An extensive post on DailyKos runs down the recent case in which the Boy Scouts of America were found liable in a case of sexual abuse that is being compared to the scandal that is rocking the Catholic Church.
More to come, no doubt.
Please share widely!
david says
this earlier related discussion. But the kos diary has a lot of useful links to excellent reporting by the Oregonian newspaper over the past couple of weeks.
somervilletom says
Here’s the money quote from the DailyKos piece:
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p>It’s a perfect bookend to this from the lede:
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p>Anybody see a pattern here?
jumbowonk says
Homosexuals are not banned from participating in Boy Scouts, merely from being adult leaders. My understanding of it was that this policy is a (misguided) response to the issues of child abuse. Their thinking is something like “if we have no leaders who are homosexuals, none of our leaders will engage in sex acts with boys.” It’s flawed thinking, but it is a far cry from homophobia.
christopher says
…it appears the Church is learning. Just last night on the news there was an item about a church staffer being immediately suspended by the archdiocese when allegations such as this came up. The archdiocese also reported this immediately to the authorities according to the news item.
christopher says
…not the whole story. The Kos poster certainly put his take and spin in this, which is his prerogative, but we must separate opinion from the news item. We must also acknowledge in the interest of fairness (Progressives do believe in that, right?) that what the jury found in this case is by no means universal. The BSA actually has one of the strongest youth protection policies I am aware of and during my time with the organization it was strictly adhered to by the council and troop with which I was involved. I also have direct knowledge of scout leaders who were forced out of their positions based on such allegations, and in one case a leader I know of went to jail for such actions in which the troop cooperated in the investigation. I did not click further than the Kos post to the Oregonian, but when they say Boy Scouts of America found liable I’m wondering if it were the particular council, since generally the national office does not keep track of who individual troop leaders are. One difference between the BSA and the Church is that while parishes take direction from the diocese and ultimately the Vatican, troops are governed by their own committees made up primarily of parent volunteers. It is their prerogative to dismiss leadership and like I say they sometimes do.
kirth says
I understand you’re on a dial-up, but if you’re going to “separate opinion from the news item,” you really have to click the link to the news item – in the interest of fairness, y’know. Here is part of what it says, which answers your wondering:
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p>Thanks for the anecdotes. Maybe the BSA should have called you as a witness.
christopher says
Yes, I guess I was refering to compartmentalizing the quoted parts of the news item from the commentary of the diarist. I truly do appreciate that you pointed out the above sentence to me, though again given my understanding about how BSA operates I’m still a little confused about how responsible the national organization can be.
centralmassdad says
As likely as not, that was where the insurance was
somervilletom says
I find it astonishing that you claim to “separate opinion from the news item” in a comment where you, by your own admission, don’t read the news item and instead once again publish your own opinion anyway. I think you have an obligation to actually read the news items in question before you presume to criticize opinion pieces based upon those news items.
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p>If you had bothered to read the news item, you would find that the entire point of this thread (as well the DailyKos piece that it references) is strong evidence that the “youth protection policies” you claim are not nearly pervasive as you wish us to believe.
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p>You seem to again, as you tended to do so often during the exchanges about the clergy sex abuse scandal, be eager to defend a deeply dysfunctional organization while steadfastly minimizing and simultaneously hiding from the specifics that betray the very claims you make.
christopher says
…youth protection policies DO have to be enforced after all, and if they are not being enforced then there is definitely a problem. My personal experience with the BSA is that when I was young and my ride home from troop meetings was late picking me up, two adults had to stay with me. Also, when I was a merit badge counselor part of the training was to really drive home the idea that I had to meet with the boy in a public place and never be alone with one boy not related to me (my brother in this case as I don’t have kids). I am indeed eager to defend worthy organizations where the vast majority of leadership are upstanding people and the specifics you refer to are still very much the exception, though by no means excusable.
stomv says
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p>Is this standard? I mean, I see how it would be effective against being accused of abuse, and dramatically reduce the risk of abuse in the myopic sense, but holy jeez. I can’t imagine how much of a PITA this is. I mean, I was alone with an adult of any arbitrary gender all the time as a kid. Coaches, teachers, councilors, neighbors, friends’ parents, clergy, the works. I don’t have many specific anecdotes, but I’ve got to believe that in more than one of those occasions, the conversation was one which helped me grow, learn, develop, or otherwise mature.
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p>So, help a non-parent out… is this how it works everywhere these days w.r.t. kids and adults?
centralmassdad says
It is a massive PIA, but is necessary. It protects both the parent/leader and the child, because (i) in the event that one of the adults is a predator, there is another there to protect the child, and (ii) in the event that one of the adults is later accused of being a predator, there is a witness.
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p>Each of the adults must submit to CORI checks and the like on an annual basis, and must spend a day being trained on the procedures described above, among others,before being permitted to be a leader. Any group that fails to follow these procedures jeopardizes its charter.
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p>Other provisions require that a leader be removed upon accusation, in order to avoid problems like that in Oregon, in which the organization was waiting until formal charges were made, and thus subjected other children to potential abuse.
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p>It is indeed a huge inconvenience, which means that an awful lot of parent volunteer time (intended to be to help do stuff with the kids) winds up spent on administering the policy.
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p>Though inconvenient, it is hard to see any other alternative. It is clear that any of these kinds of allegations must be treated as true, at the time they are made. Unfortunately, the policy was adopted in the late 80s, after this case in Oregon had happened. Prior to that, and at the time of these incidents, the guiding principle was innocent-until-proven-guilty, which obviously proved inadequate.
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p>The organization has been the subject of much criticism for not being open, or otherwise disclosing the list of people removed from leadership positions, and for making removals in as quiet a manner possible, without making reports to police, or otherwise publicly identifying an accused individual. It is this last that seemed to annoy the jurors in Oregon: they found that this was intended to protect PR, etc.
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p>As someone who is a volunteer leader, I very much appreciate the existence of that policy, and hope that it does not change, because if it were otherwise, I would be subjecting myself to life-and-livlihood threatening libel just by organizing a troop meeting. And the organization would, in turn, be exposing itself to liability to me on account of such libel.
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p>Critics want compulsory reporting, such as is required of teachers and certain medical professionals, but don’t seem to be advocating immunity for such reporting, as is the case with those others.
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p>There other difficulty is dealing with allegations — like most of these– that do not immediately result in a criminal prosecution, or other process better equipped to make a finding as to the truth of the allegation. What do you do if someone claims to have been falsely accused, and seeks reinstatement? What if the accuser recants? Should the recantation be afforded less credibility than the accusation? One can certainly imagine circumstances when a recantation might be evidence of further abuse, and circumstances when a recantation might be evidence of no abuse. It is a constant and unresolvable dilemma, and any youth organization must walk a tightrope to protect its kids while not subjecting its adult volunteers to baseless public accusations.
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p>
stomv says
Obviously nobody can speak for “everything”, but surely there are other organizations that involve adults and kids… do they take as defensive a posture? Is this protocol a standard M.O. for orgs involving kids?
centralmassdad says
But CYC, scouts, little league and pop warner football all do. Girl scouts too, though I have no direct involvement there.
christopher says
As a substitute teacher I needed to be “CORIed” and while I may be the only adult in a class full of kids there are windows on the classroom doors so there is always visual access to whomever might be passing by.
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p>I was on the Religious Education committee a few years ago at my church when we were drafting a “Safe Church Policy” that addresses many of the same rules regarding adult/child interaction. The United Church of Christ has been pushing this for awhile and really started to emphasize it in light of the problems in the Catholic Church. My church now has an officer called the “Safe Church Advocate” who is responsible for making sure that all adults who work with kids (and that is several adults) has a CORI and that youth events comply with proper ratios of adults to children.
peter-porcupine says
stomv says
So I’m interpreting two distinct portions:
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p>1. CORI check or other background check
2. Operating procedures for ongoing work.
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p>Regarding (1), that makes sense. Don’t hire people who are known to be predators or otherwise unreliable with kids’ safety. But (2) strikes me as overkill*. I mean, it’s not explicitly a bad thing, but I can’t help but wonder if it puts extra pressure on the org… you’ve got to make sure 2 adults can be scheduled for a given event, extra hours of training, etc etc.
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p>Maybe I just don’t want to thing about an America in 2010 where every adult should be assumed to be a child predator and treated accordingly.
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p>
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p> * My comments on (2) are all conjecture; I haven’t worked with kids for about 8 years, back when I was volunteering at the local Boys & Girls Club, without a background check, but always on site with other adults in view.
centralmassdad says
You are quite correct that the procedures put a lot of pressure on the administration of what is essentially a volunteer organization.
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p>But, how do you deal with these things as they develop? Mr. Mike has no criminal record of any kind, and passes his CORI with flying colors, and becomes a leader in the organization. Tiny Tim says that Mr. Mike did Bad Thing X, which, if true, would be grounds for criminal prosecution. The police investigate, and find no evidence, and the DA doesn’t press charges. His CORI is still clear.
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p>Now the org has several options: (i) ban Mr. Mike, with a public denunciation and humiliation, and hope to be able to defend a libel action if it comes; (ii) ban Mr. Mike, quietly, avoid a libel action, but raise the risk of “cover-up” for “PR” purposes; or (iii) wait for a criminal prosecution, if any there be. If there is no arrest or criminal prosecution, and Mr. Mike is invited to leave by the other leaders in Tiny Tim’s group, what happens when he volunteers in a group two towns over? The CORI will still be clear, so is he a “known” predator?
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p>It is very difficult for any organization to protect (i) the kids, (ii) its volunteers, and also (iii) itself. Personally, I do not subscribe to the theory that any effort in pursuit of (iii) is deplorable and illegitimate, because it is hard to fulfill the mission if the organization ceases to exist. Others clearly disagree, and that jury certainly seemed to disagree.
somervilletom says
In your comment, you write:
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p>The facts of the case we’re discussing are (emphasis mine):
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p>Your apocryphal “Mr. Mike” is irrelevant to this case. This organization knew that Timor Dykes was a child abuser, and knew that he had abused scouts. It, nonetheless, hid those facts from parents and authorities.
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p>I appreciate that it’s more fun and more exciting to argue about situations where nobody knows what the best answer is. I would remind us, however, that this situation should not have been ambiguous to anybody.
centralmassdad says
You would have noted that this exchange was not about the Oregon case, but about existing procedures in 2010.
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p>In 1983, I was in the first grade, and so had little to do with protection policies at that time. You will also note, upon reading the thread, that these existing policies were adopted in the late 80s. You will also note that the discussion centered on the practical difficulties involved in implementation, especially given that most of the people involved in implementation are volunteers donating their free time.
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p>Your opinion that I am a criminal conspirator has been duly noted elsewhere. It may please you to know that, this past weekend, I attended Mass and then took my Cub Scouts to lay a wreath at the Vietnam memorial in Worcester. I also smoked a tobacco product, drank a beer, and purchased fossil fuels from a BP station, just to hone my dangerous criminal edge.
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p>If you have something useful to add to the above discussion, about carrying out protection policies in 2010, then I would welcome your keen insights. Otherwise, I might suggest that you can the perpetual high dudgeon.
somervilletom says
The thread is about a case where the Boy Scouts of America were found liable in a case of sex abuse, in which certain organizational similarities with the Catholic Church were noted. You tied your exchange back to the topic of the thread in your wrapup, as follows (emphasis mine):
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p>
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p>I note that your stirring conclusion (with suitable substitutions to clarify your own language) is:
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p>”Personally, I do not subscribe to the theory that any effort in pursuit of [an organization to protect itself] is deplorable and illegitimate, because it is hard to fulfill the mission if the organization ceases to exist.”
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p>In the portion I highlighted, you seem to suggest that the jury (presumably in the BSA case) inappropriately punished BSA.
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p>It’s hardly “high dudgeon” to remind you that BSA’s negligent behavior was a long long way from excessive or even reasonable CORI checks. If you can’t discern the difference between “[smoking] a tobacco product, [drinking] a beer, and [purchasing] fossil fuels from a BP station” and appointing an adult leader whom you KNOW has already sexually abused adolescents, and then hiding that knowledge from the parents who put their children in your care, then you have every right to be defensive about the BSA case and this thread discussing it.
centralmassdad says
If one were to delete all comments not made by you, then your statement regarding what the conversation is about would be true. Otherwise, I’ll leave it to those engaging in the conversation to decide what they are talking about.
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p>I don’t know whether the jury was right or wrong; I have seen enough juries in operation to know that jury findings should be taken with a lot of salt. I have follwed the case with some interest, and it wasn’t clear that the accused’s admission was ever communicated to the BSA. The entity to whom it was communicated had already settled out of the case.
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p>The comments contained what I regarded as an interesting discussion of the difficulties of running a youth organization. Again, since you appear to have such strongly held views, I invite your input on how to avoid the problem in the future, without creating different problems.
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p>Regardless of legal and liability concerns concerning the policy in decades past, which I will leave to the capable plaintiffs’ bar, the non-policy then in existence was clearly grossly inadequate, was subsequently altered, and, one hopes, improved.
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p>Today, the problem remains: in a highly de-centralized organization, how do you ensure that a protection policy is implemented properly, knowing that the person doing the implementation is someone who volunteers a few hours a week of their free time? The looser the policy, the more likely there are loopholes such as the Oregon case. The tighter the policy, the more likely that it becomes to burdensome to be closely followed, and then what is the use?
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p>Who is in charge? The BSA, or the chartering institution of a particular troop or pack? (In my group, we do all of the training, twice, to satisfy both.) What is the reporting/disclosure threshold? Any accusation, or after evaluation of evidence and credibility (which opens all kinds of other issues)? Should the accused be able to respond? What if the initial report wasn’t true? Is there defamation exposure?
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p>This isn’t a BSA problem, but a problem facing any youth organization that relies heavily on volunteers.
somervilletom says
A far simpler standard that would have fixed the problem in the BSA case at the outset (and avoided the tragic abuse that ensued) is for the leadership of any organization to immediately dismiss prospective leaders who are known to have been convicted of sex abuse.
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p>It seems to me that you a pursuing a different issue than the issue of this thread.
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p>The jury found that the BSA did, in fact, know of the prior abuse perpetrated by Timur Dykes and did nothing about it (in fact, they found that the BSA intentionally hid their knowledge from parents and local authorities).
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p>I’m not attempting to minimize the complexity of the issues involving volunteers who occasionally offer a few hours with young people. I am, however, suggesting that when the leadership of an organization learns of such convictions (from whatever source), then that organization has an obligation to act on that knowledge and protect the young people in the organization.
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p>In this case, this far simpler standard would have solved the problem. That’s why, in my opinion, the BSA deserves the severe criticism it is receiving.
centralmassdad says
Obviously, that is the most basic provision of any effective policy. It must be coupled with a way of knowing who has been convicted– hence the CORI check.
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p>The news reports seem to indicate that this particular predator was “later” convicted three times, on various abuse charges. It isn’t clear that this would have helped in the Oregon case– was the conviction after the fact, or was there another round post-conviction? If he abused scouts post conviction, and the council knew about the conviction, they deserve to get hit, and hard.
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p>It seems to me that the organization was charged with knowing because the predator acknowledged what had happened. What is not s reported is to whom he made the acknowledgment–someone at the chartering institution, and maybe a scoutmaster: Someone not involved in the BSA, and a volunteer. I also have not seen details about when these individuals reported this to the council or national, or that they had a file on this particular guy. That is why I am highly skeptical of the “secret file” evidence, because it seemed to have zero probative value in that case (unless of course this guy was in the file). It seems to me to be simply a way to drag national into it, even though the national org plays (certainly played, in 1983) very little role in weeding out problems, which was then a job for the councils.
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p>In any event, in the prevention department, I don’t think waiting for convictions is enough, because the prosecutions come so long after the fact. There has to be a way to catch the problem MUCH faster than that–which means that the org, and not the police, the DA, or a jury must make the call about an individual’s guilt.
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p>And I don’t have any problem with the organization thinking about self-protection in dealing with these issues. That’s their job. Obviously, self-protection that makes a small scandal into a future nuclear explosion isn’t such a good idea, from an organizational survival standpoint.
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p>Thank you for calling attention to this.
peter-porcupine says
..and ‘discretion’.
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p>Scout leaders are mandated reporters – like teachers, police, etc. So if you see something or a child tells you something, you have a legal obligation to report it immediately.
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p>BTW – one thing that hampers the effort to make a parallel between Scouting and the Catholic Church is that the polices and problems apply equally to the Girl Scouts as well. While they are not the same organization, the policies and practices on protecting children from abuse are identical.
bigd says
…from a little over two years ago:
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p>http://www.boston.com/news/nat…
jconway says
First of all I think it is pretty clear that abuse is not a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, and calls for ending celibacy and expanding the priesthood to eliminate the abuse scandals are clearly misguided since religious organizations that permit both have had abusers, and non-religious organizations like the Boy Scouts have also had issues as well. Secondly the solution the bigots in both organizations support, keeping the ‘gays’ out, is clearly flawed as well. Various articles have shown that the push by the Catholic church to keep gays out of the priesthood has turned a lot of otherwise mentally fit seminarians away from the priesthood. Clearly this policy of conflating pedophilia with homosexuality has also failed the boy scouts. More targeted screening, investigation, and most importantly turning over records to civil authorities is the clear solution.
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p>Some here have falsely accused me of being an apologist for the Church on abuse issues, I never have been. What I have been arguing though is that the push to make the Church ‘more progressive’, however merited, is wholly unrelated to the issue of ending abuse. I applaud the zero tolerance policies the US has adopted, I hope and pray the whole Church adopts them from the Pope on down, and I applaud my two archbishops (O’Malley and George) for continuing to respond to this crisis vigorously and relentlessly to ensure no pedophiles remain in the priesthood. On an unrelated note I also applaud O’Malley for allowing the children of gay parents a chance at a Catholic education, while it does create conflict with church teaching it is wholly un-Christian to deny an education to a child that wants it, to deny the word of God to people that seek it, and to judge children by the sins (Church’s view not mine) of their parents.
jconway says
As both a Catholic and a former Boy Scout let me be clear that both organizations by and large, have great volunteers committed to a lifetime of serving young people running them. Individuals within the organization have committed horrendous acts of evil against innocent children, and many aspects of both organizations are corrupted by these acts. That said the men and women that dedicate their lives to serving young people in either organization, in my experience, are incredibly dedicated to serving children and would never exploit them. So don’t turn your back on the Church or the Boy Scouts, I am confident both will restore their reputations and go back to doing great work for everyone. And again I hope they have learned that equating gays with pedophiles is not only bigoted but actually decreases the efficacy of their anti-pedophile operations.
gregr says
I recently applied to become a 4H volunteer and my wife and I both had to submit to CORI checks and get three written personal references.
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p>Honestly, I don’t know if I feel any “safer” for my son now that society has become paranoid about people who deal with kids. However, such checks would have prevented this particular BSA lawsuit in Oregon.