June 1, 2021 • 48 mins
The number of patients at Anneewakee is growing and the center soon expands with a second location in Carrabelle, Florida. We hear from some of the first groups sent there and stories of the backbreaking labor it took to build it.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Camp Hell. Anawaki is a production of I Heart Radio.
The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
of the author and participants and do not necessarily represent
those of I Heart Media or its employees. Due to
discussion of traumatic, sexual and violent content, listeners, discussion is advised.
(00:22):
Out of the blue getting the call that this program
was being made, there was a little bit of dread,
maybe a little bit of relief. It's not something that
ever really goes away from me. It's also not a
part of my everyday life as far as my interactions
with other people and things that I do. Stays in
(00:46):
my thoughts less and less over time. My name is
Carl Moore. I was m five sixty two. I went
to an Awake and nineteen seven any six and left
there in uh Carl served as a counselor for Anawaki
(01:09):
and was the closest of anyone I spoke with to
Lewis Petter and his inner circle. By the time of
Carl's entry to Antawaki in, Petter had still managed to
keep contact with the boys on campus, even though he
was not permitted to enter their campsites. Carl remembers his
initial introduction to the program while visiting a close friend
(01:31):
during one of Anawaki's fellowships, an annual fundraiser for the
foundation which would show off the improvement of its patients
to their families. That's the fellowship. We would have the
entire campus and all the families together in the Amphitheater area.
We go through a program and awards would be given out, testimonials,
(01:54):
kids would do skits. Yeah, everybody put on a good show,
and then after the main ceremony, each group would go
off to its own area and have lunch. It was
pretty impressive, and for me, I just saw these people.
I said, that's what I want. I want to I
(02:15):
want to be confident and strong and sure what I'm doing.
Like all these people looked like they were I knew
someone who was there, and I thought I'd never see again,
and I thought they were just not gonna make it.
Then I went out there and saw them at one
of the fellowships, and I couldn't believe. You know, it's
like they changed so much and it seems so positive.
(02:38):
And my life was in disarray. I mean, I was depressed,
anxious at the end of my rope. I felt like
then I saw this place where they had all these
healthy people, and I thought, well, maybe that's something I
should try. Carl remembers his first impression of Lewis Petter
following this fellowship. He was not really a big person
(03:02):
but physically but had a big presence. When he came
into a room, he knew he was there. If he
looked at you, you knew who was interested in you.
He paid attention to people. Petter was God and antawaiki.
When I came to view it as being his, there
was really no distinguishing in my mind him from the program.
(03:23):
Carl says this first introduction to anna Waki came at
one of the darkest times in his life, a time
when he was desperate for some guidance and direction. I
had gotten a girl pregnant and we had decided to
get an abortion. I had had a lot of self hatred,
(03:44):
I guess Carl decided that an awaki might be the
answer to his problems. He set up an entry interview
with Louis Petter. It is here that he would meet
him for the first time. I went for an interview
and into his office and I told him about that,
and I was pretty confused. He had a pitch that
(04:08):
he would give two people about letting go of your
feelings and ideas, and he actually kind of helped me
to let go of some of that anger and hurt
that I was feeling. Then he came over and had
me close my eyes and hold my hand up. I
(04:29):
didn't know what it was about. And then he came
over and he put his hand on my face and
put his thumb against my lips and I opened my
mouth and he put his thumb in my mouth. Now
let him do it? Even how you say, how could
(04:52):
I let him do that? And I was like, this
guy's God. He's helped all these people, He's done these
amazing things, and he must think I'm pretty special. From
going to want to kill yourself to be in uh,
one of God's chosen was big step. I think at
(05:17):
that point he said, well, you can come back and
go into program. We'll see how it goes. Over the
past several weeks, we have received number of very serious
allegations concerning both the facility out there in a number
of individuals involved with him. It was just a form
(05:39):
of their therapy. They were told to do it. And
at the time he was fourteen and a half fifteen
years old. They didn't know any better. I asked him,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
up for Louis Packer. He had no answer to that question.
Involved having the institution paid little place and absolutely of
(06:07):
what they should have done. I'm disturbed the fact of
something that can still going on any wicked. I'm Josh
Stain and this is Camp hell An Awake. By the
mid nineteen seventies and Away he had established itself as
a successful program for troubled youth in Georgia. The center
(06:29):
had secured its medical license, which allowed the collection of
third party payments from insurance companies, and was now having
patients referred there from the court system as well as
other learning centers. Louis Petter, supposedly restricted from making contact
with any patients, was still keeping his office on campus grounds.
(06:50):
Any oversight at the time had slipped through the cracks
of state government, and the enrollment of patients at Antawaki
was growing exponentially. Carl moore Or was one of these patients.
He was admitted in nineteen seventy seven after seeing the
result of his brother's reform there. Carl's family had a
particular connection to Antawaki. His mother was involved in a
(07:12):
number of schools in Atlanta that would often refer children
to the program In Douglasville, Annawak's reputation had put the
program at the top of the list for educators to
send children who were beyond the scope of their help.
Here's Chris McKnight, a former patient who was referred to
Antawaki from the New School, a program headed by Carl's
(07:33):
mother tweeting More. And my father pulled me out of
the school. I was going to edit me into tweeting
More school the new school. I was there for a
couple of months, and at the new school, I met
a couple of people that I was at Annawaki with
who were at her school post and awake. So it
(07:56):
turns out tweeting More recommended Antawaki. It's not just me,
but a lot of other kids. My feelings with Tweetie
is I don't think she knew about the abuse of Annawaki.
I've known Tweetie since I was a little kid. I mean,
she's she's pasted an hour rest her soul. A number
of former patients I've interviewed said they were referred to
(08:17):
an Awake from other schools in similar ways. Word had
spread throughout learning centers in Georgia and neighboring states that
Antawaki was a solution for troubled kids who didn't have
a place elsewhere. Now that Anawaki was an officially licensed
medical hospital, it was also receiving patients who were wards
of the state of Georgia and other neighboring states like Alabama.
(08:42):
This all amounted to a large increase in the number
of patients enrolling, and Antawaki was running out of room.
It just seemed that things grew very rapidly while I
was there. I'm Stephen mckinn and I was a patient
(09:03):
and aniwag from July of nineteen seventy six through August
of nineteen eighty. My number was M five three and
Awaki had been established for sixteen years, but by nineteen
(09:25):
eighty the numbers were up above six hundred, so the
population at least by laundry number, increased threefold in the
time that I was there. Apparently, the Douglasville campus was
(09:45):
not big enough for the amount of people that were
coming in in a wiki would soon need to expand
their program outside of Douglasville. This would take form and
what would later be known as the South Campus in Carrabelle, Florida,
a small fishing town near Tallahassee on the Gulf of Mexico.
(10:06):
Anawiki had taken biking and canoeing trips to this town
dating back to some of its earliest years. In seventy one,
article from the Tallahassee Democrat pictures a group of boys
and two older men riding bikes single file down the highway.
The caption states Douglasville, Georgia utes and their leader on
(10:26):
their annual bike excursion to Florida on their way to
Daytona Beach via St. Augustine from Carabelle. Stephen says he
was one of the first groups sent there to build
what would become the South Campus. They looked among the
people that they had in Douglasville that we're in vocational
(10:48):
groups and chose a certain number of young men that
were physically strong and he evil to go down and
produce work without a lot of guide us. We were told,
(11:09):
y'all are going down here to build the campus, and
for the most part, that's what we did. I was
part of the first votational group that went down there.
All we did was work for six days a week
and went to church on Sunday and tried to go
(11:32):
swimming or something like that on Sunday afternoons. It was hot,
It was a lot of bugs, a lot of mosquitoes.
It was completely undeveloped, and when we first went down
(11:52):
all there was was that power poll a well with
water doct edders can ever in a Weekie's second campus
in Carabelle consisted of two locations approximately five miles apart,
often referred to as the bay Side and the land Side.
(12:14):
The bayside house to former motel taken over and renovated
by Inawaki patients. Five miles inward was Landside, once part
of World War two training camp Gordon Johnston. All that
was left was four cement blocks from a former military
radar station and untouched Gulf wilderness. This is where Stephen
(12:35):
and his first group would begin building a second campus
for word groups in Florida. We went down there and
began building a lodge, a place for us to eat
and meet. We slept on the old radar installations slab
and also worked building the first camp site down there,
(12:59):
which was called Shimidi. Landside was a few miles away
from Bayside. It was not on the coast. It was
four or five miles inland. There was not any mixing
of the academic groups and the vocational groups. We only
(13:23):
came to Bayside to eat our meals and I finished
my part of Carabelle. There were two groups at Bayside
and three groups at Landside, so at that point it
(13:44):
was rapidly approaching the size of the Douglas Bell campus.
Stephen says the chosen location of Carabelle tied into the
educational aspect of an Awaki. For are to the building
of the second campus, and Awake he could only offer
(14:06):
a g D or prepare people for a g D.
They were not an accredited at school. So they entered
into some agreement with Carabell Public Schools and they had
three academic groups in Caribell, where the members of those
(14:30):
groups went to public school during the day and then
came back to what we called Bayside or the old
hotel at night. This practice of utilizing the Florida public
school system did not go unnoticed by the local government
in Caribell. In a newspaper article from four the new
(14:53):
superintendent of Franklin County mentions asking the inn a WEEKI
Foundation to pay tuition for its students attending floor to
public schools. In another article dated from and Awake is
described as a quote college prep school where students could
earn college credit by attending the Florida public schools. Eventually,
(15:15):
and Awake would be required to pay a tuition fee
of fifty dollars a student, but plans were already under
way to build their own school. Following the nine seventy hearing,
(15:42):
some restrictions have been put into place regarding Lewis Petter's
interaction with the boys at in Awake. The original stipulation
the Petter have no contact with any of the boys
had since been deluded to him not setting foot in
the sleeping quarters. By many accounts, this still meant Petter
would often see the boys, even still having visitors in
(16:05):
his house and maintaining his inner circle. Carl Moore, when
we first heard at the top of the episode, would
be next in line in a string of young men
which Petter would manipulate and abuse. Carl says this first
began in Carabelle. Everything about the way I went through
the program was different. I mean, looking back to me,
(16:27):
it was clear that I was selected to be something special.
I was assigned to group in Caravelle, Florida, which was
the first group down there. Most of what I remember
about that was was pretty positive. We had a couple
of group leaders that were I think they're really good guys.
They were the kind of people that's like, jeez, I
(16:49):
want to grow up and be like that guy. I
ended up in Carabelle, and then I think some of
the guys down there thought it was funny. You know,
I hadn't been through the you know, at some point
I ended up driving back and forth bringing supplies down
from Douglasville. Kind of immediately set me apart from everyone
else who couldn't go anywhere. I would say, yeah, Carl
(17:09):
doesn't have his knife frillages, but he can drive the
trucks back and forth. You know, there are already people
there that he had relationships with. He had a trailer
on the South campus. It was quite a privilege to
get invited to go to the trailer. He had another
guy who was who was living at his house then
(17:31):
who brought down there with him former patient. A couple
other guys who were I don't know if there are
patients or not at the time, but they all were.
It had been, you know, so that was the kind
of a special thing to get invited to come to
dinner in there that it was a good cook. By
the way, that was where I had really my my
(17:54):
first sexual experience with him. He was big on uh,
trust and loyalty. The standard speech was something like, I'm
gonna be your old elephant. He would say, I'm going
to teach you the way, and you can only have
one old elephant. Of course, everybody confided in him, and
(18:18):
he expected that, and it was clear that, you know,
he would expect that. I think he probably even addressed
it directly and saying, you know, something like you can
tell me everything or anything, but you can't do that
with everybody, and we did. Carl says that this type
of abuse was something that was felt out that not
(18:40):
all of the boys were subjected to, but only the
ones that were susceptible to it. So here's the slide
of hand that kind of happens with that. You're gonna
be open with me, You're gonna trust me absolutely, and
you're gonna do away with all the taboos and all
this crap that you've been taught that makes you feel
so bad, and then I've put my hands on you
(19:01):
and say how does that feel? Say, well, you don't
say it feels weird. Yeah, I mean some some guys
would punch him out. He would know who those guys were.
It's just like what we learned on the Serengetti in Africa.
When the tigers or the lions are approaching a herd
(19:24):
of animals, they look for the weak ones that are
at the edge of the herd and they try to
pick them off. My name is Chris Newland, and I
am the executive director at the National Children's Advocacy Center.
We were actually the first child advocacy center in the world.
At Children's Advocacy Centers, what we do is coordinate the
(19:44):
multidisciplinary response to child abuse in our communities, and this
model includes partnerships and collaborations with law enforcement, child protective services,
medical providers, mental health professionals, prosecutors, victim advocates, so all
of us working in a coordinated manner. What's really insidious
(20:04):
in this is the fact that in child sexual abuse,
in many situations, the child ends up being sexually abused
by someone who they consider their friend, someone who they like. Oftentimes,
the term grooming is used to describe the actions that
happen leading up to sexual abuse with children by their abuser.
(20:28):
Chris says that this is an inaccurate term to use.
Why do we use a word grooming to describe what
an individual may do to sexual abuse a child? Why
do we use a word that is in every other
context pro social. What they're doing is manipulating. They're taking
advantage of someone whom they can they can deceive for
(20:51):
their own personal advantage and gain without any concern for
that individual. There's multiple levels of manipulation that occur. First,
an individual manipulate the broader environment by having a good
reputation and you know, being well respected in their community, like, oh,
Chris could never do something like that. I've known Chris
(21:13):
for twenty six years and I've only known him to
be x. Those are about creating this environment where I'm
manipulating everybody to think I'm a really good guy, to
hide the things that maybe I'm doing secretly. Another level
of manipulation that happens is the manipulation of caregivers or
trusted others. So let's say the individual wants to have
(21:37):
sexual contact with the child. Their first step really is
to win over the parents or caregivers of that child,
because they until they can have that individual access with
the child, they're not gonna have the opportunity to sexually
abuse them. It was part of the show, you know,
they had a program that did change live. Being in
(21:57):
the inside, I was kind of isolated. Really. Anybody that
was close to Petter was It's like two different worlds,
you know, there was a Aniwoki outside and the Petter inside.
He would definitely pick and choose whoever he was going
to be close to or spend time with. I think
that any group leader that had come through the program
(22:20):
was certainly going to be on that list of people
that would likely have had a relationship with better. It's
not an accusations, just just the way it is. The
last is the child, and it's not just a random
approach where I'm just gonna try to hit on every child. Necessarily,
that's not the case. Individuals may have particular interests and
(22:41):
who they're interested in or who they may have a
desire to be in contact with. They may also will
almost always look at is this a child who I
think I can manipulate or not. If you have a
child who always tells on everybody for every transgression, that's
not who you're going after, right because that that individual
is gonna, you know, tell. Shortly after Karl's stay at
(23:06):
the Carabell campus, he was promoted to group counselor and
put on an aweki's payroll, which brought him even closer
to Petter and his home. So I left the group
in Florida after pretty much after the ninety days, and
I got my crest. We were starting down that road.
And you know, some time after that, I went to
(23:26):
work with a group and it just kind of evolved
into a group leader. It wasn't like there was any
kind of formal process to it. I was just put
with a group. It's like, try this out. And at
some point I started getting a check for it, paycheck.
I was just following the program. Really, I wasn't the
(23:47):
first one to go through this. I needed a place
to go when I was off. Petter had a couple
of beds in the basement of his house and there
was another guy living there who had been through the program.
And to then we were part of the family. The
offender in this scenario is making the kids like them
(24:07):
where they are an important part of their life, because
it makes it harder for you to tell on someone
you really like. It's easy for any of us to
tell on someone we hate when they've done something wrong,
right like, oh hey, this person, I hate them, they
did this, But when it's someone we like, we're less
likely to the manipulation of You get to do something
(24:28):
that other people don't get to do, You get to
have access to something that other people don't get to
have access to, makes it where they You know, this
confusing notion of okay, but I'm special now that some
of this stuff feels weird, but I get all these
extra privileges or opportunities that other people don't get. I'm special.
And especially for someone who may be at a wilderness camp,
(24:50):
who hasn't maybe oftentimes felt special in their life or
been important to someone else, that can be very powerful
for them, not in a sexual away, but just to
feel respected, to feel wanted, to feel a part of something.
I don't think you could be in Petter's inner circle
without a great deal of denial. I mean I was
(25:13):
living with his family, and I would say, you know,
it's clear to me that at some level they knew
the drill. I think that, like a lot of people
in my position, they were essentially making sacrifices for the
greater good kind of thing. You know that Anna Waki
was so important and so good, you know we had
(25:33):
to keep it going. It's hard to describe what happens
something like that. You don't think about it, You think
about other things. Once you kind of compartmentalize that one
little objectionable thing, then you try to do things to
make your life worth while. I think everybody who is
(25:53):
near Petter did that in some way or another. Chris
says the not always, but sometimes this type of abuse
can continue downward from the abused to others. Now, in
the situation with Anna Waki, these behaviors were nurtured by
(26:14):
people in positions of influence, and we see this from
time to time. Individuals who were abused become involved in
that and they have developing some level of enjoyment, and
they are they're encouraged to engage in this behavior with
other individuals. The other thing it does is it empowers
(26:35):
the offender. Like if let's say so, I I'm sexually
abusing this child and now I'm encouraging this childhood gates
in sexual contact. I can then go to that child
and say, if you ever talked about what happened, they're
going to find about about what you've done. You'll be
in trouble too. Now I've made my victim even more
vulnerable to me and more able to be manipulated because
(26:57):
you have these other people that are kind of this
pond the scheme of sexual abuse. People would confide in him,
and uh, he kind of kept an inventory of people.
He would have something to say about everybody, and he
kind of manipulated people with that information in a really
(27:18):
kind of clever, discreet way. Sometimes he would have confrontations
with people and they would they would not come out
ahead on it, and I think that's why. I think
people were afraid to confront him for that reason. I
think he was one of these people who had the
ability to turn people's own situations against them pretty easily.
(27:38):
He had told me once that he he had been
in the Scouts, the boy Scouts, and the Scout master
had taught them that male relationship with the older man
was important or healthy thing. The unusual thing was that
Petter saw it as this guy was right, and this
(27:59):
idea of these necessary and healthy sexual relationships with men.
I mean, clearly Petter saw things that way children can
be manipulated and manipulating them. It's also part of the
offender's mentality, like if other people are doing this, it's
more socially acceptable. In our inner circle, it's acceptable for
(28:21):
us to do that. I serve as a role model
for them so they can engage other kids in this activity.
It almost is gonna make it harder to believe. But
in the group that I'm hanging out with, the people
who I'm associating with, this is more commonplace and it
becomes a norm. I think I rationalized as long as
I could that I was doing the right thing. At
some point I couldn't accept that myself, but I really
(28:45):
had nowhere to go about it. It was almost like
I had stopped growing when I got there. In a
lot of ways, there was always the upside of it,
but the downside of it was that, yeah, I could
and keep living like that. I didn't know how to
get out. I think for probably the last two years
it's almost a blur. I didn't I wasn't functioning and
(29:09):
really any capacity. I just was depressed. I was suicidal.
It's probably by the narrowest of margins that I didn't
just kill myself. I I came really close. Yeah, I
just I had nowhere to go with it. The more
sincere you are about wanting to get help, the more
(29:31):
trusting you are, the more vulnerable will you become. Professional
therapists are trained about this stuff. It's it's not an
easy thing and I've learned quite a bit about it
their situations. Where anybody can lose their objectivity, there's training
and integrity and some mechanisms for therapists to deal with that.
(29:53):
There's not many mechanisms for patients to deal with it,
and that's unfortunate. Petter wasn't if he was trying to that.
He completely did the opposite, took the vulnerability and uh
and exploited it on a really huge scale. But it's
a cruel thing, you know, the more innocent you are,
(30:14):
the worst you are subject to getting hurt. That way,
the more trusting you are, the more you try to
do the right thing, the worst you get hurt. And
that's just that's the heart break of it. While Louis
(30:43):
Petter continued his methods of abuse and manipulation. The construction
of Antiwaki's Carabell campus was escalating this work. Building on
untouched Gulf wilderness proved even harder on the patients than
what was being done in Douglasville. He is a former patient,
Chris McKnight. Douglasville was very hilly and a really big campus, right,
(31:09):
lots of trees, so there could be a group a
hundred feet over there doing something and you couldn't even
see them. Caramell wasn't like that. You could see clear
across campus for half a mile barely obstructed. It was
kind of like laid out, sort of a circle of buildings.
Then there was an old quad building that was the
(31:31):
foundations for a huge tower when it was now rebased,
and they built buildings on the four foundations that held
the tower. There were small buildings, but most of the
buildings were kind of like in an outer part of
the cleared campus. So if you're working on campus and Caribell,
somebody could see if you're just sitting not working, clear
across the campus or something. So it seemed like it
(31:54):
was a lot more. I felt like we were always
watched more in Carabell at that time, they sent the
toughest of the students to Florida. This is Stephen, a
former patient be in Awaking. He was also a part
of one of the first work groups in Carabelle. They
(32:16):
formulated a group to start an entire new group in carabell.
So while I'm in the en oh, and while they're
formulating this group, there's this intimidation factor that you know
you're being hauled off to the to the roughest of
(32:37):
the rough, and and these guys are going to straighten
me out. For sure. South Campus was smaller than Central,
and then about a year after being there, we built
the big athletic building, which was full of school rooms
(32:58):
in the weight room and the training room and right
next to the football field all the students built. At
the very first campsite I went to was an island
surrounded by a lake infested by alligators and rattlesnakes and
and whatnot. But we built a barge to pull ourselves
(33:23):
across over to the island and we lived in tps
over there. Well, I got bent by a rattlesnake, but
I had my boots on, so I was all right.
We did have one guy that beats an alligator to
death of a baseball bat. Yeah, the alligators were kind
(33:45):
of a problem. Chris McKnight attended Carebelle after the new
campus had been built. He says the work would continue
almost pointlessly if there was nothing to build. It seemed
as though they ran out of stuff to do a carabell.
They purchased forty acres and we just cleared brush. This
(34:07):
went on for like nearly two years of just clearing
brush for no ends, just like go anywhere, find a place,
and to start clearing brush. You never hauled it away.
It was never concerted effort to clear from this section
to that section, and it got to the point they
finally led us torch it and then after that we
never had to go to the North forty again. It
was just completely useless worker project. It just seemed that
(34:30):
like they went out of the way to find stuff
for us to do that just never went to any means.
I remember once we dug a ditch from one creek
to a swampy area and they said it was drainage,
but nothing ever drained, and it was just to keep
us busy. It was just for no reason. Here's former
(34:51):
patient Mark Barbourn. We worked on the Florida trail. We've
done a lot of cutting down of all metados, and
we built the baseball field. I actually laid the center
blocks for the dugouts for the baseball field. There was
another guy that got bit by a rattlesnake when we
(35:13):
were cutting out some some trails. I think the air
lifted him to Tallahassee, and you know, he was back
within a couple of days. This crushing labor would also
lead to physical abuse by the hands of group leaders
and fellow patients. There were injuries. There were injuries all
the time. I was injured quite a bit, especially my
(35:36):
first six months, but mostly that was abuse from other kids.
I was pushed, punched, beaten up by peers quite a bit,
especially that first six six nine months, and I just
figured that just was the way it was. You know.
It was like the hierarchy of just being in a
(35:59):
really terrible situation, you know what I mean. I didn't
know any better, or no one told me that there
that there was another way, or that this is just
the way you're gonna expect to be beaten up or abused,
you know, I mean, it was kind of Lord of
the Flies. You just kind of figure it out where
you were just gonna be in a lot of a
(36:21):
lot of pain, an Awaki. There was a lot of fear,
fear from the staff, fear from your peers. I was
physically afraid. I mean it was I saw other kids
to be abused by their peer group, and I saw
a lot of kids being abused by group leaders, I
(36:43):
mean terribly. So I saw it once it turned over.
Literally it seemed over backwards. And I know from that
day on had back trouble for the rest of his life.
And yet it was being a smartass. We're having a
fire building contest and everyone had to build their own fire,
(37:07):
and said something to the fact that, hey, we build
a fire every night for for group meeting. Why don't
we just do it then in time, everyone, we're just
wasting wood here and came over and just kind of
folded him in half, kind of put his left arm
on his neck and just pushed him like over his knee,
and then he kind of just threw him up against
(37:28):
a tree and kind of collected himself and and said, well,
are we gonna do this fire building contest or not?
And I don't even remember crying so much. Is just
kind of like whimpering in pain and his face just
being so red. I think just I don't know. It
(37:51):
just affected me tremendously seeing a kid hurt like that.
I mean, I had been beaten up by peer group,
and I've been beaten up by my mother, but I
had never seen another kid beaaten up by an adult.
That just scares the hell out of you. Mark Barber
(38:15):
recalls another incident which stuck with him over the years.
One still kind of haunts me. There was a guy, Mr. Phillips,
who was the head of security. There was a guy
in my group, our vocational group, who ran off. We
called him Splitters, but he was a runner. He took
(38:37):
off in the middle of the night. He was gone.
They caught him, and I remember going to the lodge
to eat the next morning and they had him behind
the lodge and you could see it. They were taking
him back there and his arm was hanging for some reason,
his arm didn't looked right. And I told the other
(39:00):
or something. We were walking in line. I said, did
you see you know such and such as arm? He goes, yeah,
it was broken, And I said that's why it looked
the way it did. He goes, yeah, he goes as
you could tell how Mr Phillips was holding it. A
couple of days later, it's in a cast and that's
in a sling and the guy's kind of drugged up.
(39:20):
I don't know if it's pain meds. I don't know
what it was. It's pretty traumatic, you know, to see
an arm going the wrong way. With all the work
being done in Carabell, the reasons for the build out
we're not always clear. One project the patients would later
work on was the build out of a new hotel
in marina in the heart of Carabelle. This hotel in
(39:44):
Marina was not a resource for in Awaki, but destined
for public use. Scott Hole is a former Inawaki patient.
He worked on helping build the marina in Carabell. And
the kind of manual labor that we would do would
either be working on the grounds of the facility itself,
but then there were also public things that we did,
(40:05):
like the marina. When we were building this marina, we
actually were you know, laying the posts that build the
boat slips. Something that's like telephone pole and it's coated
with a chemical called creosote. But we would carry those
big poles to take two of us. You know, it's
probably eight foot long like a telephone pole, not quite
as thick though, and you know, we would have chemical
(40:25):
burns all over our neck and shoulders from carrying that
creosote over and putting them into the end of the water.
We take a big hose and get it down, down, down,
until it was level and that kind of thing. But
it was very very large marina where we were actually,
you know, sinking the creosote post for the boat slips
and all that kind of thing. Doing fifteen year old
(40:45):
kids doing this really hard manual labor building this marina
that I don't know who got the money from, but
it certainly wasn't us. I mean, our parents were paying
for the privilege for us to build this marina for
these other people. Chris McKnight remembers working on the renovation
to the adjoining restaurant attached to the marina. We completely
like leveled the whole marina, rebuilt some of the buildings,
(41:09):
re landscaped everything. They had, bought some boats that we
never really got to use, some sailboats, and they also
bought the restaurant that was there in the marina, which
we gutted and they never really did much with it.
I don't know who the marina was owned by beforehand.
I think they bought the marina and I want to
stay nineteen eighty and it was set dormant and they
(41:33):
finished out the lease with the restaurant and then they
closed the restaurant down and I don't know what their
intentions were. So I remember one of the first work
projects was scraping off the old tile in the downstairs
part of the restaurant and uh and like on the
other side of the room, they had already ripped out
most of the petition walls and stuff, and it was
(41:55):
just kind of like one big coward's room and there
was guys in the other end rip it out in insulation.
And it was hot, you know, it was on the
end of May, but it was still floorida. It's hot, humid,
and you could just see particles kind of floating around.
There's like one door open and where I went in
just scraping this tile from probably like the fifties or forties.
Mark Barber remembers one particular incident while working on the marina.
(42:20):
We were at the marina and we were bolting together
a whole bunch of covert pipe, and that covert pipe
was covered with creosote to keep it from rusting, you know,
from the salt water. And one of the guys had
gotten creosote burnt really bad. It was like a third
degree sunburn on his arms and between his legs to
(42:41):
where we were straddling and bolting it together. I was
helping him. I got burnt a little bit, but not
bad enough to even even really mentioned, but he got
tore up pretty bad. Mark Sublett was one patient who
suffered these types of burns. We were building the athletic
building for Airbell and we were pouring the foundations for it.
(43:03):
The foundations were getting off We're supposed to pour down
to a graded steak, a grade steak. A couple of
us jumped in the asphalt or the concrete. I'm sorry,
and started having You have to brake it back and
get it to the right level. That stuff burns your
skin real bad. And I guess I didn't know it
or didn't feel it, but it burned about sevent the
(43:23):
skin off my legs, so I was laid up. They
took me out of my group. I could not go
anywhere my skin was gone. Had to go through a
bunch of painful stuff as you get third degree chemical burns,
so it could not work. So I'd hanging the clinic
and all this stuff, and that was kind of a
respite because you get some TV and some radio in
the clinic, so you kind of hang out, but still
(43:44):
kind of shitty because of course sitting there are burned
legs and very painful as I'm sitting in the clinic
at the Quadrangle down in Florida, out hobbling around on crutches,
and apparently my parents had come down for a parent
teacher meeting and go, hey, there's my son out there
on crutches, and so they go, oh, we forgot to
(44:05):
tell you your son hurt your legs. Okay, oh no,
you know what he does. Oh he's getting full on,
will take care of everything. Don't worry, He'll be just fine.
And of course to what they told him was afterward, hey,
you're not gonna have to pay us. We're gonna comp
your son to go here. I think part of the
reason they did that because at the time my father
(44:26):
ran to cab General Hospital from six four, so they
kind of knew that pretty big hospital, you know, the
head administrator and all that stuff. So they sent him,
you know, the you know, you don't know any more money.
This marina and hotel would come to appreciate him value
(44:48):
greatly in the years ahead. Here's journalist Albert Edgin. At
that time, Florida was exploding and Caramel that area down there.
He was smart to go there, very smart, because it's
just around the coast from Panama City. Panama City is
(45:09):
a place where people from Chicago go, you know, the Midwest,
their families in the Midwest that they don't go to Miami.
They go to Panama City, for God's sake. And so
caramells right around the curve from that. So when you
think about it, yeah, you can start a thing in
Carrabelle where you've got especialty is treating kids. But man,
(45:30):
that's a real estate bonanza. Antawaki South Campus would come
to be known as Anawaki on the Gulf, described in
local papers at the time as a private, nonprofit college
prep school with an Awake looking to expand their program
into other states. It would soon set up another corporation
(45:50):
to handle all of its real estate endeavors. Anawaki Estates.
This corporation would be run and owned by Petter's three daughters, Marcia, Rita,
and Dana. With the success of in Awaki on the
Gulf in a corporation to hold all of their property
in a wake, he would soon look to international travel
(46:10):
and even a possible expansion into other countries next time
on Camp Help and Awaki, I think that he figured
(46:32):
out people were onto him, and so there became a
chosen group to accompanying them to Mexico. It was supposed
to be this big privileged trip. So the Mexico trips
most years they took us to a house of ill
repew house, prostitution, whatever you wanna call it. If you
(46:53):
didn't know him, you would think he had a kind
He would have a kind heart. They'd you want to
help you, and you in a weird way he would.
It was a church going guy who claimed to be.
But they kept on telling me that I tried to
commit suicide and that's what had happened to me. And
I was trying to tell another of the staff members
(47:13):
in E and L, No, that's not what happened to me.
This happened to me. Camp Hell Anna Waki was created
and hosted by Josh Thane with producer Miranda Hawkins and
executive producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was
written and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival
(47:37):
footage provided by ws B and CBS News. Find us
on Instagram at camp hell pod. That's c A M
p h E L L p O D. Educate yourself
about the issue of child abuse and things that you
should look for at the Darkness to Light website D
two l dot org. That's d the number two l
(47:59):
dot org. Camp hell Anawaki is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
Camp Hell. Anawaki is a production of I Heart Radio.
The views and opinions expressing this podcast are solely those
of the author and participants and do not necessarily represent
those of I Heart Media or its employees. Due to
discussion of traumatic, sexual and violent content, listeners, discussion is advised.
(00:22):
Out of the blue getting the call that this program
was being made, there was a little bit of dread,
maybe a little bit of relief. It's not something that
ever really goes away from me. It's also not a
part of my everyday life as far as my interactions
with other people and things that I do. Stays in
(00:46):
my thoughts less and less over time. My name is
Carl Moore. I was m five sixty two. I went
to an Awake and nineteen seven any six and left
there in uh Carl served as a counselor for Anawaki
(01:09):
and was the closest of anyone I spoke with to
Lewis Petter and his inner circle. By the time of
Carl's entry to Antawaki in, Petter had still managed to
keep contact with the boys on campus, even though he
was not permitted to enter their campsites. Carl remembers his
initial introduction to the program while visiting a close friend
(01:31):
during one of Anawaki's fellowships, an annual fundraiser for the
foundation which would show off the improvement of its patients
to their families. That's the fellowship. We would have the
entire campus and all the families together in the Amphitheater area.
We go through a program and awards would be given out, testimonials,
(01:54):
kids would do skits. Yeah, everybody put on a good show,
and then after the main ceremony, each group would go
off to its own area and have lunch. It was
pretty impressive, and for me, I just saw these people.
I said, that's what I want. I want to I
(02:15):
want to be confident and strong and sure what I'm doing.
Like all these people looked like they were I knew
someone who was there, and I thought I'd never see again,
and I thought they were just not gonna make it.
Then I went out there and saw them at one
of the fellowships, and I couldn't believe. You know, it's
like they changed so much and it seems so positive.
(02:38):
And my life was in disarray. I mean, I was depressed,
anxious at the end of my rope. I felt like
then I saw this place where they had all these
healthy people, and I thought, well, maybe that's something I
should try. Carl remembers his first impression of Lewis Petter
following this fellowship. He was not really a big person
(03:02):
but physically but had a big presence. When he came
into a room, he knew he was there. If he
looked at you, you knew who was interested in you.
He paid attention to people. Petter was God and antawaiki.
When I came to view it as being his, there
was really no distinguishing in my mind him from the program.
(03:23):
Carl says this first introduction to anna Waki came at
one of the darkest times in his life, a time
when he was desperate for some guidance and direction. I
had gotten a girl pregnant and we had decided to
get an abortion. I had had a lot of self hatred,
(03:44):
I guess Carl decided that an awaki might be the
answer to his problems. He set up an entry interview
with Louis Petter. It is here that he would meet
him for the first time. I went for an interview
and into his office and I told him about that,
and I was pretty confused. He had a pitch that
(04:08):
he would give two people about letting go of your
feelings and ideas, and he actually kind of helped me
to let go of some of that anger and hurt
that I was feeling. Then he came over and had
me close my eyes and hold my hand up. I
(04:29):
didn't know what it was about. And then he came
over and he put his hand on my face and
put his thumb against my lips and I opened my
mouth and he put his thumb in my mouth. Now
let him do it? Even how you say, how could
(04:52):
I let him do that? And I was like, this
guy's God. He's helped all these people, He's done these
amazing things, and he must think I'm pretty special. From
going to want to kill yourself to be in uh,
one of God's chosen was big step. I think at
(05:17):
that point he said, well, you can come back and
go into program. We'll see how it goes. Over the
past several weeks, we have received number of very serious
allegations concerning both the facility out there in a number
of individuals involved with him. It was just a form
(05:39):
of their therapy. They were told to do it. And
at the time he was fourteen and a half fifteen
years old. They didn't know any better. I asked him,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
up for Louis Packer. He had no answer to that question.
Involved having the institution paid little place and absolutely of
(06:07):
what they should have done. I'm disturbed the fact of
something that can still going on any wicked. I'm Josh
Stain and this is Camp hell An Awake. By the
mid nineteen seventies and Away he had established itself as
a successful program for troubled youth in Georgia. The center
(06:29):
had secured its medical license, which allowed the collection of
third party payments from insurance companies, and was now having
patients referred there from the court system as well as
other learning centers. Louis Petter, supposedly restricted from making contact
with any patients, was still keeping his office on campus grounds.
(06:50):
Any oversight at the time had slipped through the cracks
of state government, and the enrollment of patients at Antawaki
was growing exponentially. Carl moore Or was one of these patients.
He was admitted in nineteen seventy seven after seeing the
result of his brother's reform there. Carl's family had a
particular connection to Antawaki. His mother was involved in a
(07:12):
number of schools in Atlanta that would often refer children
to the program In Douglasville, Annawak's reputation had put the
program at the top of the list for educators to
send children who were beyond the scope of their help.
Here's Chris McKnight, a former patient who was referred to
Antawaki from the New School, a program headed by Carl's
(07:33):
mother tweeting More. And my father pulled me out of
the school. I was going to edit me into tweeting
More school the new school. I was there for a
couple of months, and at the new school, I met
a couple of people that I was at Annawaki with
who were at her school post and awake. So it
(07:56):
turns out tweeting More recommended Antawaki. It's not just me,
but a lot of other kids. My feelings with Tweetie
is I don't think she knew about the abuse of Annawaki.
I've known Tweetie since I was a little kid. I mean,
she's she's pasted an hour rest her soul. A number
of former patients I've interviewed said they were referred to
(08:17):
an Awake from other schools in similar ways. Word had
spread throughout learning centers in Georgia and neighboring states that
Antawaki was a solution for troubled kids who didn't have
a place elsewhere. Now that Anawaki was an officially licensed
medical hospital, it was also receiving patients who were wards
of the state of Georgia and other neighboring states like Alabama.
(08:42):
This all amounted to a large increase in the number
of patients enrolling, and Antawaki was running out of room.
It just seemed that things grew very rapidly while I
was there. I'm Stephen mckinn and I was a patient
(09:03):
and aniwag from July of nineteen seventy six through August
of nineteen eighty. My number was M five three and
Awaki had been established for sixteen years, but by nineteen
(09:25):
eighty the numbers were up above six hundred, so the
population at least by laundry number, increased threefold in the
time that I was there. Apparently, the Douglasville campus was
(09:45):
not big enough for the amount of people that were
coming in in a wiki would soon need to expand
their program outside of Douglasville. This would take form and
what would later be known as the South Campus in Carrabelle, Florida,
a small fishing town near Tallahassee on the Gulf of Mexico.
(10:06):
Anawiki had taken biking and canoeing trips to this town
dating back to some of its earliest years. In seventy one,
article from the Tallahassee Democrat pictures a group of boys
and two older men riding bikes single file down the highway.
The caption states Douglasville, Georgia utes and their leader on
(10:26):
their annual bike excursion to Florida on their way to
Daytona Beach via St. Augustine from Carabelle. Stephen says he
was one of the first groups sent there to build
what would become the South Campus. They looked among the
people that they had in Douglasville that we're in vocational
(10:48):
groups and chose a certain number of young men that
were physically strong and he evil to go down and
produce work without a lot of guide us. We were told,
(11:09):
y'all are going down here to build the campus, and
for the most part, that's what we did. I was
part of the first votational group that went down there.
All we did was work for six days a week
and went to church on Sunday and tried to go
(11:32):
swimming or something like that on Sunday afternoons. It was hot,
It was a lot of bugs, a lot of mosquitoes.
It was completely undeveloped, and when we first went down
(11:52):
all there was was that power poll a well with
water doct edders can ever in a Weekie's second campus
in Carabelle consisted of two locations approximately five miles apart,
often referred to as the bay Side and the land Side.
(12:14):
The bayside house to former motel taken over and renovated
by Inawaki patients. Five miles inward was Landside, once part
of World War two training camp Gordon Johnston. All that
was left was four cement blocks from a former military
radar station and untouched Gulf wilderness. This is where Stephen
(12:35):
and his first group would begin building a second campus
for word groups in Florida. We went down there and
began building a lodge, a place for us to eat
and meet. We slept on the old radar installations slab
and also worked building the first camp site down there,
(12:59):
which was called Shimidi. Landside was a few miles away
from Bayside. It was not on the coast. It was
four or five miles inland. There was not any mixing
of the academic groups and the vocational groups. We only
(13:23):
came to Bayside to eat our meals and I finished
my part of Carabelle. There were two groups at Bayside
and three groups at Landside, so at that point it
(13:44):
was rapidly approaching the size of the Douglas Bell campus.
Stephen says the chosen location of Carabelle tied into the
educational aspect of an Awaki. For are to the building
of the second campus, and Awake he could only offer
(14:06):
a g D or prepare people for a g D.
They were not an accredited at school. So they entered
into some agreement with Carabell Public Schools and they had
three academic groups in Caribell, where the members of those
(14:30):
groups went to public school during the day and then
came back to what we called Bayside or the old
hotel at night. This practice of utilizing the Florida public
school system did not go unnoticed by the local government
in Caribell. In a newspaper article from four the new
(14:53):
superintendent of Franklin County mentions asking the inn a WEEKI
Foundation to pay tuition for its students attending floor to
public schools. In another article dated from and Awake is
described as a quote college prep school where students could
earn college credit by attending the Florida public schools. Eventually,
(15:15):
and Awake would be required to pay a tuition fee
of fifty dollars a student, but plans were already under
way to build their own school. Following the nine seventy hearing,
(15:42):
some restrictions have been put into place regarding Lewis Petter's
interaction with the boys at in Awake. The original stipulation
the Petter have no contact with any of the boys
had since been deluded to him not setting foot in
the sleeping quarters. By many accounts, this still meant Petter
would often see the boys, even still having visitors in
(16:05):
his house and maintaining his inner circle. Carl Moore, when
we first heard at the top of the episode, would
be next in line in a string of young men
which Petter would manipulate and abuse. Carl says this first
began in Carabelle. Everything about the way I went through
the program was different. I mean, looking back to me,
(16:27):
it was clear that I was selected to be something special.
I was assigned to group in Caravelle, Florida, which was
the first group down there. Most of what I remember
about that was was pretty positive. We had a couple
of group leaders that were I think they're really good guys.
They were the kind of people that's like, jeez, I
(16:49):
want to grow up and be like that guy. I
ended up in Carabelle, and then I think some of
the guys down there thought it was funny. You know,
I hadn't been through the you know, at some point
I ended up driving back and forth bringing supplies down
from Douglasville. Kind of immediately set me apart from everyone
else who couldn't go anywhere. I would say, yeah, Carl
(17:09):
doesn't have his knife frillages, but he can drive the
trucks back and forth. You know, there are already people
there that he had relationships with. He had a trailer
on the South campus. It was quite a privilege to
get invited to go to the trailer. He had another
guy who was who was living at his house then
(17:31):
who brought down there with him former patient. A couple
other guys who were I don't know if there are
patients or not at the time, but they all were.
It had been, you know, so that was the kind
of a special thing to get invited to come to
dinner in there that it was a good cook. By
the way, that was where I had really my my
(17:54):
first sexual experience with him. He was big on uh,
trust and loyalty. The standard speech was something like, I'm
gonna be your old elephant. He would say, I'm going
to teach you the way, and you can only have
one old elephant. Of course, everybody confided in him, and
(18:18):
he expected that, and it was clear that, you know,
he would expect that. I think he probably even addressed
it directly and saying, you know, something like you can
tell me everything or anything, but you can't do that
with everybody, and we did. Carl says that this type
of abuse was something that was felt out that not
(18:40):
all of the boys were subjected to, but only the
ones that were susceptible to it. So here's the slide
of hand that kind of happens with that. You're gonna
be open with me, You're gonna trust me absolutely, and
you're gonna do away with all the taboos and all
this crap that you've been taught that makes you feel
so bad, and then I've put my hands on you
(19:01):
and say how does that feel? Say, well, you don't
say it feels weird. Yeah, I mean some some guys
would punch him out. He would know who those guys were.
It's just like what we learned on the Serengetti in Africa.
When the tigers or the lions are approaching a herd
(19:24):
of animals, they look for the weak ones that are
at the edge of the herd and they try to
pick them off. My name is Chris Newland, and I
am the executive director at the National Children's Advocacy Center.
We were actually the first child advocacy center in the world.
At Children's Advocacy Centers, what we do is coordinate the
(19:44):
multidisciplinary response to child abuse in our communities, and this
model includes partnerships and collaborations with law enforcement, child protective services,
medical providers, mental health professionals, prosecutors, victim advocates, so all
of us working in a coordinated manner. What's really insidious
(20:04):
in this is the fact that in child sexual abuse,
in many situations, the child ends up being sexually abused
by someone who they consider their friend, someone who they like. Oftentimes,
the term grooming is used to describe the actions that
happen leading up to sexual abuse with children by their abuser.
(20:28):
Chris says that this is an inaccurate term to use.
Why do we use a word grooming to describe what
an individual may do to sexual abuse a child? Why
do we use a word that is in every other
context pro social. What they're doing is manipulating. They're taking
advantage of someone whom they can they can deceive for
(20:51):
their own personal advantage and gain without any concern for
that individual. There's multiple levels of manipulation that occur. First,
an individual manipulate the broader environment by having a good
reputation and you know, being well respected in their community, like, oh,
Chris could never do something like that. I've known Chris
(21:13):
for twenty six years and I've only known him to
be x. Those are about creating this environment where I'm
manipulating everybody to think I'm a really good guy, to
hide the things that maybe I'm doing secretly. Another level
of manipulation that happens is the manipulation of caregivers or
trusted others. So let's say the individual wants to have
(21:37):
sexual contact with the child. Their first step really is
to win over the parents or caregivers of that child,
because they until they can have that individual access with
the child, they're not gonna have the opportunity to sexually
abuse them. It was part of the show, you know,
they had a program that did change live. Being in
(21:57):
the inside, I was kind of isolated. Really. Anybody that
was close to Petter was It's like two different worlds,
you know, there was a Aniwoki outside and the Petter inside.
He would definitely pick and choose whoever he was going
to be close to or spend time with. I think
that any group leader that had come through the program
(22:20):
was certainly going to be on that list of people
that would likely have had a relationship with better. It's
not an accusations, just just the way it is. The
last is the child, and it's not just a random
approach where I'm just gonna try to hit on every child. Necessarily,
that's not the case. Individuals may have particular interests and
(22:41):
who they're interested in or who they may have a
desire to be in contact with. They may also will
almost always look at is this a child who I
think I can manipulate or not. If you have a
child who always tells on everybody for every transgression, that's
not who you're going after, right because that that individual
is gonna, you know, tell. Shortly after Karl's stay at
(23:06):
the Carabell campus, he was promoted to group counselor and
put on an aweki's payroll, which brought him even closer
to Petter and his home. So I left the group
in Florida after pretty much after the ninety days, and
I got my crest. We were starting down that road.
And you know, some time after that, I went to
(23:26):
work with a group and it just kind of evolved
into a group leader. It wasn't like there was any
kind of formal process to it. I was just put
with a group. It's like, try this out. And at
some point I started getting a check for it, paycheck.
I was just following the program. Really, I wasn't the
(23:47):
first one to go through this. I needed a place
to go when I was off. Petter had a couple
of beds in the basement of his house and there
was another guy living there who had been through the program.
And to then we were part of the family. The
offender in this scenario is making the kids like them
(24:07):
where they are an important part of their life, because
it makes it harder for you to tell on someone
you really like. It's easy for any of us to
tell on someone we hate when they've done something wrong,
right like, oh hey, this person, I hate them, they
did this, But when it's someone we like, we're less
likely to the manipulation of You get to do something
(24:28):
that other people don't get to do, You get to
have access to something that other people don't get to
have access to, makes it where they You know, this
confusing notion of okay, but I'm special now that some
of this stuff feels weird, but I get all these
extra privileges or opportunities that other people don't get. I'm special.
And especially for someone who may be at a wilderness camp,
(24:50):
who hasn't maybe oftentimes felt special in their life or
been important to someone else, that can be very powerful
for them, not in a sexual away, but just to
feel respected, to feel wanted, to feel a part of something.
I don't think you could be in Petter's inner circle
without a great deal of denial. I mean I was
(25:13):
living with his family, and I would say, you know,
it's clear to me that at some level they knew
the drill. I think that, like a lot of people
in my position, they were essentially making sacrifices for the
greater good kind of thing. You know that Anna Waki
was so important and so good, you know we had
(25:33):
to keep it going. It's hard to describe what happens
something like that. You don't think about it, You think
about other things. Once you kind of compartmentalize that one
little objectionable thing, then you try to do things to
make your life worth while. I think everybody who is
(25:53):
near Petter did that in some way or another. Chris
says the not always, but sometimes this type of abuse
can continue downward from the abused to others. Now, in
the situation with Anna Waki, these behaviors were nurtured by
(26:14):
people in positions of influence, and we see this from
time to time. Individuals who were abused become involved in
that and they have developing some level of enjoyment, and
they are they're encouraged to engage in this behavior with
other individuals. The other thing it does is it empowers
(26:35):
the offender. Like if let's say so, I I'm sexually
abusing this child and now I'm encouraging this childhood gates
in sexual contact. I can then go to that child
and say, if you ever talked about what happened, they're
going to find about about what you've done. You'll be
in trouble too. Now I've made my victim even more
vulnerable to me and more able to be manipulated because
(26:57):
you have these other people that are kind of this
pond the scheme of sexual abuse. People would confide in him,
and uh, he kind of kept an inventory of people.
He would have something to say about everybody, and he
kind of manipulated people with that information in a really
(27:18):
kind of clever, discreet way. Sometimes he would have confrontations
with people and they would they would not come out
ahead on it, and I think that's why. I think
people were afraid to confront him for that reason. I
think he was one of these people who had the
ability to turn people's own situations against them pretty easily.
(27:38):
He had told me once that he he had been
in the Scouts, the boy Scouts, and the Scout master
had taught them that male relationship with the older man
was important or healthy thing. The unusual thing was that
Petter saw it as this guy was right, and this
(27:59):
idea of these necessary and healthy sexual relationships with men.
I mean, clearly Petter saw things that way children can
be manipulated and manipulating them. It's also part of the
offender's mentality, like if other people are doing this, it's
more socially acceptable. In our inner circle, it's acceptable for
(28:21):
us to do that. I serve as a role model
for them so they can engage other kids in this activity.
It almost is gonna make it harder to believe. But
in the group that I'm hanging out with, the people
who I'm associating with, this is more commonplace and it
becomes a norm. I think I rationalized as long as
I could that I was doing the right thing. At
some point I couldn't accept that myself, but I really
(28:45):
had nowhere to go about it. It was almost like
I had stopped growing when I got there. In a
lot of ways, there was always the upside of it,
but the downside of it was that, yeah, I could
and keep living like that. I didn't know how to
get out. I think for probably the last two years
it's almost a blur. I didn't I wasn't functioning and
(29:09):
really any capacity. I just was depressed. I was suicidal.
It's probably by the narrowest of margins that I didn't
just kill myself. I I came really close. Yeah, I
just I had nowhere to go with it. The more
sincere you are about wanting to get help, the more
(29:31):
trusting you are, the more vulnerable will you become. Professional
therapists are trained about this stuff. It's it's not an
easy thing and I've learned quite a bit about it
their situations. Where anybody can lose their objectivity, there's training
and integrity and some mechanisms for therapists to deal with that.
(29:53):
There's not many mechanisms for patients to deal with it,
and that's unfortunate. Petter wasn't if he was trying to that.
He completely did the opposite, took the vulnerability and uh
and exploited it on a really huge scale. But it's
a cruel thing, you know, the more innocent you are,
(30:14):
the worst you are subject to getting hurt. That way,
the more trusting you are, the more you try to
do the right thing, the worst you get hurt. And
that's just that's the heart break of it. While Louis
(30:43):
Petter continued his methods of abuse and manipulation. The construction
of Antiwaki's Carabell campus was escalating this work. Building on
untouched Gulf wilderness proved even harder on the patients than
what was being done in Douglasville. He is a former patient,
Chris McKnight. Douglasville was very hilly and a really big campus, right,
(31:09):
lots of trees, so there could be a group a
hundred feet over there doing something and you couldn't even
see them. Caramell wasn't like that. You could see clear
across campus for half a mile barely obstructed. It was
kind of like laid out, sort of a circle of buildings.
Then there was an old quad building that was the
(31:31):
foundations for a huge tower when it was now rebased,
and they built buildings on the four foundations that held
the tower. There were small buildings, but most of the
buildings were kind of like in an outer part of
the cleared campus. So if you're working on campus and Caribell,
somebody could see if you're just sitting not working, clear
across the campus or something. So it seemed like it
(31:54):
was a lot more. I felt like we were always
watched more in Carabell at that time, they sent the
toughest of the students to Florida. This is Stephen, a
former patient be in Awaking. He was also a part
of one of the first work groups in Carabelle. They
(32:16):
formulated a group to start an entire new group in carabell.
So while I'm in the en oh, and while they're
formulating this group, there's this intimidation factor that you know
you're being hauled off to the to the roughest of
(32:37):
the rough, and and these guys are going to straighten
me out. For sure. South Campus was smaller than Central,
and then about a year after being there, we built
the big athletic building, which was full of school rooms
(32:58):
in the weight room and the training room and right
next to the football field all the students built. At
the very first campsite I went to was an island
surrounded by a lake infested by alligators and rattlesnakes and
and whatnot. But we built a barge to pull ourselves
(33:23):
across over to the island and we lived in tps
over there. Well, I got bent by a rattlesnake, but
I had my boots on, so I was all right.
We did have one guy that beats an alligator to
death of a baseball bat. Yeah, the alligators were kind
(33:45):
of a problem. Chris McKnight attended Carebelle after the new
campus had been built. He says the work would continue
almost pointlessly if there was nothing to build. It seemed
as though they ran out of stuff to do a carabell.
They purchased forty acres and we just cleared brush. This
(34:07):
went on for like nearly two years of just clearing
brush for no ends, just like go anywhere, find a place,
and to start clearing brush. You never hauled it away.
It was never concerted effort to clear from this section
to that section, and it got to the point they
finally led us torch it and then after that we
never had to go to the North forty again. It
was just completely useless worker project. It just seemed that
(34:30):
like they went out of the way to find stuff
for us to do that just never went to any means.
I remember once we dug a ditch from one creek
to a swampy area and they said it was drainage,
but nothing ever drained, and it was just to keep
us busy. It was just for no reason. Here's former
(34:51):
patient Mark Barbourn. We worked on the Florida trail. We've
done a lot of cutting down of all metados, and
we built the baseball field. I actually laid the center
blocks for the dugouts for the baseball field. There was
another guy that got bit by a rattlesnake when we
(35:13):
were cutting out some some trails. I think the air
lifted him to Tallahassee, and you know, he was back
within a couple of days. This crushing labor would also
lead to physical abuse by the hands of group leaders
and fellow patients. There were injuries. There were injuries all
the time. I was injured quite a bit, especially my
(35:36):
first six months, but mostly that was abuse from other kids.
I was pushed, punched, beaten up by peers quite a bit,
especially that first six six nine months, and I just
figured that just was the way it was. You know.
It was like the hierarchy of just being in a
(35:59):
really terrible situation, you know what I mean. I didn't
know any better, or no one told me that there
that there was another way, or that this is just
the way you're gonna expect to be beaten up or abused,
you know, I mean, it was kind of Lord of
the Flies. You just kind of figure it out where
you were just gonna be in a lot of a
(36:21):
lot of pain, an Awaki. There was a lot of fear,
fear from the staff, fear from your peers. I was
physically afraid. I mean it was I saw other kids
to be abused by their peer group, and I saw
a lot of kids being abused by group leaders, I
(36:43):
mean terribly. So I saw it once it turned over.
Literally it seemed over backwards. And I know from that
day on had back trouble for the rest of his life.
And yet it was being a smartass. We're having a
fire building contest and everyone had to build their own fire,
(37:07):
and said something to the fact that, hey, we build
a fire every night for for group meeting. Why don't
we just do it then in time, everyone, we're just
wasting wood here and came over and just kind of
folded him in half, kind of put his left arm
on his neck and just pushed him like over his knee,
and then he kind of just threw him up against
(37:28):
a tree and kind of collected himself and and said, well,
are we gonna do this fire building contest or not?
And I don't even remember crying so much. Is just
kind of like whimpering in pain and his face just
being so red. I think just I don't know. It
(37:51):
just affected me tremendously seeing a kid hurt like that.
I mean, I had been beaten up by peer group,
and I've been beaten up by my mother, but I
had never seen another kid beaaten up by an adult.
That just scares the hell out of you. Mark Barber
(38:15):
recalls another incident which stuck with him over the years.
One still kind of haunts me. There was a guy, Mr. Phillips,
who was the head of security. There was a guy
in my group, our vocational group, who ran off. We
called him Splitters, but he was a runner. He took
(38:37):
off in the middle of the night. He was gone.
They caught him, and I remember going to the lodge
to eat the next morning and they had him behind
the lodge and you could see it. They were taking
him back there and his arm was hanging for some reason,
his arm didn't looked right. And I told the other
(39:00):
or something. We were walking in line. I said, did
you see you know such and such as arm? He goes, yeah,
it was broken, And I said that's why it looked
the way it did. He goes, yeah, he goes as
you could tell how Mr Phillips was holding it. A
couple of days later, it's in a cast and that's
in a sling and the guy's kind of drugged up.
(39:20):
I don't know if it's pain meds. I don't know
what it was. It's pretty traumatic, you know, to see
an arm going the wrong way. With all the work
being done in Carabell, the reasons for the build out
we're not always clear. One project the patients would later
work on was the build out of a new hotel
in marina in the heart of Carabelle. This hotel in
(39:44):
Marina was not a resource for in Awaki, but destined
for public use. Scott Hole is a former Inawaki patient.
He worked on helping build the marina in Carabell. And
the kind of manual labor that we would do would
either be working on the grounds of the facility itself,
but then there were also public things that we did,
(40:05):
like the marina. When we were building this marina, we
actually were you know, laying the posts that build the
boat slips. Something that's like telephone pole and it's coated
with a chemical called creosote. But we would carry those
big poles to take two of us. You know, it's
probably eight foot long like a telephone pole, not quite
as thick though, and you know, we would have chemical
(40:25):
burns all over our neck and shoulders from carrying that
creosote over and putting them into the end of the water.
We take a big hose and get it down, down, down,
until it was level and that kind of thing. But
it was very very large marina where we were actually,
you know, sinking the creosote post for the boat slips
and all that kind of thing. Doing fifteen year old
(40:45):
kids doing this really hard manual labor building this marina
that I don't know who got the money from, but
it certainly wasn't us. I mean, our parents were paying
for the privilege for us to build this marina for
these other people. Chris McKnight remembers working on the renovation
to the adjoining restaurant attached to the marina. We completely
like leveled the whole marina, rebuilt some of the buildings,
(41:09):
re landscaped everything. They had, bought some boats that we
never really got to use, some sailboats, and they also
bought the restaurant that was there in the marina, which
we gutted and they never really did much with it.
I don't know who the marina was owned by beforehand.
I think they bought the marina and I want to
stay nineteen eighty and it was set dormant and they
(41:33):
finished out the lease with the restaurant and then they
closed the restaurant down and I don't know what their
intentions were. So I remember one of the first work
projects was scraping off the old tile in the downstairs
part of the restaurant and uh and like on the
other side of the room, they had already ripped out
most of the petition walls and stuff, and it was
(41:55):
just kind of like one big coward's room and there
was guys in the other end rip it out in insulation.
And it was hot, you know, it was on the
end of May, but it was still floorida. It's hot, humid,
and you could just see particles kind of floating around.
There's like one door open and where I went in
just scraping this tile from probably like the fifties or forties.
Mark Barber remembers one particular incident while working on the marina.
(42:20):
We were at the marina and we were bolting together
a whole bunch of covert pipe, and that covert pipe
was covered with creosote to keep it from rusting, you know,
from the salt water. And one of the guys had
gotten creosote burnt really bad. It was like a third
degree sunburn on his arms and between his legs to
(42:41):
where we were straddling and bolting it together. I was
helping him. I got burnt a little bit, but not
bad enough to even even really mentioned, but he got
tore up pretty bad. Mark Sublett was one patient who
suffered these types of burns. We were building the athletic
building for Airbell and we were pouring the foundations for it.
(43:03):
The foundations were getting off We're supposed to pour down
to a graded steak, a grade steak. A couple of
us jumped in the asphalt or the concrete. I'm sorry,
and started having You have to brake it back and
get it to the right level. That stuff burns your
skin real bad. And I guess I didn't know it
or didn't feel it, but it burned about sevent the
(43:23):
skin off my legs, so I was laid up. They
took me out of my group. I could not go
anywhere my skin was gone. Had to go through a
bunch of painful stuff as you get third degree chemical burns,
so it could not work. So I'd hanging the clinic
and all this stuff, and that was kind of a
respite because you get some TV and some radio in
the clinic, so you kind of hang out, but still
(43:44):
kind of shitty because of course sitting there are burned
legs and very painful as I'm sitting in the clinic
at the Quadrangle down in Florida, out hobbling around on crutches,
and apparently my parents had come down for a parent
teacher meeting and go, hey, there's my son out there
on crutches, and so they go, oh, we forgot to
(44:05):
tell you your son hurt your legs. Okay, oh no,
you know what he does. Oh he's getting full on,
will take care of everything. Don't worry, He'll be just fine.
And of course to what they told him was afterward, hey,
you're not gonna have to pay us. We're gonna comp
your son to go here. I think part of the
reason they did that because at the time my father
(44:26):
ran to cab General Hospital from six four, so they
kind of knew that pretty big hospital, you know, the
head administrator and all that stuff. So they sent him,
you know, the you know, you don't know any more money.
This marina and hotel would come to appreciate him value
(44:48):
greatly in the years ahead. Here's journalist Albert Edgin. At
that time, Florida was exploding and Caramel that area down there.
He was smart to go there, very smart, because it's
just around the coast from Panama City. Panama City is
(45:09):
a place where people from Chicago go, you know, the Midwest,
their families in the Midwest that they don't go to Miami.
They go to Panama City, for God's sake. And so
caramells right around the curve from that. So when you
think about it, yeah, you can start a thing in
Carrabelle where you've got especialty is treating kids. But man,
(45:30):
that's a real estate bonanza. Antawaki South Campus would come
to be known as Anawaki on the Gulf, described in
local papers at the time as a private, nonprofit college
prep school with an Awake looking to expand their program
into other states. It would soon set up another corporation
(45:50):
to handle all of its real estate endeavors. Anawaki Estates.
This corporation would be run and owned by Petter's three daughters, Marcia, Rita,
and Dana. With the success of in Awaki on the
Gulf in a corporation to hold all of their property
in a wake, he would soon look to international travel
(46:10):
and even a possible expansion into other countries next time
on Camp Help and Awaki, I think that he figured
(46:32):
out people were onto him, and so there became a
chosen group to accompanying them to Mexico. It was supposed
to be this big privileged trip. So the Mexico trips
most years they took us to a house of ill
repew house, prostitution, whatever you wanna call it. If you
(46:53):
didn't know him, you would think he had a kind
He would have a kind heart. They'd you want to
help you, and you in a weird way he would.
It was a church going guy who claimed to be.
But they kept on telling me that I tried to
commit suicide and that's what had happened to me. And
I was trying to tell another of the staff members
(47:13):
in E and L, No, that's not what happened to me.
This happened to me. Camp Hell Anna Waki was created
and hosted by Josh Thane with producer Miranda Hawkins and
executive producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was
written and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival
(47:37):
footage provided by ws B and CBS News. Find us
on Instagram at camp hell pod. That's c A M
p h E L L p O D. Educate yourself
about the issue of child abuse and things that you
should look for at the Darkness to Light website D
two l dot org. That's d the number two l
(47:59):
dot org. Camp hell Anawaki is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com