So what do you think of this?

[DWise1_AOL 10]

Back when I was involved in the 1990's, Youth Protection was a big red-hot item. On the surface, it looked like BSA was pro-actively addressing the problem. And yet at the same time, BSA had a horrible reputation among youth programs in its refusal to inform other programs of problem adults. As I understand it, though I do not know the legal reasons why BSA was forced to do this, it was only within the past year that BSA has finally had to release its files. And in our YP training, part of the attitude was that the training was more for our own protection than for the boys'. Part of the completion of the training was to pronounce us as now being "youth protected." And while that may appear odd as I describe it, there was indeed a kernel of truth there. We needed to not only be aware of situations that our boys needed to protected against, but at the same time we ourselves needed to protect ourselves from any appearance of inappropriate conduct. A Chinese co-worker once shared a Chinese saying with me: "Do not tie your shoes in a watermelon patch." If you are walking through somebody else's watermelon patch and you bend down to tie your shoes, what does it look like you are doing to an on-looker? Like you are stealing a watermelon. Do not look like you are doing anything that you shouldn't be doing. How easy is it for a decent adult to be accused of something that he didn't do, would never dream of doing? Youth Protection Training does indeed also serve to educate leaders to not do something stupid, regardless of how innocent it was.

 

But then in the early 1990's, I caught part of an investigative news program about past BSA molestation scandals. One of the most interesting things in that report was a list of arguments that BSA lawyers used in the lawsuits. Like, the child had invited the molestation. Does that sound familiar? Like an example of a false claim that was presented in Youth Protection Training? One claim after another that we had been trained to reject as false were the exact ones that BSA lawyers had used in defense of BSA in those molestation lawsuits. As it turned out, the entire Youth Protection Training program had been put into place and given such importance as part of a CYA reaction, not pro-action, of BSA because of the molestation lawsuits.

 

In spite of that, youth protection is extremely important. Being aware of the stupid mistakes that you need to avoid in order to protect yourself is also extremely important. Regardless of BSA's possibly and very likely questionable motives, this is a very important issue.

 

There was something else in that news program that was very interesting. Why are molesters so interested in getting involved in youth programs? The answer I've seen is that they are predators looking for new prey. But the molesters interviewed in that program told a different story. They knew that they had done wrong and they wanted to do right. They were drawn to youth programs in order to make amends and to do good. And then their weakness would betray them yet again.

[moosetracker 132]

Interesting DWise.. Now, my first YPT training was at the later half of the 1990's since my boy joined around 1995 or 1996.. Perhaps since it was a person to person training back then, it depended on the trainer how it was presented.. Ours was done by someone from the State police who was also into scouting.. The emphasis was on protecting the children.. But, like now you got a little about protecting yourself.. If you can't convince someone to do it for the kids, then you might convince them to do it for their own self interest.. That first Training is the one that sticks with me the best.. Perhaps it was because it was my first, but I also was awed by the attendance to listen to this trainer, I guess he was considered the best of the best at the time..

[NeverAnEagle 20]

Confidential files turned over for a lawsuit set to go to trial in Minnesota may shed new light on the problem of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America.

Attorneys for one former Scout won a court order for the nationwide internal files, commonly known as "ineligible volunteer" or "perversion files."

They cover the years 1999-2008, much more recent than similar files forced into the open in an Oregon case last year.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/files-detail-sex-abuse-boy-scouts-20193511

[NJCubScouter 1389]

Confidential files turned over for a lawsuit set to go to trial in Minnesota may shed new light on the problem of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America.

Attorneys for one former Scout won a court order for the nationwide internal files, commonly known as "ineligible volunteer" or "perversion files."

They cover the years 1999-2008, much more recent than similar files forced into the open in an Oregon case last year.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/files-detail-sex-abuse-boy-scouts-20193511

I think the two paragraphs below are the key to that article. (I tried to put the really important words in bold but that is beyond either the forum software or my skills in using it, instead I am putting **'s around them.)

 

Patrick Boyle, who as a journalist was among the first to expose efforts by the Scouts to hide the extent of abuse by their leaders, said **the files could show how the Boy Scouts evolved in their response to abuse allegations over the years  or didn't.**

 

"What's potentially powerful about these files is they can give us some idea of how big the problem has been in recent years, and **might even give us an idea of whether the abuse prevention efforts by the Scouts have had any impact**," said Boyle, who now serves as communications director for the nonprofit Forum for Youth Investment in Washington.

 

That's the real issue. The previous files were from before the Youth Protection training and guidelines. These latest files to be released are from a time when YP has been in full swing. I am hoping that the files show that YP has been well-enforced and has made a positive impact by reducing the number of "incidents" and producing swift and certain separation of any offenders from the BSA. We shall see.

[qwazse 4342]

Interesting DWise.. Now, my first YPT training was at the later half of the 1990's since my boy joined around 1995 or 1996.. Perhaps since it was a person to person training back then, it depended on the trainer how it was presented.. Ours was done by someone from the State police who was also into scouting.. The emphasis was on protecting the children.. But, like now you got a little about protecting yourself.. If you can't convince someone to do it for the kids, then you might convince them to do it for their own self interest.. That first Training is the one that sticks with me the best.. Perhaps it was because it was my first, but I also was awed by the attendance to listen to this trainer, I guess he was considered the best of the best at the time..

My first YPT course ('01) was taught by a fellow who was a former camp director and current member of the council camping committee. He had specific examples of how YP protected adults. (His experience seemed to indicate that scouts who tended to make accusations made them against female scouters.) He also had examples about how the buddy system protected kids, but how it could fall apart (e.g., older scouts vs. much younger scouts, etc... ).

 

 

Anyway it was memorable because it felt like some of "the files" we're being opened for us, and the events weren't from someplace on the far side of the country.

[qwazse 4342]

Confidential files turned over for a lawsuit set to go to trial in Minnesota may shed new light on the problem of sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America.

Attorneys for one former Scout won a court order for the nationwide internal files, commonly known as "ineligible volunteer" or "perversion files."

They cover the years 1999-2008, much more recent than similar files forced into the open in an Oregon case last year.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/files-detail-sex-abuse-boy-scouts-20193511

I wouldn't hold out hope that there will be a lot of reliable scientific conclusions from this. It's still anecdotal evidence. Chances are each report will include a finding by the state, but in terms of if the rate of assault actually decreased, I'm afraid we'll never know.

[Scouter99 265]

Back when I was involved in the 1990's' date=' Youth Protection was a big red-hot item. On the surface, it looked like BSA was pro-actively addressing the problem. And yet at the same time, BSA had a horrible reputation among youth programs in its refusal to inform other programs of problem adults. As I understand it, though I do not know the legal reasons why BSA was forced to do this, it was only within the past year that BSA has finally had to release its files. And in our YP training, part of the attitude was that the training was more for [i']our own[/i] protection than for the boys'. Part of the completion of the training was to pronounce us as now being "youth protected." And while that may appear odd as I describe it, there was indeed a kernel of truth there. We needed to not only be aware of situations that our boys needed to protected against, but at the same time we ourselves needed to protect ourselves from any appearance of inappropriate conduct. A Chinese co-worker once shared a Chinese saying with me: "Do not tie your shoes in a watermelon patch." If you are walking through somebody else's watermelon patch and you bend down to tie your shoes, what does it look like you are doing to an on-looker? Like you are stealing a watermelon. Do not look like you are doing anything that you shouldn't be doing. How easy is it for a decent adult to be accused of something that he didn't do, would never dream of doing? Youth Protection Training does indeed also serve to educate leaders to not do something stupid, regardless of how innocent it was.

The only release of files has been via legal action. There was a release of files from 1970-something through 1980-something in a Virginia lawsuit (which the boy lost) called the "Infant C" case; Brett Corbitt was suing BSA, National Capitol Area Council, and his actual abuser Carl Bittenbender. More files were released due to another lawsuit which BSA settled before they could be introduce as evidence, but the lawyer sent them to the book's author. A 2010 Oregon lawsuit saw more files released.

 

The original Infant C. files were used for a Washington Times series which led to a book, which then led to the program you saw...

 

But then in the early 1990's, I caught part of an investigative news program about past BSA molestation scandals. One of the most interesting things in that report was a list of arguments that BSA lawyers used in the lawsuits. Like, the child had invited the molestation. Does that sound familiar? Like an example of a false claim that was presented in Youth Protection Training? One claim after another that we had been trained to reject as false were the exact ones that BSA lawyers had used in defense of BSA in those molestation lawsuits. As it turned out, the entire Youth Protection Training program had been put into place and given such importance as part of a CYA reaction, not pro-action, of BSA because of the molestation lawsuits.

The program you saw part of was an episode of the short-lived ABC news magazine Day One (styled "Day1One") inspired by the book "Scout's Honor.". I haven't had any luck finding the episode online, but I just finished the book and it's basically a hit piece. It is written in a style that takes the case of Carl Bittenbender, who had affairs with several boys across 3 states in the 1980s, applying it to the BSA as a whole, which fatally flaws it since Bittenbender's case is a-typical, but that's the point of a hit piece.

 

The book's main arguments are that BSA should have been more proactive in protecting youth by investigating adults' backgrounds better and filing charges against abusers when they were found out, that BSA should have shared its files with other organizations, that BSA should have done analyses of its files to facilitate predicting who might be an abuser and to inform its protection policies, and that BSA was late to the game in youth protection as compared to Big Brothers/Big Sisters.

So, point by point:

*Background checks as we know them were not available in most parts of the country until the mid-90s. The book was written before then just as computerized BG checks were coming around, so it argues that troops and councils should have done better jobs of calling references (as if an abuser was going to list references that would reveal themselves) and that BSA should have been using what few cumbersome analogue BG check systems were available (which ignores the fact that those systems were not interagency or interstate).

*BSA should have filed charges whenever it could have; however, once again this is an ahistorical argument. Most child abuse goes unreported, and even when discovered, most abuse before the 1980s was not prosecuted for a variety of reasons ranging from no laws covering it, to lack of desire/cooperation from victims, to police disinterest, to institutional coverups. The argument that BSA should have been doing something that no one else, including law enforcement, was doing prior to the 80s sounds great, but that's it.

*Big Brothers asked BSA to share its files, and that sounds like a great idea. But the files contain only accusations in many cases, and sharing them would be libelous. The "perversion" class of files also contains the names of men who were simply gay--they're an internal control system that contain names of people that other agencies might accept with open arms.

Think about it this way, DWise, you are in all likelihood in the Ineligible Volunteer files under "morals" because you're an atheist, you're in there with gamblers, burglars, people who cuss too much, divorcees, etc. Now say BSA sends your name to Big Brothers as a person who is morally unfit to lead young people, is that acceptable? Some of the people in the files are simply gay, or did things like "birthday spankings." Does giving a scout birthday spankings make a person a pervert? No, it maybe makes him absentminded in context. But that guy is in the "perversion" files--no abuse, no crime, no victims, no sex.

*The charge that BSA should have been studying its files is valid, but the idea that doing so could have let BSA profile/predict abusers is false. The author is a reporter, not a criminologist, psychologist, etc. and he should stick to what he knows. Analysis of the files last year told us what the experts already know: There is no profile of a pedophile. The secondary argument that the files would have allowed BSA to see weakness in its program that helped abusers is shaky, again, prior to the 1980s no one thought of child sex abuse as a largescale societal problem, again the author is arguing from hindsight.

*The charge that BSA was late to the game would be laughable if we weren't talking about such a grim subject. The book compares BSA to Big Brothers; in 1983 Big Brothers began compiling its first national database of abusers, and reached out to BSA for info-sharing. Big Brothers was founded in 1904, it took them 79 years to address the issue of abuse on the national level. BSA was founded it 1910, they began a national system in 1920. Big Brothers is no comparison to BSA. 2012 analysis of the files shows that BSA's rate of abuse is comparable to Big Brothers, (.0007 and .0005) so we see further that there is no real comparison, BSA was doing just as good as Big Brothers, and was doing it longer.

 

The author weaves a personal tale of being the only reporter to take a serious, longterm look at this issue, and spends time on his confusion and frustration that the national media did not pick up his series. He also hammers BSA for claims that the problem was less in BSA than society at large without stats. Ironically, he is telling us exactly what the real problem was: Letting abusers off the hook was a social, nationwide problem, not a BSA problem. And now that analysis of the files has been done, we know that BSA is correct: instances of abuse are 70x lower in BSA than in society.

 

Focusing in on the extraordinary case of Carl Bittenbender tells us a tragic story, but it doesn't tell us anything about BSA, it just tells us about Carl Bittenbender and the mistakes that were made in his case only. Rhode Island convicted him of abuse, then let him move to Pennsylvania then Virginia without contacting the parole system in either state--The author's argument that his background should have been investigated is moot, VA and PA wouldn't have known because RI never told them--that's not the BSA's fault.