Peter Truong
2015-01-07 02:42:02 UTC
Reading about the incidents and the jurys conclusion,
reasonable people would assume someone in authority at the
very least, a scoutmaster knew what was going on and ignored
it. That would justify the award, perhaps. But thats not the
case here. The statute of limitations having passed for criminal
prosecution, it would make sense for the victim to sue the
predator, but why BSA? As the Republican-Americans Penelope
Overton reported Tuesday:
The victim claims the national organization should have used the
sexual abuse data it compiled in secret files to create
prevention programs. At least 68 Connecticut men are included in
the Boy Scouts so-called perversion files, the once top-
secret blacklist started 80 years ago. The organization did
not have a file on the victims abuser who was at that time a
minor himself. But the victim alleges that data showed enough
of a problem that Boy Scouts should have educated their Scouts,
leaders and parents of the dangers.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Really?
So BSA didnt know and couldnt have known what the abuser was
up to. How in the world could it be liable for what he did?
To my knowledge, nothing of this sort ever happened in the troop
I was a member of in the 1970s, and none of the scoutmasters
ever warned us something like that might happen to me or other
members. Im sure they knew it was possible, and would have
intervened if they had suspected anything. And they would have
felt guilty with good reason if any of the boys in their
care had been molested by any adult or Scout. Or injured as a
result of improper use of a hatchet or hiking in an unsafe area,
or drowned as a result of swimming without supervision. Their
clear duty was to look out for us.
All of our scoutmasters were men in their 30s and 40s fathers
of boys in the troop. They werent naive or stupid. They needed
no training to have their suspicions aroused if grooming, sexual
bullying or actual molestation were taking place. I believe they
would have known, and dealt with the problem appropriately.
In the New Fairfield case, the victim did not tell anyone, even
his parents or teachers, what happened to him. Certainly, the
predator didnt admit or brag about what he had done.
Its all very sad, but the woulda-could-shoulda standard the
jury applied in this case is a mighty slender thread for such a
large award. BSA says it will appeal; surely it will get a
reduction of the award or even have the case thrown out.
One of the ironies of this case is the high cost to BSA
resulting from the quest to allow homosexuals to join the
organization. A sexual predator who targets a 10-year-old, as in
the New Fairfield case, is a pedophile. A sexual predator who
targets a 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old of the same sex is not a
pedophile; he is a homosexual. It is for this reason that I
think the lawsuits on both sides of this issue advocating gay
participation on one hand, punishing the organization for
homosexual predation on the other are part of a single
campaign to destroy Scouting rather than an effort to require
equal access, or justice for victims.
http://blogs.rep-am.com/worth_reading/2014/12/16/puzzling-ruling/
reasonable people would assume someone in authority at the
very least, a scoutmaster knew what was going on and ignored
it. That would justify the award, perhaps. But thats not the
case here. The statute of limitations having passed for criminal
prosecution, it would make sense for the victim to sue the
predator, but why BSA? As the Republican-Americans Penelope
Overton reported Tuesday:
The victim claims the national organization should have used the
sexual abuse data it compiled in secret files to create
prevention programs. At least 68 Connecticut men are included in
the Boy Scouts so-called perversion files, the once top-
secret blacklist started 80 years ago. The organization did
not have a file on the victims abuser who was at that time a
minor himself. But the victim alleges that data showed enough
of a problem that Boy Scouts should have educated their Scouts,
leaders and parents of the dangers.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Really?
So BSA didnt know and couldnt have known what the abuser was
up to. How in the world could it be liable for what he did?
To my knowledge, nothing of this sort ever happened in the troop
I was a member of in the 1970s, and none of the scoutmasters
ever warned us something like that might happen to me or other
members. Im sure they knew it was possible, and would have
intervened if they had suspected anything. And they would have
felt guilty with good reason if any of the boys in their
care had been molested by any adult or Scout. Or injured as a
result of improper use of a hatchet or hiking in an unsafe area,
or drowned as a result of swimming without supervision. Their
clear duty was to look out for us.
All of our scoutmasters were men in their 30s and 40s fathers
of boys in the troop. They werent naive or stupid. They needed
no training to have their suspicions aroused if grooming, sexual
bullying or actual molestation were taking place. I believe they
would have known, and dealt with the problem appropriately.
In the New Fairfield case, the victim did not tell anyone, even
his parents or teachers, what happened to him. Certainly, the
predator didnt admit or brag about what he had done.
Its all very sad, but the woulda-could-shoulda standard the
jury applied in this case is a mighty slender thread for such a
large award. BSA says it will appeal; surely it will get a
reduction of the award or even have the case thrown out.
One of the ironies of this case is the high cost to BSA
resulting from the quest to allow homosexuals to join the
organization. A sexual predator who targets a 10-year-old, as in
the New Fairfield case, is a pedophile. A sexual predator who
targets a 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old of the same sex is not a
pedophile; he is a homosexual. It is for this reason that I
think the lawsuits on both sides of this issue advocating gay
participation on one hand, punishing the organization for
homosexual predation on the other are part of a single
campaign to destroy Scouting rather than an effort to require
equal access, or justice for victims.
http://blogs.rep-am.com/worth_reading/2014/12/16/puzzling-ruling/