Hypothetical YPT Question

[John-in-KC 311]

Taser,

 

We don't know the State or Territory you are in.

 

We don't know the facts of the situation.

 

We don't know your status as a registered leader with BSA.

 

We don't know who you are relative to this child.

 

Good people here have spent a lot of energy trying to divine a reply.

 

Here's what I will say:

 

- If you are anyone but the Program Officer (CM, SM, Advisor) or the Committee Chair, and you are a Scouter without blood relation to the Scout, contact your:

- Program Officer

- Committee Chair

- COR

- IH

and ask to have a business talk. Lay on the table what you saw. The Chartered Partner has a vote; they select/approve leadership.

 

- If you are the Program Officer, CC, or COR, call a business meeting.

 

- If you are the parent, you have two choices:

-- Call Child Protective Services. Lay it out. Understand in doing this you are most likely burning bridges between you/your child, and both the Scout unit and the Chartered Partner. This is a drastic measure, not to be taken lightly. Make a decision coldly and rationally that you want to walk this trail

 

-- Call your unit COR. Ask for a business meeting with the:

- Program Officer

- Committee Chair

- COR

- IH

At that meeting, lay on the table what happened to your child. Ask for corrective measures.

 

Others here have given you great advice. Read it, quietly and calmly. Get to a coldly rational place in your mind when you do.

 

I wish you well.

[mds3d 90]

Having read the thread and the comments, here are my thoughts.

 

First let me summarize. Lets say this is three different instances. One scout complaining about one scoutmaster in one unit, repeated for three separate units.

One scout filed a complaint about Bullying (by the Scouter, I assume)

One scout filed a complaint about Emotional Abuse

One scout filed a complaint about 1-on-1 contact.

 

ALL of these complaints should have been taken to the COR before the Council ever saw them. None of these things are crimes in and of themselves. If they were, the complaint should have been filed with the police not the scout council.

 

My understanding is that it takes A LOT for the council to remove a Scouter. I also am under the impression that the only thing council looks at in the light of a single complaint is if the incident could be Child Abuse that should be reported to the police. If it is not, then nothing is done.

 

Multiple similar complaints means a call to the COR of record so that they can deal with their own unit.

 

Scouts and Scout Parents should also remember than filing a complaint with council is burning a bridge. Either the Scouter will be removed from the troop (by the COR) or the scout will no longer hold the same place in the troop. Do I agree with removing them? Not really, but they probably should leave on their own if it is bad enough to complain to council about.

 

So what would I do?

Am I the SM of another unit? Invite them to my unit, where they can get scouting like it is meant to be done.

Am I a concerned COR of one of the units? Remove the leader who kicked a scout out for complaining about them and discuss the issue with the other COR's at a Council committee meeting.

Am I a parent? Take my scout to a unit who provides scouting like it is supposed to be done.

 

The problem with your situation is that there is a lot you haven't told us. Like were all of the allegations true? What role are we playing? What were the exact situations (is there room for interpretation)?

[ScoutNut 147]

Taserdoc - You keep bringing up that the main problem you have is that the Council never investigated the incidents at all, and that the Scouts, and their parents, were never interviewed.

 

Yet you state that complaints were filed with the Council. How can complaints be filed without speaking to anyone at the Council? "Hypothetically" someone was "interviewed" at the initial complaint filing.

 

Are you assuming "hypothetically" that the Council did not investigate the incidents at all? Because "hypothetically" (and actually) unless you are the SE, or another Council employee who would be in a position to be allowed access to confidential, sensitive, matters such as this, you would have no way of knowing what was, or was not, done by Council. This is not something that is typically announced to the public.

 

"Hypothetically" whether the Scouts stretched the truth, the parents overreacted, or everything in all of the complaints against all of the SMs, in all of the different Troops, was completely accurate, it makes no difference. It was determined by the SE that the complaints were not of a type that required any of the SMs involved to lose their membership, or to pass the complaints along to the local authorities.

 

That at one point you changed your "hypothetical" to include the "hypothetical fact" that the SMs all threatened to sue (Council? BSA? the families? all of the above?) says to me that there were, "hypothetically", some questions about the complaints.

 

"Hypothetically", if I felt that the complaints had merit and there was evidence of actual child abuse, I would counsel the families to go to the local authorities.(This message has been edited by Scoutnut)