Speaker 1: Camp hell an Awake is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
Speaker 1: of the author and participants and do not necessarily represent
Speaker 1: those of I Heeart Media or its employees. Due to
Speaker 1: discussion of traumatic, sexual, and violent content, listeners, discussion is advised.
Speaker 1: The whole episode was almost surreal. I moved to Atlanta
Speaker 1: in X seven, became a graduate student. Needed money, so
Speaker 1: I looked under psychologists in the phone book in the
Speaker 1: yellow pages, and there was something called any Wakey Foundation,
Speaker 1: and I said, what the dickens is that? This is
Speaker 1: Roger Brenn. He was an early employee at ana Waki.
Speaker 1: Today he's a clinical psychologist and currently practices in Huntsville, Alabama.
Speaker 1: First person I talked to was Lewis Petter, and on
Speaker 1: the phone he asked my credentials. He said, you're exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for, and so I drove out to
Speaker 1: his offices. Lewis Heater came out and introduced himself to me,
Speaker 1: and we sat in his office and he hired me
Speaker 1: on the spot. I was probably there fifteen minutes. He said,
Speaker 1: do you want to work with us? It sounded like
Speaker 1: a fun exciting place I thought I could grow. He
Speaker 1: basically made me the clinical director. There was no other
Speaker 1: mental health person on the campus per se. Now he
Speaker 1: had a license to practice psychology, but had been grandfather,
Speaker 1: and he had doctor in front of his name. I
Speaker 1: didn't know for several months what that meant, but he
Speaker 1: had an honorary doctorate degree, and from that point on
Speaker 1: I thought he was a real psychologist. When medical licensing
Speaker 1: laws came into play in the United States, if you
Speaker 1: already had a master's degree and had been practicing psychology
Speaker 1: for a number of years, you were able to obtain
Speaker 1: a license as a one time clause. Roger explained that
Speaker 1: this would not fly today, but at the time you
Speaker 1: were grandfathered in. Such was the case with Anna Waki's founder,
Speaker 1: Lewis Petter. There was no training Number one. It was
Speaker 1: all on the job. The boys were required to build
Speaker 1: their own lodging. UH. They did a lot of their
Speaker 1: own cooking. UH. They had to make sure that they
Speaker 1: stayed in groups and worked in groups and teams. I've
Speaker 1: been there about six months, and of course it took
Speaker 1: me a while to get acclimated to the camp, and
Speaker 1: at the same time I started thinking there were some
Speaker 1: unusual things. Well, we started suspecting that there was some
Speaker 1: kind of sexual misconduct. Couldn't prove it, kids wouldn't admit it,
Speaker 1: so we sort of hung in there to see what
Speaker 1: we could find out. Over the past several weeks we
Speaker 1: have received the number of very serious allegations concerning both
Speaker 1: the facility out there in a number of individuals involved
Speaker 1: with him. It was just a form of their therapy.
Speaker 1: They were told to do it, and at the time
Speaker 1: he was fourteen and a half fifteen years old, they
Speaker 1: didn't know any better. I asked him, why are you
Speaker 1: letting this hypen? Why are you covering up for Louis Patter.
Speaker 1: He had no answer to that question, having paid its little,
Speaker 1: such destricable place, and to do absolutely the contrary of
Speaker 1: what they should have said. I'm disturbable the fact of
Speaker 1: something I can still got on it and I wake you.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Stain and this is Camp Hell Anawaki. In
Speaker 1: speaking with former patients and employees of Anawaki, I heard
Speaker 1: a range of experiences, some heartbreaking, some inspiring, and some
Speaker 1: that were straight horrific. To understand what led to these experiences,
Speaker 1: we need to look at how this institution was initially
Speaker 1: set up. What were its purposes? And why were so
Speaker 1: many parents sending their children there? I tried to find
Speaker 1: anyone who could give me an idea of what the
Speaker 1: early days of Annawaki were like. It was out in
Speaker 1: the woods. Was a dirt road going into it. Outside
Speaker 1: Douglasville was still a dirt road. The Aniwaki sign was
Speaker 1: there in a path where the Abulds are going to
Speaker 1: be built. Down below that was the small little school
Speaker 1: room and one lodge, and then as you go down
Speaker 1: into the campsite there was a tool room and stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Richard Edgerley. I got recruited there in nineteen.
Speaker 1: My number was e seventy nine. That means Richard was
Speaker 1: only the seventy nine person to attend an awake. He
Speaker 1: says he was admitted when he was around the age
Speaker 1: of ten or eleven. The lake was being built. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like hite finished because I worked on that for
Speaker 1: I would say a month before they filled it up.
Speaker 1: The cabins had just received power. Fact the place where
Speaker 1: they stuck the poles and it was still flat, so
Speaker 1: it hadn't it time to grow up. An Awaki Lakes
Speaker 1: still sits in Douglasville and can easily be seen on
Speaker 1: any map. This was one of Richard's original work projects.
Speaker 1: While attending in the beginning was that's what everybody was
Speaker 1: working on. The lake clearance, stumps, burning the wood, the grass,
Speaker 1: cutting with sling blades, lots of trail building because everything
Speaker 1: was new. We line all our trails of the rocks.
Speaker 1: We used to have competitions to see who could move
Speaker 1: the biggest rock. In fact, the one my friend and
Speaker 1: I did is still sitting there exactly where it's set.
Speaker 1: Fifty years ago. We stay in the cabins. We built
Speaker 1: two extensions. They weren't finished totally. A couple of the
Speaker 1: cabins had the foundation for an add on to the
Speaker 1: building and it wasn't done during my time. We knocked
Speaker 1: down the wall and built that extension. During that time
Speaker 1: we installed heating panels, and twenty years agoing now and
Speaker 1: out there, they were still hanging and they were still working.
Speaker 1: The day to day for patients at an Awaki was
Speaker 1: set by a self planned schedule. It was to be
Speaker 1: followed by the letter. On Sundays, we have to write
Speaker 1: a schedule of everything we did for that week from
Speaker 1: morning to night five three would bake up five forty five,
Speaker 1: we get dressed. Six o'clock we would assemble as a group.
Speaker 1: Six ten we would move to the lodge. We would
Speaker 1: have to walk around the lake. Seven o'clock was breakfast,
Speaker 1: always thirty minutes. Eight o'clock we go to the tool room,
Speaker 1: check out the tools. Depending on what we had to
Speaker 1: do that day, axes, rakes, whatever, we'd actually go to
Speaker 1: whatever project it was, cutting grass, lining trails, building things
Speaker 1: in the camp, helping other groups build their stuff, cleaning
Speaker 1: out sewage ponds, painting, staining. Eleven o'clock we would stop
Speaker 1: clean up. Twelve o'clock, lunch, one o'clock we'd go back
Speaker 1: to work. At three thirty four o'clock we would stop
Speaker 1: back to the lodge and think again what happened with dinner.
Speaker 1: Three minutes after that, we went back to our campsites
Speaker 1: and had a group meeting. Could range anywhere sixties seven o'clock,
Speaker 1: and that was in the back of the campsite, split
Speaker 1: logs around the fire pit. The group would sit there
Speaker 1: and talk and work out our problems and say what
Speaker 1: happened during the day. And then after that we'd have
Speaker 1: free time activities. Letter writing showers ever we need to do,
Speaker 1: and then twenty around there lights out. It wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1: It kept you busy, and you had your friends and
Speaker 1: bec you didn't have any time to thank nearly at all.
Speaker 1: This rigid daily structure provided the patients of an awaki
Speaker 1: with a predictable routine, a widely accepted strategy to reduce
Speaker 1: problem behaviors in children with emotional behavioral issues. So what
Speaker 1: doesn't mean to be diagnosed with an emotional behavioral issue?
Speaker 1: The answer is more complicated than you may think. I
Speaker 1: went to speak with an expert who could shed some
Speaker 1: light on the subject. My name is Steve Trustcott. I
Speaker 1: am a professor at Georgia State University in the school
Speaker 1: Psychology program. And I'm Katherine Perkins, and I'm also a
Speaker 1: professor in school psychology at Georgia State. I asked Stephen
Speaker 1: Catherine to explain what it means to have a child
Speaker 1: with emotional behavioral issues. One of the things that is
Speaker 1: probably going to make your story complicated is that there
Speaker 1: are multiple systems for determining what or a child has
Speaker 1: an emotional or behavior disorder, and within those systems, there
Speaker 1: are different definitions. There's a legal system. There's an educational system,
Speaker 1: and then there's a system of psychiatric kind of disorders,
Speaker 1: and they overlap some but they're not the same, so
Speaker 1: i'll give you up. For instance, the classification using the
Speaker 1: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual identifies about ten of us population
Speaker 1: of children notes having an emotional or behavioral disorder, whereas
Speaker 1: the school based definition only about a little less than
Speaker 1: one percent of kids or kids who are classified as
Speaker 1: having an emotional or behavior disorder. So there's a disparity
Speaker 1: between those and part of the disparity is that the
Speaker 1: criteria are different. So the criteria for a special education
Speaker 1: for the label of eb D and Georgia. That's another
Speaker 1: thing is the labels change across the states, but in
Speaker 1: Georgia it's eb D. The label requires there to be
Speaker 1: an educational impact. Basically, the term emotional behavioral issue is
Speaker 1: not a universal standard. What qualifies as emotionally disturbed changes
Speaker 1: depending on the context in which it is determined, whether
Speaker 1: it be by a school, hospital, or otherwise. This is
Speaker 1: something that would give in a waky enough wiggle room
Speaker 1: to claim anyone could be accepted based on the facility standards.
Speaker 1: Emotional behavioral disturbance is the label that was given by
Speaker 1: the federal government. That's in this law Individuals for Disabilities
Speaker 1: Education Act that specifies what students qualify for special education
Speaker 1: in public schools. That's what that label is. And then,
Speaker 1: like my colleague pointed out, there are other labeling systems
Speaker 1: that are more medically oriented, or you know, the judicial
Speaker 1: system has their own label, which is guilty or not guilty,
Speaker 1: and so it's a little confusing. But the federal law
Speaker 1: for special education clearly outlines the criteria that you're looking
Speaker 1: at to determine if a child meets that criteria for
Speaker 1: emotional behavior of disturbance. There isn't a definitive way to
Speaker 1: say this kid does and this kid doesn't have that disability.
Speaker 1: Catherine and Steve pointed out that just because a child
Speaker 1: is labeled as emotionally disturbed, that doesn't make that criteria
Speaker 1: the same in Georgia as it may be in Alabama
Speaker 1: or Florida. This term is a blanket that could be
Speaker 1: used in a number of situations. Some of these would
Speaker 1: not only include school, but also the judiciary system. The
Speaker 1: definition in Georgia is based on five primary concerns. The
Speaker 1: first one is an inability to build or maintain satisfactory
Speaker 1: interpersonal relationships with peers and or teachers. An inability to
Speaker 1: learn which cannot be adequately explained by intellectual, sensory, or
Speaker 1: health factors. The third one is a consistent or chronic
Speaker 1: inappropriate type of behavior or feelings under normal situations. The
Speaker 1: fourth is a displayed pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression,
Speaker 1: and the last one is a displayed tendency to develop
Speaker 1: physical symptoms, pains, or unreasonable fears associated with personal or
Speaker 1: school problems. So those are kind of the five hallmarks
Speaker 1: of students who are identified as having eb D. So
Speaker 1: here's how I think of it. There's typical childhood development,
Speaker 1: you know, the way most kids grow and learn, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes the kind of behaviors that we're talking about
Speaker 1: when we're talking about eb D. They may be perfectly
Speaker 1: typical and normal, but then if they persist into other
Speaker 1: developmental stages, they might look very different. So, for example,
Speaker 1: many people talk about the terrible twos, have you know,
Speaker 1: tantrum behavior and very young children who are trying to
Speaker 1: find their way in the world and are trying to
Speaker 1: assert their power and their choice and their decision making.
Speaker 1: And then if they don't get their way, they let
Speaker 1: you know they're not happy about that. But that same
Speaker 1: tantrum behavior that would be typical with a two year
Speaker 1: old starts looking very different in a school aged child.
Speaker 1: And so it's when these behaviors persist with frequency, intensity,
Speaker 1: and duration beyond that that is seen in typically developing children,
Speaker 1: that's when we start saying, Oh, that's problematic. And how
Speaker 1: do parents react when faced with this type of situation?
Speaker 1: And how did so many come to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: Anna Waki was the answer. I spoke with Richard Dressler.
Speaker 1: He part time serves as a motivational speaker helping family
Speaker 1: deal with crisis. His son was also sent to an
Speaker 1: awake as a team. I asked him what it was
Speaker 1: like dealing with a child with emotional behavior issues and
Speaker 1: how he came to the conclusion to send him to
Speaker 1: an awake. Oh. Desperation, helplessness, anxiety, frustration. When people ask
Speaker 1: me that question about being a parent, and I tell him, look,
Speaker 1: we're not giving any guide books to read how to
Speaker 1: be a parent. Okay, it's a daily experience. It's a
Speaker 1: constant struggle between your head and your heart and knowing
Speaker 1: what you should do, what you don't want to do.
Speaker 1: There was no place, because I look back, that I
Speaker 1: felt I could go to that could really help me.
Speaker 1: There are more programs today that are more advanced. There's
Speaker 1: more advancements about drug abuse. There's more what I would
Speaker 1: call openness in society. So the only thing you could
Speaker 1: do back then is trust your psychiatrist, who also was
Speaker 1: duped and knew nothing about what was going on at
Speaker 1: any of these places like an Awake. Richard says in Awake,
Speaker 1: he was first presented to him by his son's psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: This would often be how children would get referred to
Speaker 1: an Awaki through a doctor or teacher. If I remember right.
Speaker 1: He described it as a psychiatric institute that can help
Speaker 1: him adjust or change his personality and behavior on a
Speaker 1: long term treatment program. Okay, and I accepted that. Richard
Speaker 1: and his wife visited the Anawaki campus for a tour
Speaker 1: before deciding whether to send their son there. This is
Speaker 1: how the Anawaki staff explain their treatment center. They talked
Speaker 1: about the fact that it was a psychiatric facility. They
Speaker 1: forewarned us about the possibility of some of the incidents
Speaker 1: that occurred, and that is we have to break down
Speaker 1: their personality we're gonna read all the letters that come in,
Speaker 1: all the phone calls. There was no privacy, and we
Speaker 1: hope you expect that will probably complain about some of
Speaker 1: these issues. All these things are normal. At that point
Speaker 1: I accepted it, knowing what I briefly knew about these
Speaker 1: kind of programs. Looking back now, I think it was
Speaker 1: one great anticipated thing they did so that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: question what they were really doing. So when your son
Speaker 1: came home and complained they're abusing me and I want
Speaker 1: to leave and this is happening to me, you would
Speaker 1: just go back, well, look he's got these psychiatric problems
Speaker 1: and needs treatment, and I'm assuming that what they told
Speaker 1: me is true, which we did. In retrospect, I have
Speaker 1: to say that, based on my experience, they probably like
Speaker 1: to us. For parents dealing with an adolescent with emotional issues,
Speaker 1: they can often feel like they have nowhere to turn.
Speaker 1: Annawaki was the solution for many of these parents in
Speaker 1: Georgia in the nineteen sixties through the nineteen eighties. What
Speaker 1: was Antawaki doing to treat these children put into their control?
Speaker 1: Psychologist Roger Brinn explains the origins of wilderness therapy. It's
Speaker 1: been a rule of thumb that if you get kids
Speaker 1: into the woods and impel them into some type of adventure, uh,
Speaker 1: they do better. And that if they have delinquent proclivities,
Speaker 1: if they're going to break the law or to become oppositional,
Speaker 1: if they do much better, and that it's a great treatment.
Speaker 1: And since then we found that that probably is a
Speaker 1: case if it's structured correctly and done right. There was
Speaker 1: a book called Wilderness Road, and as I recall, there
Speaker 1: was a businessman's club in Dallas, Texas that sponsored the
Speaker 1: original residential treatment center for kids, particularly boys. In Our
Speaker 1: program at Antawaki was supposed to be designed after that program,
Speaker 1: and it was similar. The boys were required to build
Speaker 1: their own lodging, they did a lot of their own cooking.
Speaker 1: They had to make sure that they stayed in groups
Speaker 1: and worked in groups and teams, and putting the kids
Speaker 1: in the woods made sense. Wilderness Road, published in nine
Speaker 1: five by Campbell Loch Miller, has served as the manual
Speaker 1: for much of what we know today as wilderness therapy.
Speaker 1: Camp Woodland Springs was started in by Lock Miller as
Speaker 1: an expansion of a summer camp program. He began with
Speaker 1: the Salesman's Club of Dallas, a group of business and
Speaker 1: professional men from the area. The parallels between Woodland Springs
Speaker 1: and Antawaki are numerous, from a campground setting where the
Speaker 1: children are in charge of their own lodging and meals,
Speaker 1: to isolating patients into groups, and even alluding to Native
Speaker 1: American terminology. Lock Miller was known around his camp as
Speaker 1: Chief Lock. The following is an excerpt from Wilderness Road.
Speaker 1: We find the camp environment good because it accords more
Speaker 1: fully with the child's nature and provides ample opportunity to
Speaker 1: satisfy the desire most boys have for adventure and exploration
Speaker 1: in the outdoors. Small group living in this environment encourages
Speaker 1: original experimentation and provides the widest possible variety of direct
Speaker 1: experience with the natural surroundings. Such a life calls into
Speaker 1: play numerous individual skills, provides an outlet for almost any
Speaker 1: ability a boy may have, and constantly encourages new and
Speaker 1: ever broadening experiences of the individual and the group. Life
Speaker 1: in this setting provides for the maximum variety, freshness, and
Speaker 1: intensity in the daily experience of each boy. Most of
Speaker 1: Anawaki's therapy consisted of a daily group meeting at the
Speaker 1: end of each day, a time where the always in
Speaker 1: your work or school group would sit around the fire
Speaker 1: and address any issues they encountered in their day. After dinner,
Speaker 1: we had group therapy on logs and that was just
Speaker 1: about every night. I worked with the staff. Everybody had
Speaker 1: two staff leaders to group leaders in each group, so
Speaker 1: you have about eight kids and two adults, maybe ten kids,
Speaker 1: and they would do group therapy and work on what
Speaker 1: went on that day in process to day. Mark Butler
Speaker 1: attended in Awake from four to He remembers the group
Speaker 1: therapy which was still taking place during his time there.
Speaker 1: The guidance counselors would kind of push you along and
Speaker 1: you know, I begin to things and it was also
Speaker 1: time to go over the day. What happened? Were there
Speaker 1: any incidents? Why did this happen? Because people got in
Speaker 1: trouble all the time. These groups would serve an integral
Speaker 1: part to the in Awaki program. Children were separated based
Speaker 1: on different factors such as age and whether they were
Speaker 1: in a work group or school group. Staying on brand,
Speaker 1: These groups were all given Native American names, names such
Speaker 1: as Tawanka, Kirkeeed, and Wahonka. Most of the groups of
Speaker 1: Anuwaki were done by age limits. Like Wahonka was the
Speaker 1: older groups, the one they went to school, alf campus
Speaker 1: had the cars. Twanka was the youngest and arranged from
Speaker 1: eight till like twelve or thirteen. Then you had other
Speaker 1: groups that were ranging groups like maybe twelve, fifteen and
Speaker 1: fifteen and sixteen or eighteen. Tuanka where I was at,
Speaker 1: was literal translations to attempt or undertake a difficult task.
Speaker 1: And like Antawaki is supposed to be the land of
Speaker 1: the friendly people. Here's journalist Albert Edgin who reported on
Speaker 1: in Awaki extensively for the Tallahassee Democrat. They were broken
Speaker 1: up into groups, and the groups were are designed for
Speaker 1: therapy and also for growth, so they had tasks they
Speaker 1: had to perform in the groups monitored the behavior of
Speaker 1: the kids in the group. The groups were independent. They
Speaker 1: were not supposed to cross polony. They were not supposed
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. Mark Butler recalls this group
Speaker 1: structure and how it functioned during his time there. I
Speaker 1: classify him into two groups, the word groups and the
Speaker 1: school groups. The word groups are always working. The school
Speaker 1: groups are always going to school. When I was there,
Speaker 1: I believe there's about tended twelve working groups and there
Speaker 1: was no socializing between the groups. Of course we did
Speaker 1: a little bit in anyway. I guess they kept thinking
Speaker 1: that if they kept the groups smaller and more contained,
Speaker 1: and it's much easier to handle, I guess. But then
Speaker 1: there was things like football where they would have to
Speaker 1: be group mixing. You know, Okay, football players come from
Speaker 1: different groups, so there was always some kind of talk
Speaker 1: between the groups. The work group model would serve two functions.
Speaker 1: At in Awaki to build what would become the largest
Speaker 1: medical facility in the state, and second to help break
Speaker 1: down the patients so they could be remolded into the
Speaker 1: inn Awaky way of life. That was the idea at least,
Speaker 1: here's Mark Sublett, another former in Awaky patient. So if
Speaker 1: you had a building group, they might come in and
Speaker 1: you might do all the masonry. Okay, so you're the
Speaker 1: masonry group. So he cleared all the land, poured all
Speaker 1: the concrete foundations, hauled all the block out there, laid
Speaker 1: all the block next, all the mud, did all the plaster,
Speaker 1: did it all and then another group might come behind
Speaker 1: you and they might be a carpentry group. So that's
Speaker 1: what they would do, And it seemed like sometimes the
Speaker 1: groups would split off and would help the electrician and
Speaker 1: be the electrical groups they've thing pulling wire doing all
Speaker 1: this stuff. I think an Awakes look on it was
Speaker 1: that they wanted to tell you, like, what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do is make your life real shitty and you're gonna
Speaker 1: hate it. So what would you want to do to
Speaker 1: get out of your shitty, hated life? And they told
Speaker 1: you that from the beginning, like, hey, from here on out, boy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to work the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: and you better get used to it. That's your life
Speaker 1: from here on out. Unless you go to school and
Speaker 1: get that education, then you might be able to do better.
Speaker 1: So kind of right off, their feeding that into your mind.
Speaker 1: This separation between work groups and school groups was the
Speaker 1: beginning of an involved hierarchy at an Awaki. It was
Speaker 1: only after one had proven themselves through a series of
Speaker 1: tasks and personal development that they would receive a rite
Speaker 1: of passage. All of the attendees were expected to achieve
Speaker 1: to get your crest. I don't think I've ever cried
Speaker 1: as much in my life as when he stood up
Speaker 1: when he got his crest, which is a certain achievement,
Speaker 1: and said, I'd like to thank my parents for letting
Speaker 1: me enough to send me here. The crest would serve
Speaker 1: as one of the key elements of Anawaki's mythos. An
Speaker 1: Anawakee document called Legend of the Crest reads as follows,
Speaker 1: The pine tree and red hill are the materials found
Speaker 1: in nature, which man may use, according to his ability
Speaker 1: and ambition, to improve the state of his existence in nature.
Speaker 1: The scroll depicts the democratic concept of the value of
Speaker 1: the individual and also the importance of one's relationship to
Speaker 1: other individuals. The winding path to the rising sun signifies
Speaker 1: the importance of striving toward a goal in life, using
Speaker 1: the self discipline necessary to overcome obstacles which may present
Speaker 1: themselves in reaching of that goal. The praying hands show
Speaker 1: the need for a religious concept, the recognition of a
Speaker 1: power in the universe which is higher than the individual.
Speaker 1: The dovel with the olive branch was selected from the
Speaker 1: story of Noah in the Bible to show that a
Speaker 1: new life in a clean, new world is possible. The
Speaker 1: crest was not only a symbol of personal improvement an
Speaker 1: advancement in the program, but it was also required before
Speaker 1: a child could advance from a work group to a
Speaker 1: school group. Here's Stephen, another former in a wiki patient.
Speaker 1: I was pretty much in a word group most of
Speaker 1: the time. That's another one of those themes, getting your
Speaker 1: crest or getting into a school group. It was a privilege,
Speaker 1: you had to work for it, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I witnessed that some of these so called privileges
Speaker 1: didn't turn out too well for for other people. When
Speaker 1: I received my crest, they had a special Christmas dinner
Speaker 1: because I believe it took me longer to get the
Speaker 1: crest than anybody, and ant like the history, and you
Speaker 1: know there again, it was because I saw the guys
Speaker 1: that had worked towards that and it didn't turn out
Speaker 1: too well for them. Once a patient had proven themselves
Speaker 1: worthy of getting their crest, they would then move on
Speaker 1: to one of the school groups. The time frame from
Speaker 1: admittance until moving into a school group could often take
Speaker 1: a year's During this time, no real schooling was a
Speaker 1: part of the child schedule. In turn, grades would be
Speaker 1: caught up to in a span of months, even weeks,
Speaker 1: rather than years. In the beginning, there was not a school.
Speaker 1: The little building in front of the lodge was a
Speaker 1: one little classroom. It had the possibility of being a school.
Speaker 1: At some point they did get a teacher, but I
Speaker 1: never finished third, never went the fourth, ever went the fifth,
Speaker 1: never went the sixth, ever went to seventh. And when
Speaker 1: I got out of an Awoki, I should have before
Speaker 1: my age, gone into the ninth, but it put me
Speaker 1: back in eighth because it hadn't been in school for
Speaker 1: so long. So when I went to high school started
Speaker 1: out of eighth grade, You're willing to do whatever it
Speaker 1: took to get out of that work group. I mean,
Speaker 1: who wanted to haul block or sling blade four miles
Speaker 1: of road or whatever chore they would have four to
Speaker 1: you that day. Of course you're gonna want to get
Speaker 1: out of that because you're a teenage kid and you
Speaker 1: know so that you'd be like, oh, what do I
Speaker 1: have to do to get into the school group? The
Speaker 1: school groups did no physical labor. All they would do
Speaker 1: is go to school. Now, they would tell you this
Speaker 1: crazy story how you could do four years of education
Speaker 1: in one year. At Annawaking. By the time I got
Speaker 1: the school group, I was already three years behind. So
Speaker 1: when I got out of there and tried to enroll
Speaker 1: in public school and whatever my records were that came
Speaker 1: back from that. I was supposed to be a senior,
Speaker 1: but I'd be having taken ninth grade English, eighth grade, this, tenth, eleventh,
Speaker 1: twelfth grade that. So it was just kind of screwed up.
Speaker 1: But that's how they would treat their school as a privilege,
Speaker 1: a higher group of an Awaki kid that's what you
Speaker 1: wanted to achieve. The Anawaki program worked like a ladder
Speaker 1: with a different rung for every advancement, giving more perks
Speaker 1: and power the further up you climbed. This hierarchy would
Speaker 1: go past the advancement of getting your crest and being
Speaker 1: promoted to a school group. Students could work their way
Speaker 1: up to becoming a group leader or even a paid
Speaker 1: counselor do you have one group and everything works from
Speaker 1: the head of leader of that group, and you also
Speaker 1: have a hierarchy of the kids. The new kid has
Speaker 1: to be taught by the next kid up what he's
Speaker 1: just learned. The next kid up has to be teaching
Speaker 1: that second kid down what he's just learned. Sort of
Speaker 1: a cascading system of learning. And it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that these were children. They may have been adolescents, but
Speaker 1: they were children. The counselor might have been sixteen years
Speaker 1: old responsible for a group of fifteen or twenty youngsters,
Speaker 1: probably more likely as eighteen years old, but not that
Speaker 1: much more mature, and certainly not experienced beyond the walls
Speaker 1: of an awaki or bringing any real experience to the situation.
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of stories that they would tell
Speaker 1: you that I learned later, where activity would stop when
Speaker 1: somebody acted out, and sometimes with supervision from the group leaders,
Speaker 1: sometimes with leadership from the members of the group, they
Speaker 1: would counsel the recalcitrant kid, whoever he may be. It
Speaker 1: was all integrated system. It was innovative, but it was
Speaker 1: also subject for severe abuse in the sense that if
Speaker 1: you have a situation where the people that are being
Speaker 1: counseled are empowered to enforce rules, then you have to
Speaker 1: have stop gap measures, and I'm not sure they had
Speaker 1: those stop gap manages. You have to supervise the children
Speaker 1: that have been given these responsibilities. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that deteriorated through the years was that the management,
Speaker 1: and by management I mean Louis Petter, would promote children
Speaker 1: to the status of counselor, and that appeared to be
Speaker 1: in many cases without any substantial training. The fact is
Speaker 1: is that a lot of these children who became counselors
Speaker 1: were incapable of dealing with situations because they hadn't been
Speaker 1: trained to and having a kid manage a situation that
Speaker 1: can only come from the kid's gut. It can't come
Speaker 1: from training or any kind of knowledge. It was an
Speaker 1: ad hoc system. I'm here to talk about an Awake
Speaker 1: and Louis Petter. This is Robert. He worked at in
Speaker 1: Awaki as a group leader in the late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Augustino. I'm a law professor at John Marshall
Speaker 1: Law School, and I've been there since where I came
Speaker 1: in as i was dean in president for five years
Speaker 1: and now I'm just a mere professor sitting in my
Speaker 1: corner office, not being pastored by the administration. Robert originally
Speaker 1: heard about Anawaki through social work with a branch of
Speaker 1: local government called the Department of Family and Children's Services,
Speaker 1: or as it is known de Facts. Probably sixty eight
Speaker 1: or sixty nine. I've been a social worker and I
Speaker 1: had heard about treatment centers for allegedly delinquent boys, someone
Speaker 1: who weren't really delinquent. They just had done him home
Speaker 1: to go to had a very bright patient. I guess
Speaker 1: I should go him who had no place to live,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, I gotta put him someplace. I
Speaker 1: heard about Anawaki through the social work, through the information
Speaker 1: held by the Department of Family, Mansial and Services, and
Speaker 1: so I went to see Anuwaki. I met Louis Petter
Speaker 1: and we talked about the program, and Petter maybe an offer.
Speaker 1: He offered me a position there as a teacher because
Speaker 1: I had by teaching credentials I had taught in high schools.
Speaker 1: Robert says the idea of working with at risk youth
Speaker 1: in an outdoor setting was something that interested him right away.
Speaker 1: When I first started to work there, I had a
Speaker 1: group and we lived in tents in Douglasville in the
Speaker 1: Anuwaki real estate. And I had that job, and I
Speaker 1: also was the head teacher. And as it turned out,
Speaker 1: I was the only teacher as far as training was concerned,
Speaker 1: there wasn't any I had co counselor with me, and
Speaker 1: with the boys. There's like tennor Troll boys in in
Speaker 1: that group. He had boys separated into different groups, maybe
Speaker 1: five or six different groups. So I was directly in
Speaker 1: charge of one group when I was the teacher for
Speaker 1: all the groups solely but surely. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did out there was supervised the boys in building. It
Speaker 1: was really a lot of fun. And I'm not very skilled,
Speaker 1: but I can carry things around and hammer and nail.
Speaker 1: And after we built the building, it was time to
Speaker 1: go in the canoe trip. Better had talked about taking
Speaker 1: a bunch of boys on an outward bound type trip,
Speaker 1: and we talked about the Swannee River. I always wanted
Speaker 1: a canoe the whole Swanny. I'd been down there and
Speaker 1: go and behold I did. We had started at the
Speaker 1: Okifinoki Swamp and went down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: So off we go. So I'm gone for the next
Speaker 1: three weeks or more because at the end of the
Speaker 1: canoe trip we stayed at a motel owned by an
Speaker 1: Awaki and Carabelle or Is either owned by an Awakey
Speaker 1: Lewis Petter robert Is referring to Carrabelle, Florida. This was
Speaker 1: the beginning of what would become a second campus for
Speaker 1: an Awaki. At the time, it was no more in
Speaker 1: a motel on the Gulf of Mexico in the Panhandle
Speaker 1: region of Florida. Robert says it was during his time
Speaker 1: on this canoe trip that he first started to think
Speaker 1: something wasn't right with Petter and his relationship with some
Speaker 1: of the boys. I had an inkling of that down
Speaker 1: at Carabelle. I thought that some of the behavior of
Speaker 1: Louis Petter was probably inappropriate to its touching. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to, you know, give a kind of
Speaker 1: fatherly hug. It's another thing to put your hands on
Speaker 1: people a little bit too much. Roger Wren, when we
Speaker 1: first heard at the beginning of this episode, also worked
Speaker 1: with Robert at Anawaki. At this time, they both began
Speaker 1: to sense that something was off. Bob was hired about
Speaker 1: seven months after I had arrived, maybe six, and he
Speaker 1: and I became immediate friends. He's really a fine human being,
Speaker 1: and Bob and I saw all right, I and we
Speaker 1: started talking and saying, what you think is going on?
Speaker 1: And then we started having some strong suspicions that things
Speaker 1: were awry and what we thought was going on in
Speaker 1: therapy was really not therapy at all. One thing that
Speaker 1: first fed the suspicion was the fact that certain children
Speaker 1: would stay at Lewis Petter's house on the weekend. I
Speaker 1: didn't like it that the kids would go to his house.
Speaker 1: A specific kid would go to his house and spend
Speaker 1: a weekend or maybe a week with him. I questioned
Speaker 1: several staffmanbers, like, what's that's all about, And well, he
Speaker 1: gives them special therapy on the weekends. There was one
Speaker 1: fellow there I thought was very ethical, very competent with
Speaker 1: the kids, and he really ran the day to day
Speaker 1: program there and he was just about as fine as
Speaker 1: he could be. And I asked him about it, and
Speaker 1: he said, he said, I think he does individual therapy
Speaker 1: with him. The counselor Roger is referring to is Brett Baxley,
Speaker 1: or as he was known on campus, Mr b. Everyone
Speaker 1: I've interviewed says that Baxley was a stand up guy
Speaker 1: who really cared about the kids and teaching them. Baxley's
Speaker 1: history with Petter went back to the beginning of Anna Waki.
Speaker 1: He even helped with the original land acquisition. What Baxley
Speaker 1: and Petter's relationship was like is still a bit of
Speaker 1: a mystery. What we do know is that, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Baxley never questioned Petter's actions. Roger Wren and Robert Agostino
Speaker 1: co chaperoned the canoe trip down the Swanee River. It
Speaker 1: was at the destination in Caribelle, Florida that their suspicion
Speaker 1: of abuse came to a head. Bob Camp and I'd
Speaker 1: used his name, but he was down there and he
Speaker 1: was There was a relationship between Louis Petter and Bob Camp,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a little off, that something was
Speaker 1: wrong again, the touching, Bob Camp's demeanor. At one point,
Speaker 1: Roger rental or Bob Camp and Louis Petter and bed together.
Speaker 1: Roger Wren initially saw this incident with Petter. He quickly
Speaker 1: grabbed Bob Agostino to confirm what his own eyes had seen.
Speaker 1: They were lying down together in the same bed, even
Speaker 1: though was plenty of beds around. Kind of start wondering
Speaker 1: what the heck was going on. But that was the
Speaker 1: first inkling, and it happened early on, I must say,
Speaker 1: but it took me a while to really figure out
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on. Roger Wren remembers this incident firsthand.
Speaker 1: Bob and I found him in the morning in bed
Speaker 1: with one of the kids, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: get a graphic, but it was. It was pretty rough,
Speaker 1: and that's when Bob and I sort of said, oh,
Speaker 1: then we knew there was no question. I've absolutely had
Speaker 1: nightmares about it for several years. If I think about
Speaker 1: it now, I get the e B gbs. It's just
Speaker 1: not a pleasant thing. The day in which that occurred,
Speaker 1: I just went per sirk. I mean, I was not myself,
Speaker 1: and I'm usually fairly well controlled, but I was so emotional.
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop Bob too. Bob and I were both mad,
Speaker 1: and he just flat denied it, kept denying it and said,
Speaker 1: that's not what you saw, and that's when we sort
Speaker 1: of agonized. I said, I'm going to get out of
Speaker 1: here it. Bob and I decided how are we going
Speaker 1: to protect these children? Because they were thirteen year old
Speaker 1: kids and there were something that were even eleven, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I just I can't leave them here. After that,
Speaker 1: I was trying to ask Bob. Bob was asking me
Speaker 1: what should we do? Should we quit or should we
Speaker 1: stay here? And trying to help the kids. What's what's
Speaker 1: our role? Da Gastino and Wrin both decided to stay
Speaker 1: on at in Awaki for the time being. They needed
Speaker 1: to find out what else was going on. When I
Speaker 1: got back there, I had a lot of work to
Speaker 1: do on the way he's setting up to school and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff, and so, you know, things
Speaker 1: went on maybe a month or so. I got to
Speaker 1: school going mostly I was with the group of the
Speaker 1: school back and forth. Then I started to notice that
Speaker 1: Louis Petter had this group of boys around him. It's
Speaker 1: the same group. I said to one of them, why
Speaker 1: are you what was with Dr? How to call him
Speaker 1: Dr petti because that's what he wanted to be called,
Speaker 1: you know. He said, no, PhD. He said, well, we
Speaker 1: live with Dr Pettick. I said what he said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: three or four of them we lived at his house
Speaker 1: with him. I said, who lived with his house with him?
Speaker 1: Is this just temporarily or been there for a long time?
Speaker 1: And at least two of them said no, they've been
Speaker 1: there for quite a while. They literally for quite a while. Well,
Speaker 1: next time there, I started to watch every time he
Speaker 1: came on campus. I kept my eyeball on Petter, and
Speaker 1: I talked to Roger and Wren, who also had a
Speaker 1: groups assigned to him besides being a psychologist and my
Speaker 1: group and Rodgers group were off bounds. He couldn't go
Speaker 1: near him. I wouldn't let him near my group. It's
Speaker 1: worth noting here that Petter was an amputee from childhood
Speaker 1: with a wooden leg where his limb once was. There
Speaker 1: was one incident where my group was assigned a new kid, tall,
Speaker 1: good looking fella, kind of muscular. And I can remember
Speaker 1: this incident really well. There was a gang shower. Each
Speaker 1: group would going in to have a gang shower, and
Speaker 1: because Louis was prone to, let's say, walk into the
Speaker 1: gang shower, supervised things. My groups in the gang shower,
Speaker 1: and I know Louie is zeroing in on this new kid.
Speaker 1: And Louis was about to go into the shower and
Speaker 1: I said, Dr Petter, I don't think you should go
Speaker 1: in there. He said, oh not. I said, it's my
Speaker 1: group in there. And remember I told you before my
Speaker 1: group is under my protection. You're not going in there.
Speaker 1: And I know what you're going in there for. And
Speaker 1: I said, Louis, I'm gonna tell you something. You go
Speaker 1: in there and you touch that kid and you try
Speaker 1: to abuse that kid, you know your wooden leg, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna saw her off and throw it in the lake.
Speaker 1: While Rinnandagostino knew that Petter was having inappropriate relations with students.
Speaker 1: There were other counselors they were afraid may also be
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the children. Look, some of the counselors
Speaker 1: out there were bringing Roger, of course was good. There
Speaker 1: was another counselor who I thought was really top flight,
Speaker 1: and I think he was a homosexual, but I know
Speaker 1: he never touched the kids. I still know what Petter
Speaker 1: had on Baxley, and why Baxley, who was a decent
Speaker 1: human being in every other way, would have cooperated with
Speaker 1: the Petter what he was doing. I just don't understand it.
Speaker 1: Never could. There was no indication that actually ever abused anyway.
Speaker 1: And then there was Sam. There's a couple of other
Speaker 1: ones out there who were just bad news. Sam was
Speaker 1: the worst, Sam Singleton. Sam Singleton was a counselor and
Speaker 1: a serial abuser of the kids. And I brought that
Speaker 1: up with loud Petter, and of course his reaction was, well,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to him, don't worry about it. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about it. I'm an old social worker. I could tell
Speaker 1: what's going on. And I eventually confronted Sam Singleton about
Speaker 1: this in fact, I kicked him off the campus. I
Speaker 1: had no authority, but I kicked him off campus anyway,
Speaker 1: and Louis, of course brought her back. A couple of
Speaker 1: weeks later. To three weeks later, he brought her back.
Speaker 1: Sam was after this kid might Apparently Sam just I'd
Speaker 1: have the hots for him, and I told Sam at
Speaker 1: one point that if he touched Mike, I would break
Speaker 1: his neck. He just walked away. He knew I was serious.
Speaker 1: Shortly after this time, Roger Wren had reached his breaking point.
Speaker 1: He recalls his resignation with the petter. After a while,
Speaker 1: it became apparent that he and I were going to
Speaker 1: be completely persona non grata. We were not going to
Speaker 1: be allowed to do anything, and we had no power.
Speaker 1: I said, I can't tolerate this, and he said goodbye.
Speaker 1: After that, I got out of there. Roger was not
Speaker 1: the only one who had had enough. Dagostino remembers the
Speaker 1: mood at an Awaki at the time. Miss Ogiltree, who
Speaker 1: was then the social worker. She was a delightful woman
Speaker 1: and she was a good, good social worker, a good person.
Speaker 1: When she figured out that that wasn't one of the
Speaker 1: bad guys, she said to me soon she finds a
Speaker 1: new job. She's getting out of there. Miss Ogiltree had left,
Speaker 1: she had fled. Roger Wren had quit. So my allies
Speaker 1: were gone, and Baxley would do nothing. The head counselor
Speaker 1: I asked him, I said, why why are you letting
Speaker 1: this happen? Why are you letting this happen? Why are
Speaker 1: you covering up for Louis Petter? And he he had
Speaker 1: no answer to that question. Well, I said, why are
Speaker 1: you allowing Louis to do this stuff? Why are you
Speaker 1: allowing this? This could be a good place, this could
Speaker 1: be a wonderful place, but it's not because of what
Speaker 1: louis doing. And you can stop him, you can keep away.
Speaker 1: Robert says his relationship with Petter remained tense during his
Speaker 1: last days at Ain't AWAKEI l after I threatened to
Speaker 1: cut his leg off. Let's say our relationsister came around
Speaker 1: the frosty and interesting enough. Of course, he didn't fire
Speaker 1: me because he really thought he was untouchable. Eventually Robert
Speaker 1: left the camp as well. He and Roger knew that
Speaker 1: something had to be done about what they had witnessed.
Speaker 1: It in a week and that's when we started making
Speaker 1: as much effort as we could. And we were young,
Speaker 1: remember with twenty five year old kids, and we're scared,
Speaker 1: and the whole process was was frightening from a personal
Speaker 1: point of view. Because I'm a graduate student. I don't
Speaker 1: have any power, but we did have enormous amount of
Speaker 1: energy and we tried everything we could. Because I probably
Speaker 1: left unawake, I went to Defects and complained about what
Speaker 1: was going on. We went to the sheriff I believe
Speaker 1: his name was Abercrombie uh and remembering that Louis Petter
Speaker 1: was also a Baptist minister and he had a strong
Speaker 1: standing in the community in Douglasville. We brought eighty kids
Speaker 1: to church every Sunday, to the Baptist church, so it
Speaker 1: was it was a big deal. And nothing happened at
Speaker 1: the sheriff's office. Nothing happened. We went to the States
Speaker 1: our welfare program. They didn't want to hear it. We
Speaker 1: went to the newspaper, to the Atlanta Journal. We went
Speaker 1: to an attorney all by ourselves, and we went in
Speaker 1: and the assays, there's you know, he didn't want any
Speaker 1: part of it. Raynondagastino had made up their minds something
Speaker 1: had to be done about the abuse taking place at Annawaki.
Speaker 1: It seemed everywhere they turned, nobody would listen to their story.
Speaker 1: That is, until a patient would finally come forward next
Speaker 1: time on Camp how and Awake. I just thought that
Speaker 1: people would be really upset about this. I thought people
Speaker 1: would rise up and do something about it. Nothing was done.
Speaker 1: We were involved in trying to find some way to
Speaker 1: extricate him from the camp. You cannot imagine knowing something
Speaker 1: that is horrendous in telling people, in fact screaming and
Speaker 1: nobody listening. It's very meticulous about maintaining relationships with the
Speaker 1: people who were in positions of power. To Department of
Speaker 1: Family and Children's Services actually placed boys in that camp
Speaker 1: even though they knew about what he did in Savannah.
Speaker 1: And finally, I think they were embarrassed at the point
Speaker 1: where they had to hold the hearing. The defense lawyers
Speaker 1: for Annawaki for the accused used information about their pathologies
Speaker 1: to discredit them, to question their credibility, and to humiliate them.
Speaker 1: In last week's episode, you heard from Dale Strickland, one
Speaker 1: of the very first attendees of an Awake. We were
Speaker 1: recently informed that Dale passed away shortly after his interview
Speaker 1: before the podcast was able to come out. We would
Speaker 1: like to dedicate this episode to Dale and his memory
Speaker 1: and thank him for his involvement in the podcast. Camp
Speaker 1: hell Anawaki was created and hosted by Josh Thane, with
Speaker 1: producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: The soundtrack was written and performed by Josh Thane and
Speaker 1: Adrian Barry. This episode featured the voices of Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: and Ben Bolan. Archival footage provided by ws B and
Speaker 1: CBS News. Find us on Instagram at camp hell Pod.
Speaker 1: That's c A M p h E L l p
Speaker 1: O D educate yourself about the issue of child abuse
Speaker 1: and things that you should look for at the Darkness
Speaker 1: to Light website D two ll dot org. That's d
Speaker 1: the number two l dot org. Camp hell ana Waki
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.