BSA Youth Protection Executive Glen Pounder LLM shares details on how, to help prevent child abuse, youth-serving organizations, schools, sporting organizations, houses of worship – every institution where adults interact with kids – must remain vigilant and bolster the use of criminal background and reference checks along with a set of policies, awareness, training, and implementation measures that are always applied.
Gemma Mitchell
3mo
In regard to the many comments here about needing youth protection training for youth, I am happy to say that the Boy Scouts do offer a program for youth called youth on youth protection training. It is designed to go in depth about what teens will face today in school, online, in sports or in scouting functions. We teach them about youth on youth abuse, they learn about the signs of grooming, much of the same that we teach the adults. It also talks about abusive relationships between teenagers romantically. It is a great start for our youth and I’m sure will be expanding just like our adult youth protection training!
Victor Wilson
3mo
The old buddy system with BSA is not enough- a three buddy system is a safer way.
Brad Braddock
3mo
If little boys and girls go out in the woods together to explore then there are obviously going to be more teen pregnancies. This is just a part of nature. If you really are worried about unwanted teen pregnancies from occurring then don’t take your children to summer camp. I know, you all hate me, but bringing down Thors hammer isn’t the answer either. No one likes big brother. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you really desire to have more control over people’s lives from start to finish then their are other countries around the world that follow strict control over their population of people. Scouting is about nature, being one with Mother Nature. Show a child what freedom feels like and you’ll have a best friend forever. Going out and going exploring, is the Wild West, it really is the frontier. If you’re a really a concerned parent, and I know you are then first I would ask whether or not your child is mature enough to join scouting, to take a journey, to survive and explore the unknown. Bringing girls into the equation was a studied idea form the very beginning, especially when they’re a bunch of sexually frustrated teenagers.
Autumn Reiter
3mo
You have the training and policies in place, but what about the practical application? There is still a lot of discretion and decision making left to impartial parties which violations are presented and unfortunate incidents happen. Centralize the reporting procedures, remove the IH and council leadership from the decision making around disciplinary action and then you can toot this horn.
BSA in Salt Lake featured bullying of District Scout Executives once Boyd Ivie left. They did not like me pointing out that LDS Scouting did not even use the Scouting Method, since every congregation only had a patrol sized "troop" and they never met with the other units in their stake (like a diocese). The ONLY real troop in the SL valley was the Catholic Diocese' troop. I had previously worked in the Inland Empire Council '79-'80, and was professionally abused and lied to by their only LDS scouter, who lied to me when he recruited me out of BYU. Before he left, and before I arrived, he abused my Inland Empire district to generate fake stats, in order to move on the the richest council in the USA. Later in the Great Salt Lake Council 80-82, was very successful, always met my goals (as I did at Redlands), and was able to put both councils over their year end goals. I never thought I would ever meet any evil men in the Scouting Profession, and the only such men I met in Scouting were LDS. LDS camps sold USDA "not for resale" surplus meats to kids to pad budgets, committing federal fraud by overordering meats, middle managers taking home the finest cuts afterwards. LDS church financial fraud, child abuse, murders are in the news!
John Houghton
3mo
This is so dumb. Sad that litigation has raised the price of volunteering for scouts. I’d prefer it if parents just chose their own level of security for their children, but I guess no one wants to be accountable themselves, so the deep state has to impose it on everyone.
Vincent Percoco
3mo
Yes, we employ the 'two deep rule' and teach the buddy system' to all scouts in our Troop. It is part of our Leader training - A simple & effective way to protect our Scout Troop and go about the business of teaching life skills. Along with Chris , I am proud of the emphasis on youth protection . Scouts Leaders/volunteers need to learn to properly identify concerns through communication and mitigation and fairness. Proper leadership- youth protection training is key.
Bring in the Boys Scouts of America 🇺🇸 back all of them need it very important Now!!! We need in every single city end to end …!!! In America 🇺🇸 No one lives behind.⛪️🛐😇😇🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Jennifer Osuna
3mo
It requires 2 deep leadership when interacting with each child (in person and over email).
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3moScouts BSA has come a long way with youth protection. I am proud of what the organization has done to emphasize protecting our kids in the program. The training sheds a lot of light on what to look for, how we as adults should interact with Scouts (two deep leadership, etc.), and how to go about reporting an incident. That said, we focus much of our efforts and discussions about youth protection on adult crimes against youth. Let us not forget, however, that we need to ensure that we are emphasizing scouts protecting themselves from their peers as well...and I don't just mean bullying, which is where the focus tends to be. There are incidents of youth-on-youth sexual abuse and crimes as well (not just in Scouts by the way), which we rarely hear about. This article calls it out, "most people who sexually abuse children are not strangers but are already known to their victim(s), and many of them may have no prior criminal background." It starts with youth. If we can prevent the abuse happening at the youth level we can mitigate risk of adults committing the crimes in the future.