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Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show


Merlyn_LeRoy

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Amateurs shouldn't be making arbitrary judgements over possible felonies like child rape. Duh.

 

By amateurs, yeh mean da folks who serve on juries? It seems to me that in our system, we allow our fellow citizens to make judgments about such things in every case. Duh. :)

 

If yeh wait for da legal system to convict, and then after conviction if yeh expect da legal system to keep da world safe from the predator for the rest of his (or her) life, you're goin' to see a couple orders of magnitude more abuse.

 

I would be interestin' to see what percentage of da "ineligible volunteers" who were referred to law enforcement were actually convicted, and how long their sentences were. I expect that in most cases there wasn't a prosecution, let alone a conviction. That was normal for the time period. Heck, da federal child pornography law wasn't even enacted until 1978, and most of da cases reported were before that! Even if there was a plea deal or conviction, I expect nearly 90% of 'em were out on the street in less than 10 years.

 

That's not a whole lot of protection from da legal system, eh? I reckon I'd be grateful to the BSA for doin' what they could to try to prevent these guys from jumpin' state and workin' with kids again.

 

It wasn't always perfect. No system is.

 

There were folks who I want to string up by their thumbs because I'm so furious about how they opted not to respond. There always are.

 

Both are true of almost any large youth-servin' organization of the period.

 

Beavah

 

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Beavah - Your right and everyone understands what your writing. The problem is that it doesn't help Merlyn. He has a political agenda and his agenda is served by muck raking. Stirring hatred and bigotry. It always says alot for an agenda when those advocating for it do it by damaging others.

 

Merlyn - Shame on you.

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Beavah disingenuously writes:

Amateurs shouldn't be making arbitrary judgements over possible felonies like child rape. Duh.

 

By amateurs, yeh mean da folks who serve on juries? It seems to me that in our system, we allow our fellow citizens to make judgments about such things in every case. Duh.

 

I don't mean lynch mobs.

 

If yeh wait for da legal system to convict, and then after conviction if yeh expect da legal system to keep da world safe from the predator for the rest of his (or her) life, you're goin' to see a couple orders of magnitude more abuse.

 

So why is it so much better to cover up abuse in the first place, and let abuse happen a lot longer?

 

 

PS: by the way, fred8033, why is it "shame on me" for reporting on child rape and BSA coverups? Shoot the messenger much?

(This message has been edited by Merlyn_LeRoy) (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

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Merlyn

 

Only those with a very weak or no argument have to resort to profanity in their feeble attempt to get a point across. The problem for you is that just about everyone who is a regular here knows very clearly what your true agenda is and very few, if any, agree or even sympathizes with your positions. Using terms like moron and idiot, etc does nothing to boost or support your arguments.

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BSA has made substantial new efforts to avoid problems by the extensive, multifacted and reinforcing youth protection policies we are all familiar with.

 

How effective that will be in deterring slimey worms remains to be seen. But it's a constructive effort by pretty much any standard.

 

Merlyn prefers to talk about incidents that happened 20-40 years ago, and disingenuously claims that BSA aided and abetted the slimey worms, which is a vile calumny.

 

 

He doesn't have anything constructive to say from what I've seen. He's just spreading poison.

 

(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

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Beavah babbles:

So juries of our peers are lynch mobs to you, eh?

 

No, People with no authority deciding to ignore possible child rape.

 

SeattlePioneer writes:

Merlyn prefers to talk about incidents that happened 20-40 years ago

 

And how Brad Allen ignored allegations of molestation in the mid 1990s and became the chief scout of the Seattle council from 2006-2010, and then area director for Area Two of the Western Region (which, as far as I can tell, he remains to this day).

 

That's not 20-40 years ago, that's someone STILL in the BSA. And I questioned why this guy was still in the BSA back in 2007. (This message has been edited by a staff member.)

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BadenP hypocritically whines:

Using terms like moron and idiot, etc does nothing to boost or support your arguments.

 

But "master baiter" is just fine, eh? Hypocrite.

 

By the way, I don't use insults to "support my arguments," I use them as insults. Trying to use insults to support an argument is an invalid ad hominem argument.

 

By the way, unnamed moderator, if you're going to remove my "moron" and "idiot" insults, remove BadenP's "master baiter" baiting.

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AZMike, "Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors"

 

packsaddle: "I was unaware of this statistic. Could you provide a reference for that claim?"

 

Well, you could start by reading your newspaper every day. I live in a city that is somewhere around the 5th largest in the U.S., and it is rare for a week to go by without a teacher, coach, counselor, or other school employee being arrested for a sexual offense against a child in the metropolitan area. I suspect that statistic will hold in most areas. The occasional article on a minister, in the area charged with an offense is reported much less often, and there are almost no current cases involving Catholic priests these days. The cases that are reported are almost all older cases that are being reported decades later, often after the accused is dead. The rate of sexual offenses has dropped off dramatically in the Catholic Church (due to reasons that I'll address later when I have time to write up an answer to SeattlePioneer's question), although it has spiked up in the Protestant denominations, as the insurance companies that issue policies for churches have noted, and is (in my estimation) likely to increase in times to come, with the increase in the new gay-friendly denominations.

 

The John Jay study on sexual offenses against children alleged against Catholic priests (which is generally acknowledged as being the best source of research data on the subject, and used the Church's own data) examined plausible accusations made between 1950 and 1992. The John Jay researchers reported that about 4 percent of the 110,000 priests (that's a total of 6,115 who were "credibly" or "not implausibly" accused over 42 years (ranging from "sexual talk" to rape) by 10,667 victims. Although 1 victim is too many, that is a very small proportion of the members of the Catholic faith, the single largest religious denomination in America, from 1950 to 1992, and a smaller proportion than the number of educators accused of sexual offenses against children.

 

Reports of allegations against priests made after 2002, including those of incidents that occurred years earlier, are released each year as part of the church's annual audits. Those reports continue to focus on new allegations dating from decades before, but the rate of current allegations has dropped way, way, way below current allegations against clerics from other Christian and Jewish denominations , and certainly way below educators (whether "physical educators" or not). The credible allegations against priests for all of 2011?

 

Seven.

 

For 2010, it was eight.

 

As there are roughly 41,406 Catholic priests in the United States, seven credibly accused priests would represent .000169 (or 0.0169%) of all U.S. priests.

 

 

And...

 

45% of all priests who were accused for 2011 were already deceased (this is a record high figure);

 

75% of all priests who were accused for 2011 are either deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or missing;

 

over 90% of all abuse accusations last year allege incidents from at least two decades ago (the most common time period was from almost 40 years ago: 1975-1979)

 

(http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/2011-annual-report.pdf)

 

The takeaway from this, I think, is that youth protection training and guidelines, such as mandated by the Catholic Church and the BSA WORKS, as does the reduction of admitted homosexuals from positions of trust with teenagers. As the Catholic Church has done under Pope Benedict. As the BSA continues to do.

 

If we compare this to some of the rates of abuse different studies have reported for educators...

 

An article in Slate reviewed the studies on the rate of sexual abuse by educators, and noted, "[t]"he best available study suggests that about 10 percent of students suffer some form of sexual abuse during their school careers. In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Association of University Women, surveyors asked students between eighth and 11th grades whether they had ever experienced inappropriate sexual conduct at school. The list of such conduct included lewd comments, exposure to pornography, peeping in the locker room, and sexual touching or grabbing. Around one in 10 students said they had been the victim of one or more such things from a teacher or other school employee, and two-thirds of those reported the incident involved physical contact. If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault. This number would include both inappropriate romantic relationships between teachers and upperclassmen, and outright pedophilia."

 

The article reasonably notes that "these statistics are uncertain, however, because no one has ever designed a nationwide study for the expressed purpose of measuring the prevalence of sexual abuse by educators. The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services cant agree on whose domain teacher sexual misconduct falls into, and Congress has shown little appetite to spend money on the issue. In the study described above, surveyors asked participants if they had ever experienced sexual improprieties at school, then asked students who reported abuse to identify the perpetrator. Since the study was intended to measure student-to-student sexual misconduct, the original investigators didnt focus on teacher-offenders. A third-party academic later used the raw data to suss out the prevalence of teacher sex abuse. A few smaller or less methodologically rigorous studies have also addressed the question, with wildly inconsistent results. One looked at college sociology students and estimated that nearly half had experienced sexual harassment by a teacher. Another surveyed 4,000 adults, with 4.1 percent reporting inappropriate sexual contact with a teacher during their high-school years. But the sample included only urbanites, and white respondents were overrepresented. A third study used responses to a questionnaire published in Seventeen magazine and estimated that just 3.7 percent of children suffer sexual abuse from their teachers." (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html)

 

What is apparent is that the high rate of sexual abuse by teachers continues even as it has dropped off in the Church. In just the first 3 months of 2012 in the New York Public School System, 248 cases of sexual abuse were reported. Yet in the last 5 years, only 97 teachers in the NY school system were actually charged - largely because the teacher's union acts to protect abusers with a zeal that the worst bishops in the Catholic Church would find appalling:

 

"Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.

 

For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unionsbelieving that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predatorsprefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting.

 

One example: An arbitrator in 2007 found that teacher Alexis Grullon had victimized young girls with repeated hugging, "incidental though not accidental contact with one student's breast" and "sexually suggestive remarks." The teacher had denied all these charges. In the end the arbitrator found him "unrepentant," yet punished him with only a six-month suspension.

 

Another example from 2007: Teacher William Scharbach was found to have inappropriately touched and held young boys. "Respondent's actions at best give the appearance of impropriety and at worst suggest pedophilia," wrote the arbitratorbefore giving the teacher only a reprimand. The teacher didn't deny the touching but denied that it was inappropriate.

 

Then there was teacher Steven Ostrin, who in 2010 was found to have asked a young girl to give him a striptease, harassed students by text, and engaged in sexual banter. The arbitrator in his case concluded that since the teacher hadn't actually solicited sex from students, the chargesall of which the teacher deniedwarranted only a suspension."

 

(Read more here: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390443437504577547313612049308-lMyQjAxMTAyMDMwMDAzODA3Wj.html)

 

 

The high rate of administrative cover-ups by the educational establishment (which is the point of this thread, BTW - not which profession has the most abusers) has also been noted by researchers:

 

A 2004 U.S. Department of Education study (Charol Shakeshaft and Audrey Cohan, In loco parentis: Sexual abuse of students in schools, (What administrators should know). Report to the U.S. Department of Education, Field Initiated Grants -http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED372511&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED372511) examined 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York City. All of the accused admitted sexual abuse of a student, but none of the abusers were reported to the authorities, and only 1 percent lost their license to teach. Only 35 percent suffered negative consequences of any kind, and 39 percent chose to leave their school district, most with positive recommendations. Some were even given an early retirement package. In only 1% of the cases did superintendents advise the new school district (the "Passing the Trash" phenomenon, as described in Diana Jean Schemo, Silently Shifting Teachers in Sex Abuse Cases, New York Times, June 18, 2002, p. A19)

 

Public school teacher Jon White, who molested 8 kids, not only was sheltered by his school administrators, they actually wrote him a glowing letter of recommendation - you can even read it here: http://www.pantagraph.com/news/article_04e5b949-69f6-5270-9a02-9c681d99e9a1.html

 

Here is just a sampling of the cases involving sexual abuse of children by teachers reported this summer - when you'd think they'd at least be on break:

 

A former middle school teacher in Tennessee pleaded guilty to performing sex acts on 10 students, some of which occurred in the classroom.

 

Police arrested an Oklahoma band and choir teacher and charged him with "18 counts of rape, sodomy and lewd molestation" of a 14-year-old student.

 

A court sentenced a New York gym teacher to prison after a jury found him guilty of molesting a girl from kindergarten through fifth grade.

 

A Los Angeles Unified School District middle school teacher accused of repeatedly molesting a 14-year-old girl led police on a high-speed chase that ended with him crashing into a tree.

 

A grand jury indicted a Kentucky high school teacher for engaging with sex acts with students.

 

A grand jury indicted a Virginia teacher for sex offenses with a minor.

 

A retired teacher in Alaska was sentened for having sex with an underage girl.

 

An Illinois teacher was sentenced for having sex with a student.

 

Police arrested a Texas teacher on suspicion of having sex several times with a student at various hotels.

 

Police arrested a California high school choir teacher for sexual misconduct with a student.

 

A jury is hearing the case of a Pennsylvania teacher accused of having sex with two students.

 

After a court sentenced a Dallas-area teacher to 62 years in prison for acting out a sickening diaper fetish, three parents sued the school for failing to prevent the abuse.

 

In what even the media dubbed "an extraordinary move," prosecutors actually charged a California elementary school principal for failing to report alleged abuse by a teacher who was arrested and charged with sexually abusing five students.

 

Fourteen mothers of former students of a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) elementary school sued the district and two principals on the claim that LAUSD and officials "ignored sexual abuse of minor students" by a former teacher.

 

I can give you links to any of those if you don't believe me, Packsaddle.

 

 

The 2004 U.S. Department of Education paper "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature" (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED372511&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED372511) noted the 10,667 young people who made credible claims of sexually mistreatment by priests between 1950 and 2002. In contrast, the extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 reflects that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee during a much shorter period, between 1991 and 2000. The figures suggest the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests, said Shakeshaft.

 

Phil Jenkins, who wrote probably the best study of the Catholic abuse scandal (and who is not himself Catholic, but a Lutheran) commented on the Shakeshaft study in an article in USA Today. It's worth quoting at length for the lessons relating to the "recent" BSA disclosures:

 

"Among other findings, we read that about 10% of secular school pupils in grades eight to 11 report having been at the receiving end of such sexual misconduct, broadly defined. That does not mean that 10% of teachers misbehave, rather that a tiny number offend frequently, and egregiously: very much the same situation, in fact, as among Catholic priests.

 

Why, then, do we hear so much about Catholic cases? What is different about the Catholic Church is the manner in which its problems have come to light, and this involves both the nature of the institution itself and the workings of the law. As a result, the church is much more open to civil litigation than any other institution. These lawsuits allow the exposure of numerous cases that would never have surfaced if the perpetrators were not priests.

 

The next time you read an account of an abuse scandal affecting priests, note the time frame in which the acts allegedly occurred. Almost certainly, it will date from long ago, probably 30 years or more. Why is that? Typically, an individual sues a church over abuse that he suffered in his childhood, and in the Catholic context, he might well find written evidence to confirm his charges of misconduct long ago. He is, after all, dealing with an institution that prizes its collective memory and preserves records dating back centuries. The victim can not only find embarrassing information about Father John Doe, but his lawyers also then can force a diocese to disclose ever more information about ancient charges against other priests, which can lead into other jurisdictions. One case thus becomes the basis for a whole network of interlocking investigations. Perhaps it's good that such older abuse cases are still coming to light, but the long passage of time makes it very unlikely that the charges can be investigated in a fair or reliable way.

 

Nor does the plaintiff in a civil case have to meet the high standards of a criminal case, of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He just has to convince a jury that his allegations are more probably true than not. Most civil cases involving priestly abuse go forward on the basis of evidence that would not stand up in a criminal court. Often, dioceses settle dubious cases to avoid expensive legal proceedings, but such closure can be a mixed blessing. Whatever the merits of the particular case, critics take the fact of settling to suggest that the church is paying blood money to conceal its crimes. That's not just a church problem. Celebrities and corporations face the same problem, that the public does not understand the workings of litigation.

 

As the resulting Catholic horror stories accumulate, so many media organizations develop a ready-made format for reporting them, a familiar mythology of specifically Catholic malpractice. Saying that does not mean charging any particular news outlet with deliberate religious prejudice: Some go to great lengths to be fair to accused clergy. But when we approach the issue as a specifically Catholic one, we inevitably cast the church as villain, to the exclusion ofother interpretations. The more firmly the public accepts the image of the sinister priest, the harder it becomes to find juries who will disbelieve abuse allegations. The more cases are reported, the more people come forward to publicize their own complaints. Most plaintiffs are reporting genuine victimization, but some are not.

 

Abuse in public schools

 

Few institutions, secular or religious, offer anything like the same advantages for plaintiffs. The internal records of other bodies are rarely as thorough as those kept by the Catholic Church, and they lack the elaborate organizational framework. It's simply not as easy to dredge up old cases. And specific legal oddities mean that it's much harder to sue other institutions. As public entities, public schools, for instance, operate under governmental or sovereign immunity. While schools can be sued, plaintiffs face restrictions that don't apply to Catholic dioceses. Financial liability is limited, and complaints have to be brought within a set time, using rigid administrative procedures. As a result, at least until recently, it just was not possible to pursue cases from long ago.

 

But that might be changing. Recently, plaintiffs have found ways to sue public schools for abuse they suffered long ago, charging that school districts violated their federal civil rights to receive an education free of the menace of harassment or sexual discrimination. In one well-publicized case that should serve as a national wake-up call, a woman won a $3.7 million judgment against a Kentucky school district for sexual abuse she experienced in the late 1970s. However widely this particular decision may apply, it's very likely that such lawsuits will spread in coming years, so that we will undoubtedly be hearing a great deal more about abusive educators.

 

Presently, though, pedophile pastors or teachers are little known to the general public, while pedophile priests have become a familiar villain. In consequence, cases of abusive priests are reported as part of a systematic crisis within a deeply flawed church, while non-Catholic offenders are treated as isolated villains, just bad apples within their professions.

 

The sexual exploitation of children is a heinous offense with lifelong consequences, and the trauma is all the greater when the offender is a trusted mentor, a pastor, priest, or teacher. It is profoundly unjust to focus all our attention on the victims of one type of perpetrator to the exclusion of others."

 

(full article in http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-07-column07_ST_N.htm)

 

I'd be curious, Packsaddle. You sound a little surprised that your profession (I think you mentioned you teach) has the highest number of reported sexual offenses. Did you think there was another profession that did? If so, which one?

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OK folks, it's back. Y'all play nice now, y'hear?

 

AZMike, the difference in what I asked about and what you just answered is the 'rate', not the 'number'. I asked about your claim, "Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors".

You just answered, "You sound a little surprised that your profession (I think you mentioned you teach) has the highest number of reported sexual offenses."

 

Given the number of young persons we interact with I'm not the least surprised about 'numbers'. But the rate is a different matter. Your original claim suggests to me that a greater proportion of educators commit sexual abuse against minors than any other profession. The statistics I'm reading in your response, on the other hand, is the proportion of students who have been abused. They aren't the same thing.

But if the proportion IS the highest for any profession then, yes, I'm surprised.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

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"AZMike, the difference in what I asked about and what you just answered is the 'rate', not the 'number'. I asked about your claim, "Educators, who seem to be the profession with the highest rate of sexual abuse against minors".

You just answered, "You sound a little surprised that your profession (I think you mentioned you teach) has the highest number of reported sexual offenses." "

 

Given the number of young persons we interact with I'm not the least surprised about 'numbers'. But the rate is a different matter. Your original claim suggests to me that a greater proportion of educators commit sexual abuse against minors than any other profession. The statistics I'm reading in your response, on the other hand, is the proportion of students who have been abused. They aren't the same thing.

But if the proportion IS the highest for any profession then, yes, I'm surprised.

 

I'd agree that it's unlikely that there is a greater _percentage_ of educators that commit sexual assault, and there is a difficulty in defining the parameters of what an "educator" is - do we include coaches, teacher's aides, counselors, janitors? There is an enormous number of school employees in the U.S., and the vast majority of them are decent, hardworking people. The same would seem to apply to Catholic priests and other Christian ministers.

 

My use of _rate_ applies to the sheer number of sexual assaults committed by educators, which is more than any other profession. As Prof. Jenkins stated, this is not due to teachers having more evil people than other groups, it's because there are so many of them in American society, because of their access to children, and because a single offender usually has multiple victims.

 

The educational establishment, particularly the unions, also hinders the effective collection of data, as well as punishment, of the offenders within the teaching profession.

 

The greater issue, and the point of this thread, is not that teachers are worse than ministers or priests or doctors or scouters, it's that the teacher's unions commit the same crimes of complicity as some bishops did, and that the level of training in youth safety for those who we entrust with the safety of our children during the day is so poor.

 

Are we as scouters doing any better? Is our level of youth safety training adequate for the 21st Century?

 

I'm bringing this up not to try to score ideological points, but to try to help us bring some light to this discussion, instead of just heat. I haven't been on this forum for long, but I hear the same arguments about the same issues over and over, and the level of personal invective is becoming high enough that I'll probably just retire from this forum if it keeps up. I like a good discussion, even an occasional heated one, but I'm too old to waste my time arguing about points where everyone has dug in their heels and isn't going to change their minds and finally just start insulting each other. The scouts in my troop know to act better than that.

 

I'd rather have a _discussion_, with the ultimate goal I think we all have - how to make Scouting a better experience for the boys involved. I'd rather talk _about_ things than just argue or try to count coup on each other. We should probably just agree to disagree about the issue of gays in Scouting - I don't think anyone here has changed their opinion.

 

If my comments have contributed to the level of incivility on this forum, I apologize to all involved, quite sincerely, and will try to do better in the future.

 

So with that in mind, let me throw this out for discussion to see if we can turn this thread into something useful for us:

 

Should we be doing more in training our adult leaders in youth safety? I think, based on my experience with other groups that deal with youths, that we're actually doing pretty good in the training and the policies. The teachers I know almost uniformly say they have not received even a minimal level of training, and often fall back on their hunches and common sense.

 

Should we be looking to teach about other areas of youth safety than just molestation?

 

Should we be training scouters in how to provide effective anti-drug education?

 

Should we be training scouters in recognizing the signs of physical and emotional abuse, and what reasonable response they should take?

 

Should we be training scouters in how to provide effective training in Internet safety to scouts?

 

If so, what would that kind of training look like? How would it be incorporated into existing adult leader training programs? Should we devote as much time to BSA Safe Life Instructor Training (or whatever) as we do to Leave No Trace Instructor training?

 

If it is worthwhile to incorporate more of this kind of training, and as training protocols are developed, would it be worthwhile to export it to other youth programs, and offer certification? Would this be a way to rebrand the BSA as youth safety experts and contribute to the community?

 

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