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: That was the biggest disappointment of our lives. The committee
Speaker 1: decided that, yeah, these things are happening. We believe you partially,
Speaker 1: and so what we're gonna do is try to do
Speaker 1: some kind of compromise here, because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: close the camp down. The deal was, well, Louisa Kennet,
Speaker 1: boys at your home anymore, you really shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: We're going to make you a different title, but otherwise
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave you alone. And so they said you
Speaker 1: can continue to be the director, that you can't be
Speaker 1: on the campus, and you can't even do with the kids,
Speaker 1: and otherwise nothing changed. Two weeks later, we understand and
Speaker 1: he was back out there. Over a year after Roger
Speaker 1: Brenn and Robert Dacastino had reported the abuse at Anawaki,
Speaker 1: a deal had been made. No criminal charges were filed,
Speaker 1: not even an official investigation by law enforcement was had
Speaker 1: Louis Petter had been cleared of all charges under the
Speaker 1: stipulation that he had no future contact with the boys
Speaker 1: at Anawaki, the center would continue with little to no
Speaker 1: change in its operation. It was emotionally painful to me
Speaker 1: to see the lack of concern and reaction by the
Speaker 1: authorities who had the duty to do something about this.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even mention the name Louis Petter for ten years.
Speaker 1: My experienced an Awake was so disillusioning. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to put into my past. I never did volunteer work
Speaker 1: after that in my life. Never ever, was the end
Speaker 1: of that. Shortly after the hearing, Dagastino received a troubling
Speaker 1: call from the Assistant Attorney General who had represented the state,
Speaker 1: John Hinchy. He told me he was calling me from
Speaker 1: outside his office a public film. He was afraid to
Speaker 1: make the call from his office, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: they've stopped the hearing. He said, yes, they're making a
Speaker 1: deal and they're going to get you if they can. That.
Speaker 1: They have decided that they're going to try and stop
Speaker 1: you from taking the George Bar. They're going to go
Speaker 1: after you hammer and tongue. They're getting a court order
Speaker 1: to seal the hearing documents, and that court orders in process. Now,
Speaker 1: if you can get a copy of the hearing and
Speaker 1: gave me the name of the printer and addressed the
Speaker 1: printer you've got a copy of that, This will protect you.
Speaker 1: So I said, I had no money. I mean I
Speaker 1: was working for next to nothing, was paying tuition, I
Speaker 1: was paying rent sometimes I could, didn't have enough mind
Speaker 1: to eat. I ran a tab at a local restaurant
Speaker 1: because they trusted me that every time I get a paycheck,
Speaker 1: got even them up. So I called a friend of
Speaker 1: mine from Columbia College where I graduated, named Jerry Miller,
Speaker 1: who was trust baby, and he had lots of money.
Speaker 1: And I said, Jerry, I need five dollars and I
Speaker 1: need it now. And I explayed the situation and Jerry said,
Speaker 1: give me your wiring instructures to your bank, which I had,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm going to my bank now and
Speaker 1: I will do the wire now. He went, he wired me,
Speaker 1: the money, went into my account, took it out, gave
Speaker 1: it to Rose Higbee, one of my fellow students. So
Speaker 1: Rose was able to get it. So I have it here.
Speaker 1: It is the copy of the transcript. Of course, there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of other things that happened. Over the
Speaker 1: past several weeks. We have received a number of very
Speaker 1: serious allegations concerning both the facility out there in a
Speaker 1: number of individuals involved with him. It was just a
Speaker 1: form of their therapy. They were told to do it,
Speaker 1: and at the time he was fourteen and a half,
Speaker 1: fifteen 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 Patter. He had no answer to that question,
Speaker 1: involved having in this situation paid it host little could
Speaker 1: be such a destricable place, and did do absolutely the
Speaker 1: contrary of what they should have done. I'm disturbed a
Speaker 1: little the fact of something its stealed. Water on it,
Speaker 1: Anna Wicked. I'm Josh Stein and this is camp hell.
Speaker 1: In a week around the time of the hearing, Rennan
Speaker 1: Dagastino had moved into an apartment together. One night, sometime
Speaker 1: after the hearing had concluded, they received an unexpected visit
Speaker 1: from a patient at Anna Waki, one of the boys
Speaker 1: who was working with Louie Petter. He came from my
Speaker 1: apartment and Rose Higbee was there and Roger rent, and
Speaker 1: he started telling me all the things that we're gonna
Speaker 1: do to me. One of the kids came in and
Speaker 1: said Dr Petter and his family are going to hurt you.
Speaker 1: And I said, what are you talking about? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: they're gonna hurt you. And I said, you're talking about physically,
Speaker 1: what other way? In every way? And we're gonna have
Speaker 1: sworn testimony that I abused the boys. Well, I got
Speaker 1: a little bit angry. The guy came in and said,
Speaker 1: I lied about you, and Bob rand him out of
Speaker 1: the house. Bob has a temper. I've only seen it once.
Speaker 1: There was a couch between him and I. I jumped
Speaker 1: over the couch to try and grab him, be to
Speaker 1: crap out of him, and he went right through the
Speaker 1: screen door. Have you ever seen a rocket take off?
Speaker 1: If this was faster than a rocket, I'd never seen
Speaker 1: anymo operate. Bob has a lot of physical skills my
Speaker 1: own body. He was there, and although he didn't hurt
Speaker 1: the kid, I'm amazed that he didn't. He did run
Speaker 1: him out of the house. So we were both scared,
Speaker 1: and I was very concerned. Anytime I left the home,
Speaker 1: I would turn the light on outside at night, and
Speaker 1: then I'd watched and wait for about ten minutes. I
Speaker 1: was scared. Sometimes I went out the back door and
Speaker 1: went around the house to see if somebody was hiding there.
Speaker 1: I felt paranoid on occasions I thought somebody was out
Speaker 1: to get me. Well, we found out, of course, that
Speaker 1: somebody was out to get us, and it was them,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about what they were gonna do
Speaker 1: to us. According to the kids, this unwanted visit was
Speaker 1: not the last rend and Dagostino would see for Manawaki.
Speaker 1: Dagostino would later learn that someone had attempted to frame
Speaker 1: him for drug possession. There was some testimony that Peter
Speaker 1: had ordered drugs to be planted in my car. At
Speaker 1: that time. The car I had was a land Rover.
Speaker 1: So the land Rover was somehow locked, which is something
Speaker 1: I never did because I was hoping someone would steal
Speaker 1: the damn thing because it was such a bad car.
Speaker 1: But anyway, for one reason or another, it was locked
Speaker 1: and they couldn't get into the car, so they put
Speaker 1: the drugs in the wheel well. I went off roading
Speaker 1: that weekend afterwards and was bumpy road and so someplace
Speaker 1: in the North Georgia Mountains. There's this packet of drugs
Speaker 1: that fell out my wheel. Well, we understood that someone
Speaker 1: had placed in Bob's land rover some cocaine in the
Speaker 1: spare tire, and that we were about to be rated
Speaker 1: for pushing drugs. And of course that scared the dickens
Speaker 1: out of me when I heard that show. Really, after
Speaker 1: this incident, authorities showed up at the apartment looking for Dagostino.
Speaker 1: The authorities had been tipped off and the threat to
Speaker 1: get Dagastino arrested proved true. Well, we had a couple
Speaker 1: of police officers come to the house looking for him,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't figure out what was going on. It
Speaker 1: was very unusual. They then swad a warrant from my arrest,
Speaker 1: so I was arrested for a soul. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: just sorry I didn't quite get to do the battery.
Speaker 1: Bob recalls his day in court and how the judge
Speaker 1: reacted to his ordeal. I told him some of the backstory,
Speaker 1: but what he was accused me of doing. They didn't
Speaker 1: show up anyway, judge says. Kate dismissed Anna wake he
Speaker 1: had managed to slip through the cracks of the Georgia
Speaker 1: legal system. Following their hearing, in Petter, having stepped down
Speaker 1: as director, was replaced by a Mr. Charles Rampley. With
Speaker 1: Petter not in this role, there was nothing that could
Speaker 1: be charged against the Innawaki Foundation. In a letter from
Speaker 1: Chairman Donald Howe to the panel following the hearing, he states, quote,
Speaker 1: the Board will of course scrutinize carefully and frequently the
Speaker 1: activities of this establishment, so that it seems to me
Speaker 1: this situation has been resolved in a satisfactory manner. Shortly
Speaker 1: after this deal was made to keep Petter off campus grounds,
Speaker 1: a new license was issued allowing in Awaki to continue
Speaker 1: as a child caring institution. Journalist Albert Edgin says this
Speaker 1: oversight and lack of investigation into child abuse was a
Speaker 1: sign of the times back then. It's fair to say
Speaker 1: that the ideas about victims and treatment and the whole
Speaker 1: panoplay were I wouldn't say primitive, but they certainly weren't
Speaker 1: as developed as they are today. Not at the time,
Speaker 1: there was a tendency to not believe victims. Much much
Speaker 1: more acute than it is now, and it can be
Speaker 1: acute now, but the best way to describe it is
Speaker 1: that in the nineteen sixties there was abuse going on,
Speaker 1: and people knew there was abuse going on. Somehow they
Speaker 1: turned their heads to it. But when it finally was
Speaker 1: litigated by the state in a administrative way, what happened
Speaker 1: was it the victims, the targets of the abuse, were questioned,
Speaker 1: their backgrounds were brought out against them. These were children
Speaker 1: who were being treated for emotional troubles, and yet when
Speaker 1: they made these accusations, their emotional troubles were used as
Speaker 1: evidence that they were lying. The difference between then and
Speaker 1: now is that it was almost as if the assumption
Speaker 1: was that they were lying and they had to prove it.
Speaker 1: There was no or very very little wiggle room, given
Speaker 1: very little accommodation, very little thought about the idea that
Speaker 1: they may be telling the truth. Albert says that during
Speaker 1: this time, it would be hard for an administrator to
Speaker 1: even wrap their heads around the idea that this type
Speaker 1: of abuse between a man and children was even capable
Speaker 1: of happening. So think about now, children who are being
Speaker 1: supervised by somebody who is just an abusive guy who's
Speaker 1: having relationships sexual relationships with young boys. In the minds
Speaker 1: of an administrator of a health department in Georgia. He
Speaker 1: can't comprehend that he wants to not believe that because
Speaker 1: he's so confused about the question of homosexuality in the
Speaker 1: first place, that that doesn't compute with that guy. So
Speaker 1: you have a hearing, and you have troubled kids and
Speaker 1: this has happened to them, and the guy who has
Speaker 1: been accused says, hey, come on, these kids are liars,
Speaker 1: their pathological liars. I've got the evidence of it right
Speaker 1: here in my psychiatric files. That's the end of that.
Speaker 1: It's hard to understand how something as serious as sexual
Speaker 1: abuse of miners could have slipped by local government in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. To give some context as to what
Speaker 1: led to this massive oversight, you have to look at
Speaker 1: what was going on in Georgia politics at the time.
Speaker 1: In seventy, the same year of the Anawaki hearing, Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter made the shift from state senator to governor of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Petter's confidant, Jim Parham, who had served as the director
Speaker 1: for de Facts for a number of years, would go
Speaker 1: on to play an integral role in Jimmy Carter's cabinet.
Speaker 1: This career opportunity for parm would greatly affect the future
Speaker 1: of Anawaki. Jimmy Carter ran for governor at Georgia on
Speaker 1: the idea that he was going to reorganize government, and
Speaker 1: when he did when he got into the governor's office,
Speaker 1: the biggest part of that job, that promise, was to
Speaker 1: take all the health facilities, state health facilities and to
Speaker 1: get him under one big organized umbrella. In order to
Speaker 1: do that, he appointed param to figure it out. Parum
Speaker 1: did figure it out. He did a good job and
Speaker 1: figuring it out, but it had to do with stepping
Speaker 1: on a lot of toes along the way. Every legislator,
Speaker 1: every member of the House, every member the Senate had
Speaker 1: a stake in it because their health departments in every county,
Speaker 1: their hospitals. During Carter's time as Georgia governor, the number
Speaker 1: of government agencies dropped from over three hundred to a
Speaker 1: consolidated two overall departments, with the heads of each reporting
Speaker 1: directly to the governor. While this may have streamlined the
Speaker 1: local government bureaucracy, it may have also left an opening
Speaker 1: for lack of oversight. One of the most controversial of
Speaker 1: these consolidations was the newly formed Department of Human Resources.
Speaker 1: It is under this department that every health and welfare
Speaker 1: organization in the state was lumped together. Shortly after the
Speaker 1: hearing regarding Anawaki's license, Jim Parm was put in charge
Speaker 1: as the director of the Department of Family and Children's
Speaker 1: Services or Defacts, the same department which held said hearing.
Speaker 1: A year later, the department would be absorbed into the
Speaker 1: aforementioned Department of Human Resources, with Parm serving as its
Speaker 1: deputy commissioner. As second in command for this expansive department,
Speaker 1: Parum would have sway over a key factor, what organizations
Speaker 1: could qualify as a licensed medical facility. Harm had been
Speaker 1: instrumental in helping Petter get Anawake he accredited as a
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital. That was pivotal for Antawaki because when they
Speaker 1: were accredited as a hospital, they became eligible for third
Speaker 1: party insurance payments, and that made an Awake a gold mine.
Speaker 1: The first correspondence regarding accrediting an Awake as a licensed
Speaker 1: hospital appears to be a letter from the Comptroller General
Speaker 1: of Georgia to Lewis Petter from two In it, Comptroller
Speaker 1: General Johnny Calledwell refers to a meeting with the staff
Speaker 1: of an Awake in review of the treatment center Calledwell
Speaker 1: provides a list of violations of the building which go
Speaker 1: against the requirements of the Safety Code for Hospitals. In
Speaker 1: the trip reports sheets sent to the then director of Anawaki,
Speaker 1: James Henry Evans, it states the purpose of this visit
Speaker 1: was to determine whether or not this treatment center can
Speaker 1: be licensed as a psyche patric hospital. It appears doubtful
Speaker 1: that this can be done under current criteria for psychiatric hospitals.
Speaker 1: There is not a building at the site which in
Speaker 1: any way resembles a psychiatric institution. It appears to this
Speaker 1: organization maybe serving a very useful purpose in rehabilitating wayward,
Speaker 1: delinquent or emotionally disturbed boys, but it is done in
Speaker 1: a completely an institutionalized setting, in the relaxed atmosphere of
Speaker 1: a summer camp. This rejection would not be the end
Speaker 1: of Petter's attempt at getting this license. In a string
Speaker 1: of memos provided from the Georgia State Archives, we see
Speaker 1: Petter once again using his friends in high places to
Speaker 1: help move red tape. The documentation that I found that
Speaker 1: showed the relationship between Petter and Parham The most troubling
Speaker 1: of that documentation had to do with memos that param
Speaker 1: had written to other administrat administrators that worked for him
Speaker 1: at the Department of Human Resources at the time, basically
Speaker 1: pushing them to grant this hospital license. They had questions
Speaker 1: about it, and he wrote that basically without saying so,
Speaker 1: and they never do this in bureaucratic documents, but it
Speaker 1: was clear that the purpose of the document was to
Speaker 1: tell them grant this guy this license. The string of
Speaker 1: memos to which Albert is referring to begins innocently enough
Speaker 1: with a letter from a concerned teacher dating from November
Speaker 1: of nine. This would begin a domino effect that would
Speaker 1: forever change the future of Annawaki. In the letter, she
Speaker 1: writes of a mentally handicapped student of hers who had
Speaker 1: trouble adapting to normal school environments but expressed an interest
Speaker 1: in outdoors and camping, whom she believed would be a
Speaker 1: perfect fit for Annawaki. The problem was the ever growing
Speaker 1: cost of enrollment in the program. The student's family could
Speaker 1: simply not afford it. Over the next months would follow
Speaker 1: it back and forth of letters between the administration of
Speaker 1: an Awaki and a number of people from different health
Speaker 1: organizations the state offered to pay the required rate for
Speaker 1: aid to families with dependent children. Administrator of Annawaki, James
Speaker 1: Evans response would be that the rate was so inadequate
Speaker 1: that the institution should not be included among any list
Speaker 1: of programs for whom these rates were established. In other words,
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough money. This was just the opportunity had
Speaker 1: or needed to finally license an Awake as a medical facility,
Speaker 1: and he would call on his friend Jim Para to
Speaker 1: help make it happen. In a letter from ninety three,
Speaker 1: PARAM inquired at the Division of Mental Health would recommend
Speaker 1: that Anawaki be granted a provisional license as a special
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital and if so, what steps would be required
Speaker 1: to obtain said license. Their superior he was a deputy
Speaker 1: director of the division of the department. He had written
Speaker 1: this to three bureaucrats who were his underlinks this parallel
Speaker 1: documentation that was in the state archives that shows that
Speaker 1: Peder was pressuring part to accelerate the process. In a
Speaker 1: reply to one of param's inquiries, director of the Legal
Speaker 1: Services Unit Rights, assuming the facility can convince the various
Speaker 1: units making recommendations to the Quality Control Unit. The department
Speaker 1: presently has the legal authority to license the facility without
Speaker 1: any additional legislation. Anawaki was soon fast tracked to receive
Speaker 1: their license to operate in the State of Georgia as
Speaker 1: a psychiatric hospital. In a memo regarding this matter, it
Speaker 1: has stated the quote, if consideration is given to licensing
Speaker 1: this center, we believe it will be necessary to waigh
Speaker 1: physical plant requirements and let the program of services be
Speaker 1: the determining factor. Basically, if the State of Georgia was
Speaker 1: going to give Anawaki a license, a special exemption would
Speaker 1: have to be made around any building requirements. Shortly after this,
Speaker 1: the Division of Mental Health wrote a glowing review of
Speaker 1: an Awaki to the Chief of the Standards and Licensing Unit,
Speaker 1: the department in charge of granting licenses. In March of
Speaker 1: seventy four, Annawake was granted a six month provisional license
Speaker 1: to operate as a state mental hospital. The special provision
Speaker 1: was made which ignored any violations of the building requirements
Speaker 1: of a medical hospital. Jim Parum followed up with a
Speaker 1: letter to Louis Petter. It read, Dear Lewis, just a
Speaker 1: quick note to thank you for the tour. I was
Speaker 1: greatly impressed with your program and the attitudes of boys
Speaker 1: with whom I spoke. You and the staff deserve great
Speaker 1: credit for the job you were doing. If I could
Speaker 1: send more state kids, I certainly would. They all seem
Speaker 1: to be doing well again. Thanks, keep up the good
Speaker 1: work as ever, Jim. Not five years after Louis Petter
Speaker 1: and Anna Wake were put on trial, Jim Parum was
Speaker 1: singing their praises. Harms influence would help keep Anna Wake
Speaker 1: in good standing and would later lead to a permanent
Speaker 1: license as a medical facility in the state of Georgia.
Speaker 1: Now and Awake could collect third party payments from any
Speaker 1: of their patients medical insurance, essentially opening the floodgates to
Speaker 1: increased premiums through which the Petter family stood to make millions.
Speaker 1: Parm in the meantime, would continue working his way up
Speaker 1: the chain of government bodies, ultimately leading to his highest
Speaker 1: ranking government he would take just a few years later.
Speaker 1: When Carter ran for president, he said he was going
Speaker 1: to reorganize the federal government, and he was gonna do
Speaker 1: it in the same way that he had reorganized the
Speaker 1: state government, which he said had been so successful. And
Speaker 1: when he became president, he appointed Parham to oversee that effort. Harum,
Speaker 1: who was a poor boy who grew up in a
Speaker 1: cotton mill village in the city of Atlanta, went all
Speaker 1: away from the cotton mill villages of Atlanta to Washington
Speaker 1: with Jimmy Carter. Anna Wake had received their medical license
Speaker 1: and now had one of its biggest proponents in the
Speaker 1: White House. Serving under Jimmy Carter's cabinet, it seemed nothing
Speaker 1: was shut down the facility. By most accounts, Petter felt
Speaker 1: he was untouchable by the law, and at this point
Speaker 1: he may as well have been. As the seventies progressed
Speaker 1: in a Waky became more ingrained in Georgia and neighboring
Speaker 1: state's way of dealing with troubled youth, wards of the
Speaker 1: state were now being sent there, and the program continued
Speaker 1: to devolve into something much harsher than when it initially began.
Speaker 1: One of the main structures on the Innawaki campus mentioned
Speaker 1: in the State Archives licensing documents is the E and
Speaker 1: O Building. This was mentioned in an earlier episode as
Speaker 1: it was formerly known among patients as the Quiet Room,
Speaker 1: a form of solitary confinement which was meant to break
Speaker 1: down patients upon their arrival or for punishment when acting out.
Speaker 1: Evaluation and observation had progressed to being one of the
Speaker 1: cruelest aspects of an awaki, one that every patient would
Speaker 1: be met with immediately upon arrival. Here's Mark Sublett, an
Speaker 1: Anawaki survivor. Your first arrival, you would go in and
Speaker 1: meet with a case worker lady, and then that's when
Speaker 1: things kind of started turning a different way. They told
Speaker 1: me you would have to be processed and evaluation, so
Speaker 1: you would go to a place called the E. N
Speaker 1: O Unit. So you'd first be led into this little
Speaker 1: room eight by eight. Anyway, they take in and tell
Speaker 1: you you're gonna have to take off all your clothes
Speaker 1: and they're gonna have to evaluate you and observe you
Speaker 1: to make sure you're not gonna harm yourself or do anything.
Speaker 1: For twenty four hours, you're removed of your clothes and
Speaker 1: you're giving a green robe just like at the hospital,
Speaker 1: a little bit more concealing, but not much. And then
Speaker 1: you're put into a room and you're locked up for
Speaker 1: forty eight hours. And that's how you're initially brought into
Speaker 1: the anawaking system. Here's another survivor Chris McKnight. The gentleman
Speaker 1: buzzed the door, and they buzzed you in, and you
Speaker 1: walk into a small fourier with two chi airs and
Speaker 1: a really small round table. The room is about ten
Speaker 1: ft by eight ft. Two doors, both locked, the glass
Speaker 1: top plexiglass top part of the door. So you go
Speaker 1: in there, and the first thing you do is they
Speaker 1: tell you to strip. I had just turned nine ten
Speaker 1: days before this. I looked more like I was seven.
Speaker 1: I was really confused, and I sat down and said no.
Speaker 1: And so the gentleman leaned over and in a much
Speaker 1: harsher voice, said, you need to strip naked now, or
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it for you. So I started
Speaker 1: to get pretty scared. I was a very small child.
Speaker 1: So what did I do. I started to take off
Speaker 1: my clothes. I'm naked, and they rolled up my clothes
Speaker 1: and they buzzed me through the other door with the
Speaker 1: group leader. And I looked to my left and there's
Speaker 1: a day room and there's about fifteen teenage boys with
Speaker 1: their clothes on, and a couple other older gentleman group
Speaker 1: leaders as it turned out, and they're all looking at me,
Speaker 1: and I'm standing there naked, and I just start to cry.
Speaker 1: I felt alone many times in my life, but this
Speaker 1: was like I felt like on my own alone. This
Speaker 1: was like a whole another kind of level of being
Speaker 1: scared and frightened. So they walk you through the day room,
Speaker 1: which is room about forty by forty ft and you
Speaker 1: walk through it, and you go through another door, and
Speaker 1: immediately to your left is a bathroom and they tell
Speaker 1: you have a one minute to take a shower, and
Speaker 1: you take a quick shower, and then they give you
Speaker 1: a robe, a green robe, tell you to put it on.
Speaker 1: You walk out of the bathroom. To your immediate left
Speaker 1: is a room. They put you in its room about
Speaker 1: twelve ft by a eight ft with a mattress, a blanket,
Speaker 1: a pillow, and a bible and that was it. High
Speaker 1: ceilings with a big plexiglass window at the top, and
Speaker 1: then they locked the door. And there you spend twenty
Speaker 1: four hours and they bring you your meals. You are
Speaker 1: in the room by yourself. It's very degrading. I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand kind of like they want to break you
Speaker 1: down to build you up, but this was your humiliation.
Speaker 1: This wasn't breaking you down to get to the root
Speaker 1: of maybe your problems or your issues, or what's going
Speaker 1: on in your life. This was just straight up humiliation.
Speaker 1: There was no need to parade kids through a day
Speaker 1: room naked to enter a program like this. After the
Speaker 1: initial forty eight hours of solitary confinement, patients were then
Speaker 1: put in a room that would be shared with anywhere
Speaker 1: from four to six other boys. Talking was still not
Speaker 1: permitted at any time, and exercise was very limited. The
Speaker 1: rest of the days were spent in silence, and patients
Speaker 1: had to ask permission for any type of movement like
Speaker 1: going to the restroom. If allowed, you were to follow
Speaker 1: a yellow line painted on the floor and not permitted
Speaker 1: to stray from it. Mark Butler says that like the
Speaker 1: rest of the Innawiki program, every basic rite, even wearing clothes,
Speaker 1: had to be earned. It takes you while to earn
Speaker 1: the privileges of being able to wear regular clothes. So
Speaker 1: I don't remember how long that was in the road flo,
Speaker 1: I think a couple of weeks. Then they allowed me
Speaker 1: to have clothes and pretty much the whole day be clean.
Speaker 1: If you're a real good you got to go outside
Speaker 1: to this little it was like a little triangular, a
Speaker 1: little courtroom, half the size of this room that you
Speaker 1: can get a little bit of sign and if you're good,
Speaker 1: every couple of days and let you go out there
Speaker 1: like ten or fifteen minutes. The amount of time a
Speaker 1: patient would stay in I and OH could vary from
Speaker 1: weeks to months for some patients. Here's Stephen, he attended
Speaker 1: an awake in the mid seventies. I was probably in
Speaker 1: the n O for a couple of months, which was
Speaker 1: fairly standard. I might have been in a hair longer,
Speaker 1: but I think they wanted to get me outside, you
Speaker 1: know that. I don't think they wanted to hold me
Speaker 1: much longer. There's Chris McKnight again. So ian O for
Speaker 1: me turned out to be I want to say, close
Speaker 1: to two and a half months. Other kids were in
Speaker 1: their shorter other kids were in their long or It
Speaker 1: really depended on you accepting your problems. And I finally
Speaker 1: realized that I was just gonna have to go along
Speaker 1: and say what they wanted to hear to get out
Speaker 1: of the You know, I had never been in any
Speaker 1: sort of lock up. I mean I had heard from
Speaker 1: other kids about juvenile hall and that was like jail
Speaker 1: to me, and I felt like I was in jail.
Speaker 1: Putting a child in solitary confinement could wear on them mentally,
Speaker 1: sometimes causing mental breakdowns. I had long fingernail shoot my
Speaker 1: fingernails down to like a saw a pattern. It was
Speaker 1: trying to scratch through my veins and my arm. I
Speaker 1: just I literally wanted to die. My whole life had
Speaker 1: been taken from me. They don't really tell you when
Speaker 1: you get there and how the program works, when you're
Speaker 1: gonna get to go outside, when you're gonna see other people.
Speaker 1: It was just a day to day, stay behind us line,
Speaker 1: don't ask questions, and do your word. It was pretty intense.
Speaker 1: It's a big shock when you first leave home, and
Speaker 1: of course I was only thirteen, so you kind of
Speaker 1: start dawning on what's gonna go on, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm not going back home, and kind of start I
Speaker 1: break down. You have your own moments, did you start realizing,
Speaker 1: start figuring out what's happening. I remember this one kid
Speaker 1: who went crazy in that twenty four hour confinement and
Speaker 1: I want to punching out the little glass window on
Speaker 1: the door and really messing up his hand pretty bad,
Speaker 1: and they had to restrain him. My second stay at
Speaker 1: Anniwaki happened to another kid. I witnessed the kid just
Speaker 1: went crazy, but he had been an EO for months.
Speaker 1: And then I found out that he had been in
Speaker 1: email for months after that, and they wound up shipping
Speaker 1: the box to another hospital. He never left the you know,
Speaker 1: and he was an ANNI waking for like nine months
Speaker 1: or so. Catherine Perkins is a psychology professor who was
Speaker 1: studied emotionally disturbed behavior in children extensively. She says this
Speaker 1: type of treatment can make a situation with a troubled
Speaker 1: team go from bad to worse. Kids or kids, and
Speaker 1: most kids need engagement, they need human contact, they need more.
Speaker 1: If you are already vulnerable for emotional and mental health illness,
Speaker 1: if you already have that level of vulnerability and then
Speaker 1: you're subjected to further abuse, you're just exacerbating a problem
Speaker 1: that was already there by no means is anything good
Speaker 1: going to come out of that. I mean, you're just
Speaker 1: taking a bad situation and making it worse. Fred Knox
Speaker 1: was only a small child when he was admitted to
Speaker 1: an AWAKE. It was during this initial processing that he
Speaker 1: realized the type of abuse that was about to take place.
Speaker 1: My number was K twelve twenty. I was there from
Speaker 1: August to November one. I was eleven. I was made
Speaker 1: to take off all my clothes and I was told
Speaker 1: to put on this blue, kind of greenish type robe.
Speaker 1: I couldn't wear any underwear. I couldn't do anything, and
Speaker 1: I was having people yell fresh meat seeing me crying.
Speaker 1: Tears were just falling out of my eyes. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing. I was made to squat.
Speaker 1: I didn't know if I was going into jail or what.
Speaker 1: I had no idea it was. It was a building
Speaker 1: called the en O. It basically had about four different units.
Speaker 1: The men the boys were on one side that were
Speaker 1: kind of split up with the bathroom, the offices in
Speaker 1: the middle, the rooms on the side, and the middle
Speaker 1: was kind of cafeteria, two little tiny courtyard, the infirmary
Speaker 1: or clinic, I guess as they called it was connected
Speaker 1: to that. You know, you had to go through about
Speaker 1: two or three doors to get to the infirmary. There
Speaker 1: were locked doors almost like every no phone to call
Speaker 1: anybody for Fred. The abusive antawaki was coming from the
Speaker 1: patients as well. I was sexually molested by a student.
Speaker 1: They would do it when other people were supposedly sleeping.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it was almost kind of like
Speaker 1: if a counselor group later turned his cheek or turned
Speaker 1: his head the other way. You know, Hey, what can
Speaker 1: I get away with? I had that. I guess that
Speaker 1: thought process, that that was a normal way of life.
Speaker 1: Fred remembers another patient who he experienced E and O with,
Speaker 1: who would later make national news. He might have heard
Speaker 1: his name mentioned, but his name was Stephen Anthony Mobley.
Speaker 1: I guess an Awaky messed him up pretty bad. He
Speaker 1: killed a Domino's Pizza manager and shot him in the
Speaker 1: back of the head, execution style. Arrested in in Gainesville, Georgia,
Speaker 1: Stephen Anthony Mobley became known in the crime world as
Speaker 1: the first defendant to use predisposition of genes as a
Speaker 1: defense for murder. He was executed on death Row by
Speaker 1: lethal injection. Thinking two thousand five, it was Annawak's program
Speaker 1: was becoming psychologically traumatizing for patients. The E and O
Speaker 1: was now the first experience of anyone in the program,
Speaker 1: setting the bar for what would come later. Since Anna
Speaker 1: Wake now had its medical license, it was free to
Speaker 1: expand its program. They would soon begin a girl's treatment
Speaker 1: center and move into other states, even other countries. Anna
Speaker 1: Wake was now accepting patients each year by the hundreds
Speaker 1: and making a fortune doing so, and without any real
Speaker 1: oversight the damage being done to these patients would only
Speaker 1: get worse next time. On Camp hell in a Week
Speaker 1: and Awake, he had been established for sixty years, but
Speaker 1: by nineteen the numbers were up above six hundreds. It's
Speaker 1: like two different worlds, you know. There was a Aniwaki
Speaker 1: outside and the competitor inside. At that time they sent
Speaker 1: the toughest of the students to Florida. There was another
Speaker 1: guy that got bit by a rattlesnake when we were
Speaker 1: cutting out some and trails. I think the air lifted
Speaker 1: them to Tallahassee. I saw other kids be abused by
Speaker 1: their peer group, and I saw a lot of kids
Speaker 1: being abused by group leaders. I mean terribly so. Camp
Speaker 1: hell an Awake was created and hosted by Josh Thane,
Speaker 1: with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written and performed by Josh
Speaker 1: Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage provided by ws B
Speaker 1: and CBS News find us on Instagram at camp hell
Speaker 1: pod that's c A M p h E L l
Speaker 1: p O D educate yourself about the issue of child
Speaker 1: abuse and things that you should look for at the
Speaker 1: Darkness to Light website D two ll dot org. That's
Speaker 1: D the number two l dot org. Camp hell an
Speaker 1: Awake is a production of I heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.