How much have things changed?
With the release of more than 15,000 pages detailing accusations of sexual abuse against 1,247 scout leaders from 1965 to 1985, the Boy Scouts have reluctantly provided us with an in-depth look at the ways the organization failed the boys and parents behind those accusations. It’s become a familiar story, one that has played out everywhere from churches to prestigious high schools to Penn State: denial, avoidance, silence, protection.
What every institution and parent should be asking right now is whether that shameful attitude has really been boxed up and left behind along with the faded letters and yellowing news clippings that the national Boy Scouts organization fought to keep from being made public. The Boy Scouts have changed their ways, implementing policies to better evaluate, train and track youth leaders. Most large organizations that work directly with children have what are certainly intended as strong protections in place, in the hope of both preventing abuse and responding appropriately to accusations.
But those protections will only work if attitudes have truly changed. Sarah Buttenweiser wrote powerfully here about her reluctance to believe the accusations a 14-year-old girl made against one of her son’s beloved teachers. Her willingness to face her own failure is rare. Most of us want to believe that we would see any similar situation as black and white.
It is all too human to want to look for an easy way out, to protect revered institutions and ourselves, and to convince ourselves, as it is plain these scout leaders did two decades ago and more, that silence could somehow be best for all concerned (in the words of one leader, from a letter quoted in The New York Times, “If it don’t stink, don’t stir it”). It’s one thing to change policies. It’s another to really have faith in the depth of that change within the hearts and minds of the adults who implement them. Can we really believe, yet, that we’re there?
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