Kelsey Snelling: This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior. We also mention specific weights, weight loss numbers, and self harm. Please take care when listening. The sun is shining, the smell of freshly cut grass wafts through the air, and the sound of a basketball hitting the rim echoes in the distance. A boarding school is buzzing with kids. But they aren’t students. It’s the middle of summer after all. These are Shaners. Camp Shane is back. But this time in Connecticut. When the Ferndale campus closed in early 2019, many thought Camp Shane was gone for good. So former staff and campers were surprised when, unexpectedly, its flagship camp re-opened in a different state. Connecticut — New York's next door neighbor. David relocated Camp Shane to the Rectory School — a private boarding school in Pomfret, Connecticut. Renting for the summer was likely cheaper than trying to keep up the old Ferndale campground. And it didn’t look anything like camp had in Ferndale: Instead of leaky, aging cabins, there were air conditioned dormitories with common rooms. There were fully functioning toilets and an actual fitness center, and the food was even a little better. It modernized the camp model that David had begun with the satellite camps. But that also meant the charm of the cabin-in-the-woods was gone and replaced by something much more sterile. When summer 2019 kicked off, campers had to navigate fluorescent-lit halls instead of well-worn muddy trails that held the memories of Shaners past. And even the shiny new digs couldn't prevent what would become a nightmare summer.
Stellan: I didn't feel safe. No one knew I had left the camp for good. One of my friends texted me and was like, Hey, people are looking for you, you're on lockdown because they think you went missing
Kelsey Snelling: This is Camp Shame. I’m Kelsey Snelling. Our final episode is about stranded kids, a state investigation, and a better tomorrow. Camp Shane may have looked different, but it was still all about losing weight. And it was still targeting kids who wanted to change their bodies before heading back to school.
Pamela: Lily really struggled with her body starting in middle school,
Pamela: and she really wanted to start high school as a
Pamela: healthy young lady. It wasn't so much really about the
Pamela: weight at that time, but more about just being physically
Pamela: fit and being able to participate fully in the high
Pamela: school experience.
Kelsey Snelling: That's Pamela Artigis. Her daughter Lily, went to Camp Shane
Kelsey Snelling: in the summer of twenty nineteen. Lily has two chronic
Kelsey Snelling: congenital health conditions. One is a heart disease and the
Kelsey Snelling: other is a connective tissue disorder. So if she was
Kelsey Snelling: going to leave her home in Florida for several weeks,
Kelsey Snelling: Pamela needed to feel confident about where her daughter would be.
Kelsey Snelling: When Pamela started looking into summer camps, she took her
Kelsey Snelling: search seriously.
Pamela: So I started doing research on weight loss camps and physical fitness camps. I looked at heart camps, cardiac camps. One of the biggest issues for me is that they had medical staff on site all the time. And so, I felt more comfortable sending her to a medically supervised summer camp rather than just a summer camp.
Kelsey Snelling: Enter Camp Shane.
Pamela: When I found it on the website, it looked like
Pamela: a great fit for Lily.
Kelsey Snelling: When it came to short term weight loss, the camp succeeded as per usual. Lily came home 22 lbs lighter. But not because of fun activities and healthy eating habits.
Pamela: She put on a good front on the outside that it was a good experience. I have later found out that it was in 2019 the other kids in the camp had taught her how to purge, and really how to manipulate the scale on the day of the day before weigh-ins. So they, the kids were, um, forcing themselves to have diarrhea, so they would weigh less, they would, um, self dehydrate so they would weigh, so they would weigh less.
Kelsey Snelling: Despite the new location, the toxic habits of the Ferndale campus had found their way to Connecticut. And other irresponsible practices had carried over, too. But this time, what happened at Shane, didn’t stay contained. That’s because kids had more access to their phones. In previous years campers had to talk to their parents in front of censoring staff… But now counselors were more lax about the policy, sometimes giving kids their phones back entirely. Meaning campers could now talk to their parents in real-time. And parents took action: They submitted complaints to 2-1-1 Child Care, an organization that maintains current listings of licensed and license-exempt childcare programs in Connecticut.
Currie Engel: In 2019, there were 34 violations initially listed on 211childcare.org.
Kelsey Snelling: That's Currie Engle. Back then, she was a general assignment
Kelsey Snelling: news reporter. She often reported on stories with a focus
Kelsey Snelling: on health and wellness at the News Times, a daily
Kelsey Snelling: newspaper in dan Berry, Connecticut.
Currie Engel: And the concerns were with camper and staff records, first aid supplies, equipment and instructions, communicable disease control, emergency plans, water supply regulation, and medically trained staff.
Kelsey Snelling: The Office of Early Childhood, or OEC, had begun to look into the camp. It’s the OEC’s job to oversee youth summer camps in Connecticut and ensure that camps are licensed and operating appropriately before opening. During her reporting, Currie got a chance to ask David about these violations.
Currie Engel: And Ettenberg, when I spoke to him, said they had moved from New York and ran into issues with state regulation differences. When I asked him about these violations, he basically was saying that the state licensure differences was part of the reason why all of these violations had come up.
Kelsey Snelling: Licensing requirements do vary between states (and sometimes even between cities and counties.) For example, Connecticut summer camps require an inspection before an operating license can be granted, while New York summer camps just require two annual inspections by the health department. Regardless, it’s the camp owner's responsibility to be up to date on what they need to run their camp. So this sounds a lot like diverting blame to me. But David could only do that for so long. That year — 2019 — a child was in a serious accident while at camp. According to an affidavit, the child was in an inner tube that was being pulled along by a rope attached to a boat
Kelsey Snelling: The child’s family claimed the rope wasn’t secure and got tangled around the kid’s hands, severely injuring three of his fingers. One of them was fully severed and eventually had to be amputated. His family filed a lawsuit, and Camp Shane settled the case out of court. Then, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Camp Shane closed for the summer of 2020, but David found a way to weather the storm and re-open in 2021. Camp Shane moved locations yet again to the South Kent School, another boarding school property in Connecticut. Pamela’s daughter, Lily, had heard about camp reopening and asked her mom if she could go back. At that point, Pamela had only heard about the good parts of summer 2019, and nothing about Lily’s purging or the regulatory violations faced by camp, so she let Lily go back.
Pamela: Because, after camp, the weight would creep back on, and it became a, a cycle, if you will. And so I think every summer she was trying to, you know, self-correct and go back.
Kelsey Snelling: Lily wasn’t the only one itching to go to camp that summer. Coming off the heels of a very intense period of isolation, kids all over were eager to get out of the house and back among their peers. Camp Shane claimed to be more necessary than ever. Here’s how David Ettenberg described campers after the pandemic.
David Ettenberg: In all the 57 years I've been here, I've never seen kids in worse shape, mentally and in terms of their health.
Kelsey Snelling: After such a difficult time, parents were looking for ways
Kelsey Snelling: to help their kids bounce back.
Ramona: My name is Ramona Schwartz. I have a now 17-year-old son who wanted to go to a weight loss camp a few years ago when we had just moved to Asheville.
Kelsey Snelling: Ramona’s son Stellan was 14 years old that summer. When he was 6 years old, Stellan began to transition genders. Having a transgender child meant Ramona had to carefully consider before sending him just anywhere.
Ramona: And so I had called David the one who owns the camp and he had promised me that it was a really good fit. He said that there would be a nurse at the camp that would handle meds and testosterone.
Kelsey Snelling: Stellan looked forward to being with other kids in a fun, new place.
Stellan: I first heard about Camp Shane through my parents. They had originally found it and they showed it to me. And from my point it seemed like a good idea and I was totally on board. It wasn't a case where my parents were forcing me to do this. On the website, you know, they had kids looking happy and they also had photos of jet skis and water slides. And for the Connecticut location, it said that it had a lake and go-karts.
Kelsey Snelling: Always the allure of the go karts. Of course, the
Kelsey Snelling: promotional materials did not change to accurately reflect the differences
Kelsey Snelling: between Ferndale and Connecticut. Why would they?
Stellan: There were photos of kids in like full face helmets and dune buggies and you know, people riding on a banana boat in a lake. And I, I was ready to get a tan. I wanted to ride a banana boat. I wanted to dive into a lake.
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shane was a big deal for Stellin, who struggled
Kelsey Snelling: with body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.
Stellan: I thought Camp Shane, would, you know, help that? And
Stellan: I thought losing weight would also help me figure out
Stellan: who I was and maybe figure out who my gender
Stellan: identity was a little bit more.
Kelsey Snelling: Most Shaners had complicated relationships with their bodies, but it was even more intense for someone with gender identity insecurities. And after a secluded year of Covid quarantine, Stellan looked forward to what Camp Shane promised. But it was immediately clear that the summer of 2021 would be more reckless than fun. Here’s Lily’s mom, Pamela, again.
Pamela: A red flag should have been when signing up for
Pamela: the camp in twenty twenty one is that there was
Pamela: really no communication from them. I recall having to go
Pamela: and reach out to them several times, even all the
Pamela: way through May, asking did you receive my deposit? Is
Pamela: Lily good to go to camp? It was obvious looking
Pamela: back that the organization wasn't there. I mean, there was
Pamela: no organization, There was no preparation.
Kelsey Snelling: Even as summer rapidly approached, Shane offered no information to parents.
Pamela: Even through the end of May. We really didn't know
Pamela: whether or not she would be going to camp, even
Pamela: though they were taking our money. So our money was
Pamela: tied up in a camp that we really weren't sure
Pamela: was going to happen.
Kelsey Snelling: But then it did.
Kelsey Snelling: Camp opened on June 24th. After flying in from North Carolina, Stellan had a rocky start.
Stellan: When I first got there, I realized it was a little bit disorganized. Checking in was, was a little bit of a shitshow. And when I did get it checked in, they realized that they had lost the bags that I had, um, shipped over there beforehand. And so they showed me to my room and left me there while they went searching for my bags. And I ended up taking a nap on the bare mattress
Kelsey Snelling: Stellan couldn’t immediately call his parents to let them know how his first day was going because phones had already been confiscated. The counselors eventually found his bags under a tree. But unfortunately, things didn’t get much better from there.
Stellan: I'm very lucky in my journey to be able to pass as a cis male. A lot of people didn't know unless I specifically told them. But even if I didn't tell them, the people that they were having me room with in the cabin were very outrageously homophobic and sexist. And these are, I was the oldest there, I believe I was 14 and these kids were like 9, 10, 12. And just like saying the most vile things to the point where even me as the biggest and the oldest, I felt unsafe and I had to move in with a counselor.
Kelsey Snelling: His living situation improved, and Stellin made some friends, but
Kelsey Snelling: that was about the only thing that got better.
Stellan: I realized that a lot of the fun activities that they had advertised weren't there. A lot of the main activities that people were excited about weren't there. You know, like the lake, the go-karts, the jet skis. And I also realized that the number of counselors was slowly dwindling. Um, one of the first people to leave was the nutritionist, which I believe is one of the most important roles at a weight loss camp, and then a few other counselors just ended up disappearing.
Kelsey Snelling: Some of the counselors who stayed had their own reservations about how things were being run. But then there were the ones who stayed and didn’t seem to care about the campers or the mission of camp.
Stellan: There were counselors buying campers alcohol and vapes and junk food. And that's when I realized this is not the camp that I signed up for.
Kelsey Snelling: When Stellan realized how laissez-faire some of these counselors were, he asked one of them for his phone back.
Stellan: I got a Snapchat from one of my friends who also got her phone and she was like, hey, we're watching Wolf of Wall Street in so-and-so's room if you wanna come. And so why I came and one of the counselors had set up her laptop and people had put all the mattresses on the floor and we were listening to music and about to start the movie and people were passing around Oreos and Cheez-Its and vapes.
Kelsey Snelling: Stellan decided he needed to let an adult know what was going on. He called his mom, Ramona.
Ramona: It just sounded like Lord of the Flies, there just wasn't any supervision. He said, we're not doing anything all day now. We're just sitting here because there's not enough people to watch us.
Kelsey Snelling: From the sounds of it, Camp Shane had completely devolved into a college party for minors. It’s safe to say, Stellan was right. This was not the camp he’d signed up for. Not only was it objectively not fun, but it was dangerous, too. Because as it turns out, Camp Shane never got clearance to open that summer at all. And The Office of Early Childhood was once again looking into Camp Shane. Back in the newsroom, Currie Engel’s editor gave her an assignment: Currie was asked to verify that the violations about Camp Shane from 2019 were connected to the same camp the OEC was investigating in 2021. Currie conducted interviews and submitted FOIA requests, which culminated in a series of articles about Camp Shane and its misconduct. Here’s what she found:
Currie Engel: During a July 1st meeting in 2021, the agency actually realized that the camp had yet to receive its license for the summer.
Kelsey Snelling: That's despite the fact that Shane had already opened a
Kelsey Snelling: week prior.
Currie Engel: By July 2nd, the supervising nurse consultant of youth camps sent an email to Ettenberg. She asked Ettenberg to email her a statement saying he wouldn't operate the camp until he obtained a license. Um, she noted she left messages on his personal cell and on an alternate phone line. The licensing division director emailed her saying that if she didn't hear back by midday, she should just head out to check on the camp.
Kelsey Snelling: The nurse consultant arranged for a state investigator to go
Kelsey Snelling: to the camp that day.
Currie Engel: On that July 2nd visit the state investigator already had concern, a concerns about medical oversight and among other things specifically that the camp was not able to provide a CPR or nursing license documentation. And, um, the inspector also noted that one counselor was working as both first aid director and lifeguard.
Kelsey Snelling: Despite these concerns, the investigator left, quote, “knowing that the director, first aid director, and a camp physician agreement were in place.” Based on this report, the OEC granted Camp Shane a license. For a children’s weight loss camp, proper medical supervision is critical. Not to mention, Shane does advertise itself as a “medically supervised weight loss camp.” David did try to hire a doctor for that summer, but it didn’t seem to be a high priority.
Currie Engel: The doctor had told the OEC that they had been asked to serve as camp doctor 10 days before the start of camp, but had declined due to the fact that they had a family vacation scheduled. Um, the doctor assumed that the camp had found another physician, but that was not the case. And then the doctor agreed to help out until a replacement was found. Our reporting found that after an initial visit to the camp on June 30th, the doctor reported having, quote, “immediate concerns,” end quote, about the way medications were being administered. The doctor also said that he, quote, “recommended that the camp close on more than one occasion due to lack of safety.”
Kelsey Snelling: The lack of medical supervision affected Lily directly. Remember, she was attending camp with several complex medical conditions. And one particular day things got really scary.
Pamela: Lily went to camp on June 24th, and she flew up with her friend, and her friend's parents dropped her off at camp. That was on a Thursday. I received a call the following Monday or Tuesday from one of the camp counselors named Bella that told me that she had been forced to resign that day. And that before she left, she went into the office and quickly grabbed my name and telephone number to call me and let me know of an incident.
Kelsey Snelling: Bella wasn't just a counselor, she was actually the camp
Kelsey Snelling: director that summer. Well for a hot minute. She quit
Kelsey Snelling: within a few days of starting. Here's what Pamela remembers
Kelsey Snelling: from her talk with Bella and leader Lily.
Pamela: Lily was out on the tennis court playing tennis, and she told the physical fitness instructor that her heart was beating very fast and that she was under doctor's orders to take a rest and to hydrate if that happened. The physical fitness instructor told her that she was not allowed to stop exercising until she either threw up or passed out. And she required her to continue playing tennis and exercising outside until Lily physically couldn't do it anymore.
Kelsey Snelling: Bella spoke with Currie as well.
Currie Engel: So she told me that she was hired two days before arriving at the camp, and she told me, quote, “it was in disorder when she arrived.” And that quote, “there was no paperwork ready for opening.”
Kelsey Snelling: On July 6th, shortly after Bella left, she contacted the investigator who’d visited as part of the OEC inquiry.
Currie Engel: Bella included concerns about there not being appropriate staff, no guidance counselor, no paperwork about medical problems, no paperwork to the nutritionist regarding allergies and food restrictions, no certified medical staff on site, and no trained person for the behavior therapy program. The person who was supposedly trained in CBT did not appear to be trained in CBT.
Kelsey Snelling: Yet camp was shamelessly continuing to misrepresent the qualifications of their staff. After the tennis court incident, Lily called her mom.
Pamela: And Lily called me on Tuesday evening and said, “mom, come and get me outta here. You need to get me outta here. I don't feel safe.” And that phone conversation broke my heart.
Kelsey Snelling: By Thursday morning, Pamela was on a flight from Florida to Connecticut. She rented a car and pulled up to camp Thursday afternoon.
Pamela: Lily was packed and waiting for me, and I drove up, she and her friends put her camp stuff in the back of my car, and no one came out to talk to me. No one knew I took her. It really felt sad because the other kids were standing there looking at me. I'll never forget the look on the other kids’ faces. This is like, please get me out of here. This is gonna make me cry. And I didn't wanna leave him, but I had to.
Kelsey Snelling: Meanwhile, Stellan, who was still stuck at camp, depended on the remaining staff to care for him.
Stellan: This nurse, her name was Hannah.
Kelsey Snelling: Hannah, the quote-unquote, “camp nurse,” was also the camp’s only lifeguard.
Stellan: She was in charge of, you know, all the kids' medications and you know, they're ailments, of course, as a nurse. And I remember, since I am transgender, at that time I was doing one testosterone shot a week. And yes, I could have done it myself, but also I was young and not a registered nurse. And so it was required for her to do the shot, like for me. And so when I walked up to her to do my shot, she handed it to me and was like, “I'm not registered to, to give you a shot, you need to do it yourself.” And I'm like, “Hannah, I'm 14. Why am I doing your job?”
Kelsey Snelling: This was a turning point for Stellan. He decided he’d had enough and called his mom again.
Ramona: He said, “I need to come home.”
Kelsey Snelling: At first, Ramona wasn't sure what to believe. She thought Stellan might just be homesick, or maybe he was being a little dramatic. She didn’t yet realize how dire the situation had become.
Stellan: The camp had caused me to self harm. I feel like when I was there I was abandoned and I didn't really have a good support system because, you know, my family was so far away and so I turned to cutting to, you know, kind of alleviate that stress and no one really cared.
Kelsey Snelling: Despite the cuts being very visible on his forearms, nobody acknowledged them. Camp Shane had never been perfect in the past, but at least in Ferndale, there was always a community, a camaraderie. When I spoke to Stellan, I didn’t hear any of that. His experience of feeling abandoned and unsupported, despite being surrounded by others, shows a serious failure in the camp's duty of care. Stellan didn’t give his mom explicit details, but he did try to stress that things were serious.
Ramona: So he called a couple of times and he said, “I'm serious, mom, I'm not safe here. These kids are not safe. There's something going on.” So then I got on Facebook and I found a Camp Shane Facebook. And so then I posted, “Hey, does anyone know? Is something going on? My kid’s calling me, but I can't tell.” And then a couple of other parents were like, “no, our kids are calling too, something's going on.”
Kelsey Snelling: At this point, the word was out. Parents, in varying states of concern and confusion, began posting on the official Camp Shane Facebook page. From there, they formed a separate, private 2021 parent group. They compared stories and shared contact information for state officials and media outlets. The parents who could, pulled their kids from camp. And all this time, they’d heard nothing from David. The chaos came to a head on July 10th. As counselor numbers dwindled, the environment became more and more perilous. For one set of parents, their worst fears materialized.
Currie Engel: They got a call and the father described it as a horrific call. And a counselor at the camp was basically calling to let them know that their daughter had been injured and that she'd been taken to the hospital.
Kelsey Snelling: Currie spoke to multiple staff members and several parents, including the parents of this young girl.
Currie Engel: And the dad was actually a surgeon and so he'd asked the staff to send him a picture of his daughter's face. And what he told me was the injury looked like somebody who'd been hit with a pipe. I could tell she had a nasal fracture just by looking at the picture.
Kelsey Snelling: The terrible irony in this is that this family had already planned to pick up their daughter early because she’d called and told them she was unhappy. When the accident happened, the kids had been playing outside on one of the athletic fields with limited supervision. By the time one counselor heard a loud noise, disaster had already struck. An 8 year old girl had fallen and an athletic goalpost fell on top of her. The counselors called the Volunteer Fire Department, EMS services, and the girl’s parents. The young girl suffered a severe head injury that put her in critical condition. On the way to the nearest hospital, she became unresponsive and was rerouted to a nearby trauma center. Her father was terrified.
Currie Engel: He told me, “I was petrified, and it really takes a lot to get me nervous, but it was sheer terror. No parent should ever have to go through that.”
Kelsey Snelling: The 8-year old, thank God, eventually recovered from the accident. She was discharged, but faced lingering effects like fever and lethargy. Today she is healed and doing well. The day after the incident, all parents received an email from David. Here’s Stellan’s mom, Ramona.
Ramona: I never received a phone call from Camp Shane. I got an email that said the camp will be closed tomorrow, come and get your son. But we lived in North Carolina. I couldn't even get a flight to go get him.
Kelsey Snelling: Parents were given 48 hours to pick up their kids. Out-of-state parents scrambled to figure out how to get their child back home on such short notice. And even for parents who were in state, two days just wasn’t enough. Luckily for Stellan, he had an old babysitter, Rosemary, who lived in New York.
Ramona: So I called Rosemary, and Rosemary borrowed a car and drove to go get him. Rosemary said that she walked in and it was just a bunch of kids running around. She never once saw one adult. There were just medications rolling around on the ground.
Kelsey Snelling: The scene Ramona described was just the beginning. When we followed up with Rosemary about this experience, she said the image was seared into her mind. Half-naked kids running around. Furniture flipped on its head. Doors torn off the hinges. And a rug that was inexplicably soaking wet. The only other people Rosemary spoke to were the kids asking, “can you take me with you?” And, “do you have any food?
Ramona: She just walked in and grabbed him and walked out. Like no one stopped her. No one had Rosemary sign him out. I had to call the camp and I was like, Hey, I just left. They just never checked. They didn't know that I had taken my medication with me when I left. And so they didn't realize that this medication had gone missing.
Kelsey Snelling: After David sent parents that email, Camp Shane officially shut down on July 13th, 2021.
News clip: Right now at five: camp closed, parents left scrambling. The state is now investigating the sudden closure.
Kelsey Snelling: When local news got wind of what was going on at Shane, David blamed Covid and staffing shortages.
David Ettenberg: Absolutely nobody to hire.
News clip: Ettenburg says he decided to close because he couldn't keep staffing since, he says, no one wanted to stay on campus for camp Covid safety procedures.
Kelsey Snelling: As soon as the camp closed, the Office of Early Childhood and the Department of Children and Families launched a formal joint investigation. Here’s what they found.
Currie Engel: There was a witness list of at least 34 people, pages upon pages upon pages of interviews, and inspection notes. Some of the goings on included not having documented medical training for staff administering medication, um, not having proof of current lifeguard certifications, current physicals for campers, staff health forms, prescriber and parent authorization or self-administration of medication, and parent permissions for all medication at camp. And that's from the inspection log.
Kelsey Snelling: The inspection log was a report of what the state investigator found during visits.
Currie Engel: But also campers reported experiencing injuries including sprains, knee injuries, smashed toes, and serious sunburns. And so, I think this is really interesting, the investigation notes had 12 complaints filed against Camp Shane. And typically the department receives about 24 camp complaints per year. So that meant half of the complaints in an entire year were filed against Camp Shane.
Kelsey Snelling: For context, there are more than 200 summer camps in Connecticut. And as Currie said, assuming it was a typical year, Camp Shane could have been responsible for about 50% of the complaints. For years, campers and counselors took issue with the second rate equipment, the low-quality restricted food, and the dubious business strategies of the Ettenbergs. But now, the evidence was too damning for the OEC not to take action. They had no choice but to ask David to surrender his camp license.
Currie Engel: In the affidavit surrendering his license, Ettenberg denied all charges. But he did agree that if he tried to reinstate or obtain a new license from the agency in the future, it would mean basically that the allegations in the investigation, which included missing campers and falsified documents, would be deemed true.
Kelsey Snelling: This affidavit essentially makes it so that David can’t obtain a new camp license without facing intense scrutiny and investigation.
Currie Engel: And some of those allegations in the record also include campers walking around unsupervised at night and in lightning storms and who were encouraged to work out until they vomited, counselors leaving campers unsupervised to quote hangout and quote party in the lounge, a counselor who yelled at and threatened to fight a camper, falsified medical administration training documents presented to the state, inappropriate quote comments of a sexual nature by a male camper toward a female camper, and multiple reports of campers being bullied.
Speaker 3: Here's Lily's mom, Pamela. Again.
Pamela: Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie because these kids were pretty much locked in these dorms without access to contacting the outside world. And if it wasn't for the, you know, the few hidden cell phones and the few teenagers that were able to use their phones, I mean, some of these kids are young. They're eight, nine, ten years old, and they're completely unsupervised with prescription medicine laying all over the place. There was really nothing right about that year at all.
Kelsey Snelling: Meanwhile, David made it publicly known in an interview with
Kelsey Snelling: NBC Connecticut how the closure affected him personally.
David Ettenberg: We are giving all the people their money back, right, after that. And it’s a big hit for me, financially.
Kelsey Snelling: The effects of that summer lived on. Pamela’s daughter, Lily, returned home, but her time at camp seriously affected her mental and physical health.
Pamela: This experience affected Lily in a lot of different ways. But I've recently learned that it's affected her much more deeply than I realized. She's been in counseling ever since this experience, and she's been pretty withdrawn and has spent a lot of the time in her bedroom over the past couple of years. And, um, I learned last week from her counselor that she's been diagnosed with an eating disorder. And that based on the labs that we're doing and her cardiologist, whether or not she's gonna need to do inpatient stay or outpatient, because she used to make herself throw up and she can no longer hold food down on her own. So she's spontaneously vomiting and, um, it could have a fatal effect on her heart and her metabolic systems.
Kelsey Snelling: Purging isn’t something Lily did before camp. She learned it through other campers, who, like her, were trying to fulfill Camp Shane’s weight loss goals. Stellan also returned home with baggage. The dive his mental health had taken while at camp only got worse.
Stellan: I was really depressed, honestly. It was traumatic and it did have a big impact on the trajectory of my life back then.
Kelsey Snelling: Stellan spent the first few days back at home locked away in his bedroom. Those around him knew something was wrong, but they didn’t know the severity of it.
Stellan: My dad, you know, he, he didn't think that I should have been acting that way. And he thought that I was overreacting in a way. He just wasn't there. The people who weren't there just won't really understand how bad it was and how traumatizing it was, you know.
Kelsey Snelling: That final summer left scars that could stay with some of these campers forever. And as we all now know, it wasn’t just that one summer that was so problematic. It was what Camp Shane had been teaching and endorsing throughout its 52 years of operation. After decades of family squabbles, shady business moves, and unfulfilled promises, Camp Shane was done. Thanks to the parents, kids, and state agencies who fought to hold David and the camp accountable, Camp Shane closed its doors for the last time.
Speaker 3: So where do we sit now, in a modern, civilized, 2025 society? Well…Camp Shane is gone, but the world that built it remains. Sure, body inclusivity and fat acceptance have come a long way — we see it reflected in movies, on billboards, among influencers, in clothing options. But for a true pulse on the state of fat liberation, look no further than the comment section of Instagram. Turn on the radio and count how many ads you hear for GLP1s (like Ozempic or mounjaro). Ask your fat friends and family about navigating a physical world manufactured for thin people. And if you think blatant body-size discrimination is a thing of the past…
Tigress Osborn: There are also these things that are even more systemic
Kelsey Snelling: That’s Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.
Tigress Osborn: Things like wage disparity, things like housing discrimination, like what your landlord or other people in your building get to say about you and your body and what they think that means in terms of the, the, the use of the building. There's lots of evidence of employment discrimination in everything from, whether you get paid the same as your thin counterparts, even if you have the same or better qualifications to things like, uh do you even get past the first interview? You've done phone interviews and you've been doing great, then you show up at the office and all of a sudden something changes. Right?
Kelsey Snelling: The discrimination that Tigress is referring to happens all over the country. Well, except Michigan. It’s legal to discriminate based on body size in all states but Michigan. And while all of this feels completely backward and archaic — and I want to be definitive, it absolutely is — there is reason to be hopeful about where we could go. In the medical field, for example, some healthcare providers and patients are trying a different approach — one that doesn’t focus on weight interventions. Here’s Dr. Lisa Erlanger.
Dr. Erlanger: We're saying this doesn't resonate with what has worked for me and my patients. Sending a kid to fat camp from a medical perspective is a very intensive intervention. I think there's a rising interest in what are the harms of being so aggressive about body size? What stigma does that perpetuate and what could it look like to be more weight inclusive?
Kelsey Snelling: Some parents are leading their children to consciously take action against stigma and bias. Here’s Dr. Rachel Milner:
Dr. Milner: One of the things I've often thought about as a parent is that I cannot prevent my kids from being impacted by the culture. Right? Diet culture is everywhere. There's no way for me to prevent them being exposed to weight stigma or anti-fat bias. What I can do is give them the internal resources and compass to identify when they see weight stigma showing up. And I can make sure that our home is a place where their bodies will always be accepted and they'll never encounter body shame.
Kelsey Snelling: And here’s something we can all do in the name of equity and progress: we can check our own internal biases and learn how to be allies. Here’s Tigress again.
Tigress Osborn: You don't have to be fat yourself, um, or wait for the fat person to be the one who advocates for accessibility, for, for fat people. You can spend your money in places that are accommodating to fat people. If you just look around the world through a lens of, you know, who is not here and why are they not here? And include fat people in that lens, and then take steps towards what that, you know, like what it looks like to create a more inclusive and welcoming space, um, that doesn't take law change that, you know, that takes heart and mind change.
Kelsey Snelling: Being free of shame can open up a whole new world for all of us. One where we can live boldly and freely.
Tigress Osborn: When you have the audacity to just be in the world as who you are, um, that has ripple effects for people around you that you might not even be seeing. It is really empowering to, to see folks who look like you and who feel like you out in the world getting to live their best lives.
Kelsey Snelling: I can’t help but notice the stark difference between Tigress’ dream and Selma Ettenberg’s dream. Tigress imagines a world where kids feel good about themselves despite the bullies. Selma envisioned a world where kids could feed good because they got thin. Maybe, for her time, that’s the best she could do. For former die-hard Shaner, Carl Evans, Camp Shane was a place of profound personal growth, with a side helping of guilt.
Carl: The only way I can describe it is comparing it to what I've heard other people talk about when they had an abusive parent, that they still loved, die. Part of trying to, to make peace with Camp Shane was the fact that I felt complacent in the harm that was happening, even though me and a number of other counselors were actively defenders and protectors against things that could be harmful at Camp. The fact that we didn't blow a whistle and tear it all down, you know, means that Dave got to go on in 2010 and 11 and 12 and 13 and 14 and still open the door and the possibilities for, for every kid that found joy and happiness under the camp, they could still, there could have been others exposed to harm and hurt.
Kelsey Snelling: For Stacy Toth, a 90s Shaner, her feelings about camp are much less complex. She sees all the ways Camp Shane failed her.
Stacy: I think coming to a place of acceptance and realizing I can be healthy and I can love myself no matter what my body looks like, I can choose to be active without it being about making my body smaller. I can choose to nourish my body with the foods that it needs, micro and macronutrients without feeling like I need to count calories. All of those are concepts that are things that I did not learn at a camp that, in my opinion, could have benefited a lot of people. And what I really needed at that time was someone to ask me how I was feeling, for someone to say like, you know, what's going on and how can I help? And nobody asked those questions.
Kelsey Snelling: Mark Rothenberg, a camper from the 80s, wishes his parents had chosen differently.
Mark: We should be teaching kids how to find something they
Mark: love and that will give them self confidence that isn't
Mark: necessarily tied to their physical appearance. If my parents had
Mark: said to me, you can stay home all day long
Mark: provided you do two things. You spend an hour engaged
Mark: in any physical activity of your choice. You could spend
Mark: an hour in the pool. You could take a walk
Mark: for an hour, and you read a book or you
Mark: write a story for an hour. That would have been
Mark: my dream summer. My parents had dropped me off at
Mark: the public library, that would have been my dream summer.
Mark: If they were hell bent on putting me in a camp,
Mark: a camp on learning how to make computer games, or
Mark: a creative writing camp that would have been my dream summer.
Mark: There were a million things my parents could have done
Mark: without frankly spending a whole lot of money that would have,
Mark: in the long term, done far more for me than
Mark: sending me away to lose thirty five pounds that I
Mark: would inevitably gain back, and those pounds brought a whole
Mark: bunch of their friends with them for me.
Kelsey Snelling: For me, I empathize with Shaners who grieve the loss of what once felt like home. But I also believe there are few things more criminal than to damage someone's relationship with their own body. And in that, Shane certainly played a part.
Dr. Erlanger: If we're gonna do that level of intervention, I think ethically we should be very sure that what we're trying to treat, what we're trying to change is going to be a medical problem for that person. That our intervention will have long lasting medical benefits and that it won't have short or long term negative outcomes that outweigh those benefits. And fat camp just doesn't meet any of those criteria.
Kelsey Snelling: We can make this world better, more navigable, and more equitable. We can stop judging peoples’ health by their size. We can disentangle our moral judgments from someone’s physical appearance. We can be conscious that our expectations of beauty and desirability are influenced by society, and are arbitrary and ever-changing. We can accept that body size is neutral, that dieting does not work, and that fat bias has no place in a civilized society. Most importantly, we can create spaces for kids where they feel safe, accepted and loved for who they are, instead of what they look like. And those safe spaces shouldn't just be in the wooded hills of Ferndale, NY; they should be everywhere. This is Camp Shame.
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shame is a production of iHeartPodcasts. I’m your host, Kelsey Snelling.
Kelsey Snelling: Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Luci Jones and Alyia Yates Grau. Our Editor is Courtenay Hameister with additional Editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me, Kelsey Snelling. For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett. Fact checking done by Madeline Goore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Sean Petell. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @CampShame – that's with an M!-- If you or anyone you know went to Camp Shane reach out with your camp stories