Date: December 19, 2018
01) Sex abuse scandal-plagued Boy Scouts may declare bankruptcy
Thanks to feinmann0!
“Sex abuse scandal-plagued Boy Scouts may declare bankruptcy
The Boy Scouts of America are planning to file for bankruptcy, cutting their losses after years of declining membership numbers and a raft of sex abuse lawsuits, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Boy Scouts management has reportedly hired law firm Sidley Austin to plan a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, which would pause pending litigation and give the cash-strapped organization some breathing room.
Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh said in a statement that they were ‘working with experts to explore all options available to ensure that local and national programming of the Boy Scouts of America continues uninterrupted.’
The Boy Scouts have been experiencing an identity crisis recently, rebranding themselves as simply ‘Scouts BSA’ and flinging open their doors to girls – perhaps not the best idea when they are also fielding dozens of sex abuse lawsuits. Critics have slammed the move for bowing to the dictates of Political Correctness, particularly because it follows the Scouts’ decision to accept transgender scouts last year and openly homosexual members not long before.
Several sex abuse lawsuits are pending against the Boy Scouts, including one by four former scouts who accuse the group of failing to run background checks on scoutmasters despite knowing it is a “pedophile magnet” and allege they were repeatedly molested by a Stamford scoutmaster during the two years they participated in the 1970s. Another suit, filed last week, alleges two Catholic priests who were also scout troop leaders sexually abused an Albuquerque man for years in the 1980s.
The Boy Scouts also face a trademark infringement suit from Girl Scouts USA, which has accused them of deliberately attempting to confuse parents and exert a monopoly over the idea of ‘Scouting’. The suit, filed last month, condemns the former Boy Scouts for trying to horn in on the Girl Scouts’ market to shore up their declining enrollment numbers.
And those numbers are definitely declining. The Boy Scouts have lost two-thirds of their numbers since the 1970s, with a full 30 percent drop since 2000. Even the Mormon Church, for whom scouting is a beloved rite of passage, have pulled some 610,000 kids out of the program since last year, starting their own version.”
What to say?…
Yes…religious organizations have their own version of “scouts”…
I officially joined Awana when I was about ten years old…and briefly discuss the experience in this post.
It did not last long…as the church abandoned that program, only a matter of weeks later…I never officially got anything…no uniform…anything…no camping trips…just, nothing…other than the experience of a small handful of glorified classroom meetings…goofing off in the gym…
…It functioned as a more fun replacement for the Wednesday night church service…for about a month…six weeks, at most…then it was over…
I don’t want to be too brutal with it…but, Awana is a sort of Scouts, with heavy fundamentalist Christian indoctrination…which fit right in, with the church we were connected too…so, for us kids, it was just a continuation of the world this church had cocooned us in…It didn’t seem strange at all, at the time.
I recall being disappointed at the time…because this was my chance to do scouting…My older brothers got a chance to do the original scouting…but this was my first taste of it.
It would not be till several years later, that I got a chance to go to real Boy Scouts meetings…
…I was living with extended family, including my cousins…two of whom were boys…and they really talked up the Scouts, getting me interested in it…so, I agreed to start attending the meetings…No more than three meetings in, the eldest decided he was quitting the Scouts…and the younger followed right along with his lead…Which left me in a mighty awkward spot…Because they were there, kind of easing me into the group…and now my options were to stop going, or go alone…
…I hadn’t really become attached to the troop, yet…was still feeling really foreign, there…I hadn’t actually decided I wanted to join…so…the issue just kind of dropped, and never came up again…
…Maybe I should have kept going…I don’t know.
Just some “Scouting” related memories from my life…Sorry I don’t have a whole lot to say about the actual news story…I mean…it is a shame, and everything…I’m glad they accepted homosexuals…I think, broadening to girls [or trans boys] was a lot more of a shaky move…and I think the Girl Scouts law suit is ridiculous…
…The sex scandals?…Maybe there were some predatory people, sometimes in charge of a troop…But I always thought that’s where a lot of the actual boys fooled around with each other…on the camping trips.
