Speaker 1: Camp Hell. Anawaki 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 Heart Media or its employees. Due to
Speaker 1: discussion of traumatic, sexual and violent content, listeners, discussion is advised.
Speaker 1: Out of the blue getting the call that this program
Speaker 1: was being made, there was a little bit of dread,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of relief. It's not something that
Speaker 1: ever really goes away from me. It's also not a
Speaker 1: part of my everyday life as far as my interactions
Speaker 1: with other people and things that I do. Stays in
Speaker 1: my thoughts less and less over time. My name is
Speaker 1: Carl Moore. I was m five sixty two. I went
Speaker 1: to an Awake and nineteen seven any six and left
Speaker 1: there in uh Carl served as a counselor for Anawaki
Speaker 1: and was the closest of anyone I spoke with to
Speaker 1: Lewis Petter and his inner circle. By the time of
Speaker 1: Carl's entry to Antawaki in, Petter had still managed to
Speaker 1: keep contact with the boys on campus, even though he
Speaker 1: was not permitted to enter their campsites. Carl remembers his
Speaker 1: initial introduction to the program while visiting a close friend
Speaker 1: during one of Anawaki's fellowships, an annual fundraiser for the
Speaker 1: foundation which would show off the improvement of its patients
Speaker 1: to their families. That's the fellowship. We would have the
Speaker 1: entire campus and all the families together in the Amphitheater area.
Speaker 1: We go through a program and awards would be given out, testimonials,
Speaker 1: kids would do skits. Yeah, everybody put on a good show,
Speaker 1: and then after the main ceremony, each group would go
Speaker 1: off to its own area and have lunch. It was
Speaker 1: pretty impressive, and for me, I just saw these people.
Speaker 1: I said, that's what I want. I want to I
Speaker 1: want to be confident and strong and sure what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Like all these people looked like they were I knew
Speaker 1: someone who was there, and I thought I'd never see again,
Speaker 1: and I thought they were just not gonna make it.
Speaker 1: Then I went out there and saw them at one
Speaker 1: of the fellowships, and I couldn't believe. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like they changed so much and it seems so positive.
Speaker 1: And my life was in disarray. I mean, I was depressed,
Speaker 1: anxious at the end of my rope. I felt like
Speaker 1: then I saw this place where they had all these
Speaker 1: healthy people, and I thought, well, maybe that's something I
Speaker 1: should try. Carl remembers his first impression of Lewis Petter
Speaker 1: following this fellowship. He was not really a big person
Speaker 1: but physically but had a big presence. When he came
Speaker 1: into a room, he knew he was there. If he
Speaker 1: looked at you, you knew who was interested in you.
Speaker 1: He paid attention to people. Petter was God and antawaiki.
Speaker 1: When I came to view it as being his, there
Speaker 1: was really no distinguishing in my mind him from the program.
Speaker 1: Carl says this first introduction to anna Waki came at
Speaker 1: one of the darkest times in his life, a time
Speaker 1: when he was desperate for some guidance and direction. I
Speaker 1: had gotten a girl pregnant and we had decided to
Speaker 1: get an abortion. I had had a lot of self hatred,
Speaker 1: I guess Carl decided that an awaki might be the
Speaker 1: answer to his problems. He set up an entry interview
Speaker 1: with Louis Petter. It is here that he would meet
Speaker 1: him for the first time. I went for an interview
Speaker 1: and into his office and I told him about that,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty confused. He had a pitch that
Speaker 1: he would give two people about letting go of your
Speaker 1: feelings and ideas, and he actually kind of helped me
Speaker 1: to let go of some of that anger and hurt
Speaker 1: that I was feeling. Then he came over and had
Speaker 1: me close my eyes and hold my hand up. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was about. And then he came
Speaker 1: over and he put his hand on my face and
Speaker 1: put his thumb against my lips and I opened my
Speaker 1: mouth and he put his thumb in my mouth. Now
Speaker 1: let him do it? Even how you say, how could
Speaker 1: I let him do that? And I was like, this
Speaker 1: guy's God. He's helped all these people, He's done these
Speaker 1: amazing things, and he must think I'm pretty special. From
Speaker 1: going to want to kill yourself to be in uh,
Speaker 1: one of God's chosen was big step. I think at
Speaker 1: that point he said, well, you can come back and
Speaker 1: go into program. We'll see how it goes. Over the
Speaker 1: past several weeks, we have received number of very serious
Speaker 1: allegations concerning both the facility out there in a number
Speaker 1: of individuals involved with him. It was just a form
Speaker 1: of their therapy. They were told to do it. And
Speaker 1: at the time he was fourteen and a half fifteen
Speaker 1: years old. They didn't know any better. I asked him,
Speaker 1: why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
Speaker 1: up for Louis Packer. He had no answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Involved having the institution paid little place and absolutely of
Speaker 1: what they should have done. I'm disturbed the fact of
Speaker 1: something that can still going on any wicked. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Stain and this is Camp hell An Awake. By the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies and Away he had established itself as
Speaker 1: a successful program for troubled youth in Georgia. The center
Speaker 1: had secured its medical license, which allowed the collection of
Speaker 1: third party payments from insurance companies, and was now having
Speaker 1: patients referred there from the court system as well as
Speaker 1: other learning centers. Louis Petter, supposedly restricted from making contact
Speaker 1: with any patients, was still keeping his office on campus grounds.
Speaker 1: Any oversight at the time had slipped through the cracks
Speaker 1: of state government, and the enrollment of patients at Antawaki
Speaker 1: was growing exponentially. Carl moore Or was one of these patients.
Speaker 1: He was admitted in nineteen seventy seven after seeing the
Speaker 1: result of his brother's reform there. Carl's family had a
Speaker 1: particular connection to Antawaki. His mother was involved in a
Speaker 1: number of schools in Atlanta that would often refer children
Speaker 1: to the program In Douglasville, Annawak's reputation had put the
Speaker 1: program at the top of the list for educators to
Speaker 1: send children who were beyond the scope of their help.
Speaker 1: Here's Chris McKnight, a former patient who was referred to
Speaker 1: Antawaki from the New School, a program headed by Carl's
Speaker 1: mother tweeting More. And my father pulled me out of
Speaker 1: the school. I was going to edit me into tweeting
Speaker 1: More school the new school. I was there for a
Speaker 1: couple of months, and at the new school, I met
Speaker 1: a couple of people that I was at Annawaki with
Speaker 1: who were at her school post and awake. So it
Speaker 1: turns out tweeting More recommended Antawaki. It's not just me,
Speaker 1: but a lot of other kids. My feelings with Tweetie
Speaker 1: is I don't think she knew about the abuse of Annawaki.
Speaker 1: I've known Tweetie since I was a little kid. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's she's pasted an hour rest her soul. A number
Speaker 1: of former patients I've interviewed said they were referred to
Speaker 1: an Awake from other schools in similar ways. Word had
Speaker 1: spread throughout learning centers in Georgia and neighboring states that
Speaker 1: Antawaki was a solution for troubled kids who didn't have
Speaker 1: a place elsewhere. Now that Anawaki was an officially licensed
Speaker 1: medical hospital, it was also receiving patients who were wards
Speaker 1: of the state of Georgia and other neighboring states like Alabama.
Speaker 1: This all amounted to a large increase in the number
Speaker 1: of patients enrolling, and Antawaki was running out of room.
Speaker 1: It just seemed that things grew very rapidly while I
Speaker 1: was there. I'm Stephen mckinn and I was a patient
Speaker 1: and aniwag from July of nineteen seventy six through August
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty. My number was M five three and
Speaker 1: Awaki had been established for sixteen years, but by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty the numbers were up above six hundred, so the
Speaker 1: population at least by laundry number, increased threefold in the
Speaker 1: time that I was there. Apparently, the Douglasville campus was
Speaker 1: not big enough for the amount of people that were
Speaker 1: coming in in a wiki would soon need to expand
Speaker 1: their program outside of Douglasville. This would take form and
Speaker 1: what would later be known as the South Campus in Carrabelle, Florida,
Speaker 1: a small fishing town near Tallahassee on the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Anawiki had taken biking and canoeing trips to this town
Speaker 1: dating back to some of its earliest years. In seventy one,
Speaker 1: article from the Tallahassee Democrat pictures a group of boys
Speaker 1: and two older men riding bikes single file down the highway.
Speaker 1: The caption states Douglasville, Georgia utes and their leader on
Speaker 1: their annual bike excursion to Florida on their way to
Speaker 1: Daytona Beach via St. Augustine from Carabelle. Stephen says he
Speaker 1: was one of the first groups sent there to build
Speaker 1: what would become the South Campus. They looked among the
Speaker 1: people that they had in Douglasville that we're in vocational
Speaker 1: groups and chose a certain number of young men that
Speaker 1: were physically strong and he evil to go down and
Speaker 1: produce work without a lot of guide us. We were told,
Speaker 1: y'all are going down here to build the campus, and
Speaker 1: for the most part, that's what we did. I was
Speaker 1: part of the first votational group that went down there.
Speaker 1: All we did was work for six days a week
Speaker 1: and went to church on Sunday and tried to go
Speaker 1: swimming or something like that on Sunday afternoons. It was hot,
Speaker 1: It was a lot of bugs, a lot of mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: It was completely undeveloped, and when we first went down
Speaker 1: all there was was that power poll a well with
Speaker 1: water doct edders can ever in a Weekie's second campus
Speaker 1: in Carabelle consisted of two locations approximately five miles apart,
Speaker 1: often referred to as the bay Side and the land Side.
Speaker 1: The bayside house to former motel taken over and renovated
Speaker 1: by Inawaki patients. Five miles inward was Landside, once part
Speaker 1: of World War two training camp Gordon Johnston. All that
Speaker 1: was left was four cement blocks from a former military
Speaker 1: radar station and untouched Gulf wilderness. This is where Stephen
Speaker 1: and his first group would begin building a second campus
Speaker 1: for word groups in Florida. We went down there and
Speaker 1: began building a lodge, a place for us to eat
Speaker 1: and meet. We slept on the old radar installations slab
Speaker 1: and also worked building the first camp site down there,
Speaker 1: which was called Shimidi. Landside was a few miles away
Speaker 1: from Bayside. It was not on the coast. It was
Speaker 1: four or five miles inland. There was not any mixing
Speaker 1: of the academic groups and the vocational groups. We only
Speaker 1: came to Bayside to eat our meals and I finished
Speaker 1: my part of Carabelle. There were two groups at Bayside
Speaker 1: and three groups at Landside, so at that point it
Speaker 1: was rapidly approaching the size of the Douglas Bell campus.
Speaker 1: Stephen says the chosen location of Carabelle tied into the
Speaker 1: educational aspect of an Awaki. For are to the building
Speaker 1: of the second campus, and Awake he could only offer
Speaker 1: a g D or prepare people for a g D.
Speaker 1: They were not an accredited at school. So they entered
Speaker 1: into some agreement with Carabell Public Schools and they had
Speaker 1: three academic groups in Caribell, where the members of those
Speaker 1: groups went to public school during the day and then
Speaker 1: came back to what we called Bayside or the old
Speaker 1: hotel at night. This practice of utilizing the Florida public
Speaker 1: school system did not go unnoticed by the local government
Speaker 1: in Caribell. In a newspaper article from four the new
Speaker 1: superintendent of Franklin County mentions asking the inn a WEEKI
Speaker 1: Foundation to pay tuition for its students attending floor to
Speaker 1: public schools. In another article dated from and Awake is
Speaker 1: described as a quote college prep school where students could
Speaker 1: earn college credit by attending the Florida public schools. Eventually,
Speaker 1: and Awake would be required to pay a tuition fee
Speaker 1: of fifty dollars a student, but plans were already under
Speaker 1: way to build their own school. Following the nine seventy hearing,
Speaker 1: some restrictions have been put into place regarding Lewis Petter's
Speaker 1: interaction with the boys at in Awake. The original stipulation
Speaker 1: the Petter have no contact with any of the boys
Speaker 1: had since been deluded to him not setting foot in
Speaker 1: the sleeping quarters. By many accounts, this still meant Petter
Speaker 1: would often see the boys, even still having visitors in
Speaker 1: his house and maintaining his inner circle. Carl Moore, when
Speaker 1: we first heard at the top of the episode, would
Speaker 1: be next in line in a string of young men
Speaker 1: which Petter would manipulate and abuse. Carl says this first
Speaker 1: began in Carabelle. Everything about the way I went through
Speaker 1: the program was different. I mean, looking back to me,
Speaker 1: it was clear that I was selected to be something special.
Speaker 1: I was assigned to group in Caravelle, Florida, which was
Speaker 1: the first group down there. Most of what I remember
Speaker 1: about that was was pretty positive. We had a couple
Speaker 1: of group leaders that were I think they're really good guys.
Speaker 1: They were the kind of people that's like, jeez, I
Speaker 1: want to grow up and be like that guy. I
Speaker 1: ended up in Carabelle, and then I think some of
Speaker 1: the guys down there thought it was funny. You know,
Speaker 1: I hadn't been through the you know, at some point
Speaker 1: I ended up driving back and forth bringing supplies down
Speaker 1: from Douglasville. Kind of immediately set me apart from everyone
Speaker 1: else who couldn't go anywhere. I would say, yeah, Carl
Speaker 1: doesn't have his knife frillages, but he can drive the
Speaker 1: trucks back and forth. You know, there are already people
Speaker 1: there that he had relationships with. He had a trailer
Speaker 1: on the South campus. It was quite a privilege to
Speaker 1: get invited to go to the trailer. He had another
Speaker 1: guy who was who was living at his house then
Speaker 1: who brought down there with him former patient. A couple
Speaker 1: other guys who were I don't know if there are
Speaker 1: patients or not at the time, but they all were.
Speaker 1: It had been, you know, so that was the kind
Speaker 1: of a special thing to get invited to come to
Speaker 1: dinner in there that it was a good cook. By
Speaker 1: the way, that was where I had really my my
Speaker 1: first sexual experience with him. He was big on uh,
Speaker 1: trust and loyalty. The standard speech was something like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be your old elephant. He would say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to teach you the way, and you can only have
Speaker 1: one old elephant. Of course, everybody confided in him, and
Speaker 1: he expected that, and it was clear that, you know,
Speaker 1: he would expect that. I think he probably even addressed
Speaker 1: it directly and saying, you know, something like you can
Speaker 1: tell me everything or anything, but you can't do that
Speaker 1: with everybody, and we did. Carl says that this type
Speaker 1: of abuse was something that was felt out that not
Speaker 1: all of the boys were subjected to, but only the
Speaker 1: ones that were susceptible to it. So here's the slide
Speaker 1: of hand that kind of happens with that. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be open with me, You're gonna trust me absolutely, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna do away with all the taboos and all
Speaker 1: this crap that you've been taught that makes you feel
Speaker 1: so bad, and then I've put my hands on you
Speaker 1: and say how does that feel? Say, well, you don't
Speaker 1: say it feels weird. Yeah, I mean some some guys
Speaker 1: would punch him out. He would know who those guys were.
Speaker 1: It's just like what we learned on the Serengetti in Africa.
Speaker 1: When the tigers or the lions are approaching a herd
Speaker 1: of animals, they look for the weak ones that are
Speaker 1: at the edge of the herd and they try to
Speaker 1: pick them off. My name is Chris Newland, and I
Speaker 1: am the executive director at the National Children's Advocacy Center.
Speaker 1: We were actually the first child advocacy center in the world.
Speaker 1: At Children's Advocacy Centers, what we do is coordinate the
Speaker 1: multidisciplinary response to child abuse in our communities, and this
Speaker 1: model includes partnerships and collaborations with law enforcement, child protective services,
Speaker 1: medical providers, mental health professionals, prosecutors, victim advocates, so all
Speaker 1: of us working in a coordinated manner. What's really insidious
Speaker 1: in this is the fact that in child sexual abuse,
Speaker 1: in many situations, the child ends up being sexually abused
Speaker 1: by someone who they consider their friend, someone who they like. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: the term grooming is used to describe the actions that
Speaker 1: happen leading up to sexual abuse with children by their abuser.
Speaker 1: Chris says that this is an inaccurate term to use.
Speaker 1: Why do we use a word grooming to describe what
Speaker 1: an individual may do to sexual abuse a child? Why
Speaker 1: do we use a word that is in every other
Speaker 1: context pro social. What they're doing is manipulating. They're taking
Speaker 1: advantage of someone whom they can they can deceive for
Speaker 1: their own personal advantage and gain without any concern for
Speaker 1: that individual. There's multiple levels of manipulation that occur. First,
Speaker 1: an individual manipulate the broader environment by having a good
Speaker 1: reputation and you know, being well respected in their community, like, oh,
Speaker 1: Chris could never do something like that. I've known Chris
Speaker 1: for twenty six years and I've only known him to
Speaker 1: be x. Those are about creating this environment where I'm
Speaker 1: manipulating everybody to think I'm a really good guy, to
Speaker 1: hide the things that maybe I'm doing secretly. Another level
Speaker 1: of manipulation that happens is the manipulation of caregivers or
Speaker 1: trusted others. So let's say the individual wants to have
Speaker 1: sexual contact with the child. Their first step really is
Speaker 1: to win over the parents or caregivers of that child,
Speaker 1: because they until they can have that individual access with
Speaker 1: the child, they're not gonna have the opportunity to sexually
Speaker 1: abuse them. It was part of the show, you know,
Speaker 1: they had a program that did change live. Being in
Speaker 1: the inside, I was kind of isolated. Really. Anybody that
Speaker 1: was close to Petter was It's like two different worlds,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a Aniwoki outside and the Petter inside.
Speaker 1: He would definitely pick and choose whoever he was going
Speaker 1: to be close to or spend time with. I think
Speaker 1: that any group leader that had come through the program
Speaker 1: was certainly going to be on that list of people
Speaker 1: that would likely have had a relationship with better. It's
Speaker 1: not an accusations, just just the way it is. The
Speaker 1: last is the child, and it's not just a random
Speaker 1: approach where I'm just gonna try to hit on every child. Necessarily,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Individuals may have particular interests and
Speaker 1: who they're interested in or who they may have a
Speaker 1: desire to be in contact with. They may also will
Speaker 1: almost always look at is this a child who I
Speaker 1: think I can manipulate or not. If you have a
Speaker 1: child who always tells on everybody for every transgression, that's
Speaker 1: not who you're going after, right because that that individual
Speaker 1: is gonna, you know, tell. Shortly after Karl's stay at
Speaker 1: the Carabell campus, he was promoted to group counselor and
Speaker 1: put on an aweki's payroll, which brought him even closer
Speaker 1: to Petter and his home. So I left the group
Speaker 1: in Florida after pretty much after the ninety days, and
Speaker 1: I got my crest. We were starting down that road.
Speaker 1: And you know, some time after that, I went to
Speaker 1: work with a group and it just kind of evolved
Speaker 1: into a group leader. It wasn't like there was any
Speaker 1: kind of formal process to it. I was just put
Speaker 1: with a group. It's like, try this out. And at
Speaker 1: some point I started getting a check for it, paycheck.
Speaker 1: I was just following the program. Really, I wasn't the
Speaker 1: first one to go through this. I needed a place
Speaker 1: to go when I was off. Petter had a couple
Speaker 1: of beds in the basement of his house and there
Speaker 1: was another guy living there who had been through the program.
Speaker 1: And to then we were part of the family. The
Speaker 1: offender in this scenario is making the kids like them
Speaker 1: where they are an important part of their life, because
Speaker 1: it makes it harder for you to tell on someone
Speaker 1: you really like. It's easy for any of us to
Speaker 1: tell on someone we hate when they've done something wrong,
Speaker 1: right like, oh hey, this person, I hate them, they
Speaker 1: did this, But when it's someone we like, we're less
Speaker 1: likely to the manipulation of You get to do something
Speaker 1: that other people don't get to do, You get to
Speaker 1: have access to something that other people don't get to
Speaker 1: have access to, makes it where they You know, this
Speaker 1: confusing notion of okay, but I'm special now that some
Speaker 1: of this stuff feels weird, but I get all these
Speaker 1: extra privileges or opportunities that other people don't get. I'm special.
Speaker 1: And especially for someone who may be at a wilderness camp,
Speaker 1: who hasn't maybe oftentimes felt special in their life or
Speaker 1: been important to someone else, that can be very powerful
Speaker 1: for them, not in a sexual away, but just to
Speaker 1: feel respected, to feel wanted, to feel a part of something.
Speaker 1: I don't think you could be in Petter's inner circle
Speaker 1: without a great deal of denial. I mean I was
Speaker 1: living with his family, and I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's clear to me that at some level they knew
Speaker 1: the drill. I think that, like a lot of people
Speaker 1: in my position, they were essentially making sacrifices for the
Speaker 1: greater good kind of thing. You know that Anna Waki
Speaker 1: was so important and so good, you know we had
Speaker 1: to keep it going. It's hard to describe what happens
Speaker 1: something like that. You don't think about it, You think
Speaker 1: about other things. Once you kind of compartmentalize that one
Speaker 1: little objectionable thing, then you try to do things to
Speaker 1: make your life worth while. I think everybody who is
Speaker 1: near Petter did that in some way or another. Chris
Speaker 1: says the not always, but sometimes this type of abuse
Speaker 1: can continue downward from the abused to others. Now, in
Speaker 1: the situation with Anna Waki, these behaviors were nurtured by
Speaker 1: people in positions of influence, and we see this from
Speaker 1: time to time. Individuals who were abused become involved in
Speaker 1: that and they have developing some level of enjoyment, and
Speaker 1: they are they're encouraged to engage in this behavior with
Speaker 1: other individuals. The other thing it does is it empowers
Speaker 1: the offender. Like if let's say so, I I'm sexually
Speaker 1: abusing this child and now I'm encouraging this childhood gates
Speaker 1: in sexual contact. I can then go to that child
Speaker 1: and say, if you ever talked about what happened, they're
Speaker 1: going to find about about what you've done. You'll be
Speaker 1: in trouble too. Now I've made my victim even more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to me and more able to be manipulated because
Speaker 1: you have these other people that are kind of this
Speaker 1: pond the scheme of sexual abuse. People would confide in him,
Speaker 1: and uh, he kind of kept an inventory of people.
Speaker 1: He would have something to say about everybody, and he
Speaker 1: kind of manipulated people with that information in a really
Speaker 1: kind of clever, discreet way. Sometimes he would have confrontations
Speaker 1: with people and they would they would not come out
Speaker 1: ahead on it, and I think that's why. I think
Speaker 1: people were afraid to confront him for that reason. I
Speaker 1: think he was one of these people who had the
Speaker 1: ability to turn people's own situations against them pretty easily.
Speaker 1: He had told me once that he he had been
Speaker 1: in the Scouts, the boy Scouts, and the Scout master
Speaker 1: had taught them that male relationship with the older man
Speaker 1: was important or healthy thing. The unusual thing was that
Speaker 1: Petter saw it as this guy was right, and this
Speaker 1: idea of these necessary and healthy sexual relationships with men.
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly Petter saw things that way children can
Speaker 1: be manipulated and manipulating them. It's also part of the
Speaker 1: offender's mentality, like if other people are doing this, it's
Speaker 1: more socially acceptable. In our inner circle, it's acceptable for
Speaker 1: us to do that. I serve as a role model
Speaker 1: for them so they can engage other kids in this activity.
Speaker 1: It almost is gonna make it harder to believe. But
Speaker 1: in the group that I'm hanging out with, the people
Speaker 1: who I'm associating with, this is more commonplace and it
Speaker 1: becomes a norm. I think I rationalized as long as
Speaker 1: I could that I was doing the right thing. At
Speaker 1: some point I couldn't accept that myself, but I really
Speaker 1: had nowhere to go about it. It was almost like
Speaker 1: I had stopped growing when I got there. In a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, there was always the upside of it,
Speaker 1: but the downside of it was that, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: and keep living like that. I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: get out. I think for probably the last two years
Speaker 1: it's almost a blur. I didn't I wasn't functioning and
Speaker 1: really any capacity. I just was depressed. I was suicidal.
Speaker 1: It's probably by the narrowest of margins that I didn't
Speaker 1: just kill myself. I I came really close. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I had nowhere to go with it. The more
Speaker 1: sincere you are about wanting to get help, the more
Speaker 1: trusting you are, the more vulnerable will you become. Professional
Speaker 1: therapists are trained about this stuff. It's it's not an
Speaker 1: easy thing and I've learned quite a bit about it
Speaker 1: their situations. Where anybody can lose their objectivity, there's training
Speaker 1: and integrity and some mechanisms for therapists to deal with that.
Speaker 1: There's not many mechanisms for patients to deal with it,
Speaker 1: and that's unfortunate. Petter wasn't if he was trying to that.
Speaker 1: He completely did the opposite, took the vulnerability and uh
Speaker 1: and exploited it on a really huge scale. But it's
Speaker 1: a cruel thing, you know, the more innocent you are,
Speaker 1: the worst you are subject to getting hurt. That way,
Speaker 1: the more trusting you are, the more you try to
Speaker 1: do the right thing, the worst you get hurt. And
Speaker 1: that's just that's the heart break of it. While Louis
Speaker 1: Petter continued his methods of abuse and manipulation. The construction
Speaker 1: of Antiwaki's Carabell campus was escalating this work. Building on
Speaker 1: untouched Gulf wilderness proved even harder on the patients than
Speaker 1: what was being done in Douglasville. He is a former patient,
Speaker 1: Chris McKnight. Douglasville was very hilly and a really big campus, right,
Speaker 1: lots of trees, so there could be a group a
Speaker 1: hundred feet over there doing something and you couldn't even
Speaker 1: see them. Caramell wasn't like that. You could see clear
Speaker 1: across campus for half a mile barely obstructed. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like laid out, sort of a circle of buildings.
Speaker 1: Then there was an old quad building that was the
Speaker 1: foundations for a huge tower when it was now rebased,
Speaker 1: and they built buildings on the four foundations that held
Speaker 1: the tower. There were small buildings, but most of the
Speaker 1: buildings were kind of like in an outer part of
Speaker 1: the cleared campus. So if you're working on campus and Caribell,
Speaker 1: somebody could see if you're just sitting not working, clear
Speaker 1: across the campus or something. So it seemed like it
Speaker 1: was a lot more. I felt like we were always
Speaker 1: watched more in Carabell at that time, they sent the
Speaker 1: toughest of the students to Florida. This is Stephen, a
Speaker 1: former patient be in Awaking. He was also a part
Speaker 1: of one of the first work groups in Carabelle. They
Speaker 1: formulated a group to start an entire new group in carabell.
Speaker 1: So while I'm in the en oh, and while they're
Speaker 1: formulating this group, there's this intimidation factor that you know
Speaker 1: you're being hauled off to the to the roughest of
Speaker 1: the rough, and and these guys are going to straighten
Speaker 1: me out. For sure. South Campus was smaller than Central,
Speaker 1: and then about a year after being there, we built
Speaker 1: the big athletic building, which was full of school rooms
Speaker 1: in the weight room and the training room and right
Speaker 1: next to the football field all the students built. At
Speaker 1: the very first campsite I went to was an island
Speaker 1: surrounded by a lake infested by alligators and rattlesnakes and
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But we built a barge to pull ourselves
Speaker 1: across over to the island and we lived in tps
Speaker 1: over there. Well, I got bent by a rattlesnake, but
Speaker 1: I had my boots on, so I was all right.
Speaker 1: We did have one guy that beats an alligator to
Speaker 1: death of a baseball bat. Yeah, the alligators were kind
Speaker 1: of a problem. Chris McKnight attended Carebelle after the new
Speaker 1: campus had been built. He says the work would continue
Speaker 1: almost pointlessly if there was nothing to build. It seemed
Speaker 1: as though they ran out of stuff to do a carabell.
Speaker 1: They purchased forty acres and we just cleared brush. This
Speaker 1: went on for like nearly two years of just clearing
Speaker 1: brush for no ends, just like go anywhere, find a place,
Speaker 1: and to start clearing brush. You never hauled it away.
Speaker 1: It was never concerted effort to clear from this section
Speaker 1: to that section, and it got to the point they
Speaker 1: finally led us torch it and then after that we
Speaker 1: never had to go to the North forty again. It
Speaker 1: was just completely useless worker project. It just seemed that
Speaker 1: like they went out of the way to find stuff
Speaker 1: for us to do that just never went to any means.
Speaker 1: I remember once we dug a ditch from one creek
Speaker 1: to a swampy area and they said it was drainage,
Speaker 1: but nothing ever drained, and it was just to keep
Speaker 1: us busy. It was just for no reason. Here's former
Speaker 1: patient Mark Barbourn. We worked on the Florida trail. We've
Speaker 1: done a lot of cutting down of all metados, and
Speaker 1: we built the baseball field. I actually laid the center
Speaker 1: blocks for the dugouts for the baseball field. There was
Speaker 1: another guy that got bit by a rattlesnake when we
Speaker 1: were cutting out some some trails. I think the air
Speaker 1: lifted him to Tallahassee, and you know, he was back
Speaker 1: within a couple of days. This crushing labor would also
Speaker 1: lead to physical abuse by the hands of group leaders
Speaker 1: and fellow patients. There were injuries. There were injuries all
Speaker 1: the time. I was injured quite a bit, especially my
Speaker 1: first six months, but mostly that was abuse from other kids.
Speaker 1: I was pushed, punched, beaten up by peers quite a bit,
Speaker 1: especially that first six six nine months, and I just
Speaker 1: figured that just was the way it was. You know.
Speaker 1: It was like the hierarchy of just being in a
Speaker 1: really terrible situation, you know what I mean. I didn't
Speaker 1: know any better, or no one told me that there
Speaker 1: that there was another way, or that this is just
Speaker 1: the way you're gonna expect to be beaten up or abused,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it was kind of Lord of
Speaker 1: the Flies. You just kind of figure it out where
Speaker 1: you were just gonna be in a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of pain, an Awaki. There was a lot of fear,
Speaker 1: fear from the staff, fear from your peers. I was
Speaker 1: physically afraid. I mean it was I saw other kids
Speaker 1: to be abused by their peer group, and I saw
Speaker 1: a lot of kids being abused by group leaders, I
Speaker 1: mean terribly. So I saw it once it turned over.
Speaker 1: Literally it seemed over backwards. And I know from that
Speaker 1: day on had back trouble for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: And yet it was being a smartass. We're having a
Speaker 1: fire building contest and everyone had to build their own fire,
Speaker 1: and said something to the fact that, hey, we build
Speaker 1: a fire every night for for group meeting. Why don't
Speaker 1: we just do it then in time, everyone, we're just
Speaker 1: wasting wood here and came over and just kind of
Speaker 1: folded him in half, kind of put his left arm
Speaker 1: on his neck and just pushed him like over his knee,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of just threw him up against
Speaker 1: a tree and kind of collected himself and and said, well,
Speaker 1: are we gonna do this fire building contest or not?
Speaker 1: And I don't even remember crying so much. Is just
Speaker 1: kind of like whimpering in pain and his face just
Speaker 1: being so red. I think just I don't know. It
Speaker 1: just affected me tremendously seeing a kid hurt like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had been beaten up by peer group,
Speaker 1: and I've been beaten up by my mother, but I
Speaker 1: had never seen another kid beaaten up by an adult.
Speaker 1: That just scares the hell out of you. Mark Barber
Speaker 1: recalls another incident which stuck with him over the years.
Speaker 1: One still kind of haunts me. There was a guy, Mr. Phillips,
Speaker 1: who was the head of security. There was a guy
Speaker 1: in my group, our vocational group, who ran off. We
Speaker 1: called him Splitters, but he was a runner. He took
Speaker 1: off in the middle of the night. He was gone.
Speaker 1: They caught him, and I remember going to the lodge
Speaker 1: to eat the next morning and they had him behind
Speaker 1: the lodge and you could see it. They were taking
Speaker 1: him back there and his arm was hanging for some reason,
Speaker 1: his arm didn't looked right. And I told the other
Speaker 1: or something. We were walking in line. I said, did
Speaker 1: you see you know such and such as arm? He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was broken, And I said that's why it looked
Speaker 1: the way it did. He goes, yeah, he goes as
Speaker 1: you could tell how Mr Phillips was holding it. A
Speaker 1: couple of days later, it's in a cast and that's
Speaker 1: in a sling and the guy's kind of drugged up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's pain meds. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it was. It's pretty traumatic, you know, to see
Speaker 1: an arm going the wrong way. With all the work
Speaker 1: being done in Carabell, the reasons for the build out
Speaker 1: we're not always clear. One project the patients would later
Speaker 1: work on was the build out of a new hotel
Speaker 1: in marina in the heart of Carabelle. This hotel in
Speaker 1: Marina was not a resource for in Awaki, but destined
Speaker 1: for public use. Scott Hole is a former Inawaki patient.
Speaker 1: He worked on helping build the marina in Carabell. And
Speaker 1: the kind of manual labor that we would do would
Speaker 1: either be working on the grounds of the facility itself,
Speaker 1: but then there were also public things that we did,
Speaker 1: like the marina. When we were building this marina, we
Speaker 1: actually were you know, laying the posts that build the
Speaker 1: boat slips. Something that's like telephone pole and it's coated
Speaker 1: with a chemical called creosote. But we would carry those
Speaker 1: big poles to take two of us. You know, it's
Speaker 1: probably eight foot long like a telephone pole, not quite
Speaker 1: as thick though, and you know, we would have chemical
Speaker 1: burns all over our neck and shoulders from carrying that
Speaker 1: creosote over and putting them into the end of the water.
Speaker 1: We take a big hose and get it down, down, down,
Speaker 1: until it was level and that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: it was very very large marina where we were actually,
Speaker 1: you know, sinking the creosote post for the boat slips
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. Doing fifteen year old
Speaker 1: kids doing this really hard manual labor building this marina
Speaker 1: that I don't know who got the money from, but
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't us. I mean, our parents were paying
Speaker 1: for the privilege for us to build this marina for
Speaker 1: these other people. Chris McKnight remembers working on the renovation
Speaker 1: to the adjoining restaurant attached to the marina. We completely
Speaker 1: like leveled the whole marina, rebuilt some of the buildings,
Speaker 1: re landscaped everything. They had, bought some boats that we
Speaker 1: never really got to use, some sailboats, and they also
Speaker 1: bought the restaurant that was there in the marina, which
Speaker 1: we gutted and they never really did much with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know who the marina was owned by beforehand.
Speaker 1: I think they bought the marina and I want to
Speaker 1: stay nineteen eighty and it was set dormant and they
Speaker 1: finished out the lease with the restaurant and then they
Speaker 1: closed the restaurant down and I don't know what their
Speaker 1: intentions were. So I remember one of the first work
Speaker 1: projects was scraping off the old tile in the downstairs
Speaker 1: part of the restaurant and uh and like on the
Speaker 1: other side of the room, they had already ripped out
Speaker 1: most of the petition walls and stuff, and it was
Speaker 1: just kind of like one big coward's room and there
Speaker 1: was guys in the other end rip it out in insulation.
Speaker 1: And it was hot, you know, it was on the
Speaker 1: end of May, but it was still floorida. It's hot, humid,
Speaker 1: and you could just see particles kind of floating around.
Speaker 1: There's like one door open and where I went in
Speaker 1: just scraping this tile from probably like the fifties or forties.
Speaker 1: Mark Barber remembers one particular incident while working on the marina.
Speaker 1: We were at the marina and we were bolting together
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of covert pipe, and that covert pipe
Speaker 1: was covered with creosote to keep it from rusting, you know,
Speaker 1: from the salt water. And one of the guys had
Speaker 1: gotten creosote burnt really bad. It was like a third
Speaker 1: degree sunburn on his arms and between his legs to
Speaker 1: where we were straddling and bolting it together. I was
Speaker 1: helping him. I got burnt a little bit, but not
Speaker 1: bad enough to even even really mentioned, but he got
Speaker 1: tore up pretty bad. Mark Sublett was one patient who
Speaker 1: suffered these types of burns. We were building the athletic
Speaker 1: building for Airbell and we were pouring the foundations for it.
Speaker 1: The foundations were getting off We're supposed to pour down
Speaker 1: to a graded steak, a grade steak. A couple of
Speaker 1: us jumped in the asphalt or the concrete. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and started having You have to brake it back and
Speaker 1: get it to the right level. That stuff burns your
Speaker 1: skin real bad. And I guess I didn't know it
Speaker 1: or didn't feel it, but it burned about sevent the
Speaker 1: skin off my legs, so I was laid up. They
Speaker 1: took me out of my group. I could not go
Speaker 1: anywhere my skin was gone. Had to go through a
Speaker 1: bunch of painful stuff as you get third degree chemical burns,
Speaker 1: so it could not work. So I'd hanging the clinic
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and that was kind of a
Speaker 1: respite because you get some TV and some radio in
Speaker 1: the clinic, so you kind of hang out, but still
Speaker 1: kind of shitty because of course sitting there are burned
Speaker 1: legs and very painful as I'm sitting in the clinic
Speaker 1: at the Quadrangle down in Florida, out hobbling around on crutches,
Speaker 1: and apparently my parents had come down for a parent
Speaker 1: teacher meeting and go, hey, there's my son out there
Speaker 1: on crutches, and so they go, oh, we forgot to
Speaker 1: tell you your son hurt your legs. Okay, oh no,
Speaker 1: you know what he does. Oh he's getting full on,
Speaker 1: will take care of everything. Don't worry, He'll be just fine.
Speaker 1: And of course to what they told him was afterward, hey,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have to pay us. We're gonna comp
Speaker 1: your son to go here. I think part of the
Speaker 1: reason they did that because at the time my father
Speaker 1: ran to cab General Hospital from six four, so they
Speaker 1: kind of knew that pretty big hospital, you know, the
Speaker 1: head administrator and all that stuff. So they sent him,
Speaker 1: you know, the you know, you don't know any more money.
Speaker 1: This marina and hotel would come to appreciate him value
Speaker 1: greatly in the years ahead. Here's journalist Albert Edgin. At
Speaker 1: that time, Florida was exploding and Caramel that area down there.
Speaker 1: He was smart to go there, very smart, because it's
Speaker 1: just around the coast from Panama City. Panama City is
Speaker 1: a place where people from Chicago go, you know, the Midwest,
Speaker 1: their families in the Midwest that they don't go to Miami.
Speaker 1: They go to Panama City, for God's sake. And so
Speaker 1: caramells right around the curve from that. So when you
Speaker 1: think about it, yeah, you can start a thing in
Speaker 1: Carrabelle where you've got especialty is treating kids. But man,
Speaker 1: that's a real estate bonanza. Antawaki South Campus would come
Speaker 1: to be known as Anawaki on the Gulf, described in
Speaker 1: local papers at the time as a private, nonprofit college
Speaker 1: prep school with an Awake looking to expand their program
Speaker 1: into other states. It would soon set up another corporation
Speaker 1: to handle all of its real estate endeavors. Anawaki Estates.
Speaker 1: This corporation would be run and owned by Petter's three daughters, Marcia, Rita,
Speaker 1: and Dana. With the success of in Awaki on the
Speaker 1: Gulf in a corporation to hold all of their property
Speaker 1: in a wake, he would soon look to international travel
Speaker 1: and even a possible expansion into other countries next time
Speaker 1: on Camp Help and Awaki, I think that he figured
Speaker 1: out people were onto him, and so there became a
Speaker 1: chosen group to accompanying them to Mexico. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be this big privileged trip. So the Mexico trips
Speaker 1: most years they took us to a house of ill
Speaker 1: repew house, prostitution, whatever you wanna call it. If you
Speaker 1: didn't know him, you would think he had a kind
Speaker 1: He would have a kind heart. They'd you want to
Speaker 1: help you, and you in a weird way he would.
Speaker 1: It was a church going guy who claimed to be.
Speaker 1: But they kept on telling me that I tried to
Speaker 1: commit suicide and that's what had happened to me. And
Speaker 1: I was trying to tell another of the staff members
Speaker 1: in E and L, No, that's not what happened to me.
Speaker 1: This happened to me. Camp Hell Anna Waki was created
Speaker 1: and hosted by Josh Thane with producer Miranda Hawkins and
Speaker 1: executive producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was
Speaker 1: written and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival
Speaker 1: footage provided by ws B and CBS News. Find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at camp hell pod. That's c A M
Speaker 1: p h E L L p O D. Educate yourself
Speaker 1: about the issue of child abuse and things that you
Speaker 1: should look for at the Darkness to Light website D
Speaker 1: two l dot org. That's d the number two l
Speaker 1: dot org. Camp hell Anawaki is a production of I
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts.