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“Failure to Protect”


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1 hour ago, karuna said:

You're still whitewashing the entire matter under the cover of "responsibility outside my mandated duties".    How sad.

I'll try again.

It does not matter whether the BOD officially told him to not report.  In many (most) jurisdictions anyone directly involved with a youth activity has a legally mandated duty to report any suspected abuse.  Furthermore an ethical and moral leader would NOT stick his head in the sand and fail to report suspected abuse EVEN if the result was against the explicit direction of the DCI BOD (which I seriously doubt ever occurred.  In fact to the best of my knowledge no such official directive was ever given to him nor was it written into his employment contract) even if the result was his resignation or termination as CEO.  You can find another job;  you can't undo/repair what the abusers were breaking.

You're so confused on this issue. 

It just doesn't matter what the corporate structure at DCI was.  It doesn't matter what the BOD told him to do.   In the face of suspected abuse in a youth activity, he had a moral, ethical (and probably legal) duty to report those suspicions.  

End of story.  

No amount of "BUT THATS NOT HOW DCI WAS STRUCTURED" can change that. The structure is irrelevant in the face of suspected abuse.  

It doesn't matter how successfully Acheson has been at the rest of his obligations including managing tour.

It just doesn't matter.  

His ability to lead the organization has evaporated. 

Because he stood by and did nothing.  

The only possible justification for not acting would be complete and willful ignorance.   Again this leaves him completely unsuitable to lead an activity so clearly running off the rails. 

As for "throwing the baby out with the bath water" ,  that's just not true.  DCI can find another CEO.  And the staff that manages to square away tour (more or less) every season can do their job without him.  Acheson is not DCI.   When the alternative to finding an interim CEO until a new one can be found is keeping the guy who stood by and said nothing,  clearly the best course is to suffer the consequences and give the organization a legitimate chance to right itself.  

Sadly enough,  reporters are eventually going to find enough people willing to say "yeah Dan knew about that" on the record.  And then -- instead of a CEO stepping down because the abuses occurred on his watch -- you're going to see "DCI CEO was aware of X, Y and Z  say  P, Q, and R."   And make no mistake -- he's target number one (and rightfully so).  

:doh:

Well, OK, I'm not going to "Ream" this discussion.  I'll just let you and your crazy position hang out there where you want it.

Hopefully, one day you'll see that he didn't, in fact, stand by and do nothing.  That's your contention, and you made it up.

smh, but let's move on

 

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1 hour ago, Bluzes said:

Been lurking here for a while since I stopped posting and most of the time you (regular posters) get things right for drum corps. This thread has hit all the hot buttons except honing in on the root cause, the high schools. Not much has changed here, some still calling for Dan's head while others defend. I stopped posting because I am just a fan and there are many that use drum corps as their livelihood and are the only ones that can right the ship, I was not doing any good.

What is needed is a grassroots effort at the high school level where these bad actors breed. If Dan needs to go then so does the Principal or School Superintendent if a teacher under them is accused of sexual misconduct.
See how fast the vetting and supervision changes, how much more is noted how many more students are taken seriously, removing Dan would not have this effect.

Predators are everywhere. We’re seeing predators linked to schools because corps staff are mostly teachers. Pioneer had a predator who drove a bus so no school breeding connection there.

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52 minutes ago, Ghost said:

The press has probably been reading DCP for months.

There is no probably about it. They have been reading DCP ... and Reddit ... and Twitter ....

Edited by Jurassic Lancer
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3 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

How would the situation be different if there never was a DCI?

Alternate History... well I'll have to get the comments from Parshall and Tully later, but I'll try and hit on some of their thoughts on the subject, one of them heartily dislikes it. 

 

Perhaps the same thing happens. The VFW and AL are caught broadsided by this. Corps would likely face severe punishments, maybe causing several of them to form "The Combine" years later.

 

Perhaps Corps would have become a joke way before now, fossilized and antiquated. Small groups doing this as some anachronism. Many of the corps people who helped grow DCI come work with HS competitive units, so that never changes, and they make what's left of Junior corps look horrid.

 

Maybe since DCA broke away from the AL in 1964, maybe it becomes the arbiter of the activity and the innovation leader. Kids who want to be in corps and do more interesting shows and learn more go there instead.

 

Lord knows. There are an infinite number of permutations. One can only speculate.

 

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3 hours ago, garfield said:

:doh:

Well, OK, I'm not going to "Ream" this discussion.  I'll just let you and your crazy position hang out there where you want it.

Hopefully, one day you'll see that he didn't, in fact, stand by and do nothing.  That's your contention, and you made it up.

smh, but let's move on

 

I don’t find this position crazy. I am not a great thinker but if DA didn’t stand by and do nothing then why are we here? Was he simply ineffectual? The proof is in the pudding is it not? 

Edited by Jurassic Lancer
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6 hours ago, George Dixon said:

I agree. Sad but true. Daylight is our friend, in this case.

I don't think the response can be "business as usual" or "business mostly as usual" - personally I feel everything should be on the table. Dan should go. An external review should be conducted and a specialist/consultant hired to help adopt the path forward. DCI / corps relationship & structure may need entirely reworked. The tour model needs a hard look - organizations wishing to do a protracted tour need higher hurdles to top. Perhaps the activity loses minors and becomes an 18-24 or so activity for college/grad students

Clearly things need to change. And in a wholesale manner. If I were a DCI corporate sponsor I would walk unless Dan resigns. JMO

anyone still on a board...corps, DCi....that swept this stuff under the rug needs to be out. Period. 

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6 hours ago, garfield said:

I'm sorry, I've read this with an open mind several times trying to understand the world you think exists.  

If I could just get you to see that you've created a "reality" about DCI that didn't exist prior to 2018, I think you'd have a breakthrough and take a different position.

The Board Member corps established practices and policies decades ago that stripped DCI  - Dan's office - from all major decisions.  Intentionally, and directly.  I have not seen actual documents, but I've been told by several people in the know that it was, essentially, "...Stay out of it.  Don't do anything except forward it on."  The Board as a whole, or to a director himself, only and largely dependent on the issue.  That was then when policy dictated "escalation" and not, necessarily reporting to law authorities.  Today, you'd be absolutely right in your base connection between these decisions and Dan's office.

But, before 2018, DCI was almost exclusively an event management and promotion non-profit. It's BoD, the directors, picked it clean every, single year so that there was never a fully-funded realistic budget. 

If the policy that Dan was charged to follow was wrong for the day, the fault should be directed at the BoD member corps directors (and minority outside directors).  Dan and his office had no reason to suspect that the policy they were charged with following was NOT being effective at the corps level. There was NO reporting mechanism that went back UP to Dan's office, as I'm told.  And it wasn't a mistake in management, it was intentional.

In today's world, he'd be accountable for acting as you want because they have granted teeth and enforcement ability.

All the participating corps were NOT his "responsibility" in any way you're suggesting!  Please, change this one assumption you've made!  The corps voted that THEY were responsible in the way you're suggesting and specifically stripped all such decision-making from the CEO's role.

Neither Dan A nor his office staff let anything happen as you describe.  There was no reason for them to suspect that the issue was not being handled as planned by the individual corps, and there was no power available to him that didn't risk his career to go outside of the P&P established by the BoD and approved by their counsel.

Now it's different.

Dan may not be up to the task of managing the tour and his office's new role.  Only he and time will tell that.  But I do know for certain the the mountain of recruiting a new CEO, getting him/her up to speed on just the governance is a long process.  Expecting that person to run the tour as successfully as Dan's office apparently has (NO COMPLAINTS - ZERO - ABOUT THE TOUR), forces a debilitating learning curve that will potentially and unnecessarily hobble the activity at the very time that organizational clarity and reliability is critically important.

What you're saying should be done is tantamount to the proverbial baby and the bath water.

as stated before Dan knew about Morgan Larson, and did nothing about it. if he did take it to the board and they ignored him, they are negligent, and he is negligent for not forcing the issue more forcefully.

and there were others that had to be known, named, and not yet named. Yet the BOD gave Dan the code red, and he followed.....so he's just as guilty. 

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6 hours ago, garfield said:

I'm sorry, I've read this with an open mind several times trying to understand the world you think exists.  

If I could just get you to see that you've created a "reality" about DCI that didn't exist prior to 2018, I think you'd have a breakthrough and take a different position.

The Board Member corps established practices and policies decades ago that stripped DCI  - Dan's office - from all major decisions.  Intentionally, and directly.  I have not seen actual documents, but I've been told by several people in the know that it was, essentially, "...Stay out of it.  Don't do anything except forward it on."  The Board as a whole, or to a director himself, only and largely dependent on the issue.  That was then when policy dictated "escalation" and not, necessarily reporting to law authorities.  Today, you'd be absolutely right in your base connection between these decisions and Dan's office.

But, before 2018, DCI was almost exclusively an event management and promotion non-profit. It's BoD, the directors, picked it clean every, single year so that there was never a fully-funded realistic budget. 

If the policy that Dan was charged to follow was wrong for the day, the fault should be directed at the BoD member corps directors (and minority outside directors).  Dan and his office had no reason to suspect that the policy they were charged with following was NOT being effective at the corps level. There was NO reporting mechanism that went back UP to Dan's office, as I'm told.  And it wasn't a mistake in management, it was intentional.

In today's world, he'd be accountable for acting as you want because they have granted teeth and enforcement ability.

All the participating corps were NOT his "responsibility" in any way you're suggesting!  Please, change this one assumption you've made!  The corps voted that THEY were responsible in the way you're suggesting and specifically stripped all such decision-making from the CEO's role.

Neither Dan A nor his office staff let anything happen as you describe.  There was no reason for them to suspect that the issue was not being handled as planned by the individual corps, and there was no power available to him that didn't risk his career to go outside of the P&P established by the BoD and approved by their counsel.

Now it's different.

Dan may not be up to the task of managing the tour and his office's new role.  Only he and time will tell that.  But I do know for certain the the mountain of recruiting a new CEO, getting him/her up to speed on just the governance is a long process.  Expecting that person to run the tour as successfully as Dan's office apparently has (NO COMPLAINTS - ZERO - ABOUT THE TOUR), forces a debilitating learning curve that will potentially and unnecessarily hobble the activity at the very time that organizational clarity and reliability is critically important.

What you're saying should be done is tantamount to the proverbial baby and the bath water.

 

"Downey: What did we do wrong? We did nothing wrong. 
Dawson: Yeah, we did. We were supposed to fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willie."

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