r/BSA_Survivors

If you don't want to seem condescending to us stop telling us to be patient and wait for our lien holdbacks to be processed. When that is all the information we get for our money and our suffering! When you have already been paid for our lien holdbacks 7-8 months ago, it's really easy to just say be patient! You are not patient you already got paid! But from STAC, to the trust, and all lawyers representing us, you are getting paid first, a in some cases way too much, for having your interns do just basic paperwork, with hardly any of you ever having to litigate, or step foot in a courtroom! You are not patient about getting your money! So stop being a bunch of condescending hypocrites and do your frickin job like you are not getting paid to take longer to do it instead of what you like to say in public what heroes, and hardworking, boyscout saving people you are!

As most of you are aware by now, we finally received an update on the lien holdback from the Trustee.

Under immense pressure, Houser attempted to douse an inferno with a glass of water. According to her latest update, a global resolution was reached with Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. As a result, the LRA has returned roughly 2,000 lien holdbacks for those who opted for Option A.

Now that the LRA has reached global agreements with all three major government medical agencies, there is absolutely no justification for the Trust to hold back more than $1,000 per claimant. We already know that the Medicare global agreement was capped at less than $200 way back in February.

The Timing of the "Update" Is No Coincidence

What’s especially telling is the timing. Several brave claimants were scheduled on September’s Omnibus docket to challenge the Trust directly. Just as the Trustee was about to face questioning on this exact issue, the entire Omnibus was abruptly canceled.

Right on the heels of that cancellation came the long-awaited update announcing the global agreements and the return of select Option A holdbacks. Returning ~2,000 holdbacks feels like little more than a symbolic gesture.

Where is the Rest of Our Money?

What about the thousands of us whose holdbacks are still being held hostage—including mine?

Didn’t the Trust engage Archer Systems specifically to administer these settlement payments? Archer is a massive entity specializing in mass tort settlements with the infrastructure to process and release funds efficiently across tens of thousands of claimants.

 Why are we still waiting for funds that are rightfully ours?

 Why does the Trustee insist on making this entire process so excruciatingly frustrating?

Looking Ahead

I’m genuinely glad for the small group of fellow survivors who have finally seen their lien holdbacks returned. To the rest of us still waiting: stay strong. Have faith that we will eventually receive every last dollar of our awards.

If there’s any silver lining to this absurd delay, it’s this: had I received these funds months ago, I might have spent them without a long-term plan. Having spent this time researching investing and financial planning, I am far better prepared to use this money to build lasting stability.

Hang in there, everyone.

There’s an old saying:
“What you put into this world eventually comes back to you. How you treat others matters. And sooner or later, everyone must answer for their actions.”

Lately, I cannot help but think about those words when I look at what is happening with the Boy Scouts of America Scouting Settlement Trust.
Because what survivors are being put through is, in my opinion, absolutely scandalous.
WE WERE CHILDREN.

We were taught to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and brave.
We were taught that character mattered.
We were taught to do the right thing, even when nobody was watching.

Yet when we needed protection the most, the very institutions and adults we trusted failed us.
And now, decades later, after finally finding the courage to tell our stories, many of us feel as though we are being failed all over again.

FIRST, THEY TOOK OUR CHILDHOODS. NOW, THE SYSTEM IS TAKING YEARS WE HAVE LEFT.
Think about that.

Survivors spent decades carrying trauma that no child should ever have to endure.
Some struggled with addiction. Some lost marriages, careers, friendships, and opportunities. Some spent their lives battling depression, shame, and memories they could never escape.
Some never survived long enough to see this settlement.

And those of us who are still here?
We have been asked to wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
We went through the claims process. We told our stories. We submitted evidence. We reopened wounds that had never fully healed.
Some survivors received awards recognizing millions of dollars in damages.

Yet receiving an award on paper and actually receiving meaningful compensation are two very different things.
WHAT GOOD IS A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR AWARD IF A SURVIVOR DIES WAITING TO RECEIVE IT?
Meanwhile, insurance disputes continue. Legal proceedings continue. Administrative processes continue.

But time does not stop for survivors.
Every day that passes is another day we cannot get back.
Every month of delay is another month someone may be struggling to afford medical treatment, housing, therapy, or simply a little peace.
AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES THIS SO OUTRAGEOUS.

The Scouting Settlement Trust was established to compensate survivors.
Not to become another source of uncertainty and suffering.
Not to leave survivors wondering whether they will live long enough to receive meaningful compensation.

Not to make people who were silenced as children feel powerless as adults.
THE TRUST EXISTS BECAUSE OF US. WE DO NOT EXIST FOR THE TRUST.
Let that sink in.

Behind every claim number is a human being.
Behind every award is a childhood that was forever changed.

Behind every survivor is a little boy who once believed the adults around him would keep him safe.
And behind every delay is a real person losing something that can never be replaced.
TIME.

You can replace money.
You can renegotiate contracts.
You can litigate insurance coverage for years.
BUT YOU CANNOT GIVE A SURVIVOR BACK THE YEARS HE HAS ALREADY LOST.
And that brings me back to the message that started this.

I DO NOT WANT REVENGE. I WANT ACCOUNTABILITY.
I don’t need to see anyone suffer.
I don’t need hatred to motivate me.
But I do believe that how people and institutions treat others ultimately defines their legacy.
And I believe that those responsible for delivering justice should be judged not by their promises, their press releases, or their legal arguments, but by what they actually deliver to the people they are supposed to help.

If you claim to stand for justice, then deliver justice.
If you claim to care about survivors, then demonstrate it through your actions.
If you are entrusted with compensating victims, then transparency, urgency, and accountability should never be optional.

BECAUSE JUSTICE THAT ARRIVES AFTER A SURVIVOR IS GONE IS JUSTICE THAT PERSON NEVER GOT TO EXPERIENCE.
To every survivor still waiting, I want you to remember something.

We were children when our voices were taken from us.
We were children when adults failed to protect us.
We were children when we learned that sometimes the people who preach the loudest about honor and integrity are the very people who fail to live by those principles.

But we are not those powerless little boys anymore.
WE HAVE VOICES NOW.
And those voices deserve to be heard.
We have every right to question this process.
We have every right to demand transparency.
We have every right to insist that the people managing this settlement recognize the urgency of our lives.
And we have every right to be angry when a system created to provide relief leaves survivors feeling abandoned.

WE ARE NOT BEGGING FOR HANDOUTS.
WE ARE DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR HARM THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.

To the Scouting Settlement Trust and everyone involved in this process:
Remember who this settlement was created for.
Remember the children who were betrayed.
Remember the survivors who have already died.
And remember those who are still here, watching the years slip away while waiting for meaningful justice.

Because history will not simply remember the dollar amounts announced in this settlement.
History will remember how the survivors were treated after those promises were made.
And that is a legacy every person involved should think very carefully about.

What goes around comes around!!
Not because we seek revenge.
But because actions have consequences, truth has a way of surviving, and accountability matters.

WE HAVE ALREADY PAID A LIFETIME PRICE FOR WHAT WAS DONE TO US.
WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SPEND THE REST OF OUR LIVES FIGHTING TO RECEIVE THE JUSTICE WE WERE PROMISED.

The little boys we once were deserved protection.
The men we are today deserve dignity.
And the survivors who are no longer with us deserved better than to die waiting.

NO MORE EMPTY PROMISES.
NO MORE TREATING SURVIVORS LIKE NUMBERS.
NO MORE FORGETTING THE HUMAN COST OF DELAY.

WE SURVIVED THE ABUSE. WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SURVIVE THE SETTLEMENT PROCESS TOO.

Do these people realize that a lot of us are selling our payments because of the law firms and all the delays? Now they’re trying to block us from selling too. We just want access to our own money.

We are writing to you today with an update on your claim against the Boy Scouts of America.

I know you are frustrated. I know this case has taken way too long and you have not achieved the level of justice or accountability you deserve. The cancellation of the hearing in September was gut-wrenching because we expected the Court to move forward and finish what we started. And when these delays continue, you lose faith in our country's judicial system and its ability to serve you and the people of this country, which is the very purpose of its existence. Because your case has taken so long, and because the money paid out has not been enough, you are justified in those feelings.

We do not have a magic wand to force the Trustee to pay out additional money faster, nor can we force Judge Silverstein to address the Future Claims issue and publish her opinion before she is ready to do so. But we can continue to push the Court and the Trustee and keep you informed of that progress as soon as it happens.

You retained our firm to hold the Boy Scouts of America accountable for what happened to you, and we are continuing to advocate for you in that effort. The next hearing before Judge Silverstein is set for Wednesday, October 21, and the Court has been actively scheduling BSA matters for that hearing. It is my hope that the Court will hear any final arguments on the Future Claims issue at that time and, if it does, that we will receive Judge Silverstein's decision in the weeks that follow.

The BSA failed you, and your life changed forever as a result. And now, with these delays, you feel the system has failed you. I think I have mentioned this quote before: "Justice limps along, but gets there all the same." We are limping along, but we will get there in the end.

Thank you for putting your trust in our firm and fighting back against the BSA for these past 8 years. Please understand that some things remain outside of our control, but we remain steadfast in our efforts to finish your case and see additional money paid out after these decisions have been made. But that will not be the end of the case, because we still need to resolve the remaining insurance disputes, sell the artwork, oil and gas leases, and landholdings, and bring that additional money into the Trust. It will not happen overnight, but little by little, progress will be made and more money will come into the Trust.

Thank you for standing up to the BSA and changing our society for the better. What happened to you should never have been allowed to happen, and by shining a huge light on the issue, you have created a safer environment for children today and into the future. Be proud of that fact and know you were instrumental in that change.

I hope you have a good weekend, and we will be back with another update next week.

Thank you all participating lawyers for being so helpful, honest, and forthcoming!

Finally finally finally..my funds got deposited today signed release form October 2 milestone pathway direct deposit opition C firm is ASK LLP

Does anyone know of any loan companies that will loan to us survivors while we wait for our payment ? My law firm won’t approve any pre settlement funding for some reason and it sucks that they have to be the ones to approve it . SMH . Please any thing helps . Notice comments please

Afrer everyone get supplemental funds when are next possible payments?

​

Mr. Vara, Ms. McCollum, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Trustee Program, Trustee Barbara Houser, and everyone responsible for oversight of the Scouting Settlement Trust:

Survivors are tired of being managed, redirected, delayed, and talked around.

This process was created to compensate people who were sexually abused as children.

Instead, many survivors have been forced into another battle—this time against silence, bureaucracy, unanswered emails, unexplained payment holds, changing lawyers, disappearing contacts, vague portal messages, and a system that too often leaves the survivor knowing less about his own claim than everybody else involved.

My case is one example.

In 2024, attorneys at Slater Slater Schulman told me that a problem affecting my settlement would be corrected through the Trust process. I was given a timeframe that led me to believe the correction would be handled and that payment would follow.

By October 2024, I was expecting that process to be moving toward a substantial payment.

Instead, the lights went out.

Communication from my lawyers essentially disappeared.

I repeatedly tried to find out what was happening.

The Trust kept directing me back to my attorneys.

My attorneys were not giving me meaningful answers.

People associated with my representation changed or disappeared from communication.

And I was left asking the same basic question:

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY CLAIM?

Think about that.

A survivor is told to ask his lawyer.

The lawyer will not provide meaningful answers.

The survivor goes back to the Trust.

The Trust sends him back to the lawyer.

Around and around it goes while months turn into years.

I later learned of serious scrutiny surrounding claims associated with SSS. That raised an obvious question for me:

What did the Trust know, when did it know it, and what information was being given or not given—to the individual survivors whose cases were affected?

That is not an accusation that somebody committed a crime.

It is a demand for an answer.

If Trust officials knew that issues involving a law firm or groups of claims could materially affect individual survivors, then survivors deserve to know what was happening.

If the Trust did not know, say so.

If it did know, explain what it knew and when.

If information could not legally be disclosed at the time, explain that too.

But stop leaving survivors to reconstruct their own cases from Reddit posts, court filings, portal changes, rumors, screenshots, and unanswered emails.

Eventually I terminated SSS and proceeded pro se because I had lost confidence that anybody else was going to fight for answers about my own claim.

Read that again.

A childhood sexual-abuse survivor enters a massive court-supervised settlement, hires lawyers, receives an award, is told that a correction is coming, and waits for the process to work—and eventually concludes that the only person he can depend on to investigate what happened is himself.

That should concern every person responsible for overseeing this system.

And please stop saying there is little information to provide.

There is plenty of information survivors could be given.

Tell us how many survivor claims remain unpaid.

Tell us how many are being delayed because of attorney liens.

Tell us how many are being delayed because of disputes involving law firms.

Tell us how many survivors have been waiting more than six months.

More than a year.

More than two years.

NOW 7 YEARS!

Tell us how much money has been distributed.

Tell us how much remains available.

Tell us how much is presently tied up in disputes.

Tell us how many attorney-related complaints have been received.

Tell us how many claims have required additional review.

Tell us how many affected survivors were actually notified.

And tell us how many survivors were simply instructed to keep contacting attorneys who were not answering them.

Those are not impossible questions.

They are basic accountability questions.

Publish a quarterly report.

Money received.

Money distributed.

Claims paid.

Claims are waiting.

Attorney disputes.

Liens.

Major unresolved issues.

Expected next steps.

Actual timelines.

No filler.

No public-relations language.

No vague assurances that everything is being handled.

Give survivors numbers, dates, and facts.

And when attorneys tell a court that an issue has been "resolved," survivors deserve to understand exactly what that means.

Resolved between the lawyers?

Resolved administratively?

Resolved for the Trust?

Or resolved for the survivor who is still sitting at home waiting for his money and wondering what the hell happened?

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

Mr. Vara and Ms. McCollum:

Please do not measure the success of this system only by whether lawyers and administrators say a problem has been resolved.

Measure it by what is happening to the survivors themselves.

Can they get an answer?

Do they know why their payment is delayed?

Do they know who is representing them?

Do they know whether an attorney lien is blocking payment?

Do they know what document is missing?

Do they know who has responsibility for fixing the problem?

And most importantly:

Do they know when they are going to be paid?

Survivors were children when powerful adults and institutions failed them the first time.

We are adults now.

Do not put us through another system built on silence.

Do not tell us to be patient indefinitely.

Do not bounce us between organizations.

Do not send us back to lawyers who will not answer us.

Do not make a survivor become a bankruptcy investigator just to understand his own settlement.

This trust exists because an institution catastrophically failed children.

Everyone administering it should understand better than almost anyone what institutional silence does to a victim.

That is why transparency matters so much here.

Andrew R. Vara. Hannah J. McCollum. Barbara Houser.

Survivors are not asking you to tell us what we want to hear.

Tell us what happened.

Tell us who had responsibility.

Tell us what information existed.

Tell us what changed.

Tell us what remains unresolved.

And tell the affected survivors what is being done about their individual cases.

Dates.

Numbers.

Records.

Timelines.

Accountability.

That is what transparency looks like.

We already spent decades carrying the consequences of adults who kept quiet.

Look, when people from the SSS tell you you have to retract everything you said about what the SSS firm has done, IR, or something else behind the scenes, we are going on. And lucky in NY your alliwed to record all of your phone calls for proof.

We should not have to fight another wall of silence inside the very system that was created to compensate us for what that first silence cost.

We survived the abuse.

We survived decades of silence.

We survived the bankruptcy.

Now stop making survivors fight simply to understand what happened to their settlement.

We are writing to you today with an update on your claim against the Boy Scouts of America.

This week was expected to bring the long-awaited September 29 hearing before Judge Silverstein. I know many of you were looking to that hearing for answers, and I was as well. The Court ultimately canceled the hearing after the matters that had been scheduled for that date were resolved or otherwise taken off the agenda. Unfortunately, that did not include a decision on the Future Claims dispute or the approximately $213 million in interest. I had hoped by this point that we would have more clarity on both issues and a better idea of when the next distribution could be made. I know how frustrating it is to keep waiting after everything this process has already required from you.

That said, Trustee Houser issued a detailed update this week that gives us a clearer picture of where several of the major issues now stand.

The Trust reports that approximately 98% of the claims being handled through the Expedited, Matrix and Independent Review processes have now been determined. Approximately 1,200 Matrix claims remain, along with only five Independent Review claims, so the initial claims review process continues to move closer to completion.

On the interest issue, the amount being held in escrow has now grown to approximately $213 million and continues to earn interest. A formal mediation with the settling insurance companies is scheduled for the middle of October. If a reasonable resolution cannot be reached through mediation, Trustee Houser has stated that she intends to proceed with litigation to resolve the dispute.

The Future Claims issue also remains outstanding. Judge Silverstein has indicated that she wants closing arguments before taking the matter under advisement, but a date for those arguments has not yet been set. Until the Court rules, the maximum distribution remains 4.7% of each allowed claim amount. That means we still cannot say when another distribution percentage will be announced.

There was also encouraging news on the insurance side. The Trustee reports that the coverage litigation against the non-settling insurers continues to move forward and that the recent rulings on the insurers' efforts to dismiss the case were largely favorable to the Trust. She also reports that settlement agreements have now been reached with six carrier groups. As we have discussed before, these insurance recoveries can continue adding money to the Trust while the larger litigation proceeds.

There are still important decisions ahead, particularly on the Future Claims dispute and the $213 million in interest. I wish I could tell you those decisions were coming faster. What I can tell you is that the remaining claims continue to be completed, additional insurance recoveries remain possible, and the mediation over the interest money is now scheduled for later this month.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this update. I hope you and your loved ones have a good weekend, and we will be back next week with another update.

So I got an email and some paperwork I had to sign to get my lien and then on this paperwork it says that I can't share any of the information with anybody or I would get sued or something. So I don't know what that means. I've never gotten that before. Anybody know what I'm talking about