Posted on 03/20/2007 8:15:14 AM PDT by Lonely NY Conservative
No details yet....
Still seeking to blame other people I see. As I said, you left out Bush, because he failed to put the entire country in lockdown before any incident like this could happen.
" If I take a bunch of minors camping in the wilderness I am damned well responsible for their safety!"
Good, glad to hear it.
"If I remember correctly, Scouting costs. There is even more responsibility implied when money changes hands. "
Irrelevant. The ScoutLeaders are volunteers.
"It was another poster who brought up the ADHD angle to this, I am merely considering it as a factor that complicates things. If the boy isn't ADHD, then it isn't a factor."
You've demonstrated have no clue on what happened, nor do you have any clue of what ADHD is about.
"Normal 12 year olds don't mindlessly 'wander' away from safety, and they don't ignore the people calling, and the helicopters and general noise of search parties when they are only a mile and a half from camp."
You are correct, but it has nothing to do with ADHD and none of those present could know the boy would do that, that includes his parents. Now they know.
I remember the Subgenius t shirts showing up on the Dead tours in the 80's. When the whole thing was explained to me, I laughed out loud. My buddy used to really push it, right down to the picture of Bob on the back of his jean jacket..
Prayers are answered. Thank You, Lord.
Never had one of them to get lost but you would be surprise what mischief they can get into. All in all they were a pretty good bunch of boys. Tough too. Many times we had bad weather during our campouts and I never once heard one complain.<<
My friends always turned to me when their son's troop was going to do something that sounded dumb. I'm an old Eagle Scout (Nixon was the honorary BSA President that signed my card). Once they were going to a glacier summer hike, with shorts and nothing to speak of in the way of equipment...
Once they planned on going on a 50 miler trail hike, and this were not even aware the trail conditions. I wasn't either, but just said "Call the ranger station and find out about the trails." It was rocks, no markings to speak of, and the rangers would "find" two or three lost parties every week during the season.
There was one thing that caught my eye. A scout official, and a boy left in camp. Last I heard scouts implemented a two by two requirement. No groups smaller than two scouts two adults. Period. This did not follow that rule. Any ideas?
DK
I was in the Scouts way back when too. I never liked people that called folks with less ability dorks.
I'm glad he was found, but if I have to hear Marc Klaas say "we need to track out kids with GPS, and parents who don't want to tracj their kids are bad parents" one more time, I'm gonna pull my hair out. GPS and/or implantable microchips are NOT the solution. The solution is to teach survival skills.
I bet if I dug deep enough, I'd probably find Klaas' name listed as an associate of VeriChip.
"Cherokee National Forest"
I grew up a few miles away. Great area. The mountain laurel thickets can be impassable.
From what I concluded after listening to FNN this morning, it appears the boy intentionally left the camp to "hitch hike" home, because he was "homesick".
So he deliberately wandered off.
sw
Hopefully the next time he tells his parents he doesn't want to go on a campout they will let him stay at home. Maybe he's just not cut out to be a scout.
And would you be willing to foot the bill for a dozen boys to have GPS when their family most likely can't afford it.
The radio is one thing, but even then, going on a 50 mile hike has slightly different concerns than going on a two-day hunting trip. A 2 mile reach 5 miles out of Unicoy Gap gets you VERY little, especially if you dont pack enough batteries, or you drop it, or get it soaked.
An up to date map, compass, and straight edge should be more than sufficient. Especially considering those things have served as bread and butter for scouting for generations. Hell, in severe weather, even a $400 GPS can be lost.
And 12 year olds with air horns? You ever want to see game in that area again?
"The scouts don't put kids through half of the crap they used to."
Two words-
Snipe
Hunt.
:)
Once they said they were there to rescue him, he asked for a helicopter ride out," said David Bauer, a ranger with the National Parks Service.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2969044
I'm with you... when found the first thing he asked for wa s a helicopter ride out of the woods.
apparently he claims he heard searchers calling his name, so he was not THAT lost...
AND he has a facination with survival stories
You have a point.
That caught my eye too. One and only one boy stays behind with one adult while everyone else goes out hiking, and next thing you know the boy wants to get the h*!! away from this place. And he was apparently in bed when the others left. Maybe I've been reading too many stories of children being assaulted by perverts, but I think that adult needs to be scrutinized and questioned very very thoroughly. It's true the boy had expressed to his father before the trip that he didn't really want to go. But that could have been for the same reason. An adult preparing to molest a child he knows usually does some advance "grooming", and progresses to the ultimate goal incrementally.
Just speculating, but: I wonder if "something" happened during the night, resulting in the boy not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. Since the Scouts DO have a firm policy of prohibiting one adult-one boy alone together, he might have reasonably assumed that staying behind wouldn't mean being left alone with his molestor. When the boy said he wanted to stay behind in bed, this adult might have "volunteered" to stay behind with him -- then the boy found himself alone with the guy and decided to bolt. It would explain the boy not having a real explanation for what he did. If he was really that miserable for reasons he felt free to talk about, wouldn't he have insisted that one of the adults call his dad to come and get him? After all, since the boy is apparently not retarded, he could certainly have anticipated that his dad would have been less annoyed by that, than by having him show up at home have gotten there by hitchhiking.
I'm not trying to convict the adult in question. He may just have been trying to look after a troubled misfit kid, and limit the number of other adults who had to stay behind, and the various adults may have just decided it would be okay to break the rules, thinking that having two of the adults stay behind to look after one cranky boy didn't really make sense. But I do think close scrutiny is warranted to make sure that's the case. Not only did this adult break the rules by being at the campsite alone with the boy, but he also then managed to "lose" the kid -- a little tough to explain with a one-to-one adult-kid ratio. If the adult is innocent of any serious wrongdoing -- which he may well be -- he has only himself to blame for causing suspicion and inviting some close scrutiny, unless the other adults left him alone with the boy over his protests.
a Garmin handheld costs about $100 pretty cheap,(anyone going on a hike in unfamiliar woods is stupid to go without a GPS, every kid that is serious about scouting can find a way to get one, what was the cost of that 3 day fiasco?, it almost cost a kid his life for something that was easily avoided)
a $25 walkie talkie could have made contact with the rescuers in a split second, he was only 800 yards from the camp site
and if you can't control the Boy Scouts from firing off their airhorns then vacume seal them with strict instructions you open the container without an emergency you are banned from further camping
camping in the woods is serious business, you don't send kids up there on the cheap
it's called being prepared
these are Boy Scouts(I was one for years) not first graders
Could well be, but I think there's another possibility that needs to be considered before we blame the kids and/or his parents. See my post at #296.
Excellant analysis.
this story is NOT right.
Notice that there is no more tv coverage...not even last night.That is very unusual.Especially since the boy was ok and was "just lost".
Also, what was this about the boy staying behind at camp because he had a stomach ache or didn't feel good and then goes off hiking on his own?
I agree, that the solo male adult stayed with this boy alone is very very very weird. Nowadays you just don't do that sort of thing, even if you are NOT a pedophile. Its too risky..if that boy had accused the man of something, wow, that adult would be in one big mess!
We ALL posted our opinions on this based on the information we had at the time. Now we're learning more of the facts. Should we always wait until everything possible is learned about an event before starting threads and posting our views on them?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.