Kanakuk Kamp Victims File Lawsuit
Victims of sexual abuse by former Kanakuk Kamp staffer Pete Newman (pictured above, currently serving 2 consecutive life sentences plus 30 years) have come forward and are taking legal action. I’ve just received this press release initiated by the Turley Law Firm. I also have a copy of the lawsuit that I understand is currently being filed- the defendants include Kanakuk Ministries, Kanakuk Kamp’s owner Joe T. White, and Pete Newman.
By Merritt Patterson
Mar. 11, 2011 | 5:21 pm | 22 Comments | Comments RSS
22 comments to "Kanakuk Kamp Victims File Lawsuit "
In reading the lawsuit, the camp had to know. Praying/hoping/wishing the best for all the victims and families.
Joe White KNEW what was going on with Newman in 1999 and decided to promote him, instead of fire him, as he should have when the first incident of him riding naked on four wheelers with young boys who were also naked came to light.
Then we have the 2003 incident where Newman and a group of young boys “streaked” through the camp. White and other leaders at the “Kamp” continued to not only let Newman pray with young boys….but prey on them as well.
The problem I have with White and Kanakuk is that they continued to employ Newman for years(even sending him to stay in the homes of some of the boys he molested to recruit other kampers)AFTER they had him sign a probationary agreement acknowledging his inappropriate behavior with young boys all in the name of PROFIT…not a Prophet!
http://crimesceneinvestigations.blogspot.com/2011/03/federal-lawsuit-filed-in-texas-against.html
(p. 4 of complaint)
i also was, last year, the sole reference for a young woman who got hired as a camp counsellor in another camp. she is a wonderful person, but you have to wonder how many employees are hired just by giving one phone reference. i talked to her boss for less than 5 minutes and she was hired an hour later. you would think there would be more of a screening process for those entrusted to young children.
Amen.
What you can do is insist that organized entities like schools, churches, etc. have a “no private alone-time policy” between adults and minors and, for that matter, teenage “junior counselors” and the children they are supervising, with exceptions only during emergencies and when those happen, a full report by the adult of who he was with, what he was doing, and why they had to be alone together.
Even better is a two- or three-adult policy but this isn’t feasible or really necessary in large-group settings like a classroom with 1 teacher and a dozen or more students in a school with other teachers in all of the nearby rooms. However, if you have fewer than a handful of kids a 2nd adult provides accountability and deterrence, and if you have more kids than one adult can safely manage then a 2nd adult is needed from a pure management perspective. If your church or camp doesn’t have the manpower to have a 2-adult policy, then they should consider a video-surveillance system or have “rovers” who check in at frequent, random intervals. Such surveillance and check-ins deter anyone who has ulterior motives who slipped through screening.
If this camp had had AND ENFORCED a 2-adult policy, I doubt very much that Newman could have molested anyone, at least not without the active and on-the-spot cooperation of other adults.
And then, I had to go and ask them if he molested them. And explain to them what he was accused of, and then later tell them that he had confessed. I know a few boys were horribly hurt by this man’s actions, but also thousands of children were irreparably harmed by the evil this “role model” was hiding. His sentence is justice served.
http://stopbaptistpredators.blogspot.com/2011/04/complicity-in-baptistland.html
Get professional help immediately.
With people like you on their staff I will never ever send my children back to Kanakuk. I agree with grump Get professional help IMMEDIATELY!
This is unbelievable considering the PN case. You would think KKuk would have installed policies that would never allow counselors to be alone with children. Organizations such as Boy Scouts of America do not allow it. Wake up KKuk. You have a serious problem.
As a victim of sexual abuse by a family friend and babysitter, I can tell you that the majority of sexual abuse is by people you trust and it is key that EVERYONE not just camps and schools recognize the signs of an adult or older child who is preying on younger children. This isn’t a question of who did or didn’t handle it properly, because unless we educate ourselves we all are doing a disservice to those around us who are being abused. If people were more informed of the signs and behaviors, these cases would be less and less frequent. So before you start pointing fingers and saying that Kanakuk should have done this and that, maybe you should look at how informed you really are, because I can guarantee you that most of you who have opinions on this, wouldn’t recognize the signs, because if the common person did, myself and others like me wouldn’t have been molested. I have caring, very involved parents, they just trusted a person that had proven to be a friend of the family- the signs were there, however they don’t seem out of place in a community of love and caring attitudes such as the church. That is why being informed is the only way to prevent or stop such atrocities from happening.
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