it occurred, may have been subject to legal privilege; and it sounds like the church’s legal advisors may have given bad advice with regard to whether such a disclosure can legally be reported under Arizona law specifically.  In Oregon recently there was a case where the ecclesiastical leader *did* report such a disclosure to the legal authorities, and as a result the church was sued for violating clerical privilege.

In a broader context, where clerical privilege doesn’t apply, the official church policy (though sadly, sometimes honored more in the breach than in the observance as individual bishops take it upon themselves to “help a good man repent” while keeping him out of jail/preserve his family and profession and social standing) has long been to report the abuse to the legal authorities.  The controversial thing (and I believe this has come up on this very forum) is whether it’s appropriate for anyone, LDS or not, to seek legal advice before making a report of child abuse; and a lot of people are really uncomfortable with the Church having institutionalized and mandated any sort of pre-reporting legal-advice-seeking process for its hierarchy.

See, eg, 

https://publicsquaremag.org/editorials/are-reported-sexual-abuse-cases-exceptional-or-illustrative-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ/

and

https://www.deseret.com/2022/8/5/23292405/i-survived-abuse-church-help-line-ap-story-broke-my-heart-latter-day-saints-associated-press-mormon

7 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

The judge made it clear the BSA does not need the LDS $250M.  She stated there is enough $ in the plan without the LDS contribution.  I take that as a signal from her on a path out.  BSA is probably best off removing the LDS from the plan.   The LDS will face a surge of lawsuits but since they are not a currren CO there will be no negative impact to the BSA.

Indeed; and the LDS have ample resources to address this sort of thing.

If they bail, does that have any ramifications for other CORs?  My understanding was that early on, there was talk that the LDS offer was seen as a sort of benchmark that other CORs would be expected to meet (and kind of a high one, at that).  Does their absence create a space for the other CORs to renegotiate their own liability?

14 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

Basically the LDS were attempting to clear out all claims where the youth was abused by a scout leader within the LDS.  She said that while it is ok to clear out claims from scouting activities, she cannot approve clearing claims where the abuse occurred outside of scouting.  

LDS will have a tough decision.   Do they pay $250M for significant protection or do they prepare for an onslaught of lawsuits.  They may face that onslaught regardless.  My guess is that they pull the $250M and become a non participating charter org.   

There’s little reason for them to participate now.  The judge appeared to characterize “pure scouting” claims as scenarios where non-LDS kids participate in LDS units and are victimized by LDS unit leaders.  This would likely be an infinitesimal percentage of claimants—the vast majority of claims involving LDS units will be “mixed claims”, because nearly all adult LDS males (including, sadly, the dirtbags who perpetrate SA) are ordained into the faith’s lay clergy.  

There’s simply no reason for the LDS church to help the BSA pay off the BSA’s obligation to LDS victims who are just going to turn around and sue the church for more anyways.  They may as well approach the victims with settlement offers directly (or, wait around to be sued).

3 hours ago, jcousino said:

My understanding under ypt is that scouting does not do the investigating. That's the job of children protective services (CPS) (law enforcement). Once the youth made the complaint the duty of the camp was to notify the scout ex and contract the youths parents and law enforcement. Threating statement are actionable, not sure what level the  inappropriate behavior reached. I do believe that bully is actionable in some state's. If the Youth has not been contracted by CPS by now it has not likely been reported. Scouting not following its own rules. Please if i am wrong let me know , So as a required reporter i would have called CPS myself. There no place for youth on youth violence If the lady is totally making this up making a false statement to CPS is a crime on her part

 

john

PS look at all the changes in the past 2 years in scouting to combat youth on youth problems

At least in my state, CPS won’t investigate child-on-child verbal bullying unless there is an element of physicality to it or unless the victim and perp live together.  (Threats of physical violence would be referred to law enforcement, not CPS.)

It seems to me that via manuals, charter agreements, etc.  BSA has been telling the units sotto voce for a while that “all your toys REALLY belong to us”.  The warnings/reminders seem to be getting increasingly intense, and are starting to smack of demands.

It seems clear to me that with traditional chartering/sponsoring civic organizations—churches, Lions/Rotary clubs, Masonic lodges, etc—on the decline, and with the high startup costs for new units of an outdoors-based program like the BSA, BSA isn’t going to be able to attain its stated goal of better serving underprivileged kids unless there is a substantial redistribution of resources from the established units to the newer ones.  Why should Troop 89’s tents, stoves, trailer, etc sit unused for three weeks out of the month when there are three other units who don’t have that kind of gear and who will never be able to acquire it because of structural inequities within our social system?  Modern conceptions of equity and justice demand that Troop 89 share the wealth.

It’s no skin off my nose at this point—I was with an LDS unit for about 12 years, and we’re well out of the Scouting game now.  But our unit’s relationship with the council/BSA for nearly all of that time was roughly equivalent to the relationship between a milk cow and a farmer (assuming the milk cow has to pay for all its own food, plus paying rent to the farmer, plus having the farmer throw a shovelful of manure at the cow once or twice a week just because he can).  Now that the Mormons are gone, it looks an awful lot to me like BSA has chosen the Methodist units as their next cash cow.

I’d run away, if I were them.

1 hour ago, GrammaScout said:

  [1]Thank you.  This is what i have been told by LDS neighbors in Scouting.  I would just say that if it is really an LDS Youth Meeting, it is NOT a Boy Scout Meeting and is deceptive in calling it that.

[2]*****-For what it’ I suppose if a particular non-LDS kid were engaging in particularly disruptive behavior, then at some point we may have had to pull the plug; but I never saw anything like that happen.*****

I am a bit puzzled about your comment here above:    So are you saying that if an LDS Scout was engaging in particularly disruptive behavior they would NOT dismissed?

                                         

1.  I suppose it depends on how carefully the distinction between the scouting unit and the CO is maintained.  The old LDS paradigm, of course, was that the chartering org (church congregation) sponsored the unit with the intent and expectation that the unit would *be* the church youth program for the sons of the families in that particular congregation.  Additional visitors who wanted to participate in that experience were welcome to join (just as they would be welcome to join Sunday worship services); but Scouting as a program was always subordinate the overall interests and needs and objectives of the church congregation.  In colloquial conversation amongst church members, there was rarely a reason to distinguish between the Boy Scout troop and the boys’ youth group.

2.  Because of the way LDS units were run, permanently expelling a boy from the pack/troop would be tantamount to expelling him from the church congregation itself.  Obviously you never want to do that, regardless of whether the boy is a “member” or merely a “visitor”; but per our theology “membership” implies enhanced mutual communitarian obligations to look out for and help one another.  If the family still wants the kid participating in church (or, when we were using the program, Scouts), then so long as the kid isn’t posing an actual safety risk to others we would (hopefully) bend over backwards to try to make things work out no matter how obnoxious the kid is being.  

2 hours ago, PACAN said:

@FormerCubmaster  What I remember from my dealings with the LDS units was that all boys were LDS HQ paid for all registrations hence the large number of LDS youth in the BSA.   The local Bishop would say that all are registered but not all actually participate.  This was different in that all LDS youth were required to participate in their weekly church night.  These units did not have any non-LDS youth but they were not precluded from joining the BSA program.

Yeah, that sounds accurate; but with the clarification that (at least when I was going through the program as a youth after the age of 12) there was basically no distinction, for practical purposes, between “weekly church night” and “weekly Scout meetings”.  Any suggestion that there was a quid pro quo,  “if you want to come to our Scouts meeting on Tuesday you must also come to our church youth group meeting on Wednesday”, doesn’t really capture the dynamic that was at play—the two were one and the same meeting.

17 hours ago, GrammaScout said:

Whereever have you found an official statement stating that a Church CO CAN require that the Scouts be of the same denomination?     Horrible!    That was done only by the Mormons because THEY made the Scout program part of their youth programs.  If you were a member and the 'bishop' told you you would now be the Instructor for sky-diving, you had to comply or lose your TR etc.     Do you NOT realize that Scouts have their own denominations..??    It would be the end of Scouting if this was done.    It is contrary to ALL the principles in the program since its inception.

 

For what it’s worth, when I was a cubmaster in an LDS congregation (and when I previously worked with 11 year olds in a different LDS congregation) (and when I grew up as a scout in yet another LDS congregation), church membership wasn’t a prerequisite for troop or pack membership.  Non-LDS kids generally weren’t interested in our units precisely because of our religious affiliation; but the one or two who *did* show interest and didn’t mind being seen in the company of a bunch of Mormons were welcomed.  We saw it as an outreach/fellowshipping opportunity.  I suppose if a particular non-LDS kid were engaging in particularly disruptive behavior, then at some point we may have had to pull the plug; but I never saw anything like that happen.

So FWIW—even as a Mormon myself, I have no idea why one would want to limit troop membership to adherents to the denomination of the chartering organization.  I’m a bit of a libertarian at heart, so I prefer to see the COs given the option—but I can’t imagine why they’d want to take it.

5 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

Some questions

Can an employee be a member of more than one Workforce Resource Group?

Can employees form a new workforce group, say

          Indigenous Peoples of BSA workforce

          Underpaid PE's workforce Union

          I Don't Have a Sense of Belonging Either workforce group

Or a “People who wouldn’t touch the clowns and grifters in National Leadership with a ten foot pole” group?

BSA was only supposed to be apolitical when its membership leaned rightward.

As the organization’s demographics evolve, it will naturally be expected to take a greater role in social activism.  

20 minutes ago, yknot said:

Once again, I am having trouble with the logic. I think a lot of religions have positions that are in some kind of gray area as do plenty of other fields. Doesn't change the fact that you are a mandatory reporter. That's a failing of the organization if it doesn't adequately inform its members of their responsibilities and train them if needed. 

Or . . . maintain a 24-hour hotline that can connect them with jurisdiction-specific legal advice in almost-real time?   I mean—if the BSA had contemporaneously, immediately referred every staffer who heard an abuse allegation to an actual lawyer who could advise the staff member of their legal obligations to report (as opposed to just falling back on policy and years-old trainings)—would the BSA be in the pickle it’s in?

If any of the less-than-1/5 of states with “immediate” reporting requirements has an issue with the Church’s practice, they certainly have the information and resources to take corrective action.  So far, they haven’t . . . so all we have is online grousing about an internal church procedure that may result in a CPS report being made at 1:00 a.m. rather than 9:00 pm. 

13 minutes ago, yknot said:

That could be true except a priest is not a layman in this situation. They are a mandatory reporter in many if not most states. They would be, or should be, at least as conversant with reporting requirements as would be a licensed driver would be with traffic law.  Especially given the abuse environment since the 1980s. This is not new or surprising information to any clergy in just about any church.

Hmm.  That gets trickier in the case of Mormonism, since we have a lay clergy at the congregational level whose institutional training is almost nil and who are holding down day jobs while putting an additional 20-30+ hours per week into their ecclesiastical responsibilities.  And again, as I pointed out above—there are practicing lawyers who get this stuff wrong unless or until they have a chance to do additions research and/or get advice from a colleague.  I’m not sure it’s realistic or fair to hold some poor schcmuck who had the misfortune to be assigned the job of a Mormon bishop, to a higher standard than what we would expect of a practicing attorney—particularly when the worst-case-scenario net result is simply a few hours’ delay on a legally-required report.  

At some point, criticism of this nature becomes less about bona fide child safety and more about having found a convenient bludgeon to beat up on institutions we are already predisposed to dislike.

54 minutes ago, yknot said:

I'm still having trouble following this logic. When I see flashing lights behind me, I don't call my lawyer before pulling over for a traffic stop and complying. The laws in each state are pretty generally known to residents in those states. I don't understand what is being advocated for here or why.  

I’m not sure obeying a cop who is demanding you pull over right now, and a layman’s knowing the ins and outs of mandatory reporter statutes, are quite in the same category.   I routinely interact professionally with people (including lawyers) who don’t know the reporting requirements in my own jurisdiction.  

Im not really “advocating” anything, just offering explanations for why the LDS church does things the way that they do.  As I noted earlier—making a report of information received during a clerical confession when one is legally bound to keep it silent (as is the case in some jurisdictions) can in and of itself expose a religious organization to civil liability.  Actions may well be required in one state that would be illegal the next state over.  There have been dark suggestions made in this thread to the effect that the Mormon church views itself as being above the law, or that the hotline exists primarily as an attempt to keep the legal authorities in the dark about incidents of child abuse whenever possible; I don’t think those suggestions are either fair or accurate.

As you probably noted in the form, callers to the hotline are given the personal/home cell numbers of the Church’s designated legal specialists in this field—this is not a situation where Mormon bishops are waiting for days or weeks to hear back as to whether they need to make a report.  So far as I am aware, *no* American jurisdiction has held the LDS Church or its functionaries (or, off the top of my head, anyone else regardless of institutional affiliation) criminally liable for taking a couple of extra hours to get legal advice before reporting child abuse to the relevant authorities. 

1 hour ago, yknot said:

BSA uses CWIG as a base source for YP. Not sure what you mean. 

I'm also not clear what you are trying to show with this recap or what the purpose is. Correct me if I'm wrong but this discussion started with a line on an internal church form that advised priests to contact internal legal counsel first before reporting abuse. If I understand you correctly, you are saying based on the above, it is reasonable for XYZ church institution to direct its mandatory reporting personnel to contact legal first. I look at this same information above and that seems not at all reasonable.  The intent of all these laws, despite some of the different permutations, are clear: that suspected abuse should be reported promptly to authorities who will do something about it in a timely manner in order to prevent more abuse. There is a special onus placed on anyone who is a mandatory reporter and institutions may not interfere. There are some very specific situations, such as perhaps a priest hearing an admission of abuse in a one on one confession, that could be considered a privileged communication and might be legitimate cause for a legal consult, but the initial form we were discussing went far beyond that kind of limited situation. 

 

Sure; but to obey the law, a person first needs to know what the law is.  Where a church stands liable for any failure of its functionaries to obey the law, it makes sense for the church to ensure that its functionaries have a means of learning the law—hence the hotline; which (as I think I pointed out earlier) takes pains to NOT actually receive “reports” of abuse in any meaningful way.  

1 hour ago, yknot said:

Again, I'm sorry, but I am not reading this the same way you are. In 9 states the mandatory reporter is required to report directly to authorities first, not to an institutional head or resource, and in 17 states there is a variation of that.  

https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/manda.pdf

I think the Sandusky case showed the dangers of having indirect reporting and it seems like some of that has been tightened up. 

That’s probably why the LDS Church’s form explicitly tells the hotline worker *not* to take any personally identifying info as to the perp or victims.  It’s not technically a report, it’s simply a person seeking legal guidance as to whether they are obligated to make a report (or, conversely, whether they are obligated to remain silent).  At the end of that call, the church’s honchos still have no idea exactly where, to whom, or by whom the abuse was perpetrated.

13 hours ago, Muttsy said:

The Handbook of Instructions in the LDS Church instructs (Ch. 10) on how to deal with child sexual abuse. If you are LDS clergy or former clergy you are acquainted with it. It instructs lower clergy to call the Church's law firm in Salt Lake, not the police or civil authorities. The perpetrator not the bishop is to turn himself in to the police but it advises the perpetrator to first lawyer up. LDS clergy are discouraged from getting involved with the legal system. The Church's focus is 100% focused on itself and zero percent on the abused child. It is focused on preventing lawsuits and scandal. 

The number of LDS related proofs of claim may be less than 40% but that is unsurprising given how the Church discourages victims from utilizing the legal system instead of the the internal church court disciplinary system which is where complaints to the bishop, if they make it that far, die. 

 

helplineintakeform whitepixels_Redacted.pdf 190.68 kB · 2 downloads

If I may add some perspective here (I am a practicing Mormon and also a government attorney representing DCFS in my state):

The reason the LDS legal hotline exists is that penitent-priest privilege laws differ by state.  The Church was recently sued, for example, by a woman whose husband’s ecclesiastical leader *did* make a report to the authorities; she claimed he had violated the privilege and since he went to jail the wife demanded several million dollars in lost income, loss of consortium, ad nauseum.  The attorneys staffing the legal hotline give church leaders the resources they need to comply with the legal requirements that specifically apply to their home jurisdictions.

In my state, penitent-priest privilege does not apply to reports or confessions of child abuse; and because we are a Mormon-heavy state we frequently get DCFS cases that began with a referral from either LDS leaders or church attorneys acting on behalf of those leaders.  What Church practice was in the 1920s or 1950s or 1970s, I cannot say; though for whatever it’s worth (probably not much, in a forum such as this!) I am inclined to agree with Mr. Lambert that the LDS Church’s scriptures tend strongly towards the idea that “repentance” entails an obligation to square oneself with the law.

On a more pedantic note:  while I’d agree that the LDS Church was a strong voice for cultural conservatism within the BSA, I’m not sure it’s quite accurate to suggest that it was we who made the BSA adopt these policies in the first place. It’s not like we cast a mind-control ray at Baden-Powell in 1908 and forced him to tailor his program to biological males, for example; or to include duty to “God and King” in the original Scout Oath.  (If any of y’all know of a church that can do time-traveling mind control, please let me know.  I’d go to that church.   )