https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-former-boy-scouts-come-090009372.html

"More than 200 individuals have come forward with new allegations of sexual abuse by members of the Boy Scouts of America in recent weeks as a trio of law firms seek to uncover unidentified child abusers.

A few of the victims are young, still underage or in their 20s, but many have held their secrets close for decades.

"Nobody would have listened to me," said James Kretschmer, 56, who says a leader groped him at a Boy Scouts camp when he was in middle school. "The problem is, then you think, ‘Is it something I did? What was I doing, was it my fault? If I hadn’t done whatever, he wouldn’t have done that.’ It took me years and years to realize it wasn’t that little child’s fault. It was the adult who had control."

Samuel, 17, said he was fondled by a leader a decade ago, who told him, "Don’t say anything.

"For awhile, I lived with those three words," Samuel said. "That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

Advised by Tim Kosnoff, an attorney who has litigated more than a thousand cases of sexual misconduct against organizations such as the Scouts and the Mormon church, the group of attorneys said it has identified 150 alleged pedophiles never before publicly accused.

The law firms began running TV and Google ads encouraging victims to sign on as clients for a potential lawsuit after a report in December that Boy Scouts of America prepared for a possible Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The volume already gathered could double the number of legal cases the organization already is facing, although a bankruptcy would halt existing and future litigation, the attorneys told USA TODAY.

In a statement about the new allegations, Boy Scouts of America said, "Any incident of child abuse is one too many, and nothing is more important than the safety and protection of children in our Scouting programs."

Kosnoff and his colleagues said a bankruptcy filing would have a chilling effect on victims' ability to expose predators who are a threat to their communities. The number of victims who have signed on since last month is evidence for the Seattle-based attorney that many more have yet to step forward.

“That’s proof that we’ve barely scratched the surface,” Kosnoff said. He added that FBI research has shown that each "perpetrator has over 100 victims over a lifetime of offending.”

Kenneth Rothweiler, a partner at one of the three firms, Eisenberg Rothweiler,said that only a handful of the new allegations are related to previously identified perpetrators. About 90%, he said, are new.

Kretschmer and Kendall Kimber, 60, are among those making their allegations public for the first time. They described a culture of shame and secrecy that kept them silent. That worry has not been erased over the years."

Again, it seems like this sort of thing is inherent in certain authority structures.

If there is a certain percentage of adults who will molest children, the question of prevalence becomes institutional. The key is threefold: 1) does the direct leader have unfettered, unsupervised control over children; 2) is that leader considered an authority such that parents tend to trust him and children fear to report him; and 3) does the overarching organization have the political clout, the financial resources, and the incentive to conceal scandals? When those pieces are in place, abusers will be protected and thereby enabled to molest way more children than "ordinary" child abusers.

You can almost predict places where molestation and other abuse will be far higher than in the general population. Among those are the Boy Scouts, the LDS church, and of course the RCC, which has centuries of experience protecting and promoting sexual predators.

Perhaps parents should pay less attention to the people to whom they are entrusting their children and more to the sort of organization those people represent. Power structures have an enormous effect on how "successful" hidden molesters will be.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> You can almost predict places where molestation
> and other abuse will be far higher than in the
> general population. Among those are the Boy
> Scouts, the LDS church, and of course the RCC,
> which has centuries of experience protecting and
> promoting sexual predators.

Gymnastics

Figure Skating

Education at every level

Really, all sports, sadly. Happening for eons, though.

Physicians


Experts have tried to warn parents. Who has access, parents? Who do you hand your kid over to? Why do you do that?

Gavin de Becker's, 'The Gift of Fear' should be mandatory reading.

Stop with the stranger danger bs! The risk to your children are the trusted ones who have PROXIMITY.

"The risk to your children are the trusted ones."

Yup.

I see a substantial weekly-dues increase in the near future.

I wanna know who knew and when.

Notsurprised.

The sharks are out, smell blood, and need to get that money before it dries up over at the BSOA.

I'll guess that a 3rd of these so called molestation are complete crap,half-truth stories, happened so long ago, can't be validated and it's one person's story against another. The percentage could be greater.

The others will be as close to the facts that can be proven in some fashion. Enough heart sale to a jury or the goal is simply to settle.

What a curious perspective you have on all of this.

You realize, I hope, that a large percentage of people who have been molested--or raped, for another example, or bullied as children--never report their abuse. So there will be some false claims but vastly fewer than the number of cases that are never brought.

You know that, right?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You know that, right?

With perfect preconceived notions, no charge gets left behind.

An impulsive desire to defend established power, which should always be given the benefit of the doubt.

In the Soviet Union/Russia, cars have the right of way over pedestrians. Seriously. That presumption that the state, established power, is more important than the individual is one of the fundamental differences between dictatorship and free society.

Might makes rights is a terrible constitution.

Ah, but life is so much easier if you let others do the thinking and merely follow orders.

All hail authority.

The guilt absolving is fantastic! The getting stoned socially when you run afoul of that power hurts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 11:34AM by Elder Berry.

I disagree.

There have been a lot false claims made in the last few years but we are conditioned that must first believe it.

When it's decades old you can say anything with a good enough back story.

At the end of the day, some are real victims, others are jumping into this to get a payout on the backs of real victims.

Some of the real victims may not be able to actually prove anything and or course the opposite may be true.

The lawyers take in a big number and filter what will ultimately be the best hand they can present to the court to get a payday.

There is a ton of research available on prevalence versus reportage and the reasons and extent of non-reportage. You could easily find it if you wanted.

So the question is you want to know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2019 02:02PM by Lot's Wife.

>
> In the Soviet Union/Russia, cars
> have the right of way over
> pedestrians. Seriously. That
> presumption that the state,
> established power, is more
> important than the individual
> is one of the fundamental
> differences between dictatorship
> and free society.
>

In California, cars have the absolute right of way over pedestrians who are not in a cross-walk. So yes, California is a dictatorship. You can see it every November and in its legislative bodies.

In the Socialist Republic of California? You don't say!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2019 01:02PM by Lot's Wife.

It is the same in AZ, a red state. People should now be jaywalking or out of bounds of a crosswalk to begin with. Just saying.

I was in the Boy Scouts and I had some creepy encounters with scout leaders. As I look at it now, I should have never been alone with them in the first place on the outings, etc. Bring down the house of cards and possibly religion too.

I haven't shared this but here is my experience...

Ya I was there back in the early 90s as an 11 year old boy and had a scout leader who went to jail for pedophilia. Except in those days pedophilia wasn't such a big of deal as the media makes it out today. They didn't keep them in jail for long. It was more like long term parole and go to jail on the weekends. But I'd be playing around out side during church and would see his car carousing up and down the streets while the Momos were singing praise to the man.

It was rather creepy. He was very attentive at his church calling before he was caught. He would visit the boys everyday, and was always interested in making sure we were active in the program. All of this was in the name of god of course.

This was the beginning of the end of being a good little morbot for me. Mormonism is really bad!

I think most countries and states let cars have the right of way except for marked crosswalks. But, is that a tussle you really want to be in? Car always wins!

I agree, maybe bring down all the house of cards activities to which parents outsource their kids.

When I was doing my calling, no one ever asked me or vetted my qualifications to be left alone with their kids for two hours every Wednesday evening.

These BSA and church led groups harken back to the age of knowing your neighbor. No parent probably even superficially knows those who are influencing their kids, nowadays.

By dropping off their kids and being glad to do it, leaving them with strangers for hours or even weekend trips, the parents are demonstrating a lack of due diligence. Just assuming that people will treat their kids with care, without ever being present themselves to verify it.

Of the girls under age 12 in my calling, never once did any parent ever come and introduce themself to me, never once did any of them even come inside to check or see what was going on. Just dropped them off and picked them up in the parking lot.

I think the parents should be a lot more present when kids are put into these organizations.

In NYC, cars turning right will contest even your right to walk in a crosswalk with a walk signal. I would have cars get within inches of me, continually edging forward as I crossed the street. Sometimes I would walk with my keys outstretched in my hand as a warning to them.

Lot's Wife notes: "1) does the direct leader have unfettered, unsupervised control over children; 2) is that leader considered an authority such that parents tend to trust him and children fear to report him; and 3) does the overarching organization have the political clout, the financial resources, and the incentive to conceal scandals? When those pieces are in place, abusers will be protected and thereby enabled to molest way more children than "ordinary" child abusers.


Carameldreams notes that various other categories are notorious for sexual abuse of minors:

Gymnastics

Figure Skating

Education at every level

Really, all sports, sadly. Happening for eons, though.

Physicians

Let's not exclude government from our considerations. Oregon's Department of (in?)-Human Services has been hit with a massive class-action law suit alleging major ("systemic" is the usual word here) neglect, reckless disregard, and yes, sexual molestation of children in their charge. Some children were placed with known/registered sex offenders.

https://chronicleofsocialchange*dot*org/child-welfare-2/oregons-child-welfare-system-hit-with-lawsuit-after-a-rising-number-of-foster-kids-sent-to-institutional-placements

Just like individuals who otherwise claim moral virtue, institutions will build PR, ideological and legal walls to stand behind when caught in such malfeasance. Gov. Kate Brown has set up a blue-ribbon panel to look into the charges, how reassuring! Like BSA and LDS, the allegations (and potential victim base) go back decades.

I include Lot's Wife's remarks because, with religious and private philanthropy in decline (and often tainted by scandal), many people regard government services as the institution to turn to, to remedy family and social collapse. Try substituting "government agency" for LW's term "leader" and "overarching organization" above.

"Angry," above, says, "tear the house of cards down." Now what?

Edited by Caffiend to fix the hot link, prohibited by RfM's antispam protection. Note "*dot*" in link address if you follow it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2019 02:06PM by caffiend.

Of course this has been going on, especially in a cult where children are "interviewed" by an adult without a parent being allowed to be in the room with them.