Help! Our local scout units have difficulty working together and the kids are being caught in the middle. I have been running the local Venture Crew for 13 years now. Over the years we have had mixed relations with the local Boy Troop, wonderful relations with the local Girl Troop, and have actively started building more with the local Pack. Our Boy Troop Scoutmaster actively slanders our unit to the kids in the Troop at every opportunity, attempts to schedule events with us and then cancels them the week of and spreads false information about the event, other times he actively schedules troop events the same time as ours to force the kids to choose, harasses our youth members when they wear their green Venturing shirts to activities or meetings, withholds advancement from them for weeks to get the non-dual registered scouts through before they do, and various other things. How is this proper conduct for a scoutmaster and his assistants?

The Charter Organization Representative for the Troop had the Crew's charter cancelled at the church we at in 2010 (which forced us to find a new charter group) so speaking to him is not really an option. Our Council has previously turned a blind eye to the conduct that this Troop and their Scoutmaster has shown to scouts and other units. What do we do?

@welcome to the forum,  @Prime00.

My suggestion is ask your scouts what they want to do and give them some options to get away from this troop. Find another troop, start a troop so they can get eagle, ... This situation is toxic.

2 hours ago, Prime00 said:

Our Council has previously turned a blind eye to the conduct that this Troop and their Scoutmaster has shown to scouts and other units. What do we do?

Don’t interact with that troop anymore? 

It's a small town and he targets the dual registered kids. We are kind of stuck there. 

Guess what's left is classic small town manipulation.

Kill him with kindness, especially in front of the scouts. The more obvious you can make it that what he's saying isn't true, the better. 

Unless the scouts confront the SM and say that they think his behavior is inappropriate, you should expect nothing to change.

I concluded early on that there’s nothing wrong with scouts having to choose between troop and crew activities. Venturing serves a different purpose for dual registered youth compared to its role for youth in only one program.

There is one line that I used to great effect during my time of troop-crew conflict: “I’m not about to be bothered by the burr up anyone’s butt … especially yours!”

Well things went bad last year. The Scoutmaster had been making reports to Council that we were "parasites to the troop" and got the SE to revoke the membership of the Crew Advisor (as well as the Scoutmaster due to other issues) and expire the charter on the Crew on the same day. This came after the same Scoutmaster blew up on the kids at a meeting after a joint event and the Crew Advisor stepped in to defend the kids. The SE stated multiple times that the Crew was the issue the entire time and that he just took care of the problem. The Crew was finally re-instated after 4 months of lost summer program but it has been severely hobbled. The Advisor is still revoked but the Scoutmaster has been allowed to do some activities that the SE has made excuses for him to attend. Not a good deal at all.