Barriers to Scouting
Barriers to Abuse: Two Problems, One Broken System
The BSA’s Barriers to Abuse address two fundamentally different problems: protecting youth from predators and managing romance between Scouts. These problems have different causes, different dynamics, and different solutions. Current policy treats them as one. The result is that neither is addressed effectively. Worse, the policies themselves create new risks.
The recent revision from “Youth Protection” to “Barriers to Abuse” improved the training significantly. What follows is not a rejection of youth protection. It is a vision for how to do it right.
PROTECTING YOUTH FROM PREDATORS
The Vision
A groomer’s method is isolation and secrecy. The only reliable defense is a Scout who trusts another adult enough to talk about what’s happening to him. Not a rule. Not a form. Not a buddy system. A relationship.
That means mentoring is the frontline defense against grooming. Not an obstacle to safety — the foundation of it.
“To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.” — Baden-Powell
The key is plural mentorship. No single adult should be a Scout’s only trusted relationship. When multiple adults know a Scout well — his Scoutmaster, a merit badge counselor, an assistant leader, a parent — no groomer can monopolize access. The Scout has people to confide in. The groomer has nowhere to hide.
| A Scout who feels forbidden to speak privately to a trusted adult is not protected. He is silenced. |
Where Policy Fails
Current policy discourages the very relationships that protect youth. “No one-on-one contact” was meant to prevent predatory situations. In practice, it has been interpreted to mean that mentoring itself is suspect.
National has clarified that one-on-one conversations are permitted as long as others can see you, even if no one else can hear. But this clarification has not reached most troops. And it is easily misunderstood by new leaders. The culture of fear remains. Scouters avoid mentoring to avoid accusations.
Even the official BSA page on mentoring admits: “Mentoring is rarely a critical part of an individual’s role, but rather an extra element….” What was once central to Scouting is now treated as optional and risky.
One Scoutmaster described how his troop handles Scoutmaster Conferences. The Scoutmaster sits against a wall. The Scout sits facing him with a low barrier at his back. Behind it, committee members can see the Scoutmaster but cannot see or hear the Scout. The pretense is compliance. The reality is that the Scout cannot speak freely. The mentoring moment — the entire purpose of the conference — is destroyed by the theater of protection.
How much other mentoring takes place in that troop? There is a minefield between the adults and the youth.
Meanwhile, predators don’t need to break the rules. They need only perform them. Mandatory reporting depends on the reporter’s judgment of what needs reporting. “Two-deep” becomes proximity theater — no one expects two leaders to stay in view of each other all day. The phrase “inappropriate conduct” is vague enough to paralyze the innocent while providing cover for the guilty.
When everyone looks suspicious, no one looks suspicious. The camouflage is built into the system.
“Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.” — Baden-Powell
Good Scouters Get Expelled
One of the finest Scouters I’ve ever known was seen talking one-on-one with a girl. In the main part of camp. Where people walked. He was kicked out. Friends intervened. Reinstated. Later he told a joke that could be interpreted as offensive. There was a Scout in the room. When friends tried to intervene again, he said no. “If this is what Scouting has become, I’m through with it.” He died heartbroken. But grieved and lauded by hundreds who had received his love and guidance.
When the system expels its best people, the system is broken.
What Works
Trust. Multiple mentors. A culture where Scouts have several adults they can confide in. Where mentoring is encouraged, not discouraged. Where the response to risk is more relationship, not less.
The hard reality: only the Scout can know if he is being groomed. If that Scout has a trusted mentor — in Scouting or outside of it — he may talk about it. And the grooming stops. If he has no one, it probably doesn’t. Every policy that discourages mentoring weakens the only real barrier to abuse.
ROMANCE AMONG SCOUTS
The Vision
Many lifelong marriages began in Scouting. That is not an accident. An environment built on shared values, shared challenge, and restraint produces relationships that last. Couples who believe in Scouting tend to believe in marriage and in raising children. The research confirms what Scouting has demonstrated for generations: relationships that develop slowly, on a foundation of friendship and shared purpose, are more likely to endure.
But among Scout-aged youth, the structure must ensure that what develops, develops slowly. Not through rules that forbid, which invite the adventure of breaking them. But through separation such that areas with private places are not coed.
“It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.” — Baden-Powell
Rules We Support
Some rules are exactly right. No displays of affection at Scout events. No hugging, kissing, or flirting. These are appropriate boundaries for Scout-aged youth at Scout events. We should enforce them without apology. A Scout is Clean. A Scout is Reverent. These points of the Scout Law call youth toward discipline and modesty. Friendship, not romance.
But rules alone are not enough. Structure must make the wrong thing impractical, not just forbidden.
The Structure
Sleeping areas should be separated by gender. Not just separate tents. Separate campsite areas. Boys’ troops here, girls’ troops there, with meaningful distance between them. And access to common areas without passing through the other territory.
Eating areas separated when practical. In a mess hall, separate tables. At a troop campsite, ideally each patrol eats in their own site.
Mixed gender only in public activity spaces. Merit badge classes, service projects, campfires, flag ceremonies. Where the purpose is Scouting, and everyone is visible.
Combined family troops placed in their own area.
This structure doesn’t forbid romance. It ensures that whatever develops, develops on a foundation of shared purpose rather than opportunity. Don’t give them ideas by telling them not to act as a couple. Give them a structure where coupling doesn’t arise naturally.
And it gives both boys and girls safe spaces where they can be themselves.
Where Policy Fails
Current policy conflates romance prevention with grooming prevention, and the rules for one undermine the other.
The buddy pair rules require Scouts to travel in same-gender pairs. This reveals that the primary purpose is discouraging romance, not preventing grooming. A groomer who approaches a Scout walking alone has broken the one-on-one rule. The buddy requirement adds nothing to prevent that. It only restricts Scouts from traveling independently within camp.
In practice, the buddy rules are unworkable and universally ignored. A Scout cannot attend a merit badge class unless another troop member has the same class at the same time. Most camps have a single youth instructor for each merit badge, who must walk to class alone. That violates the very rule they are supposed to model. To avoid punishment, Scouts declare whoever is nearby as their buddy. Only a Scout who is truly alone, or a boy-girl pair, is ever questioned.
Traveling alone within camp is one of Scouting’s most meaningful experiences. It signals trust. Solitude is where Scouting’s deepest work happens. The Scout alone on a trail is learning self-reliance. The Scout sitting under a tree at dusk is discovering that he belongs to the outdoors. The Scout walking to class by himself is being trusted. And thereby learning to be trustworthy. A Scout needs to learn to like himself. A policy that eliminates solitude eliminates one of Scouting’s most powerful teachers.
To suggest that a Scout cannot safely walk within camp is offensive to the spirit of Scouting and insulting to the Scout. (Buddy system is needed for Cubs.)
Two Deep Leadership
The Two Deep Leadership rule says that every unit activity must have two or more adult leaders present who are registered with the unit. Both must attend, but they don’t have to stay together. If female youth are present, at least one leader must be female.
This rule is particularly difficult for small units. If two qualified leaders are not available, the event must be cancelled. Cancellation is a severe blow. Parents and Scouts will not set aside a weekend for an event that may not happen. A troop that only rarely camps cannot thrive. A troop without consistent weekly meetings at the same place, day, and time will likely shrink and dissolve.
Linked troops often share leaders registered in both units. The larger pool allows one troop’s leaders to fill in for the other. But the current interpretation requires four leaders for linked troops camping together — two per unit — even though a family troop in the identical scenario requires only two. This inconsistency pressures troops toward the family troop model, which concentrates the risks rather than distributing them.
THE COMMON THREAD: TRUST COLLAPSE
Both problems — predator protection and romance management — are made catastrophically worse by one thing: rules that cannot be followed.
When buddy pair rules are routinely broken, Scouts learn that rules are flexible. When leaders pretend to comply with policies they know are theater, Scouts learn that honesty is optional. When everyone is breaking rules, the Scout who says “What are they going to do, kick me out?” is not a bad kid. He is a product of a system that taught him dishonesty through its own dishonesty.
A Scout came to me ready to work on a merit badge. “I have pictures,” he said. “Proof I did the prerequisite.” He held up his phone. Eager. Proud.
“Tell me about it,” I said. He did — walking through the process, the effort, the result. Then he waited for me to inspect the image.
“I don’t need it,” I said. “A Scout is Trustworthy. You are a Scout. I trust that you did it.”
He looked stunned. Then quiet. Then a kind of contentment. I could see it settle. His word matters.
Trust is not just a value. It is the first condition of growth. To be trusted is to be seen, held to account, and believed capable of integrity. The Scout who is never trusted will never learn to be trustworthy.
When rules say he cannot walk alone, we tell him the world is unsafe. Worse, that he himself is a danger to others. When rules say no adult may speak with him privately, we tell him his mentors are threats. When rule-breaking becomes routine, we proclaim that honor is flexible, that violation is normal, that truth is a problem to avoid rather than a virtue to uphold.
This is not Youth Protection. This is trust collapse by policy.
THE VISION
Barriers to Abuse should make Scouting safer and stronger, not weaker and more dishonest.
Encourage mentoring. Multiple trusted adults in every Scout’s life. The more mentors, the less room for groomers.
Separate by gender where romance arises. Sleeping, eating, campsite proximity. Simple, enforceable, and effective. No need for a rule against walking alone through single-gender territory or the center of camp.
Mix freely where Scouting happens. Activities, classes, service. Where the purpose is clear and everyone is visible.
Support rules that work. No displays of affection. No hugging, kissing, or flirting. Enforce them without apology.
Eliminate rules that can’t be followed. Every unworkable rule teaches Scouts that rules don’t matter. Fix the rules or remove them. Never tolerate a system that requires routine dishonesty to function.
Trust the Scout. He came to Scouting to be trusted. If we cannot trust him to walk to a merit badge class, we have already failed him.
“A Scout is Trustworthy. A Scout’s Honor is to be trusted. If he were to violate his honor … he may be directed to hand over his Scout badge.”
Three sentences from the original Handbook. We have abandoned the last two. The first means nothing without them.