Speaker 1: Campell Annawaki is a production of I Heart Radio. The
Speaker 1: views and opinions express in 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, listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: The Girls campus was set back, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: a mile and a half along a very winding gravel road.
Speaker 1: When you pulled into North campus, the first building that
Speaker 1: you saw was the lodge. Off to the right and
Speaker 1: straight ahead was a bell tower, and then a stone
Speaker 1: path with steps leading up to the administration building and
Speaker 1: the clinic across the way, and what was called the
Speaker 1: dorm behind the nick, which originally was only for v
Speaker 1: I p S coming to stay on campus for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And that was it. That was literally all we had.
Speaker 1: I believe that there were some trailers kind of tucked
Speaker 1: away where more of the administration maybe clerical offices were,
Speaker 1: but it was very primitive. Everything was painted in what
Speaker 1: they called an awake beige, and it's very eerie to
Speaker 1: find out later that these colors and the design of
Speaker 1: the buildings, with the arches in the doorways and the
Speaker 1: tile on the wrap round port was reflective of Mexico.
Speaker 1: I was admitted to an Awake April eleven, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: and I terminated May thirty one, nineteen and I was
Speaker 1: one thirty eight c. This is Sandy. She's as survivor
Speaker 1: of Annawaki. By the late nineteen seventies, Annawaki had expanded
Speaker 1: its reach into Florida and was now annually taking trips
Speaker 1: into other countries, but there were still one demographic the
Speaker 1: Annawaki Foundation was yet to reach, troubled female youth. Louis Petter,
Speaker 1: once again using his skill as a community outreach, now
Speaker 1: with a reputed treatment center with a history of working
Speaker 1: with the state, opened up the Annawaki North Campus in Rockmar,
Speaker 1: Georgia in nineteen seventy nine. In a letter to the
Speaker 1: John Below Campbell Foundation, a Christian grant organization, Louis Petter
Speaker 1: lays his plans for the new facility, quote the girls
Speaker 1: program will be located on three acres of land outside
Speaker 1: of Yorkville in Polk County. Anna Waki has been very
Speaker 1: fortunate in having one of its very good friends provide
Speaker 1: a financial loan to secure the land at a purchase
Speaker 1: price of one d and thirty thousand dollars. By the
Speaker 1: time Sandy was admitted, the program had already had over
Speaker 1: one hundred patients. Sandy remembers the event that led to
Speaker 1: her admittance. I was dating a boy that was a
Speaker 1: little bit older than myself, and I told him at
Speaker 1: that point that I wanted to run away from home,
Speaker 1: so we made plans to do that, and I actually
Speaker 1: was a runaway for about three weeks and turned myself
Speaker 1: in finally, and I actually told the police it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be put in foster care because I was
Speaker 1: so unhappy with my home life. And my parents showed
Speaker 1: up to take me home, and they lied to me
Speaker 1: and told me that those arrangements couldn't be made until
Speaker 1: the following week. And so I got home, and about
Speaker 1: an hour after I got home, they sat me down
Speaker 1: and told me that they were going to take me
Speaker 1: somewhere for evaluation, and they literally bodily threw me in
Speaker 1: the car and they drove me straight there. I went
Speaker 1: through a battery of testing, at which point at the
Speaker 1: end of this they told me they were going to
Speaker 1: admit me, and I became hysterical and ran to my
Speaker 1: mother in the lobby and fell to my knees and
Speaker 1: begged her, crying, please don't leave me here, please, you know,
Speaker 1: I promise I'll be good. And she had some tears
Speaker 1: running down her cheeks, but without a word, she just
Speaker 1: turned away and walked away and left me. So that
Speaker 1: was how I was told. There was no warning at all.
Speaker 1: It was devastating. The physical labor was forced upon the
Speaker 1: girls at the rock Mark campus, just as it was
Speaker 1: the boys in Douglasville and Carabelle. A new campus had
Speaker 1: to be built the rest of our day. After breakfast,
Speaker 1: we would work from probably eight thirty or nine until
Speaker 1: eleven thirty, I believe, and we did various projects, and
Speaker 1: all of them were very physical. Sometimes we would work
Speaker 1: on lance aping projects, working with heavy wheelbarrows, rakes, shovels,
Speaker 1: digging holes post hole diggers. The hardest project that I
Speaker 1: remember doing my first summer, we were building a campsite
Speaker 1: at the top of a very high ridge. We were
Speaker 1: hauling two by four's and a frames and shingles and
Speaker 1: bags of mortar and cement. So at age fifteen, they
Speaker 1: would have us bend over and they would put a
Speaker 1: bag of mortar on our back, which weighed forty six
Speaker 1: pounds or a bag of cement on our back which
Speaker 1: weighed four pounds, and we were to hold and carry
Speaker 1: that bag of mortar or cement bent over up a
Speaker 1: mountain in order to make the footings for the cabins.
Speaker 1: The girls in my particular group were fourteen and fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, maybe sixteen years old, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how hard it must have been for the girls that
Speaker 1: were twelve and thirteen. And this was the middle of
Speaker 1: the summer, in a terrible heat wave, and even though
Speaker 1: we were in the mountains, it was very, very hot
Speaker 1: temperatures well into the nineties. Sometimes up to a hundred
Speaker 1: girls were getting heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and they
Speaker 1: would discourage us from sitting down and taking a break
Speaker 1: and drinking water. They would give us very very short
Speaker 1: breaks we were allowed to sit down and stop working.
Speaker 1: This type of grueling forced labor would lead to a
Speaker 1: number of health issues for Sandy as well as others.
Speaker 1: All of the physical labor that I did, and they
Speaker 1: kept me in Takkada for fifteen months, so I was
Speaker 1: in a work group longer than most girls were, and
Speaker 1: shortly after getting out of an Awaki, I developed back problems.
Speaker 1: Very very young in my twenties, and I was actually
Speaker 1: diagnosed with degenerative di disease when I was thirty one
Speaker 1: years old, which they told me was very young to
Speaker 1: have that condition. Already, my spine has literally disintegrated to
Speaker 1: the point where I am now fifty two years old
Speaker 1: and I am almost bedridden. I have severe spinal stenosis,
Speaker 1: which is a narrowing of the spinal canal that protects
Speaker 1: and houses the nerves. I have spinal stenosis, severe spinal
Speaker 1: stenosis in my neck and my lumbar area, and it
Speaker 1: is excruciatingly painful and the only option that I have
Speaker 1: is major surgery. I contracted a very rare neurological condition
Speaker 1: called complex regional pain syndrome acronym CRPS when I was
Speaker 1: in my early forties. It is an extremely rare condition
Speaker 1: that is a disorder of the sympathetic and parasympathetic set
Speaker 1: parts of the nervous system, and it results in my
Speaker 1: brain constantly sending pain signals to various parts of my
Speaker 1: body believing that there is an injury there so there
Speaker 1: is subsequent redness and swelling and pain where there is
Speaker 1: no injury. And there are many of us from North
Speaker 1: campus that have contracted a lot of rare diseases. Many
Speaker 1: of us are already deceased, and we're only in our
Speaker 1: early to mid to late fifties m M. Over the
Speaker 1: past several weeks we have received the 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 Packer. He had no answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Involved having in this situation paid a little could be
Speaker 1: such a district way, and to do absolutely the contrary
Speaker 1: of what they should have done. I'm disturbed little the
Speaker 1: fact of something. It gets still one on it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Stein and this is Camp hell in a Waki.
Speaker 1: I think they opened the campus in January of seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and I came in August. My name is Kelly Lewis,
Speaker 1: and at the time I had a laundry number, and
Speaker 1: that laundry number was thirty three F I was the
Speaker 1: thirty third girl. My last name then was Fisher. Kelly
Speaker 1: says at that point the girls would receive two laundry numbers,
Speaker 1: one to show your number from the rock Mart campus,
Speaker 1: and the second an overall number from the boys and
Speaker 1: girls combined. The first number was the number of girls,
Speaker 1: so I was the thirty third female. Then it was
Speaker 1: always your last name initial, and then the number of
Speaker 1: persons who had come through the door at Anawaki. So
Speaker 1: when I came, I was the nine hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five person to come. I attended from A D to
Speaker 1: eighty three, and I was fifteen to eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I left the day after my eighteenth birthday. Kelly says
Speaker 1: that Annawak's female campus was also receiving patients from wards
Speaker 1: of the state or through the juvenile court system, as
Speaker 1: in her case. I was sent to Annawaki because I
Speaker 1: had a long history of behavior issues. I had been
Speaker 1: placed in foster care and group homes and even did
Speaker 1: time in a y d C. And they had told
Speaker 1: me that I would be sentenced to due time at
Speaker 1: the Makin y d C, which was the girl's y
Speaker 1: d C. It's the Making Youth Detention Center, and someone
Speaker 1: in the court took a liking to me and found
Speaker 1: annawaky for me and said uh in court one day
Speaker 1: that they would like to consider that if my parents
Speaker 1: insurance would cover it. I was a ward of the
Speaker 1: state at that point, which meant the state had custody
Speaker 1: of me, but they required my parents to continue my insurance.
Speaker 1: Both my parents were truck drivers for the same company
Speaker 1: and they drove eight two wheelers. They had good insurance.
Speaker 1: We had Blue Cross Blue Shield and it covered most
Speaker 1: of my stay there until my parents lost their employment.
Speaker 1: A week's fees for enrollment had increased exponentially since being
Speaker 1: accredited as a medical hospital. Kelly's family would soon see
Speaker 1: the result of not being able to keep up with
Speaker 1: these payments. As I was looking through my records, I
Speaker 1: noticed that there were letters about how much in arrears
Speaker 1: my parents were and paying their part, and it was
Speaker 1: decided that I would work and did work details at
Speaker 1: Aniwiki just like everyone else. But on Sunday, everyone else
Speaker 1: was off quote unquote and they would not have to work,
Speaker 1: but I had to go and work in the kitchen
Speaker 1: to pay the arrears on my parents account. So I
Speaker 1: worked my way through reform school. I guess we laid
Speaker 1: brick and block until our hands bled. We carried brick
Speaker 1: and block on our backs and shingles on our shoulders,
Speaker 1: and we would mix cement on the road and then
Speaker 1: we would fill wheelbarrows full of it and push them
Speaker 1: a mile up the side of a mountain. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were girls. I was five ft tall and weighed
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight pounds, and I was probably pushing
Speaker 1: my weight or more in that wheel barrel. The mortar
Speaker 1: bags weighed ninety odd pounds, and we would put them
Speaker 1: on our shoulders or on our backs, and bundles of shingles.
Speaker 1: I was famous for four bundles of shingles up the
Speaker 1: side of a mountain. I was very strong. I'm low
Speaker 1: to the ground. I have torque. I was a mule
Speaker 1: for them. I'm a physical person, so I was always
Speaker 1: focused on working, and I felt like we just needed
Speaker 1: to get done whatever we needed to get done, no
Speaker 1: matter what the costs to our bodies. I saw lots
Speaker 1: of bloody and blistered hands where we would have to
Speaker 1: dig footings for our cabins, and we did those with
Speaker 1: shovels and picks and maddox, and uh, it was hard work.
Speaker 1: Especially in the side of a mountain. Rock marked is
Speaker 1: called rock mart for a reason. The dirt is full
Speaker 1: of rocks and we would have to dig them out,
Speaker 1: and we also dug out houses, which had to be
Speaker 1: eighteen feet deep. We would climb into these holes and
Speaker 1: with an army shovel and pick and maddox and phillip
Speaker 1: buckets and send them up while we dug these holes.
Speaker 1: I loved that part. I loved being inside the earth digging.
Speaker 1: I loved, you know, the smell of it, in the
Speaker 1: closeness to you know, nature. I really did enjoy that.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the work was very hard and
Speaker 1: and very hard on on bodies, on hands, and the
Speaker 1: focus during those first years was on building the campsite,
Speaker 1: which I look back now, we we built an empire
Speaker 1: for a pedophile. That's a very difficult thing to to
Speaker 1: think about, but that's what we did. He made millions
Speaker 1: of dollars off what we needed to house more people
Speaker 1: so that he could pull in more money. Kelly too,
Speaker 1: would suffer great health issues due to the backbreaking labor
Speaker 1: from her time in Anawiki. This seems to be a
Speaker 1: constant from every survivor who attended the Rock mart campus
Speaker 1: I spoke with. As I look through my records time
Speaker 1: after time after time, I see Kelly was in the
Speaker 1: clinic being treated for back pain. And I have struggled
Speaker 1: with back pain in my entire life. I've not had
Speaker 1: surgery for it. Um. They wanted to do surgery on
Speaker 1: my back since I was twenty seven, and I've refused
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to run the risk involved. But
Speaker 1: I've I've seen a chiropractor and many doctors and taking
Speaker 1: medications all for back pain my my entire life. Here's Terry.
Speaker 1: She attended in a Waki during the same time as Kelly.
Speaker 1: She remembers the physical labor and how it has affected her.
Speaker 1: Still as I sit here now, my back still hurts.
Speaker 1: I think I've had a backgate since I was fourteen
Speaker 1: years old because we literally would fill wheelbarrels with huge
Speaker 1: cender blocks and bricks and we would have to haul
Speaker 1: on these hills out in the woods to the sites
Speaker 1: where we were building buildings and so um it is
Speaker 1: very very hard. The other thing that was really painful physically,
Speaker 1: I remember we had to carry creosotes, these huge I
Speaker 1: guess like what telephone poles are made out of, and
Speaker 1: it would be like two of us up on our
Speaker 1: shoulders going up these hills. It was like a black
Speaker 1: tar something that would yeah rub off on our necks
Speaker 1: and our shoulders. We would get burns and blisters. All
Speaker 1: they would do is take us to a clinic, but
Speaker 1: basically they would just wipe you off and put a
Speaker 1: band aid on you, and you go right back out
Speaker 1: to work. Even when you were sick, like in the wintertime.
Speaker 1: You know, imagine having a bad cold and having to
Speaker 1: work outside in the pouring, freezing rain. It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: We had to work in all conditions, especially living in tepee's.
Speaker 1: When it would rain in the wintertime, the rain would
Speaker 1: run down the teepee poles and our beds are cuts
Speaker 1: were up against the poles and so it would literally
Speaker 1: just so the bottom of our sleeping bags. And there
Speaker 1: were times we would wake up with like a block
Speaker 1: of ice at the bottom of our sleeping bag from
Speaker 1: the rain and when it froze. Talk about not being
Speaker 1: able to warm your feet, it was. It was brutal.
Speaker 1: My back and my neck will never be the same ever.
Speaker 1: Here's Sheryld, another survivor of In a Weeki's North Campus
Speaker 1: in Rock Mart some of us were really tiny girls.
Speaker 1: I know when I went there, I probably weighed hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. I just like that. We were physically abused
Speaker 1: on the sense that we were having to do some
Speaker 1: things that you know, eighteen year old, strapping young boys do,
Speaker 1: and we were some of us were eleven, twelve years old,
Speaker 1: you know, even sixteen, we were fully grown and developed.
Speaker 1: We would have to carry you know, five gallon full
Speaker 1: water jugs up the side of the mountain to get
Speaker 1: to the campsites. I remember carrying almost a hundred pound
Speaker 1: bags of cement on our backs. I remember we'd have
Speaker 1: to bend, you know, bend forward, and people would put
Speaker 1: the cements on our back, on our the bags of
Speaker 1: the dry cement on our backs. We would have to
Speaker 1: clear trees, and I mean big trees. We would have
Speaker 1: to haul the big logs to clear ways for campsites,
Speaker 1: retention ponds, stuff like that. I got there after the
Speaker 1: building of most of the campsites were completed for the women.
Speaker 1: I stayed in a frame tent for the first my
Speaker 1: first group, and then the second group. I was in
Speaker 1: a cabin which was a lot nicer, but we still
Speaker 1: used lanterns it was freezing. It was freezing in those
Speaker 1: storage mountains. We were basically helping to develop land for them.
Speaker 1: We were free labor. I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: when we were there, we wanted to just get there
Speaker 1: and get out, and we pretty much did whatever they
Speaker 1: told us. In comparison to in a week these other
Speaker 1: two campuses in Douglasville and Carabell. The women's campus does
Speaker 1: have a lot of similarities, forced labor for hours on end,
Speaker 1: resulting in injuries, using this labor to build out the campus,
Speaker 1: denying education to the miners who did said work. But
Speaker 1: with these similarities, the mentality of the campus seemed to
Speaker 1: be a little different. Often, the boys campuses would be
Speaker 1: described as a Lord of the Flies type situation where
Speaker 1: only the strong survive and the boys would often punish
Speaker 1: and regulate each other. While this may have not been
Speaker 1: the case of the girls campus, the dynamic between counselors
Speaker 1: and patients was largely the same. We were very affectionate
Speaker 1: with one another. We were encouraged to hug, we were
Speaker 1: encouraged to stroke each other's hair. I remember sitting and
Speaker 1: laying my head in someone's lap and having them stroke
Speaker 1: my hair and feeling very full of love and affection
Speaker 1: for this person. It wasn't sexual. We were encouraged to
Speaker 1: be affectionate with each other. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was something that the staff enjoyed to see or
Speaker 1: if it was something that they encouraged to build a
Speaker 1: family type structure. It's confusing because I think they mask
Speaker 1: it with the fact that they were trying to build
Speaker 1: family type structures within our groups, but it ended up
Speaker 1: being we were teenagers and there were hormones everywhere, and
Speaker 1: it ended up a lot of times being interactive. The
Speaker 1: mentality it's hard to explain because nobody wanted to be there.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really a good atmosphere. It was depressing having
Speaker 1: to work like that. It felt like jail or something,
Speaker 1: and everybody just wanted to get as many brownie points
Speaker 1: as they could and do whatever they could to get out.
Speaker 1: That was the main goal was just follow the rules,
Speaker 1: do everything they say, and do everything you can to
Speaker 1: stay on the group leaders good side and the counselors
Speaker 1: and um, you know, and hopefully get out. There was
Speaker 1: one time when we were having like a group meeting.
Speaker 1: We would have you know, group meetings in the evenings
Speaker 1: to talk about our day and feelings and how people
Speaker 1: got along and different situations that might have come up.
Speaker 1: And I can remember a lot of the group meetings
Speaker 1: started turning into the counselors confronting girls about not being opened,
Speaker 1: like physically, like they have a wall up and you
Speaker 1: need to let that wall down. And they did different exercises,
Speaker 1: like they made one girl lay on the ground and
Speaker 1: everybody had to like rubber and massager until she would
Speaker 1: feel comfortable. And that felt very uncomfortable. And one girl
Speaker 1: in particular, I mean was crying. I I felt like
Speaker 1: being forced to have to rub her and touch her.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was assaulting her. But you do
Speaker 1: what you're told. You know, you don't want to go
Speaker 1: against the group leader. I don't want to lose any
Speaker 1: brownie points. So Terry remembers one particular trip to Cumberland
Speaker 1: Island near Savannah, Georgia. It is here where she was
Speaker 1: informed that an impromptu ceremony was held between a counselor
Speaker 1: and patient. The group I was in we went on
Speaker 1: a trip to Cumberland Island. It's hard to remember how
Speaker 1: long we were there. I want to say at least
Speaker 1: ten days. It felt like two weeks. It was a
Speaker 1: long time, and we literally camped out on this island
Speaker 1: and that was I was in the group where my
Speaker 1: two group leaders had a relationship with each other, and
Speaker 1: so they were much more affectionate on this trip. We
Speaker 1: would see him kiss, we could hear him, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess, having sex in their tent. And then we
Speaker 1: started a couple of girls, one of my best friends
Speaker 1: out there. We noticed another girl was getting really close
Speaker 1: with one of the group leaders, and she shared with
Speaker 1: us that she had a marriage ceremony out on the
Speaker 1: beach and that they were a couple. And I was
Speaker 1: just so surprised. I didn't really understand, but I knew
Speaker 1: it probably wasn't right. I don't know, and I kind
Speaker 1: of felt sorry for my friend who um was in
Speaker 1: the relationship, because I think she was really naive. I
Speaker 1: don't know it changed her, but it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: in a good way. Here's Sandy again. She says that
Speaker 1: at the rock Mark campus, counselors and patients alike tended
Speaker 1: to be physical with each other in normal day to
Speaker 1: day activities. She says this could be very confusing for
Speaker 1: a young child at the time. Allegedly, the group itself
Speaker 1: was to represent the family that we don't have anymore.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of physical touch that was
Speaker 1: encouraged by the staff. There, girls who were constantly hugging,
Speaker 1: holding hands, sitting in between each other's legs during group psychotherapy,
Speaker 1: things that looking back on, it was so inappropriate. It
Speaker 1: was almost like they were pushing a certain you know,
Speaker 1: same sex culture, and yet forbidding it to happen at
Speaker 1: the same time. I am just appalled when I looked
Speaker 1: back and realized how incredibly inappropriate that was, and that
Speaker 1: that was encouraged. If a girl tried to sit by herself,
Speaker 1: she would have been called out for doing that by
Speaker 1: the group or by the group leaders as trying to
Speaker 1: be isolating, you see. So that was very uncomfortable to
Speaker 1: think about. And I was fourteen. I was kind of
Speaker 1: naive for my age, and so I really didn't learn
Speaker 1: what lesbian was till I got to an awake and
Speaker 1: saw how some of the girls had intimate relationships and counselors.
Speaker 1: A couple of my group leaders were intimate with each other,
Speaker 1: and I understood then that they were like a couple,
Speaker 1: and so that's kind of how I learned about what
Speaker 1: lesbians were. They were to hold hands, they would kiss,
Speaker 1: they would sleep in the same tp or cabin, depending
Speaker 1: on what group I was in, because I went through
Speaker 1: different groups that it was. It was a pretty common
Speaker 1: thing out there. I mean, it happened frequently. It didn't
Speaker 1: take long once a group was formed and you had
Speaker 1: your counselors. I mean, it was just a matter of
Speaker 1: time before people started building different relationships. I started noticing,
Speaker 1: like a counselor would favor a certain girl and they
Speaker 1: would spend a lot of time together, and and then
Speaker 1: it would, you know, be that they would sleep in
Speaker 1: the same tent or cabin together, and you know, and
Speaker 1: then everybody knows that something's going on. Eventually we figure out, okay,
Speaker 1: they must be having a relationship. And it happened a
Speaker 1: lot different counselors with different girls. I just happened to
Speaker 1: be in a group where both of our counselors fell
Speaker 1: in love with each other, but they were also very
Speaker 1: flirty with us as patients. Here Survivor Cheryl again. She
Speaker 1: also says that close relationships were encouraged between the patients
Speaker 1: and group leaders. This encouragement would soon lead to the
Speaker 1: same type of sexual abuse seen on the other Nawaki campuses.
Speaker 1: I feel like that it was encouraged for us to
Speaker 1: have close relationships with both our peers and our group leaders,
Speaker 1: and specifically me, I had a problem with some of
Speaker 1: of the people, some of the group leaders. I tend
Speaker 1: to kind of shy away from the people that were
Speaker 1: really loud, really boisterous, even though I was kind of
Speaker 1: loud and boisterous too. The group leaders just kind of
Speaker 1: scared me. I remember feeling kind of at their mercy.
Speaker 1: Every night if we pissed them off. They had these
Speaker 1: sticky notes that they would write about us every night
Speaker 1: by lantern. They would write them in their cabin or
Speaker 1: the tent or whatever. They basically would just write little
Speaker 1: excerpts about how we were that day, what our attitude
Speaker 1: was like, what group was like, whatever. One night, I
Speaker 1: was sleeping in my cabin and I woke up and
Speaker 1: one of the group leaders was down between my legs.
Speaker 1: I woke up and I remember she put her hand
Speaker 1: over my mouth and told me to don't say a word.
Speaker 1: And basically, as it went on, I if I had
Speaker 1: said anything, I was told that. I mean, for once
Speaker 1: she would get in trouble, she would have to leave,
Speaker 1: and then Basically my life would be screwed because I
Speaker 1: would get things written about me that would make me
Speaker 1: have to stay longer because I thought I was there
Speaker 1: as you know, had to be there. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that I could have walked when I was eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there as a ward of the state or
Speaker 1: through d CFS or whatever. So that's kind of how
Speaker 1: that started. It didn't go on for a really long
Speaker 1: period of time, but there was, you know, jealousy on
Speaker 1: her part. She had a hard time. I was close
Speaker 1: to another group leader that was you never did anything inappropriate,
Speaker 1: and I think she had a hard time with that.
Speaker 1: I think she was just scared me my being close
Speaker 1: with the other group leader, that I was going to
Speaker 1: wrap her out. And I was scared out of my
Speaker 1: mind to wrap her out. There was no way that
Speaker 1: I was going to stay there, not one day longer
Speaker 1: than I had to. So, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: she kind of had me over a barrel, so to speak.
Speaker 1: Here's Jill. She was another victim of the abuse going
Speaker 1: on at Rock Mart. She says that this type of
Speaker 1: abuse was known among counselors, even shared when it first began.
Speaker 1: I was in the Nichia group, and we were building
Speaker 1: our camp site, so we would all sleep in this
Speaker 1: one tent that the floor was actually done in the
Speaker 1: rest of the camp site wasn't complete. We would all
Speaker 1: pile up in this one place on the tongue and
Speaker 1: group floors that we had put in. And there was
Speaker 1: this one group leader that kept coming onto me and um,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what. I hate to say this,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what gay was at that point.
Speaker 1: I was so young and wild and in my own
Speaker 1: little element. I wasn't even sure what homosexuality was back then.
Speaker 1: To tell you, it's roof so she would she molested me.
Speaker 1: After that incident, I got moved to another group. It
Speaker 1: was like they were passing me around. There was another
Speaker 1: group with another group leader that molested me. Also. I
Speaker 1: did not try to report it. I didn't understand it.
Speaker 1: It made my life easier, so I didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: I would like the favorite. I couldn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: Kites of Things survivor Kelly Lewis says that while the
Speaker 1: sexual abuse was happening between ouncers and patients, it was
Speaker 1: being presented in a consensual way to other patients. We
Speaker 1: were convinced by the staff there that anything that had
Speaker 1: happened sexually was consensual, and that the girls and the
Speaker 1: group leaders had relationships. And what I know now as
Speaker 1: an adult is that they were victims. They weren't part
Speaker 1: of the of the relationship. It wasn't a relationship. It
Speaker 1: was an authority figure, it was an adult, and it
Speaker 1: was a child who was held captive. And in that situation,
Speaker 1: your choice is gone. You don't have the choice to
Speaker 1: say no, I don't want to be doing us. You
Speaker 1: just don't. I was in a group with one student
Speaker 1: who was transferred to another group because it was discovered
Speaker 1: that she had feelings for the group leader. Well, it
Speaker 1: never came out that they had a sexual relationship until
Speaker 1: later when that same group leader was confronted by me
Speaker 1: for having a relationship with another student. Kelly shared a
Speaker 1: group with Cheryl while her abuse was taking place. She
Speaker 1: recalls an incident during a group meeting where she chose
Speaker 1: to speak up about what she thought was happening. While
Speaker 1: at the time she believed this to be a consensual relationship,
Speaker 1: she sees today that in actuality, it was a child
Speaker 1: being taken advantage of the situation happened over the course
Speaker 1: of several days where a group leader and one of
Speaker 1: the students kept having snippy little arguments, and there was
Speaker 1: a level of frustration. And I ended up, after probably
Speaker 1: the second or third day of that tension going on,
Speaker 1: we were behind schedule, and I was a stickler for
Speaker 1: being on schedule, and it was because of this argument
Speaker 1: that they were continuing to have. So I ended up
Speaker 1: calling a group meeting in the middle of a trail
Speaker 1: in the woods, and I said, everybody's circle up. I
Speaker 1: need to get this, I need to say something. I
Speaker 1: need to get this off my chest right now. And
Speaker 1: I said to this student and to this group leader,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what's going on between the two
Speaker 1: of you, but all of this lover's quarrels going on
Speaker 1: are putting us behind schedule, and it needs to end.
Speaker 1: It needs to stop. Cheryl remembers Kelly speaking up that
Speaker 1: day when she called a group meeting. Everything came to
Speaker 1: a head with my situation with a group leader. Went
Speaker 1: a fellow group member stopped us on the trail. I
Speaker 1: specifically remember her saying basically, what the hell is going
Speaker 1: on with you two? You need to knock it off,
Speaker 1: and talking with her. She remembers looking at it as
Speaker 1: a lover's quarrel, a lover lovers spat and back. Then
Speaker 1: basically she stopped us. Things got confronted, the counselor had
Speaker 1: to leave, and my group basically was mad at me.
Speaker 1: They were told that it was a consensual relationship, and
Speaker 1: it was not a consensual relationship by any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form. I do know that there were several other
Speaker 1: girls in the same situation as me in the sense
Speaker 1: that they had group leaders. Some of them the same,
Speaker 1: some of them are different, different group leaders. I have
Speaker 1: actually been reached out to by some group members, some
Speaker 1: former group members that have told me they remember that
Speaker 1: night having a group meeting and wishing that they could
Speaker 1: just scream out and say this is happening to me too,
Speaker 1: and they have a hard time sleeping at night knowing
Speaker 1: they feel like that they could have done something to
Speaker 1: help me or to help themselves, but they were terrified
Speaker 1: of that and so nobody really said anything. The group
Speaker 1: was basically presented that I was having a relationship with
Speaker 1: the group leader and because of me that she had
Speaker 1: to leave. Kelly says that while the punishment of the
Speaker 1: counselor was not known Cheryl as a victim endured the
Speaker 1: brunt of many restrictions and punishments at Anna Waki for
Speaker 1: her involvement. That first night, actually we thought she might
Speaker 1: run away, so we all slept in one giant room.
Speaker 1: There was a building. There was just one big room
Speaker 1: for the you know, the evaluation observation unit, and we
Speaker 1: slept in that room that night with her in the center,
Speaker 1: and we circled her to keep her from running away.
Speaker 1: I think I remember her being on what we called
Speaker 1: three foot We also called it belt looping because you
Speaker 1: had to hold on to someone else's belt loop, you know,
Speaker 1: to be within three ft of another person at all times.
Speaker 1: And she was put on what was called board campus,
Speaker 1: which was a really strong restriction. You couldn't go on
Speaker 1: home visits, you couldn't go on nights out, you couldn't
Speaker 1: go on store runs. You were basically restricted and had
Speaker 1: to stay on on campus at all times. The student
Speaker 1: has carried that with her, has had to carry that
Speaker 1: with her, and that she was punished for being raped,
Speaker 1: and this group leader took advantage of the situation and
Speaker 1: took advantage of her. It still is astonishing to me
Speaker 1: that she was punished for it. For the girls who
Speaker 1: attended the Anawaki North campus in Rockmart, the abuse they
Speaker 1: were subjected to did not end with just the counselors
Speaker 1: a wing to Terry. There were other visitors who too
Speaker 1: were taking advantage of the girls, some even from the church.
Speaker 1: I was Catholic and my parents wanted them to approve
Speaker 1: to have a priest come out at least once a
Speaker 1: month so that I could have communion and confession and
Speaker 1: anna wake. You wouldn't allow that, but they did offer
Speaker 1: that I could meet with their chaplain like once a week.
Speaker 1: My understanding of the chaplain at and awake you, I
Speaker 1: guess he was like a preacher and he volunteered to
Speaker 1: come out and give spiritual guidance, but that never happened.
Speaker 1: The first time I met him, I immediately like got
Speaker 1: the creeps. I could just tell um the way he
Speaker 1: talked to me, the way he looked at me when
Speaker 1: he would hug me, like he would like purposely press
Speaker 1: my breast up against him or his hand would you know,
Speaker 1: touch my breast, and um, he would say, oh, you
Speaker 1: were looking so pretty today, and just um commenting about
Speaker 1: my clothes or my tops. You could tell he was
Speaker 1: like coming on to me, and I wasn't the only one.
Speaker 1: He did it to other girls too, so it was
Speaker 1: just a I don't know. We called him the happy chappie,
Speaker 1: but um it was really in a bad way. He
Speaker 1: we didn't trust him at all. Terry says the girls
Speaker 1: would all be taken to a dentist who was connected
Speaker 1: with an Awaki. She says he too would take advantage
Speaker 1: of the patients physically and financially. They would put us
Speaker 1: all in the van to go to the dentist and
Speaker 1: I remember the first time we went. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any toothaches or anything, but somehow they I didn't believe him,
Speaker 1: but they said I had like set it or eight cavities.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got a mouthful of fillings. I mean,
Speaker 1: to this day, I've got all these feelings in my mouth.
Speaker 1: I just don't think I needed them. And we all knew.
Speaker 1: We laughed because we're like, he's just making money off
Speaker 1: of us. That the worst part was the dentist was
Speaker 1: a pervert. There was no doubt about it. I think
Speaker 1: I was the first one to go in and so
Speaker 1: I remember when they laid me back on the chair
Speaker 1: and they gave me laughing gas. But even before the
Speaker 1: laughing gas. The it's like a cloth napkin that they
Speaker 1: would pin around your neck, you know, so you don't
Speaker 1: soil your clothes. He would lay his instruments across that napkin,
Speaker 1: in other words, across our chest instead of them remaining
Speaker 1: on the little table where the instruments probably belonged. And
Speaker 1: so every time he would go to grab an instrument,
Speaker 1: you know, I would feel them like pinch my nipple
Speaker 1: or of my breast, and it was it was a
Speaker 1: horrible feeling, and I just wanted to get out of there.
Speaker 1: And so I remember after I got all my teeth
Speaker 1: filled and went out, I told the other girls. I
Speaker 1: was like, watch out, he's gonna put the instruments on
Speaker 1: your chest and touch you. And everybody said the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't the only one. The same thing happened.
Speaker 1: Here's survivor Kelly Lewis. When I was at Anna Wiki,
Speaker 1: I went to the dentist, and as an adult, almost
Speaker 1: every tooth in my head is full as with a filling,
Speaker 1: and over the years my teeth have become brittle because
Speaker 1: they're they're the mercury fillings. I never had them replaced
Speaker 1: so they're the metal fillings. But obviously they had some
Speaker 1: sort of deal going with the dentist because I never
Speaker 1: had a cavity before I went to Anna Wiki Ever,
Speaker 1: never a cavity. I don't have genetically bad teeth, and
Speaker 1: when I left there, almost every tooth in my head
Speaker 1: was filled. During Terry's time at Antawaki, she chose to
Speaker 1: write about her experience there. Probably around my second year
Speaker 1: at Atawaki, I earned my music privilege, my guitar privilege.
Speaker 1: So my parents sent me a guitar, and I taught
Speaker 1: myself how to play and loved to sing, and so
Speaker 1: I decided to write a song about an awake. The
Speaker 1: first song I wrote was I guess, kind of like
Speaker 1: a survival song. I tried to make it really positive
Speaker 1: and make it a good thing and maybe get some
Speaker 1: brownie points, because everybody teased me, They're like, you're really
Speaker 1: gonna get on Doc Petter's good side, you know when
Speaker 1: he hears this song, and I did, so I did.
Speaker 1: I have the opportunity to record it in a studio
Speaker 1: and ended up writing two songs. Terry provided me with
Speaker 1: a copy of the record, which Antawaki funded to produce.
Speaker 1: It is a forty five with two sides, a full
Speaker 1: scale eighties production, including a string section, dual guitar solos,
Speaker 1: and everything you would expect from something you may hear
Speaker 1: on the radio at the time. The first song is
Speaker 1: a tribute to an awake and what it claimed to be.
Speaker 1: It's title an Awakey Love Pine Tree. It's just what
Speaker 1: God take these things again. Branch sing Chess. That's the
Speaker 1: B side of the record. While seemingly still a pro
Speaker 1: and a waky song, has a bit of a darker
Speaker 1: undertone to the lyrics. Terry sings tears may fall of loneliness.
Speaker 1: In each drop, You'll see a child hurting deep inside,
Speaker 1: yearning to be free. He need see child deep inside.
Speaker 1: To Lewis Petter had high hopes for the record, wanting
Speaker 1: to sell it to the families and an upcoming fellowship,
Speaker 1: an Awak's annual fundraiser. I was going to perform it
Speaker 1: at their fellowship where all the parents come once or
Speaker 1: twice a year, and they were going to sell the
Speaker 1: record to raise money. And my parents, I mean I
Speaker 1: was only like fifteen or sixteen at the time, so
Speaker 1: my parents were concerned about the money part of it,
Speaker 1: and also Doc Petter was wanting the copyright of the music,
Speaker 1: and so my parents ended up having to get a lawyer.
Speaker 1: They had like a legal battle over it, which was unfortunate.
Speaker 1: And I don't think they ever sold the records at
Speaker 1: that fellowship. I can't remember they did let me sing
Speaker 1: it though. In a correspondence to Terry's parents from one
Speaker 1: of an Awaki's lawyers, three concerns are mentioned which her
Speaker 1: parents wanted addressed. In an Awak's reply, their only response
Speaker 1: is to point out the outstanding debt of her parents
Speaker 1: for not just her, but her two brothers time in
Speaker 1: the program as well. There seems to be the same
Speaker 1: shuffling of correspondence from one lawyer to another board member
Speaker 1: with nothing really being addressed. In a final letter from
Speaker 1: board member Sarah Tillis, it is finally stated what other
Speaker 1: concerns Terry's parents had, That their children had not received
Speaker 1: the treatment for which they were paying, the concern over
Speaker 1: the rights to Terry songs, and finally that they were
Speaker 1: aware that Lewis Petter had been bringing their two sons
Speaker 1: to a brothel in Mexico. Things were starting to leak
Speaker 1: out about the wrongdoings at Inawaki for so long they
Speaker 1: had gone on with no oversight that nobody thought anything
Speaker 1: about it. With the number of students attending and the
Speaker 1: price of admittance skyrocketing, parents were starting to question what
Speaker 1: type of treatment their chidren we're really being provided. The
Speaker 1: inner structure of an awaki was beginning to crumble. Next
Speaker 1: time on Camp Help an Awaki. My name is Chris
Speaker 1: Newland and I am the executive director at the National
Speaker 1: Children's Advocacy Center. We were actually the first child advocacy
Speaker 1: center in the world. At Children's Advocacy Centers, what we
Speaker 1: do is coordinate the multidisciplinary response to child abuse in
Speaker 1: our communities. And this model includes partnerships and collaborations with
Speaker 1: law enforcement, child protective services, medical providers, mental health professionals, prosecutors,
Speaker 1: victim advocates, so all of us working in a coordinated manner.
Speaker 1: At a child advocacy center, we conduct forensic interviews, we
Speaker 1: do medical exams, We provide victim advocacy for children and
Speaker 1: families when there's allegations of abuse. And this whole model,
Speaker 1: which started in nine has revolutionized our nation's response to
Speaker 1: child abuse and how we are making the process much
Speaker 1: more child friendly and trauma and form and not causing
Speaker 1: children to be re traumatized by a system that should
Speaker 1: actually help them. Camp Hell anna Waki was created and
Speaker 1: hosted by Josh Thane, with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written
Speaker 1: and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage
Speaker 1: provided by WSB and CBS News. Find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at camp hell pod. That's c A m p h
Speaker 1: E L l p O D educate yourself about the
Speaker 1: issue of child abuse and things that you should look
Speaker 1: for at the Darkness to Light website D two ll
Speaker 1: dot org. That's d the number two l dot org.
Speaker 1: Campell anna Waki is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.