First of all, I’ve unknowingly seen this “grooming” toward a few others growing up in scouting. But seeing these young scouts later as adult (and scout leaders

First of all, I’ve unknowingly seen this “grooming” toward a few others growing up in scouting. But seeing these young scouts later as adult (and scout leaders) they were not “groomed” or worse. As disturbing as it was, we were amongst the lucky ones. This has change greatly for Boy Scout, now called Scouting (because of inclusion of all genders). The biggest stop to this problematic issue of grooming by such a trusted position of authority (scout leaders) is the two-leader deep. All participating adults must undergo numerous trainings before even engaging with a scout and only with at least one Scouting-trained adult nearby. As an assistant scoutmaster of 24 years, it is not only embedded deeply in all adults having received training from Scouting but also tested and reinforced yearly that no one adult may be alone with any number of scouts, Scouting-trained or not. Scouting Youth Protection Training program includes being proactive in ensuring two-deep leaders by writing up (citing) against any (non-guardian) adult being caught just standing alone near a scout or even a group of scouts. Reporting is deep and far and onerous. Chastising is never an option. And we are trained to view reporting as a matter of fact and not even problematic. No hesitation, just do it. The Council legal staff takes all report seriously and take in all inputs into consideration and decision is final. Our troops do a self-imposed three—adult rules because our deep-expertise troop sponsors insist on upon this. It is irksome at first to tolerate this 3-adult-deep but after awhile, we quickly learn rotational duty for 3-deep coverage. And amongst the 5 troops, have not seen a report more than once in 24 years (for questionable hand on shoulder) of which the parent-leader was then excluded from further outings by the Scouting Council. I truly hope we got this licked but this OP report is refreshing in terms of exposing methodology so that we know what to look for and proactively prevent them. Scouting is fun, for the youth. Adults must be Scouting-trained yearly and just do have to do a team-up, not only for the protection of all youths but for their own protection against reporting (and any legal repercussion that may accompanied such report). Leaders do do take breaks from leaderships during outings and have learned to have fun but must be with another one adult, so off to fishing we go. Be prepared. https://www.scouting.org/training/ https://www.scouting.org/training/