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21 minutes ago, JoeBob said:

Careful, lest you reveal yourself as partisan on the other side.

Agreed! And that’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this forum. You might have made a correct assumption about my politics but I’ll endeavor to not let that be confirmed here. 

I’m not technically adept enough to quote two posts but to @skeptic, there is a documented partisanship to many media outlets. Sure, in a perfect world there wouldn’t be, but that’s why I thought it was important to note the source… we’re living in a world where provided information is not benign and it’s better to know than not.

One of my last responses to one of your posts was about an analysis by one of the only people allowed to review the BSA IV files and which vindicated BSA to a degree. I think that’s really important context. 

4 hours ago, skeptic said:

an institution that relied on the integrity and ethics of its members and staff at a time when such values are treated as naive.

Ouch… I would also be too embarrassed to link to that partisan source (Jonathan Turley of The Hill).  

Integrity and ethics are very, very important but some hide behind the veneer of the institution. How does a victim of abuse in the BSA think when they hear trustworthy, loyal… ? I know it makes my stomach turn even as I try to follow the same principles in my life.

We need to track ethics and integrity by actions not words. SCOTUS has ideals of non-partisanship but politicians fight for the appointments… so the ideal is laughable.  Same for BSA in my mind, better to prove it than say it. 

22 hours ago, ThenNow said:

Scroll down. Thoughts?
 

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2022/05/03/scouters-to-receive-2022-silver-buffalo-silver-antelope-awards-scoutings-top-national-and-territorial-volunteer-honors/?utm_source=scoutingwire&utm_campaign=swvolunteer05042022&utm_medium=email&utm_content=

Per the press release, we’re part of an “illustrious list of people who have given noteworthy and extraordinary service to youth.” Gross. 

2 hours ago, Eagledad said:

to come to all discussions as anti BSA doesn't make sense to me.

Here’s an extremely over the top hypothetical question: how can anyone be against the Weinstein Organization? They enabled great art to be made and donated a lot of their profits to so many worthy causes! There are always powerful men in society that rape women… it’s just a statistic. One-in-a-million, what’re you going to do?

Here’s another: who can be anti-the Cosby Show? They made us laugh, focused on family structures and the lead actor donated a lot of money to charity. About that lead actor, probably the same as it always was in Hollywood… we just know about it because of the media. Guess there are two million people that work in the entertainment industry because we know about the two rapists.

Of course many people are anti those things now, which seems reasonable to me, even as they were lauded at the time for their good works and contributions to society. You can’t buy your way to heaven. But that’s not my point, even as it is fun to ridicule deserving entities. 

The women that were raped were shunned, silenced, not given opportunities in the entertainment industry, hurt, not believed, etc. My point is that it is 100% reasonable for those women to be anti the structure that enabled them being raped and then punished them for it. A little empathy goes a long way. 

I would also note that criticism and dissent are positive. Maybe you’ll read my post and poke some holes in the logic… but either way I hope it opens you up to why there are people that are anti-BSA. 

6 hours ago, Eagledad said:

And there are others who are obviously anti BSA. Which just makes no sense to me.

Not sure if I understand correctly but this reads as you saying there’s no scenario one can be anti-BSA that you would understand. I mean this specific portion of the forum is about kids that were sexually abused within the structure set up by BSA. I can think of several other reasons someone could be anti-BSA that I might not agree with but at least makes sense. 

5 hours ago, elitts said:

Current known abuse rate:  .076%

Do you have a reference for this? I can’t seem to find anything online. 
 

My current theory is that CSA has not been well researched (not to say there’s not been a lot of effort in some studies) and that that is purposeful.

On 4/22/2022 at 3:21 PM, ThenNow said:

Is anyone familiar with the Exec Producers, production company or filmmakers? 

https://onmyhonormovie.com/experts

25 minutes ago, skeptic said:

fairly clear that the magnitude of things is hard to judge

Glad we agree on that point, but that's exactly what the report does. 

On 4/23/2022 at 7:34 PM, skeptic said:

My only claim is that the problem is one of our larger society, and indicators are that it is less of an issue with BSA

The Warren report relied on the IV files and estimated there were 12,254 victims between 1944 and 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/nyregion/boy-scouts-sex-abuse.amp.html

That the analysis was based on the provided files is a huge caveat throughout the report. This is the sentence before the claim that the rate was lower in the Boy Scouts: 

In making these comparisons, it is important to note that the two “prevalence studies” are different in intent and thoroughness and many factors can help explain the different rates of child sexual abuse including social class, family cohesion, victim vulnerability, and varying levels of investigative experience and vigor.

So, a lot more caveats. Just in a first pass review, there is no reference to the gender makeup of abusers and victims in the Boy Scouts and how that affects reporting.

There are 82,000+ claims in the current bankruptcy. As in the Warren report data, the comparison isn’t direct but I think it’s fair to say the Warren estimates are low. 

Maybe after the bankruptcy there will be more clarity (given more data) on whether CSA was “less of an issue” in the Boy Scouts. 

I’m very [insert synonym for skeptical] of some Warren report conclusions. 

9 hours ago, scoutesquire said:

Why have the insurers not shown hard proof of fraud?  They don't have any.

My recollection is that insurers asked to further investigate some claims earlier in the process but it was not allowed. That act could have other effects but for the insurers it would be difficult to show proof if not allowed to look for evidence. 

7 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

what were the stated penalties?

If helpful:

There's also section indicating you "declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing statements are true and correct."

Just now, MYCVAStory said:

It was NOT a comparable group.

Thanks! 

Do you have concerns with the validation process? I haven't read the TDP completely but assumed this was part of choosing a competent person to administer the trust.

33 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

300-1200+ cut and paste electronic signatures in short order

Has anyone heard a good estimate of the number of fraudulent claims? An expert this week said her experience was something a bit over 40% but I don't know if it was a comparable group. 

More importantly, at least to me, is the breakdown by class. If all/most fraudulent claims are for the expedited distribution, that would be annoying to me and it's likely illegal, but ultimately wouldn't affect other outcomes to any great degree (my calculation is less than 1% of $2.7B).

If there are fraudulent claims in different classes, they will need to provide more information for review. 

1 hour ago, Eagle1970 said:

Had it required personal completion and real signatures with much more detail, many weak or even fraudulent claims would have never been filed.  Now they have to do what they can on the back end, after law firms have substantial money invested.

I agree with this... law firms not vetting the claims (and, of course, the people making those claims) has made this process much more difficult. 

1 hour ago, MYCVAStory said:

The settlement could look a lot different IF one is approved.

For sure. I should have been more clear that it is a guess based on the current plan under consideration and using the voting tallies from the recent vote. Both of those major items can change.

How underfunded is the TDP? That's a question I have had and with the provided excel sheet, I tried to make an educated guess. This includes: all non-rejected claims and all claims with a council listed (i.e., if no LC was listed, it's not included)... this is somewhere around 43,000 claims. 

The basis is $3,500 for all who selected the expedited distribution and the base matrix value with no scaling factors except the mid-point of the different SOL scaling factors for all others. 

As you can see below, the total amount (with the major assumptions above) is about $9.5B and, of course, we all know the Trust amount of $2.7B (current, assuming no additional money from the non-settling entities). So, it seems reasonable to me that we should assume in the neighborhood of 1/3 of any claim can be paid from the Trust (really, less if we think there will be more than 43,000 paid claims). Maybe that will go up meaningfully if other entities settle, but pretty sure there's not another $6B out there. 

If anyone would like the excel sheet that I modified with states/SOL scaling factors, I can set up a dropbox link. Also, I'm open to feedback on the methodology. 

BTW, the SOL limitations closes off about $6B more in claims. 

7 hours ago, ThenNow said:

9305.pdf 1004.1 kB · 10 downloads

There's a lot of information in that pdf and the excel sheet here: https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/a3fa6777-ba03-42a0-a73b-5c9a90600938_2022-03-11_FINAL_REDACTED_Supplemental_LC_and_CO_Voting_Report.xlsx

Here is the breakdown by class of listed allegations for both the 56,536 counted votes and the 49,223 counted but did-not-elect-the-expedited-distribution: (fyi, I'm not writing out the types... if you can't figure them out, they are in the excel sheet).

Caveat: the data is a tiny bit messy... I think there is one more claim with a counted vote than was included in the 56,536 number and only briefly looking at the SOL column, about 4% of my open state council claims were shown as barred.

If there's any analysis someone would like done, I can try to figure it out. The columns I think are most interesting are: expedited distribution selection, abuse allegation, SOL (barred or not barred) and local council.

I'm going to try to assign open, grey, closed to the councils but that will take some time. I think it would inform the answer to the question of whether the open vs closed SOL condition affected voting choice. 

4 minutes ago, PaleRider said:

1700 odd claims

The author the Forbes article writes "since the bankruptcy, these 1700-odd claims (which already seemed like a lot to me) exploded to over 100,000"

@johnsch322was highlighting the biases of the author. 

2 hours ago, ThenNow said:

How can this continue to happen relatively unchecked without both full disclosure of aggregator funding and advertising methods, and frontend vetting and validation of e-signatures?

Hi @ThenNow, I think it's because bankruptcy court is an imperfect venue for tort claims but companies prefer it as they pay pennies on the dollar against their liabilities. The insurers pay lip service to potential fraud but are also getting rid of their liabilities for a defined amount. The entities with the assets don't really care if there's fraud, that's not what they are trying to manage. The entities that are aggregating/advertising and not vetting/validating are trying to maximize the number of claimants under their umbrella. 

Collectively, they attempt to manage it by giving a modest payment off-ramp (expedited distribution) that can be used for real abuse cases but also should capture most (all?) of the fraudulent claims. To have a distribution from the TDP or IR processes, there are mechanisms to mitigate fraud.

Quote

Any dilution of the claimant pool by nefarious means damages survivors all over again.

I'm working this through because I think this is a great point. Let's say 10% of all claims are fraudulent (no idea if this is the case but it doesn't seem unreasonable and maybe biased high) and they all take the expedited distribution, that would be 1% of the $2.7B amount. Totally gross and unfair but: for a survivor, what's 1% when you're paying 33.3-40% to counsel? and for the debtor, what's 1% when you're paying billions less than your liabilities?

So I'm not sure the unsavory parts will ever end with bankruptcy as the best (from the debtors' standpoint) option. The best that can be done is to manage it. 

1 minute ago, skeptic said:

Not sure if this post suggests this article, which is spot on by the way from my perspective, is reason for censue.

Hi @skeptic... there was more in the original post (that I don't recall) but that was the shared link. I still had it open and thought others might want to read it.

We disagree on whether the article is spot on.

58 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

isn't it better to use the moment to leverage enhanced youth protection than see BSA emerge without those significant improvements?

Yes, I completely agree that it is better.

I've been trying to think of a good analogy to describe what seems like bizarro world to me. The best I've come up with USA gymnastics. From the same month they filed for bankruptcy: "We have the majority of the Deborah Daniels report recommendations either implemented or in progress, and we are committed putting all of the recommendations in place. " https://usagym.org/pages/post.html?PostID=23015 also see https://usagym.org/pages/aboutus/pages/recommendations.html.

So a youth-oriented group recognized a problem associated with youth protection, enabled independent recommendations and started implementing them.

The BSA sent out a plan with insufficient* youth protection to survivors of childhood sexual abuse and asked them to vote yes (and if it they did, it would be implemented at a later date). The asterisk is because I'm not an expert on what should be implemented but presumably the TCC didn't agree with what was included in the first plan that was sent out. 

So, yes, much better to have it but I cannot believe this is what it takes to have it. 

2 minutes ago, johnsch322 said:

they were able to get better youth protection  

I scream every time I see something about negotiating for "better" youth protection. [This has nothing to do with the points in your post, @johnsch322.] I may have mentioned this earlier but that (better youth protection) was the chat answer I received from Doug Kennedy of the TCC as the reason to vote for this plan. 

1. appropriate youth protection should have been implemented as soon as it was determined to not be sufficient. This is a BSA failure (and is presumably an on-going failure until a bankruptcy case is over).
2. that it is being negotiated as part of a bankruptcy stemming from too little youth protection is unbelievable. This is a BSA failure.
3. that the first plan was sent out with "lesser" and presumably not appropriate youth protection is unconscionable. This is a BSA, a TCC and a court failure. If it wasn't sufficient, it should not have been sent out.

The BSA is an entity that wants to survive and I can understand (but vehemently disagree with) their choices around money, settlements, debt, etc. But when that entity is youth-oriented and needs to negotiate with outside groups to make sure the youth are protected... disgusting. 

Quote

Are they betting that more money will have to be put on the table to get the plan confirmed and thru the appeals process?

That is a really interesting idea. We'll see!

19 minutes ago, NJScout1980 said:

Being censured for opinions based on credible evidence is ridiculous.

Sorry to hear that, @NJScout1980. I read and responded to your post. While we may disagree on some things, I don't recall anything not appropriate for this forum. For what it's worth... I hope you keep posting. 

Here's the article that was shared: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2022/03/08/bankruptcy-and-the-boy-scouts/

I urge everyone to brush up on their critical readings skills if they do read it.

Just now, johnsch322 said:

Everyone who was mediating on the side of survivors was hamstrung by the bad deal that BSA made with Hartford

This is also what I understood from my attorney (after I previously voiced displeasure on this forum that the insurance company amounts were terrible and should be renegotiated). 

3 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

8000 holdout votes of 56,500 voting claimants is not insubstantial

Approximately 3,000 additional people had their votes counted (how that squares with the difference from the non-counted vote appendices is more effort than I'm willing to put in at the moment). Of the counted votes, approximately 9,000 more people voted accept and 6,000 less people voted reject.

I'm assuming the bulk of the 6,000 fewer reject votes are changed votes and the 3,000 additional counted votes were predominantly to accept. Further, I'm assuming the bulk of the changed votes are the 5,000 additional yes votes are from those voting by master ballot (i.e., certain law firms changing their position from reject to accept). Does that make sense to others?

9 minutes ago, NJScout1980 said:

let’s shine some light on the real culprits in dragging out this bankruptcy.

Thanks for sharing the article. I'd suggest reading it critically (and not only because it's an op-ed by a member of the Federalist Society). Here's one example:

Quote

...recent reports are that the bill for BSA’s experts and those hired by the official creditors’ committees have ballooned to more than $205 million, which is approaching the size of the original trust that was part of settlement discussions. Experts have noted that bills for lawyers and others in connection with the fraught proceedings are on a path to being comprise more than 40% of BSA’s self-reported assets, whereas in past mega-bankruptcies such fees were usually 2-3% and certainly less than 10%.

I agree that fees should be kept to a minimum but who cares how much the "original trust" was worth and why should it be a basis for comparison? In fact, the author is making a point in the opposite direction: after experts and lawyers were part of the negotiations, the current trust is going to be over $2.7B. I mean, that's a return on investment! Spending $2 to get $24 is a good deal. A 1217% ROI! 

To the second point, I have looked for this information and not been able to find any good source... has anyone ever come across anything useful? At least the author caveats the BSA's assets with "self-reported."