BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt

Subject: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 08:17 AM

For child molestation. And they *still* won't allow atheists.

https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqdAgKIm5DQklTVERvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NqOEtFUWpMdDcyUGo0QU1FU045dmNGSDROX01FaXBDYjNrZ1UyTnZkWFJ6SUc5bUlFRnRaWEpwWTJFZ1ptbHNaWE1nWm05eUlHSmhibXR5ZFhCMFkza29BQVAB?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

Sorry, can't make a blicky from my phone.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: gillymor
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 08:53 AM

I like to think that their decline started in '68. The year they cashiered me from their organization for foul language, beer drinking, smoking and general no goodery.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 09:01 AM

I can't see how to shorten that link but this one should be representative:

MSN

Basically they're trying to conceal their assets against damage claims and to block as many claims as possibly by sneakily setting a time limit.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Monique
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 01:25 PM

Mrrzy's link

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 02:26 PM

Who needs the boy scouts when you can have Trump youth troops called the TP (TURNING POINT)

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 02:33 PM

Here's the story in: The Telegraph

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 02:46 PM

Turning Point TP "No more boys with books, TP will make you a man of WILL"

TP openly offers reeducation of young minds and the evil of Socialism and that the conservative way is the only way. Its speakers are exclusively Republicans which includes Pense and Trump.

You don't think they are trying to emulate the Hitler Youth do you?
(TURNING POINT)

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 02:58 PM

The scouts were bad news;
Turning Point USA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk. The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.

Charlie Kirk
Since its founding, Turning Point USA has embarked on a mission to build the most organized, active, and powerful conservative grassroots activist network on high school and college campuses across the country. With a presence on over 1,500 campuses, Turning Point USA is the largest and fastest-growing youth organization in America.

Turning Point USA accomplishes its goals primarily through its National Field Program, Innovative Grassroots Messaging, Educational Resources, and Activist Conferences.

NATIONAL FIELD PROGRAM

INNOVATIVE GRASSROOTS MESSAGING

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

ACTIVIST CONFERENCES
Become an activist about TP
Late to bed and early to rise ORGANIZE

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Charmion
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 03:09 PM

You do know what TP means to most people ... ?

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 07:21 PM

in the UK.. ad breaks in tv shows only exist for the purpose of tea and a pee...

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 07:23 PM

Donny - thanks for the link alerting us..

But we do get it.. they are obviously evil.. no need to over-labour the point...

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Feb 20 - 09:08 PM

Golly gosh awhilikers! When I was in Boy Scouts we, um, maybe violated the Boy Scout Law sometimes. Like by smoking, drinking, cussing, telling dirty jokes, playing practical jokes (e.g., loading a cigarette with the powder from a .22 bullet and giving it to a friend to smoke), playing games with hatchets and (forbidden) sheath knives, and other things too obscure to mention.

BSA is doing CYA. No, they're not going out of business. The LDS Church has their own thing these days, having cut ties with the BSA because the BSA now accepts GIRLS (yukky! cooties!).

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 12:37 AM

I was registered with the Scouts for about 30 years, 20 of those as an adult leader until about 1995. We knew about sexual abuse back in the 1980s, and the Scouts instituted some fairly strict rules to prevent abuse. The main change was "two-deep leadership," which required at least two adult leaders for every activity. It's a simple, common-sense solution, and I think it helped a lot. They also gave training to leaders to help us identify potential problems. But still, there were incidents - and in the litigious United States, that's going to cost the Boy Scouts a lot of money.
I'm sure the Boy Scouts were well aware that there were huge amounts of liability for the misconduct of their volunteer leaders. Just as the Catholic bishops did, they did their best to protect themselves from that liability while still trying their best to prevent future abuses. The way things are now, the payoff is about $1 million per victim - and it's clear that the Scouts have failed in their efforts to evade that liability. Was it right for the Scouts and the Catholic Church to try to protect themselves from that liability? I don't know. A million bucks a case seems an awful lot. Whatever the case, they failed in their attempts to protect themselves, and ended up looking very bad.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 09:41 AM

And they still won't allow atheists.

My mom and her friend, before I was born, got thrown out of the Girl Scouts (as den mothers, not scouts) for refusing to pray over the cookies. That friend later turned up in my favorite small world story, but that's a whole 'nother thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 10:27 AM

The thread on Catholic institutional child abuse has been closed so there's nowhere to put this, but it's a parallel situation: my wife was talking to a local policewoman yesterday, doing a survey about how well they were doing. They got onto local schools, and the policewoman mentioned that she wouldn't consider letting her own son go to the local Catholic school, even though it was the nearest by a long way. The reason? The school let the priest do whatever he wanted without supervision, and he wasn't subject to any form of police check - i.e. the Disclosure Scotland system. She wasn't willing to subject her kid to that sort of risk - no other organization could get away with it.

Have Scout leaders in the US ever had to submit to the sorts of checking that almost all people working with kids in Scotland need to have?

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: gillymor
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 10:39 AM

I enjoyed my time in the scouts and was never sexually molested (unless I'm repressing something) or saw any evidence of it. I grew up mostly in the suburbs and scouting helped instill a lifelong love of the outdoors and outdoor crafts in me, I rose to 1st class scout shortly before I got the boot. However, our scout master was a christian zealot who used his sadistic senior patrol to impose his religion upon us junior scouts and we did suffer physical abuse at their hands. I remember being dragged by my feet to a Sunday morning prayer meeting at one Camporee and they dragged a Jewish friend of mine as well.
We did exact some revenge though. After our expulsion we snuck into the church basement where the senior patrol stowed their camping gear and drenched it in Log Cabin syrup.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 02:20 PM

Mrrr - the Girl Scouts of the USA moved out of most of those right-wing restrictions long ago, to the point that the right no longer trusts them. They are now often condemned as a "liberal" organization. No religious requirements, no restrictions on gender orientation, and no involvement in right-wing politics. The Mormons cut ties with the Girl Scouts long ago, and the Christian righties founded a conservative counter-organization called American Heritage Girls. But as far as I can see, the Girl Scouts do an admirable job.

The Boy Scouts took a turn to the right in about 1990, and I became more and more uncomfortable with the organization and started to feel like I didn't fit in any more. They started to make an issue of religion and gender orientation - it used to be that they didn't care who or what you were, as long as you didn't make an issue of it. And they got big into what they called patriotism, in a way that made me feel they were becoming a wing of the Republican Party.

I think it's good that the Mormons pulled out of the Boy Scouts - that should tip the balance of the organization away from the for right.

Jack, the child molestation scandal hit the US Boy Scouts in the late 1980s, and fingerprint checks and limited background checks were required of all leaders after that. And as I said before, the "two-deep leadership" requires that leaders never be alone with children.

In the US, there are also pretty good controls on US priests and church volunteers and employees working with children. These controls were enacted in 2002.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 02:35 PM

The point about the policewoman's complaint is that in Scotland there is a uniform system that applies to absolutely ANYONE working with children (except that priests have managed to wriggle out of it). Is there a comparable national registry in the US of people who shouldn't be allowed to work with kids? Leaving it up to separate organizations doesn't cut it.

When I was a kid, my yoga teacher was also a scoutmaster and a Sunday school teacher. A few years after I'd left his yoga class he got caught for some sort of indecency with a child (I think, related to the Sunday school) and sentenced to two years in the nick. That sort of thing is less likely when the registry covers every kind of activity that puts an adult in a position of power over kids. They only get to do it once.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts morally bankrupt
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 20 - 05:29 PM

Joe you worked in the Catholic church looking for solutions to child sexual abuse and was registered and worked with the Boy Scouts?
Please tell me you didn't work for Epstein too. :^/

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 02:24 AM

I worked for 25 years as a government investigator, Donuel, and I was good at it. I was a volunteer in Scouts and in the Catholic Church, and both organizations informally asked me for advice on occasion.
Something wrong with that?
Both organizations knew they had a serious problem, and they were doing their best to resolve it and still survive. I Don't think Mr. Epstein had any interest in resolving HIS problem.
Joe

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 02:49 AM

Jack, in United States, there are public lists of all priests who have been accused of misconduct with children. Are there no such public lists in Scotland?

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 08:29 AM

The policewoman didn't know of any. The Disclosure Scotland system is supposed to be universal, and if the Catholic Church has managed to get priests exempted from it, they have free rein to do whatever they want. Some organizations might be able to simply ban all priests from the premises pre-emptively but a church school can hardly do that.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 10:00 AM

Joe, someone resolved Epstien's problem but probably for the wrong reasons.

I was totally oblivious to sex abuse in my life experience to the point I wonder if that is an exception to the rule.
But then...
I was not a Scout or a church goer.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 08:48 PM

Makes me wonder how I got through 12 years of being a Brownie, Girl Guide and Sea Ranger without ever encountering anything of this nature, or even hearing about it. And now my son-in-law is a Cub leader, and grandchildren are in Cubs and Rainbows.

Just wonder what Baden-Powell would have made of it all? Glad he's not around still to know!

Incidentally the Scottish system of vetting people was changed a few years back to PVG (Protection of Vulnerable Groups) which extends beyond child-age organisations.

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Feb 20 - 09:14 PM

There's more than enough google questions about Baden-Powell's interest in boys...

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 02:16 AM

From my experience in Scouts and in the Catholic Church, I would say that sexual abuse of children was very uncommon. I disqualified two adult men for leader positions because I got some negative responses when I did phone checks on them. And we had one leader in our district who was found to be behaving improperly with children in the Mormon church - so he was removed from his position in the Scouts.
I hate to think how many priests I've known who have "gone bad" - maybe twenty. But then, I've known hundreds of priests because I spent 8 years in the seminary. And I did not have direct knowledge of the sexual misconduct of any priest - I read the reports in the newspaper.
And of course, each offender can have many victims, so the problem snowballs.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Boy Scouts bankrupt
From: Senoufou
Date: 21 Feb 20 - 06:21 AM

Same here Tattie! I was a Brownie, Girl Guide, Pack Leader, then Tawny Owl, and regular churchgoer/Sunday school teacher, and never ever encountered anything untoward such as inappropriate behaviour by anyone at all.
But my sister and her friend did have a man expose himself to them when they were out playing in the woods near our house!

Checks nowadays are very thorough. My husband quite rightly had to be completely checked out for criminal activity etc in order to take up his school cleaning job. And he was warned never ever to get too familiar with the pupils, and to lock toilet blocks when cleaning them.
Even when cleaning a classroom, he must call for his female boss if any pupil enters after school to fetch something they've forgotten. This is all understandable and necessary.