Real Risk Perceived Risk and Mandatory Reportin

[Beavah 205]

But, a fellow who keeps violating the policy is exercising poor risk management to the group as a whole.

 

Yah, shelled creature, yeh took this in a different direction, eh? That's fine.

 

I'm not sure quite what yeh mean here. One might argue that a fellow who refuses to teach line & tender rescues for First Class because most competent agencies consider 'em dangerous is violatin' the policy but exercising excellent risk management for da group as a whole.

 

If we're talkin' about YP policies, it's worth notin' that I'm not aware of any evidence that YP policies actually prevent abuse. Definitive evidence would be hard to obtain. Da BSA hasn't published its figures, but from da rate of news reports I don't think da numbers have gone down since we've implemented YP stuff. Especially when yeh consider that da rates of almost all violent crimes have gone down durin' the same period, yeh would need evidence that da BSA rate declined more than what would be accounted for by da societal decline and da decline in membership.

 

What has changed, though, is that we have a more credible legal defense. That legal defense is not substantively affected by out-of-scouting contact or individual judgment calls.

 

What I wonder is I read somewhere that the 3 organizations that made the most settlements were the (1)Catholic Church (2)BSA (3)United Methodist Church.

 

Yah, don't confuse da practice patterns of attorneys and da press with actual risk, eh? Da BSA and da Catholic Church are (somewhat correctly) seen as single, nation-wide organizations, where public schools and sports programs and other churches are seen as local shops. Single large organizations offer deeper pockets along with more cases, eh? Once yeh have established a ground-breaking case, yeh get all kinds of potential for easy-to-settle follow-on cases for more bucks. Heck, yeh might force 'em to release their files, and then yeh can use da files to go solicit more potential plaintiffs!

 

Same deal with da press, eh? Reportin' on a local Methodist church gets yeh a local story. But da Boston Globe reportin' on da Catholic Church in their area gets yeh a national story with legs and lots of revenue, eh? Because folks think of da Catholic Church as bein' one nation-wide organization. And sure as shootin', that attracts other press agencies and other attorneys lookin' to cash in. Do yeh really think da archdiocese of L.A. isn't goin' to settle for a huge judgment rather than avoid da court case after the Boston mess? Even if da legal claims of half da plaintiffs are dubious? It would be foolish, after da case has already been tried in da nationwide press.

 

Da thing that's hard is to separate da actions and words of emotional and self-interested parties from da actual facts about protectin' kids. The BSA and da Catholics have each had their share of bad actors, but these folks are distributed throughout society. Unlike what fred8033 and various plaintiff attorneys may claim, there's no evidence that there's a herd of predators who look to join youth-serving organizations to gain access. There's instead a bunch of folks of that proclivity who drift toward positions in organizations they have a background with. They become priests or ministers because they're religious, scouters because they like the outdoors or were scouts, coaches because they're good at sports, photographers if they like photography. Often enough they become parents.

 

Beavah

 

[DeanRx 69]

Tampa Tutle writes, "I think we will see some guys dismissed unjustly. There will always be some injustice in that kind of system--On what side of the scale should we err--the Scouter or the Scout?"

 

Yup, that pretty much sums up the attitude. Tis better to tarnish the grown man and loose a leader than to perhaps second guess a child because what might be happenning is soooo terrible, one must defame the adult to protect the child. I don't really disagree with that stance, up until the point its you or your close friend / relative that is being accused. Then the perception changes pretty dang quick.

 

After all, a child would never make something up to get back at or get out of doing something an adult told them to do. Especially a culture savy pre-teen or teen who knows the best way to get an adult in trouble is to make a claim of ANY type of abuse? I'm not saying blame the victim, but how else do "false positives" occur? Is there any money tobe made in reporting false positives? Becuase there sure as hell is a LOT of money to be made out of reporting and accusing.

 

When the policy is, "remove and no youth contact until its proven otherwise" instead of a legitimate investigation to assess what, if anything, is actually amiss, then the organization while appearing to have a hard line stance, is really only perpetuating a "guilt until proven innocent" approach.

 

I'm not convinced this keeps scouts any safer and certainly makes scouting a much more dangerous place for scouters to navigate.

 

Face it folks - we are ALL just one phone call away from being asked to no longer be a leader in this organization. We need to be VERY aware of that fact.

 

It might be good for youth protection, but it does very little to promote trust and confidence in adults by todays youth.

 

Dean

[JMHawkins 15]

Tis better to tarnish the grown man and loose a leader than to perhaps second guess a child because what might be happenning is soooo terrible, one must defame the adult to protect the child.

 

Right, except of course it's not just the adult scouter who's harmed. It's his family too. His children, who now have a father the community thinks is another Jerry Sandusky. His wife who has to live with sideways glances and whispers at the supermarket. I'm sure none of that harm his kids at all, right? And then there's the societal trust problem Dean mentions. Society doesn't work very well when we teach all of our kids to fear and mistrust adults. One of the terrible consequences of child abuse is that it destroys the victim's ability to build trusting relationships. So, we deal with that by destroying every child's trust? Way to go. Hurrah for us. Harrison Bergeron applied to emotional health.