BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
There are some stories that can't go away fast enough. There are others we'd like to hang onto until we've figured them out.
The Girl Scouts' Camp Butterworth fiasco is one of the latter.
Initially, we just want to know if Warren County officials are going to file charges against a 19-year-old counselor accused of fondling her campers, and against the Girl Scouts organization for waiting 11 hours to report the matter.
Get back to us on that. Either way. If nothing criminal happened here, still something happened.
The issue goes beyond a legal matter to a moral matter. It has to do with how girls are told to think of themselves in the world, and women are believed to act.
And it demonstrates how it is sometimes possible to have injustice whether there is a crime.
Message OK, action wrong
The girls at the camp had undoubtably heard powerful messages about being female for years. Many girls enter the Girl Scouts pipeline at age 5. These girls were 10 and 11.
To its credit, the Girl Scouts organization tells girls right up front that they are strong, valuable, smart and resourceful. It says it fully supports their right to be independent, healthily assertive, able to speak and act for themselves.
That is why some of us parents sign their daughters up, pay their dues, buy their cookies. We believe, in a world of harmful messages, the Girl Scouts say the right things to girls.
Then, of course, we are left to watch what they actually do.
From the beginning of this incident, it appeared the girls did the right thing. They believed they were mistreated, and they spoke up immediately. And, whether their stories were true or false, accurate or distorted, the Girl Scouts did the wrong thing. They waited to tell authorities, and they sent off the counselor on a bus.
This is where it moves beyond a legal matter. Did Scout leaders think the girls just wouldn't notice? Now they're worried about what the prosecutor thinks, the parents think, what we think, but have they ever cared about the message they sent to the girls?
That children's bodies are important, and so are their rights to privacy and dignity - or not?
That when children speak up, adults will listen carefully and act promptly - or not?
That issues of possible wrongdoing or injustice will always be handled with bravery and directness.
Or not?
Be a woman about it
The willy-nilly handling of this matter comes into focus when we compare it to the Navy's Tailhook scandal. Wouldn't adult females be outraged - haven't they been outraged - if they leveled such charges, and their superiors put the alleged assailant on a bus out of town?
And who exactly has the Girl Scouts' official support here, the campers or the counselor? Or is the issue one of the honchos simply protecting themselves?
It leads us to the second most troubling issue. What does this tell girls - and all of us - about how women function in the world?
For years women have been accused of handling conflict poorly - avoiding it, denying it, running away from it. Rather than suck it up and face nasty matters squarely, women were assumed to want to simply put the whole mess on a bus and make nice.
Sound familiar?
Males, at least before political correctness, used to have a blunt approach to difficult issues. Be a man about it, they told each other. Stand up, do the right thing, take your hits.
It's time for the Girl Scout leaders to be a woman about it.
For all their careful chatter, their endless printed propaganda, their bureaucratic training sessions, they seem to have missed their own message.
Females do indeed have a right to be treated with dignity and respect. If there is any question that they have not been, they have the wits, the skills and the guts to address matters straight on.
For those of us who have long been Girl Scout supporters, this has been a disappointing experience all around. Surely women can do better by girls.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE