[SCA-AE] RE: Background checks for youth

[Mick Cole]

--- In sca-aethelmearc at yahoogroups.com, Aoife <mtnlion at ...> wrote:
>
> The current proposed solution is similar to how the Boy Scouts and 
other youth-oriented organizations handle the issue. It makes sense 
to look to those organizations, since they have already handled and 
repeatedly do handle the legal and moral issues we will also face. By 
and large, their system works.
While I would certainly agree that looking at how the Boy Scouts 
handle youth protection is worthwhile, I would respectfully submit 
that, based on many years experience as a BSA Scoutmaster, the policy 
of requiring only a limited number of officials to have background 
checks by itself bears so little resemblance to BSA youth protection 
that it is simply wrong to state that the "current propose solution 
is similar to how the Boy Scouts . . . handle the issue." While it is 
true that registered leaders, including merit badge counsellors, are 
required to undergo a background check, the background check is only 
one aspect of the total BSA approach to youth protection, which 
includes regular training for youth and adults.
While I have no doubt corporate counsel would disagree, I 
respectfully submit that the proposal merely provides some minimal 
level of protection for the corporation without providing true 
protection for either youth or adult.
In order to be useful, in my view, the policy needs to provide, at a 
minimum, training for youth on how to recognize, avoid, and report 
potential abusive situations, and training to adults on how to avoid 
being in a situation where the potential for false accusations exists.
In my view, the danger of false positives from background checks 
(say, as a result of having a name similar to that of a convicted sex 
offender) far outweighs the chances of actually catching a convicted 
sex offender.
Despite having been awarded a Bronze Pelican by the Catholic Diocese 
of Rochester (NY) for my volunteer work with Catholic scouting youth 
(even though I am not a Catholic), I stopped volunteering to work 
with Catholic youth when the Diocese adopted a similar policy to that 
being contemplated by the SCA. I did so in explicit protest against a 
policy that, in my view, was intended to protect the Church, without 
providing any real protection to either youth or adult volunteers. I 
was not concerned about "passing" the background check, as I had 
undergone a similar check when I became a scout leader. I simply felt 
I had an ethical duty to not support with my participation a policy 
that provided little or no true youth protection.
Respectfully submitted,
Mailagnas maqqas Dunaidonas, better known as Mick