[Ansteorra] Accountability... (was: The original complaint..)

[Lori C.]

I apologize in advance for this little wall of text, and I know I'm risking the apocalypse by posting to the Ansteorra list twice in one week... but... 

Before this slides under the rug (where it likely belongs) I just wanted to mention something. It annoys me when anyone suggests that we are all responsible for the current situation. None of us is responsible for the actions of the crazy people who harm children, or for the repercussions that harm generates. 

I choose to believe that this lawsuit isn't about punishment. I think it was about forcing change in the SCA. And you know what? Many, many changes have been made to the way we deal with kids in our organization since 2005. We (even those of us without kids) are all now very aware of the liability we face for having official children's programs, and the corporation has tried to implement things that will limit our risk. Mission accomplished. Lesson learned. 

But please, don't let it end there, because there is a second lesson to learn... and the future of our game depends on it. This lawsuit was inevitable from the moment the SCA appointed kids activity officers and started sanctioning kids activities. We knew it at the time. Someone wise even said "all it will take is one lawsuit to wipe us out." Thankfully, through a lot of legal effort and the generosity of the kingdoms that isn't going to happen. This time. 
 
Folks, this is about organizations that work with kids being sued right and left, especially those with - as someone said earlier - deep financial pockets. We were naive to think we could weed out the predators and subsequently dodge the lawsuit bullet. Even with all of our safeguards in place to protect our children we are only doing half of what is needed to protect our organization going forward. What Robert Fitzmorgan so eloquently said earlier is true... the part about the dangers of keeping all our financial asset eggs in one basket. 

See... so many of us knew this was a problem long, long ago, back in '95 when we discovered that the corporation could (and would) take money from kingdoms to pay corporate debts. Back then, several kingdoms looked into incorporating independently as a safeguard to protect our local assets. A few even succeeded, but it wasn't a very well implemented rebellion. In the end we proved that the kingdoms could find ways to protect our assets, but no real and lasting changes were made. Time and distance from the crisis made us forget how vulnerable we were. Now we are literally paying the hefty $1.3 million dollar price for our own lack of follow through. 

Our organization is just flat too big - and too well off financially - not to find a better way to protect the hard earned assets of our groups and kingdoms. Hopefully, before we all decide that serious discussions are no fun, before we insist this isn't going to affect our game, before we return to business as usual and become sitting ducks for the next financial disaster... please give some serious consideration to how we can prevent this from happening again. A kingdom committee maybe? A group of smart people who are motivated to come up with ideas that can be presented to our corporate officers? People who will make sure there is some follow through... some accountability at the corporate level to ensure there will be change... people who won't walk away until the job is done... because believe me... affecting a corporate change in the SCA is a long, hard road... 
 
We've already proven how amazingly generous our people are and how resilient we can be at moving on. Yes, we are awesome. But let's fix the rest of the problem. Our kingdom, actually our entire game, deserves better than for everyone to turn a blind eye. We already did that years ago and now look what it is costing us. Once our kingdom treasurer has to cut a check to corporate for $62,041.21... geez, that should be a huge wake-up call... It isn't about this money, this time. We'll be fine. It IS about finding a different way to organize SCA finances so we are not doing this again ten years from now. 
 
OK, I'm going to crawl back under my comfy rock now... :)
 
~ Kat MacLochlainn