July 13, 2021 • 61 mins
Criminal charges against Louis Poetter continue to grow, while other Anneewakee employees are arrested. A civil suit against Anneewakee is built.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
It was right around the time when I was coming
(00:22):
out in the news that my mom was contacted by
a student that was no longer there, that it turned eighteen,
that pulled themselves, and then his mom was sending a
lot of people in newspaper clippings and stuff, obviously before
the internet, so my mom she was aware of it.
(00:45):
This is Mark Barber. He attended in Awaki from four
during the criminal investigation into the organization. It was during
the end of his time there that parents were beginning
to find out about the allegations against Anawaki and Lewis Petter.
You could see a lot of changes. We had some visitors,
(01:07):
they built a new clinic, there was a lot of improvement.
Several staff members pretty much disappeared overnight. The staff members
that I had seen that I knew were messing around
with students. They kept their distance and they weren't on
campus nearly as much. With allegations stacking up against an Awaki,
(01:33):
insurance companies were beginning to refute payment. This would lead
to Mark's termination or exit from Anawaki to be rushed
through at this time. I was terminated March one, nineteen six,
and I knew about four days before I was getting
(01:54):
terminated they wanted me to come in put in some
paperwork what my plans were. I had already been looking
at schools and finishing up, you know, high school education,
which I was about three years behind on with some
of the testing, but they kind of rushed through it.
Later in life, I found out the insurance stopped paying
(02:16):
them because of all the allegations. They Champus said, we're
not paying you. They stopped paying it. They went to
my mom and dad. I think they asked him for
like seventy eight thousand dollars. So I think instead of
my mom just coming up and getting me and not
having that closure moment that you have with your group
(02:37):
when they pick you up by your jeans and throw
you in there and everybody gives you a hug, and
you exchange phone numbers, and you know, you get your
stuff and you have a nice send off. You know,
a lot of guys didn't get that. A lot of
guys just got cold shoulder. See you later. They left
one day, they went to the clinic and never came back.
We don't know what happened to. So, yeah, that's how
(02:58):
that's how my last day ended up. Scott Hole was
another attendee of Anawaki at this time. He says that
as soon as your insurance ran out in a weak
he would then terminate you. Yeah, you know, that time
during the investigation was a weird, weird time. I had
been there for quite a while and I was about
(03:20):
to get released, and all of a sudden, you know,
they started like giving me all these awards and stuff,
which was kind of weird. They made me a junior
staff member and gave me this thing called the Silver
Medallion that they only give to one person a year.
I don't know, it was just like they were trying
to normalize things. Actually, actually, you know when they they
called it terminating when you actually, I guess graduate from there,
(03:42):
and usually typically this I certainly found out. The w
when you graduated was when your insurance ran out. So
my insurance ran out to that man, Oh, you're cured,
now go, you know. So I was there right as
all that was going on, So I don't remember exactly
the way things were around the campus. I just remember
it being very, very weird. For other patients, like Mark Butler.
(04:06):
As soon as their parents were informed of the scandal,
they decided to take their kids out of the program
of their own free will. I didn't know that the
scandal broke until I got a letter from my father
or a phone call from my father saying I'm taking
you out, because inside everything was hush huhs. We didn't
(04:27):
know nothing. I was told that there's a big lawsuit
and criminal charges from my family. He said, we're taking
you out. The stories of what the patients did in
Awake had to endure we're beginning to leak out through
the media. He says that it was so they were
(04:49):
told to do it, and at the time he was
fourteen and a half fifteen years old, they didn't know
any better. They were told to take the clothes off
and they would take it. Taking the pictures hm as therapy.
As therapy. The boys have to get down in the
septic tank and bucket them out. How are they addressed?
(05:11):
My sentence is that he was. He was naked, uh
and after he got through doing the work, he was
given a chemical to put on his body and go
to the shower and bade with something to kill the bacteria.
Mark Barber says that while he believed many of the
staff knew about the investigation and allegations against Petter and Innawaki,
(05:34):
most would still not speak up other staff members. I'm
pretty sure he knew what was going on. There was
a story that a staff member told me. After I
got out of being awaken, I actually found him in
the early days of the internet, found his phone number,
called him and talked to him. We had talked about
(05:57):
what had happened, how in a way he got shut down,
and he said that one of the nurses went into
a staff meeting and said, what are you all gonna
do if one of these students ends up with AIDS
or HIV and he goes you could tell who the
predators were and who the predators weren't by that comment,
(06:21):
by the look on their faces. This is what the
staff member told me. And he was in the group.
He was in there, you know. So with that being said, yeah,
I would say I would say all of them new
I think some of them turned to blind eye, and
you would have to be very naive, and I don't
think you would have made it as a Anawaki staff member,
(06:42):
group leader, even kitchen help if you didn't see the
abuse going on. Everybody knew and everybody kept their mouth shut.
O would passed. 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
(07:05):
a form 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 you,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
up for Louis Patterer. He had no answer to that question.
Involved having and this situation paid it little could be
(07:27):
such district place and to do absolutely the contrary of
what they should have done. I'm disturbed over the fact
of something it gets still going on it anyway. I'm
Josh Stein and this is Camp hell an AWAKEI. The
(07:48):
Aniwaki Institution has now been under investigation by Douglas County
authorities for three months. Just last week, investigators with the
Department of Human Resources began talking to the more than
one children now at the Douglas County facility. Right now today,
we do not feel or we have not found, anything
that would indicate that the children are in immediate danger.
(08:09):
Assistant Human Resources Director Jewel Norman says her agency has
found no evidence at this point to shut down the
Douglas County facility. The investigation into an Awiki had brought
in to include local Douglas County authorities, the Georgia Bureau
of Investigations, and now the Department of Human Resources. With
(08:30):
multiple counts of sodomy attributed to Petter and charges against
other employees racking up, the center was still able to
stay open. Petter had been freed from jail after supporters
in the community raised the one million dollars to cover
his bond. As the investigation group, more counts were being
filed against Petter, eventually totaling up to twenty four counts
(08:54):
of sodomy against him. One of the other main suspects
was Head of Therapeutic Services Jim Womack, Here's former d
A for Douglas County Frank Winn. James Womack was a
supervisor at it in a wake. And I don't mean
he just supervised kids. He supervised employees as well as kids,
(09:15):
and he was somebody that it was clear he was
somewhat close to Petter, but at the same time, it
appeared there were some kids that he would take off
in ways that didn't seem appropriate. So as we started investigating,
we were able to find out that there had been
some kids that he had isolated and had had relations with.
(09:38):
I don't remember him being someone that was very friendly,
you know, he was a little bit more of a
we felt like a strong arm fellow, James Walmack. I know,
when we talked about his case, his situation, we just
felt like he wasn't really Lewis Petter's partner. They weren't
(10:00):
partners in crime. It was like, well, that's the way
we can do stuff it and awaking, so I'm gonna
do it. That was clearly our belief as to who
James Walmack was. He might do some things for Petter
because he worked there or because he knew what Petter
was doing, but what he did seemed to be very
(10:22):
much on his own because he believed that's what you
could get away with out there. While trying to find
a charge that would stick for Petter and other in
a WEEKI employees, things could get complicated very quickly. Journalist
Albert Edgin says that the strongest case against Petter and
others would have been the sodomy law at the time.
(10:46):
I think it's interesting to look at the criminal case
from the perspective of the prosecutors. They had a couple
of challenges, and there was sort of a hierarchy of
laws that they were dealing with, and Georgia, sodomy was illegal,
So if they had testimony about a homosexual relationship that
became physical that involved acts of what words defined in
(11:10):
the Georgia law as sodomy at the time, then they
had a slam dunk case. So they were very aggressive
about going after the sodomy cases. That was the easiest
thing for me. The next thing is child abuse on
Georgia's side and child abuse on Florida's side. Now, without
knowing that the details of how those cases are made
(11:30):
or what those laws in those two states were like,
then that means from the prosecutor's point of view that
what they had to think about was how is this
going to play out in a courtroom, and they have
I think three problems. One is they know, well, first
of all, in Florida, where there is no sodomy law,
there's no anti sodomy law. If they're dealing with a
(11:54):
child abuse case, or if they're dealing with a case
where there's a relationship between a child and an adult,
the defense is going to say that was a consensual relationship.
You got to think about it like a prosecutor, like,
that's gonna be one thing that the defense is going
to do. The bottom line on that is that the
easiest cases to make in the cases that they made
in Georgia on sodomy, and that Florida authorities went along
(12:17):
with that because they thought, you get this guy in jail,
we get this guy in jail. Then you have the
additional challenge of getting the victims to talk about it
because it's so embarrassing. It's a horrific experience that they
had and they don't want to talk about in the courtroom.
So it took a while for them to organize the case.
They brought their cases against the people they could bring
(12:39):
them against. The problem that still exists is that Florida
had a list of Georgia probably did too. But Florida
had a list of abuse of counselors, which means older
people adults eighteen or older counselors who had abused kids
that they didn't prosecute and they couldn't process. Cute. Some
(13:00):
of them they couldn't find, but they found at least
one in Tennessee, and he was working at a psychiatric
treatment center for children. So that was then you have
to think how many of these people that they didn't
find are still working in these places now. I asked
Frank Win if anyone from in Aweki South Campus in Caribelle, Florida,
(13:24):
or the Girls Campus in rock Mart were charged and convicted.
I did not participate in any charges. Both places were
other jurisdictions for one thing, so I wouldn't have been
involved in whether they were prosecuted or not, other than
I didn't have anything to prosecute him for in Douglas County.
(13:46):
I don't recall that there was anything significantly wrong that
somebody had done that they had gotten prosecuted for in
either place other than what we were already prosecuting for.
I mean, Louis better, we know did stuff in Mexico
and Florida but that doesn't mean we're gonna prosecute him
for what he did there. And if other people did
(14:08):
stuff there, those jurisdictions would have had access to whatever
we had. I do not remember anything specific about criminal
charges related to any employees at carabell or Rock Market.
Once you've prosecuted somebody, what's the value of using resources
(14:28):
to prosecute them again. And if there were a victim slash,
you know, someone who's been groomed, then do they deserve
to be prosecuted in another jurisdiction. That's somebody else's call.
But at the same time I could understand them decide
and know they shouldn't be prosecuted. I don't really have
an answer. I don't remember discussing are having contact with
(14:54):
prosecution authorities from Carabelle or Polpe County along with Petter
and Jim Wamack, administrator and Petter's son in law, James
Henry Evans, was arrested as well. Eventually, Lewis's wife, Mabel,
would also be arrested for failure to report child abuse.
(15:17):
A little more than two hours ago, a handcuffed Mabel Petter,
the wife of Annawakey founder Lewis Petter was escorted into
the Douglas County jail. The sixty seven year old Anawakey
nursing director has been charged with four counts of failure
to report child abuse. Tony Say mr Evans. A few
minutes later, her son in law, former Annawakey administrator and
(15:38):
acting director, Henry Evans, was taken in handcuffs into the jail,
charged with twenty three counts of failure to report child abuse.
Gb I agent Tony Gaily said investigators had to forcibly
enter evans residence to make the arrest. What we're saying
is that these incidents has occurred, they should have been
reported either to the Sheriff's Department of District Attorne his office,
(16:00):
or the Department of Family and Children's Services. They were not,
and that's a violation of the law. Walmax was presented
as a trial where we settled everything except the legal
issue of the statue limitations. It was just obvious that
we were had narrowed the whole case down to he
(16:22):
did it. The question is legally could we prosecuted? And
so why not just present that to the judge with
better We had so much more and so we weren't
gonna be dealing with just one semantic. There was a
lot more there, with better financially as well as abuses.
Winds says that while the investigation into the sexual abuse
(16:45):
charges was ongoing with the documents seized from an Awaki,
there was now a rico a racketeering case being built
against the inn a WEEKI organization as well. A racketeering
case would involve any pattern of illegal activity that is
carried out by a business which is owned or controlled
by those engaged in such activity. When we're getting ready
(17:09):
for trial, my number one focus was on the sexual
abuse charges and the information related to that that that
was my focus. At the same time, we had people
from the Price Unit, Attorney's Council as well as the
gb I helping us with the case. There were a
whole lot more adept and knowledgeable about how to analyze
(17:33):
the financial part of and a weight when we're talking
about what other charges might have been brought as opposed
to what we're brought. While we were getting ready for
a trial, our negotiation incorporated the fact that we were
investigating other matters that were financial in nature. My memory
(17:57):
is there's no doubt that they knew about it, no doubt.
They knew we had a lot of documents, and they
knew what the documents were that we had. They could
have assumed that we were idiots and that we didn't
know what the documents were showing about their activities, or
they could make the correct assumption that we had people
(18:20):
from the g b I and from the Prosecuting Attorney's
Council that understood what they were manipulating in the financial documents.
So at some point we began crafting a rico indictment.
Some are all of the lawyers for the bet Our
(18:40):
family figured that out, And I remember Mr Petter's attorney
asking me, I need to know if y'all actually got
a document with names on it and charges related to
other matters, And I said, we have a reco indictment
has names of other family members on it, and we
(19:05):
intended to go forward with that document. Part of what
they asked was uh, and we agreed to this was
to drop that aspect of the case. Negotiations had begun
between the patter's attorneys and the prosecution. Frank explains that
this was to try and ensure as much as they
(19:27):
could that the organization behind in Awaki and its financial
interests would come to an end. I say they asked
We asked for a lot too. We asked that the
daughters forfeit everything. I remember thinking that, okay, they're giving
an Awaki estates completely to the nonprofit. It would look
(19:51):
like a huge tax donation. So part of our agreement
was you give up everything you own and end. You
can't take a tax deduction because it would have been inappropriate.
It wasn't their property. After over two years of investigation
and preliminary hearings and agreement between Petter's attorneys and the
(20:15):
prosecution had been made in April of Petter would enter
a guilty plea in return for the investigation to drop
the RICO indictment. Petter pleaded guilty to nineteen counts of
sodomizing twelve former and a Waki patients, camps number four
(20:36):
and five, five different different invision of the Africans camps
undertan and left different India when they're wanting us not
(21:02):
to go forward with the RICO. At the same time,
we addressed all the finances. If you read through the
comprehensive plea agreement, there's a lot of financial information in there.
That has nothing to do with the sexual abuse charges.
It had to do with us doing the best we
(21:23):
could correct what they had stolen. As far as I
was concerned, they had taken something by manipulation and fraud
and it was equivalent to stealing. We agreed if Lewis
Pedderck led guilty on the sex charges and we worked
out the financial restitution as best we could, then we
(21:46):
just basically stopped writing the reco indictment. Chuck Olsen, who
work is the main one that would have been involved
in it. He was brilliant when it came to details,
especially in going through finance actual documents and being able
to craft incidents that would have been part of the
(22:06):
reco indictment. And we were probably about halfway through with it.
But it's a lot of information, and Chuck was working
his butt off trying to organize it and make sure
that he had it complete. And I don't know if
Truck was disappointed or not, but I think he was.
He was based on the financial restitution that we got
(22:27):
from the agreement. I think he was satisfied that we
accomplished what needed to be accomplished with in essence stripping
the family of what everything we could find that they
had taken from an AWAKEI Ultimately some of the properties
the Pattern family acquired were given back to the inn
Awaki Estates Foundation. For other properties in other countries such
(22:50):
as Canada and Mexico, it was just too far out
of the reach of Wind's investigation. Did they had some
cash at the place in Pachuca. Certainly finding that he
had gone to Mexico, that was something that we had
(23:10):
wondered about. That's one of the reasons Earl sent some
officers down there. Other than being able to corroborate kids
versions of how things were down there, I don't remember
they were able to really get physical evidence to bring
back other than photographs and a little bit of real
(23:30):
estate type of information. Douglas County had a lot of
expenses in this investigation, as well as the State of Georgia,
But it was Douglas County's case, an awaki Estates and
or the family members. Everything that we were we knew
about except Mexico. We we didn't want to go back
(23:52):
and mess with any property that was down in Mexico.
So I don't recall that we did anything with the
Mexico estate, but everything else that we had was turned
over to annawaki Ink. As far as the real estate goes,
there was some stuff that was given to Douglas County.
There was some about three hundred acres in Canada and
(24:16):
that was I believe in Lewis Petter's name. That property
was given to Douglas County. There was a lot of
jewelry that was given to Douglas County. There was some
money out of the cash bond, and I remember that
being a dispute later on as to who got what
out of the cash bond that was posted. But the
(24:38):
intent was the cash that came from Petter, we Douglas
County took some of that money to help defray costs.
So part of the comprehensive Plea agreement involved them agreeing
to forfeit those funds to Douglas County. The funds that
were traced to Petter. My memory was we allowed a
(25:02):
certain amount for Mabel to keep and then a majority
of it was forwarded to Douglas County. As far as
other stuff that was done, I believe the Carabelle property
was turned over to an awaki Ink. All the property
in Douglas County that was not otherwise in aniwaki Ink's
(25:22):
name was supposed to be turned over to them. The
property in Polk County I believe was an Awakia estates
and had to be turned over in return for giving
up almost all of in a week he's financial interest
and in turn, any control he had over the organization.
Louis Petter was then sentenced to eight years in prison,
(25:44):
with an additional twelve years of probation to follow. To
give a comparison to a known trial from today, nixi
Um Secret Society founder Keith for Near, who was charged
with sex trafficking of children and can spiracy to commit
forced labor, was sentenced to one and twenty years in prison,
(26:06):
essentially a life sentence. I asked Frank if he believed
that eight years was really enough of a punishment for
Petter being a known abuser for over two decades. Well, yes,
I think it was enough based on the information we
(26:27):
had at the time. This might sound a little mean,
but I wasn't sure how long he would survive in prison,
and so that factored into it also. And when I
say it may actually sound mean, I didn't think at
the time he entered the Blue I felt like whatever
(26:49):
time he was he might not make it eight years.
If he did make it, he would come out and be,
you know, very unhealthy. At the end, I felt like
he was old enough and in bad enough health to
where eight years was. I think I mentioned earlier it
was like giving someone else fifteen years. Partly because of
his health. I think he wound up surprising us and
(27:13):
living longer than we expected. That would have been his
side of the negotiation. I guess he figured he knew
he was in better health than we believed. Do you
think he put a fast one? No, not necessarily. I
mean it was based on what we had. It was
still a fair sentence for the back. At that time,
sentences weren't as harsh in general as they are nowadays
(27:37):
when it comes to in kind of sexual abuse, and
eight years might have been a little bit low. But
we covered everything and we were able to get the
family didn't serve as much time as a whole if
you just added up everybody's sentences. But they gave up
everything financially that we felt like they should, that we
(28:00):
think they deserved. While the Douglas County authorities were doing
(28:25):
all they could to put a stop to the n
Waki organization under Louis Petter. Another group of former victims
had begun to file a civil suit against Petter and
an Awake. When I was practicing law, I had some
neighbors who walked into my office or former neighbors, and
(28:47):
they had a son about Awaky treatment center and the
able suspicious of the seby nine thousand dollar bill that
they had received. So we discussed and I told them
I would look into it. But before I could really
look into it, nice food my clients for it on payment.
(29:10):
This is Pat Edelkind. She's one of the two main
attorneys who handled the civil suit against dan Awaki. Pat's
career is an impressive one. Aside from her involvement in
the Anna Waki case, she was the first single mother
to ever graduate from Harvard Law School. Not only that
I had graduatingd I was so fearful we'll not being
(29:33):
able to pick up after ten years that I worked
extra hard I suppose, and I graduated h well Victorian
and my class, first in my class. It seems her
story is similar to Frank Winn and Earl Lee's and
that one small issue ended up snowballing and is something
(29:54):
bigger than she ever could have imagined. I've heard about
it waking since I was looking for a place to
put my youngest son, who had learning just about with this,
to try and get a hold of that when he
was young, and he was around eleven, and stopped him
(30:16):
from some of the behaviors that he was exhibiting. When
I was searching for a place, I came upon an
Awaki which seemed to be ideal. And when I talked
to Mark, my son about him, and he wasn't happy
about it, but he wasn't unhappy either, so he tried
(30:36):
it and it seemed to work out fairly well initially.
Shortly after Pat entered her son into Annawaki, she began
to hear some things that made her question the program.
She eventually decided to remove her son. He wasn't really
making the progress that I thought he should have been making,
(30:57):
and I was a little suspicious of the place. Also
of my spot had picked up grammatical error in his speech,
and also he he just wasn't thriving. He told me
that they will work all the time, and that they
will shortened therapy sessions with the psychiatry. In fact, the
(31:21):
psychiatrist was legally blond and that they had very short
session with Father Keim there if that usually more like
five all both the charge was for the futtle hour.
Now this really bothered me, and I didn't watch him
just working out in the cold and the element all
(31:43):
the time he was there. So I'm vocational lethy I
thought would be good, but not that much. It just
got to be at bit much, so I removed him.
It's around the same time that Pat decided in a
weak he was not for her son. When her neighbors
came to her with their financial complaint against the center.
(32:06):
What would happen to them is that they had their
child at home with them, but he was paying charged
for our visits when they were like five of sin
with the psychiatrist and all those kinds of things. And
he would tell them that things were going on, and
(32:28):
my son told me also, but it wasn't as a stage,
and that my son had said that they heard that
d Heater, who was ahead of the ansgestion could go
gay on you, and they were beating It didn't add
up to what they said it was going to be.
(32:50):
One of the things that really got attention of black
form of neighbors is the fact that they were paying
out of pocket. They didn't have a hospital or insurance
and things like that that would have picked up this bill.
So they were attuned of what was charged. Most of
(33:11):
the parents so has either the school system, but not
really the school system so much as individual insurance that
would pay it as a health see. Pat would soon
find out the social workers who worked for an Awaki
would refute any allegations from patients. The social worker, who
(33:36):
is person that parents talked to, would hear all the
stuff that the children would say, but then she would say, oh, no,
that wasn't so, and all of the social workers did that,
and the social workers was killed. The parents that you
can't believe what's your son tells you or order because
(34:00):
they are a big step to begin with, and that's
why they came here. They just want to go home
and astra a while. That just did not wash. The
social worker would say, oh, that didn't happen, or that
didn't happen. The parents might have gone said, look, he
said he didn't have the arpy, or he said that
(34:21):
he didn't get educated, or whenever they were supposed to do,
they were not doing. All the child was doing was
laboring to build the house, whether his head was roof,
and all of the social workers would deny an abuse whatsoever,
But these children were getting abused. There was one that
(34:46):
would beating so badly and knocked into the wall then
it broke his ear drum. Not with appalling. Pat would
initially foul a counter suit on behalf of her neighbors
who had been sued by Anawaki for back payment. The
civil suit would soon come to cover an umbrella of
charges against an Awaki. I first filed on their behalf.
(35:11):
I filed accountter plane and spent awake to hit sis them.
I could see them back, and I did, and I
alleged frog moult practice violations of RICO and also physical abuse.
That's suxual abuse. And of course an't wait to deny that.
(35:37):
But as a matter of fact, other hear I started
coming to me because they did word well. And then
I associated with Randall Blackwood that he would handle trial
work and I would take care of all the plain
(35:57):
of some of the depositions that those kind of thing,
which it was a lot of things that handled because
eventually we had one underd and thirty one wanted in
separate lawses. These were individual lawsses. However, they were tried
in multip pursuits. I think we had about eight. PAD
(36:21):
would work side by side with well known attorney Randall
Blackwood and his wife Florence, assisting in handling all of
the documents as well. With such a large case, PAD
would need reinforcements. Randall Blackwood was a renowned trial lawyer
and I was just one person, so I needed someone
(36:45):
who was really excellent exact so I associated with him
and we ended up splitting the sea. I did a
lot of the paper work, most of it, but Randy
did the trials and I helped, of course, but he
was the presence in the courtroom. And we had one
(37:07):
judge assigned to ostin Hooly, Judge Jack Frich And he
was actually very good too, because there was such a
massive paper that we did one dedicated judge just to
keep it straight. Here's Judge Jack Etheridge remembering the circumstances
(37:28):
involving the trial. This is taken from a video clip
thanks to the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research
and Studies at the University of Georgia. Another case I
remember quite well was called the Anawaki case. One lawyer
essentially took over the claims of all of these people,
(37:49):
and there was more than guess and it was just
too complex a case to ask any sitting judge to handle,
and so I was asked to take own aces and
did and we took maybe a year or two to
deal with all the preliminary motion a lot at stake
and uh at the end, I was able to segregate
(38:14):
about ten young men as the plaintiffs against a few
of the defendants, and then we were gonna try the
other cases incrementally as we've been along. We set up
a separate courtroom. We built courtroom for that trial and
it was tried over a period of I think ten weeks.
(38:37):
In order to be able to go into trial at
any time, they used a former Riches department store to
make an ad hoc courtroom. Yeah, Riches department store had closed,
but in the part department store we had a courtroom
(38:58):
built so that the much would litigate the cases. We
could adate the cases and get them thuttled and have
the access. It is the time, So that's what Judge
jack Etheridge healthy hearings. After we had putting the money
(39:19):
into making a court room and we uh tried the
one case that went to trial. Papled work in tandem
with Frank Wynn and Douglas County authorities by sharing their findings.
They would help each other with their cases. The District
Attorney of Douglas County where the institutions were it was
(39:44):
Fright wyn And at the time there has been a
case of cases where people had gone to Mr Wynn
that have complained about sexual abuse and battering and those
kinds of things, and so he's looking into it. So
(40:06):
I shared my knowledge with him, and he kept other
placest to me and that's how it got so many.
But something needed to be done about. Sarah Tillis would
also have a hand in making sure these civil proceedings
did all they could to take Petter down. Journalist Albert
(40:28):
Egen says that her diligent notes kept during her last
few years as a board member greatly helped the case.
Four people involved in developing the narrative of the civil case,
which dealt with an awakes management and the deterioration of
Lewis Petter's control. Those four people were Sarah Tillis, patal Kind,
(40:55):
Randy Blackwood, and Randy's wife Florence and those documentations that
shows how Sarah Tillis went through weeks and weeks and
weeks of recounting what she had experienced day to day,
keeping notes, collating notes, and finally what emerged was a
narrative of the way the place fell apart, and Sarah
(41:17):
was at the core of that. Sarah Tillis's experience with that,
Sarah Tillis's determination and uh fortitude was what really really,
in the end of the day, exposed everything. Randy Blackwood
was just a bulldog of a lawyer, A really nice guy,
a little guy, kind of slightly built, but man, he
(41:40):
was tough and he was pissed. He took this personally.
Randy was meticulous in his research, but Randy was screwed
and manipulative. Randy told me a lot of things through
the course and working on the story. There was a
point in time when I was pulling all those documents
(42:02):
from the state archives that showed the hospital licensure manipulation
between Parmam and Petro and also showed the long term
relationship between Parma and Petro. Albert says that he too,
would share documents from his covering of the Nawaki story.
All of these factors would help paint the picture of
(42:22):
how bad in Awaki had gotten. Randy had a good case.
But when I brought that material to him and showed
him what I had found and asked him about it,
then he and Florence decided that Florence would go back
and do the same research I had done, so they
would have it independently of me. But at the same time,
Randy and I developed a I would call it a partnership,
(42:45):
even because I was working on the story and he
was working on the case, and at the end of
the day we were working on the same thing, so
we became friends. And um, you know. He was very
helpful to me in that he would leak things to me,
he would give me in formation, he would guide me
towards things that he was working on. But at the
same time, his goal was to do two things. One
(43:07):
was too in the public's eye to turn Petter into
into a demon, which was not difficult to do, but
Randy was determined to do it. That's what he was
doing with a whole range of reporters and people in
the public eye. So his goal was not just to
to collect the information and to help the you know,
(43:28):
the children that had been abused. But from a strategic,
from a tactical point of view, his goal was to
make sure that by the time he got this litigation
to court that there was going to be a very
very negative view of Anawaki and Petter in the public's eye,
and he succeeded. Taking on a year's long case can
often be personally and financially taxing to the council's involved.
(43:52):
This was especially true for Randall Blackwood and Pat edel Kind.
My understanding is that Sarah Tillison her husband, helped fund
the litigation. Randy and Florence I know they had to
borrow money along the way. At the end of the day,
they were so certain of the outcome that they were
(44:14):
willing to financially risk what they had to risk. All
of the lawsuits from financed by myself and Randy Berkley.
So there came a time when a very heavy load
to carry, but we did. However, I came close to bankruptcy,
and I believe Randy did also. I was fearful of
(44:37):
losing my house. We were, although we plowed plenty of
money in it and took out roans, it got to
be pretty frightening. When it came trying to pay the piper,
I just despised them. I have been personally moved, but
also legally it was for render. We thought, having in
(45:00):
this stitution paid it a hospital, to be such shut
desticable place and to do absolutely the contrary of what
they should have done. The supern holes should have been
talked to the NAT school. They weren't being taught either.
(45:23):
They were there to be helped, and they weren't. That's
the sad truth of it. In fact, they were harmed.
Pattel Kind was attempting to take down a million dollar operation,
one involving political figures, a board of trustees, and the
whole staff of upper management. Handling a suit like this
(45:46):
is something that can certainly make you a target. Pat
says it is during her involvement in the civil suit
that she believes someone from the Anawaki organization may have
tried to harm or even kill her. I was leaving
warning sized Virginia Higla's area and I was on I
(46:08):
eighty five going north and my car suddling when I
was controlled and hit the divide a wall and rolled
in front of three lanes of traffic, which I luckily survived.
I broke in my hid in the crash. She believed
(46:29):
that this was no accident, but that someone had knowingly
tampered with her car in an attempt to hurt her. Well,
my car, which had been parked on the street at
that occasion, was tampered with, and when our control on
I five rolled across three lanes of traffic, I was
(46:52):
fortunate to survive, and it was a new car, so
I thought, what on earth? And then I received us
to call from a psychologist formerly went that awaking, who
didn't get me his name, but what he said, I'll
never forget it was chilly. He said, this is what
(47:13):
Louis Petter raise his lackeys to do, is to do
go the tricks on people, to try and hilpe them.
She thinks they're hurrying him. By November seven, nine women
(47:50):
had to come forward to sue in Awaki on counts
of racketeering, conspiring to abuse them, and attempting to defraud
them financially. Just a few weeks later, the case would
grow to twenty two former patients suing the center, naming Petter,
Jim Parham and other board members as defendants. Once again,
(48:14):
one of the hardest things was attempting to get victims
to come forward to speak in court. Mark Barber remembers
his reaction when first finding out about the suit. We
first heard about the lawsuit, and I guess it was
a class action lawsuit. My mom got some paperwork in
the mail and I want to say eight somewhere around there,
(48:39):
and my mom asking me, do you want to talk
to anybody about this? And at this time I had
my film full of counselors and therapists and psychologists, and
I really didn't want to speak to anybody about anything anymore. Um.
But I got to a point where I just kind
of shoveled it real eep and just told my mom
(49:01):
I didn't have anything to say. Nothing really happened to me.
I don't want to talk about it. Pat Edelkind says
that trying to get the younger patients to admit to
the sexual abuse was very challenging. Fortunately, some older former
patients would be willing to come forward well. The other
(49:22):
ones would admit to the battery and physical abuse, never
the sexual abuse. But we eventually learned to put on
the older ones that were more comfortable with talking about
what happened. Even though the satural limitations has asked, they
(49:46):
were able to tell what happened in the sexual abuse
and it was pretty astalding. One key witness that agreed
to come forward in the civil suit was one of
the earliest instances of Petter's abuse. Bob Camp. Camp had
been one of Petter's victims during the trial, actually living
(50:07):
with him while the trial happened. Journalist Albert Edgin was
able to speak with Camp at length during his time
covering the Antawakey story. Bob Camp was a troubled young
man who was treated at anawakey whom Petter lured into
(50:30):
a sexual relationship. Petter had him stay in his home.
Petter went to Mexico with him. Petter made him into
a counselor. Petter uh detigrated Bob Camp's father, who was
an alcoholic, and brought Bob's mother into his confidence. Bob
(50:52):
Camp was a vulnerable person whom Petter exploited. Bob was
a really a brilliant man, but severely troubled in his youth.
But he was smart about dealing with his troubles. He
knew he was troubled. His behavior would range from being
(51:16):
emotionally out of control to being very, very determined to
analyze his own behavior into and to deal with it.
Randy Blackwood told me about Bob Camp and said that
his story was the clearest case of abuse that Randy
intended to use in his litigation, but Bob understandably was
(51:39):
hesitant to talk. Uh. Randy Blackwood's first job was to
persuade Bob to talk in a courtroom, but before that,
because as I said, part of randy strategy was public
vilification and getting this story out before the case came
to trial, Randy wanted me to talk to Bob. Bob
(51:59):
wouldn't talk to me, but finally Randy persuaded him too,
and I had a long conversation with Bob Camp, who
told me his whole life story, including the abuse by
Louis Petter, sitting in a truck in the parking lot
outside the Decab County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia. And among
the things he told me was that he was so
(52:20):
troubled at the time he was in his thirties, that
he had had such a rough time that he didn't
have any male friends his age. He was a basketball fan,
and he didn't even have somebody that he could go
to see an Atlanta Hawks game with. And it was
an emotional moment for me, certainly for him to hear
(52:43):
that that was the depths to which Louis Petter had
driven some of the children that he should have been helping.
At that point, I decided that I was going to
do everything I could to take Louis Petter's story, make
it public, and take him out. You'd have to have
been sitting in that truck and listen to that man,
(53:05):
this thirty year old man whose life had been destroyed,
who had been manipulated, and he knew it. He The
thing about Bob Campus that he's so damned smart and
so analytical that he knew what had happened to him.
And Bob has written and really a very clear headed
and honest account of the whole deteriorating relationship between him
(53:29):
and Petter, and which he documents that he documents how
Petter did it. But the thing about the documentation is
not that what's stunning is not the narrative. What stunning
is Bob Camp's analysis of the narrative, which is built
into that piece that he wrote. He actually knows what
(53:49):
happened to him. He's able to analyze it as it's happening,
and he can't do anything about it because he is
so troubled. Because the reason he's in an awake he
is to take care of that, but instead that is
is exponentially made worse by this guy who is a
(54:14):
real estate salesman. Bob Camp would write a sixty seven
page essay detailing his abuse by Petter's hands. It would
trace his first instance of moles station during his first
interview with Petter, to living in Petter's house for years,
to eventually committing himself to psychotherapy and realizing the manipulation
(54:38):
he had been subjected to for so many years. The
analysis is the most amazing part of it because Bob says,
and this is in retrospect, but he had to have
been than having these thoughts along the way. One of
the things that comes through is Bob has stunned at
how much control Petter has over him. But he's able
to say, here's how he got it. He knows how
(55:00):
Petter controlled him, but he can't stop it. When Petter
was going through this investigation that Ren and Dagostino precipitated,
Bob Camp was living with Petter in his home. Petter
had such control over Bob Camp at the time that
the person that probably could have been the best witness
(55:21):
for the Dagastino ren accusations was under Louis Petter's thumb,
and it took him another fifteen years to get out
from under his thumb. He was a child at the time,
he was a teenager. Bob was such an honest guy
and so determined to get better that he checked himself
(55:43):
into Georgia Regional Hospital for six months voluntarily because he
wanted to help himself. He had had a downturn and
he wanted to help himself. Now significantly, he didn't check
himself into an awaking He goes to Georgia Regional and
he gets good treatment there. He gets he's got good people,
professionals who are dealing with his troubles, and he tells
(56:03):
them all about it, and there's a blow by blow
account of what happened to him there, and one of
the things that happens. Of course, as the counselors there
began to learn about his relationship with Louis Patter, so
they bring Patter in and Petter admits all of this
to Bob and yet in his meeting with Bob and
Bob's mother, he tries to manipulate Bob. Still at that point,
(56:29):
in a document from Bob Camp's therapy, he had managed
to get Louis Petter to admit to his years of abuse.
Petter had been so certain that this document would never
see the light of day that he spoke openly of
his manipulation and sexual acts with the then minor. Bob
Camp managed to get copies of his records and shared
(56:50):
those with Albert years later. Lewis Petter at that time
apparently reassured himself that because this was a confidential meeting
in a psychiatric treatment program facility, that this will never
come up. So he was, for once in his life,
he was honest and forthright, although still manipulative. He was
(57:14):
honest to the degree that he admitted that he had
had this relationship with with Bob Camp. When he didn't
count on it was that eventually Bob would get well
enough to make it public, that he would be able
to be strong enough to handle that pet Her underestimated
Bob Camp. Bob eventually became probably the the headliner litigant.
(57:36):
He was the guy that Randy and Pat used as
the example of the whole Earth manipulation. Bob Camp was
important to the litigation because his story was the clearest,
the oldest, the most persistent, and really the most horrible
of all, and he was willing to talk about it.
(57:58):
He had the courage to stand up and say this
happened to me. He had a lot of support and
I never met his wife, but man, I have a
good impression of her because one of the things that
he told me repeatedly was that she was supportive, and
she didn't have to be supportive. You know, that was
a horrific situation that she found herself in and she's
(58:20):
stuck with that guy. The civil suit against Petter had
ballooned to involve over one and ten patients from Anna
Waki due to Bob Camp's testimony. Had edel Kind and
Randy Blackwood would have basically a spoken confession by Petter
in one case of his abuse. With the civil trial
(58:43):
going on upboards of three years or more, Blackwood and
edel Kind were struggling financially to try and keep the
trial going an attempt to bring some type of justice
to the victims of Lewis Petter and Company. Next time
(59:04):
on the conclusion to Camp Help in Awaking. It gave
him something to start on, move to recuperate, but haven't
lived what I lived through. No one will trade money
for that. I still live with survivors guilt. I don't
know if that'll ever leave me. It has absolutely changed
(59:25):
my life. It changed my body. I'm hoping that by
doing this podcast that it will bring me some closer.
The most troubling thing to me is that there are
still people who were abusing Patience in any way. He
who are in the health care systems around the site.
(59:49):
He hurts so many people. I felt like the balance
between good and evil on this planet shifted. M Camp
Hell an Awake was created and hosted by Josh Thane,
with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex Williams and
(01:00:11):
Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written and performed by Josh
Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival 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
(01:00:32):
that you should look for at the Darkness to Light website.
D two well dot org. That's d the number two
l dot org camp hell an Awake 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.
It was right around the time when I was coming
(00:22):
out in the news that my mom was contacted by
a student that was no longer there, that it turned eighteen,
that pulled themselves, and then his mom was sending a
lot of people in newspaper clippings and stuff, obviously before
the internet, so my mom she was aware of it.
(00:45):
This is Mark Barber. He attended in Awaki from four
during the criminal investigation into the organization. It was during
the end of his time there that parents were beginning
to find out about the allegations against Anawaki and Lewis Petter.
You could see a lot of changes. We had some visitors,
(01:07):
they built a new clinic, there was a lot of improvement.
Several staff members pretty much disappeared overnight. The staff members
that I had seen that I knew were messing around
with students. They kept their distance and they weren't on
campus nearly as much. With allegations stacking up against an Awaki,
(01:33):
insurance companies were beginning to refute payment. This would lead
to Mark's termination or exit from Anawaki to be rushed
through at this time. I was terminated March one, nineteen six,
and I knew about four days before I was getting
(01:54):
terminated they wanted me to come in put in some
paperwork what my plans were. I had already been looking
at schools and finishing up, you know, high school education,
which I was about three years behind on with some
of the testing, but they kind of rushed through it.
Later in life, I found out the insurance stopped paying
(02:16):
them because of all the allegations. They Champus said, we're
not paying you. They stopped paying it. They went to
my mom and dad. I think they asked him for
like seventy eight thousand dollars. So I think instead of
my mom just coming up and getting me and not
having that closure moment that you have with your group
(02:37):
when they pick you up by your jeans and throw
you in there and everybody gives you a hug, and
you exchange phone numbers, and you know, you get your
stuff and you have a nice send off. You know,
a lot of guys didn't get that. A lot of
guys just got cold shoulder. See you later. They left
one day, they went to the clinic and never came back.
We don't know what happened to. So, yeah, that's how
(02:58):
that's how my last day ended up. Scott Hole was
another attendee of Anawaki at this time. He says that
as soon as your insurance ran out in a weak
he would then terminate you. Yeah, you know, that time
during the investigation was a weird, weird time. I had
been there for quite a while and I was about
(03:20):
to get released, and all of a sudden, you know,
they started like giving me all these awards and stuff,
which was kind of weird. They made me a junior
staff member and gave me this thing called the Silver
Medallion that they only give to one person a year.
I don't know, it was just like they were trying
to normalize things. Actually, actually, you know when they they
called it terminating when you actually, I guess graduate from there,
(03:42):
and usually typically this I certainly found out. The w
when you graduated was when your insurance ran out. So
my insurance ran out to that man, Oh, you're cured,
now go, you know. So I was there right as
all that was going on, So I don't remember exactly
the way things were around the campus. I just remember
it being very, very weird. For other patients, like Mark Butler.
(04:06):
As soon as their parents were informed of the scandal,
they decided to take their kids out of the program
of their own free will. I didn't know that the
scandal broke until I got a letter from my father
or a phone call from my father saying I'm taking
you out, because inside everything was hush huhs. We didn't
(04:27):
know nothing. I was told that there's a big lawsuit
and criminal charges from my family. He said, we're taking
you out. The stories of what the patients did in
Awake had to endure we're beginning to leak out through
the media. He says that it was so they were
(04:49):
told to do it, and at the time he was
fourteen and a half fifteen years old, they didn't know
any better. They were told to take the clothes off
and they would take it. Taking the pictures hm as therapy.
As therapy. The boys have to get down in the
septic tank and bucket them out. How are they addressed?
(05:11):
My sentence is that he was. He was naked, uh
and after he got through doing the work, he was
given a chemical to put on his body and go
to the shower and bade with something to kill the bacteria.
Mark Barber says that while he believed many of the
staff knew about the investigation and allegations against Petter and Innawaki,
(05:34):
most would still not speak up other staff members. I'm
pretty sure he knew what was going on. There was
a story that a staff member told me. After I
got out of being awaken, I actually found him in
the early days of the internet, found his phone number,
called him and talked to him. We had talked about
(05:57):
what had happened, how in a way he got shut down,
and he said that one of the nurses went into
a staff meeting and said, what are you all gonna
do if one of these students ends up with AIDS
or HIV and he goes you could tell who the
predators were and who the predators weren't by that comment,
(06:21):
by the look on their faces. This is what the
staff member told me. And he was in the group.
He was in there, you know. So with that being said, yeah,
I would say I would say all of them new
I think some of them turned to blind eye, and
you would have to be very naive, and I don't
think you would have made it as a Anawaki staff member,
(06:42):
group leader, even kitchen help if you didn't see the
abuse going on. Everybody knew and everybody kept their mouth shut.
O would passed. 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
(07:05):
a form 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 you,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
up for Louis Patterer. He had no answer to that question.
Involved having and this situation paid it little could be
(07:27):
such district place and to do absolutely the contrary of
what they should have done. I'm disturbed over the fact
of something it gets still going on it anyway. I'm
Josh Stein and this is Camp hell an AWAKEI. The
(07:48):
Aniwaki Institution has now been under investigation by Douglas County
authorities for three months. Just last week, investigators with the
Department of Human Resources began talking to the more than
one children now at the Douglas County facility. Right now today,
we do not feel or we have not found, anything
that would indicate that the children are in immediate danger.
(08:09):
Assistant Human Resources Director Jewel Norman says her agency has
found no evidence at this point to shut down the
Douglas County facility. The investigation into an Awiki had brought
in to include local Douglas County authorities, the Georgia Bureau
of Investigations, and now the Department of Human Resources. With
(08:30):
multiple counts of sodomy attributed to Petter and charges against
other employees racking up, the center was still able to
stay open. Petter had been freed from jail after supporters
in the community raised the one million dollars to cover
his bond. As the investigation group, more counts were being
filed against Petter, eventually totaling up to twenty four counts
(08:54):
of sodomy against him. One of the other main suspects
was Head of Therapeutic Services Jim Womack, Here's former d
A for Douglas County Frank Winn. James Womack was a
supervisor at it in a wake. And I don't mean
he just supervised kids. He supervised employees as well as kids,
(09:15):
and he was somebody that it was clear he was
somewhat close to Petter, but at the same time, it
appeared there were some kids that he would take off
in ways that didn't seem appropriate. So as we started investigating,
we were able to find out that there had been
some kids that he had isolated and had had relations with.
(09:38):
I don't remember him being someone that was very friendly,
you know, he was a little bit more of a
we felt like a strong arm fellow, James Walmack. I know,
when we talked about his case, his situation, we just
felt like he wasn't really Lewis Petter's partner. They weren't
(10:00):
partners in crime. It was like, well, that's the way
we can do stuff it and awaking, so I'm gonna
do it. That was clearly our belief as to who
James Walmack was. He might do some things for Petter
because he worked there or because he knew what Petter
was doing, but what he did seemed to be very
(10:22):
much on his own because he believed that's what you
could get away with out there. While trying to find
a charge that would stick for Petter and other in
a WEEKI employees, things could get complicated very quickly. Journalist
Albert Edgin says that the strongest case against Petter and
others would have been the sodomy law at the time.
(10:46):
I think it's interesting to look at the criminal case
from the perspective of the prosecutors. They had a couple
of challenges, and there was sort of a hierarchy of
laws that they were dealing with, and Georgia, sodomy was illegal,
So if they had testimony about a homosexual relationship that
became physical that involved acts of what words defined in
(11:10):
the Georgia law as sodomy at the time, then they
had a slam dunk case. So they were very aggressive
about going after the sodomy cases. That was the easiest
thing for me. The next thing is child abuse on
Georgia's side and child abuse on Florida's side. Now, without
knowing that the details of how those cases are made
(11:30):
or what those laws in those two states were like,
then that means from the prosecutor's point of view that
what they had to think about was how is this
going to play out in a courtroom, and they have
I think three problems. One is they know, well, first
of all, in Florida, where there is no sodomy law,
there's no anti sodomy law. If they're dealing with a
(11:54):
child abuse case, or if they're dealing with a case
where there's a relationship between a child and an adult,
the defense is going to say that was a consensual relationship.
You got to think about it like a prosecutor, like,
that's gonna be one thing that the defense is going
to do. The bottom line on that is that the
easiest cases to make in the cases that they made
in Georgia on sodomy, and that Florida authorities went along
(12:17):
with that because they thought, you get this guy in jail,
we get this guy in jail. Then you have the
additional challenge of getting the victims to talk about it
because it's so embarrassing. It's a horrific experience that they
had and they don't want to talk about in the courtroom.
So it took a while for them to organize the case.
They brought their cases against the people they could bring
(12:39):
them against. The problem that still exists is that Florida
had a list of Georgia probably did too. But Florida
had a list of abuse of counselors, which means older
people adults eighteen or older counselors who had abused kids
that they didn't prosecute and they couldn't process. Cute. Some
(13:00):
of them they couldn't find, but they found at least
one in Tennessee, and he was working at a psychiatric
treatment center for children. So that was then you have
to think how many of these people that they didn't
find are still working in these places now. I asked
Frank Win if anyone from in Aweki South Campus in Caribelle, Florida,
(13:24):
or the Girls Campus in rock Mart were charged and convicted.
I did not participate in any charges. Both places were
other jurisdictions for one thing, so I wouldn't have been
involved in whether they were prosecuted or not, other than
I didn't have anything to prosecute him for in Douglas County.
(13:46):
I don't recall that there was anything significantly wrong that
somebody had done that they had gotten prosecuted for in
either place other than what we were already prosecuting for.
I mean, Louis better, we know did stuff in Mexico
and Florida but that doesn't mean we're gonna prosecute him
for what he did there. And if other people did
(14:08):
stuff there, those jurisdictions would have had access to whatever
we had. I do not remember anything specific about criminal
charges related to any employees at carabell or Rock Market.
Once you've prosecuted somebody, what's the value of using resources
(14:28):
to prosecute them again. And if there were a victim slash,
you know, someone who's been groomed, then do they deserve
to be prosecuted in another jurisdiction. That's somebody else's call.
But at the same time I could understand them decide
and know they shouldn't be prosecuted. I don't really have
an answer. I don't remember discussing are having contact with
(14:54):
prosecution authorities from Carabelle or Polpe County along with Petter
and Jim Wamack, administrator and Petter's son in law, James
Henry Evans, was arrested as well. Eventually, Lewis's wife, Mabel,
would also be arrested for failure to report child abuse.
(15:17):
A little more than two hours ago, a handcuffed Mabel Petter,
the wife of Annawakey founder Lewis Petter was escorted into
the Douglas County jail. The sixty seven year old Anawakey
nursing director has been charged with four counts of failure
to report child abuse. Tony Say mr Evans. A few
minutes later, her son in law, former Annawakey administrator and
(15:38):
acting director, Henry Evans, was taken in handcuffs into the jail,
charged with twenty three counts of failure to report child abuse.
Gb I agent Tony Gaily said investigators had to forcibly
enter evans residence to make the arrest. What we're saying
is that these incidents has occurred, they should have been
reported either to the Sheriff's Department of District Attorne his office,
(16:00):
or the Department of Family and Children's Services. They were not,
and that's a violation of the law. Walmax was presented
as a trial where we settled everything except the legal
issue of the statue limitations. It was just obvious that
we were had narrowed the whole case down to he
(16:22):
did it. The question is legally could we prosecuted? And
so why not just present that to the judge with
better We had so much more and so we weren't
gonna be dealing with just one semantic. There was a
lot more there, with better financially as well as abuses.
Winds says that while the investigation into the sexual abuse
(16:45):
charges was ongoing with the documents seized from an Awaki,
there was now a rico a racketeering case being built
against the inn a WEEKI organization as well. A racketeering
case would involve any pattern of illegal activity that is
carried out by a business which is owned or controlled
by those engaged in such activity. When we're getting ready
(17:09):
for trial, my number one focus was on the sexual
abuse charges and the information related to that that that
was my focus. At the same time, we had people
from the Price Unit, Attorney's Council as well as the
gb I helping us with the case. There were a
whole lot more adept and knowledgeable about how to analyze
(17:33):
the financial part of and a weight when we're talking
about what other charges might have been brought as opposed
to what we're brought. While we were getting ready for
a trial, our negotiation incorporated the fact that we were
investigating other matters that were financial in nature. My memory
(17:57):
is there's no doubt that they knew about it, no doubt.
They knew we had a lot of documents, and they
knew what the documents were that we had. They could
have assumed that we were idiots and that we didn't
know what the documents were showing about their activities, or
they could make the correct assumption that we had people
(18:20):
from the g b I and from the Prosecuting Attorney's
Council that understood what they were manipulating in the financial documents.
So at some point we began crafting a rico indictment.
Some are all of the lawyers for the bet Our
(18:40):
family figured that out, And I remember Mr Petter's attorney
asking me, I need to know if y'all actually got
a document with names on it and charges related to
other matters, And I said, we have a reco indictment
has names of other family members on it, and we
(19:05):
intended to go forward with that document. Part of what
they asked was uh, and we agreed to this was
to drop that aspect of the case. Negotiations had begun
between the patter's attorneys and the prosecution. Frank explains that
this was to try and ensure as much as they
(19:27):
could that the organization behind in Awaki and its financial
interests would come to an end. I say they asked
We asked for a lot too. We asked that the
daughters forfeit everything. I remember thinking that, okay, they're giving
an Awaki estates completely to the nonprofit. It would look
(19:51):
like a huge tax donation. So part of our agreement
was you give up everything you own and end. You
can't take a tax deduction because it would have been inappropriate.
It wasn't their property. After over two years of investigation
and preliminary hearings and agreement between Petter's attorneys and the
(20:15):
prosecution had been made in April of Petter would enter
a guilty plea in return for the investigation to drop
the RICO indictment. Petter pleaded guilty to nineteen counts of
sodomizing twelve former and a Waki patients, camps number four
(20:36):
and five, five different different invision of the Africans camps
undertan and left different India when they're wanting us not
(21:02):
to go forward with the RICO. At the same time,
we addressed all the finances. If you read through the
comprehensive plea agreement, there's a lot of financial information in there.
That has nothing to do with the sexual abuse charges.
It had to do with us doing the best we
(21:23):
could correct what they had stolen. As far as I
was concerned, they had taken something by manipulation and fraud
and it was equivalent to stealing. We agreed if Lewis
Pedderck led guilty on the sex charges and we worked
out the financial restitution as best we could, then we
(21:46):
just basically stopped writing the reco indictment. Chuck Olsen, who
work is the main one that would have been involved
in it. He was brilliant when it came to details,
especially in going through finance actual documents and being able
to craft incidents that would have been part of the
(22:06):
reco indictment. And we were probably about halfway through with it.
But it's a lot of information, and Chuck was working
his butt off trying to organize it and make sure
that he had it complete. And I don't know if
Truck was disappointed or not, but I think he was.
He was based on the financial restitution that we got
(22:27):
from the agreement. I think he was satisfied that we
accomplished what needed to be accomplished with in essence stripping
the family of what everything we could find that they
had taken from an AWAKEI Ultimately some of the properties
the Pattern family acquired were given back to the inn
Awaki Estates Foundation. For other properties in other countries such
(22:50):
as Canada and Mexico, it was just too far out
of the reach of Wind's investigation. Did they had some
cash at the place in Pachuca. Certainly finding that he
had gone to Mexico, that was something that we had
(23:10):
wondered about. That's one of the reasons Earl sent some
officers down there. Other than being able to corroborate kids
versions of how things were down there, I don't remember
they were able to really get physical evidence to bring
back other than photographs and a little bit of real
(23:30):
estate type of information. Douglas County had a lot of
expenses in this investigation, as well as the State of Georgia,
But it was Douglas County's case, an awaki Estates and
or the family members. Everything that we were we knew
about except Mexico. We we didn't want to go back
(23:52):
and mess with any property that was down in Mexico.
So I don't recall that we did anything with the
Mexico estate, but everything else that we had was turned
over to annawaki Ink. As far as the real estate goes,
there was some stuff that was given to Douglas County.
There was some about three hundred acres in Canada and
(24:16):
that was I believe in Lewis Petter's name. That property
was given to Douglas County. There was a lot of
jewelry that was given to Douglas County. There was some
money out of the cash bond, and I remember that
being a dispute later on as to who got what
out of the cash bond that was posted. But the
(24:38):
intent was the cash that came from Petter, we Douglas
County took some of that money to help defray costs.
So part of the comprehensive Plea agreement involved them agreeing
to forfeit those funds to Douglas County. The funds that
were traced to Petter. My memory was we allowed a
(25:02):
certain amount for Mabel to keep and then a majority
of it was forwarded to Douglas County. As far as
other stuff that was done, I believe the Carabelle property
was turned over to an awaki Ink. All the property
in Douglas County that was not otherwise in aniwaki Ink's
(25:22):
name was supposed to be turned over to them. The
property in Polk County I believe was an Awakia estates
and had to be turned over in return for giving
up almost all of in a week he's financial interest
and in turn, any control he had over the organization.
Louis Petter was then sentenced to eight years in prison,
(25:44):
with an additional twelve years of probation to follow. To
give a comparison to a known trial from today, nixi
Um Secret Society founder Keith for Near, who was charged
with sex trafficking of children and can spiracy to commit
forced labor, was sentenced to one and twenty years in prison,
(26:06):
essentially a life sentence. I asked Frank if he believed
that eight years was really enough of a punishment for
Petter being a known abuser for over two decades. Well, yes,
I think it was enough based on the information we
(26:27):
had at the time. This might sound a little mean,
but I wasn't sure how long he would survive in prison,
and so that factored into it also. And when I
say it may actually sound mean, I didn't think at
the time he entered the Blue I felt like whatever
(26:49):
time he was he might not make it eight years.
If he did make it, he would come out and be,
you know, very unhealthy. At the end, I felt like
he was old enough and in bad enough health to
where eight years was. I think I mentioned earlier it
was like giving someone else fifteen years. Partly because of
his health. I think he wound up surprising us and
(27:13):
living longer than we expected. That would have been his
side of the negotiation. I guess he figured he knew
he was in better health than we believed. Do you
think he put a fast one? No, not necessarily. I
mean it was based on what we had. It was
still a fair sentence for the back. At that time,
sentences weren't as harsh in general as they are nowadays
(27:37):
when it comes to in kind of sexual abuse, and
eight years might have been a little bit low. But
we covered everything and we were able to get the
family didn't serve as much time as a whole if
you just added up everybody's sentences. But they gave up
everything financially that we felt like they should, that we
(28:00):
think they deserved. While the Douglas County authorities were doing
(28:25):
all they could to put a stop to the n
Waki organization under Louis Petter. Another group of former victims
had begun to file a civil suit against Petter and
an Awake. When I was practicing law, I had some
neighbors who walked into my office or former neighbors, and
(28:47):
they had a son about Awaky treatment center and the
able suspicious of the seby nine thousand dollar bill that
they had received. So we discussed and I told them
I would look into it. But before I could really
look into it, nice food my clients for it on payment.
(29:10):
This is Pat Edelkind. She's one of the two main
attorneys who handled the civil suit against dan Awaki. Pat's
career is an impressive one. Aside from her involvement in
the Anna Waki case, she was the first single mother
to ever graduate from Harvard Law School. Not only that
I had graduatingd I was so fearful we'll not being
(29:33):
able to pick up after ten years that I worked
extra hard I suppose, and I graduated h well Victorian
and my class, first in my class. It seems her
story is similar to Frank Winn and Earl Lee's and
that one small issue ended up snowballing and is something
(29:54):
bigger than she ever could have imagined. I've heard about
it waking since I was looking for a place to
put my youngest son, who had learning just about with this,
to try and get a hold of that when he
was young, and he was around eleven, and stopped him
(30:16):
from some of the behaviors that he was exhibiting. When
I was searching for a place, I came upon an
Awaki which seemed to be ideal. And when I talked
to Mark, my son about him, and he wasn't happy
about it, but he wasn't unhappy either, so he tried
(30:36):
it and it seemed to work out fairly well initially.
Shortly after Pat entered her son into Annawaki, she began
to hear some things that made her question the program.
She eventually decided to remove her son. He wasn't really
making the progress that I thought he should have been making,
(30:57):
and I was a little suspicious of the place. Also
of my spot had picked up grammatical error in his speech,
and also he he just wasn't thriving. He told me
that they will work all the time, and that they
will shortened therapy sessions with the psychiatry. In fact, the
(31:21):
psychiatrist was legally blond and that they had very short
session with Father Keim there if that usually more like
five all both the charge was for the futtle hour.
Now this really bothered me, and I didn't watch him
just working out in the cold and the element all
(31:43):
the time he was there. So I'm vocational lethy I
thought would be good, but not that much. It just
got to be at bit much, so I removed him.
It's around the same time that Pat decided in a
weak he was not for her son. When her neighbors
came to her with their financial complaint against the center.
(32:06):
What would happen to them is that they had their
child at home with them, but he was paying charged
for our visits when they were like five of sin
with the psychiatrist and all those kinds of things. And
he would tell them that things were going on, and
(32:28):
my son told me also, but it wasn't as a stage,
and that my son had said that they heard that
d Heater, who was ahead of the ansgestion could go
gay on you, and they were beating It didn't add
up to what they said it was going to be.
(32:50):
One of the things that really got attention of black
form of neighbors is the fact that they were paying
out of pocket. They didn't have a hospital or insurance
and things like that that would have picked up this bill.
So they were attuned of what was charged. Most of
(33:11):
the parents so has either the school system, but not
really the school system so much as individual insurance that
would pay it as a health see. Pat would soon
find out the social workers who worked for an Awaki
would refute any allegations from patients. The social worker, who
(33:36):
is person that parents talked to, would hear all the
stuff that the children would say, but then she would say, oh, no,
that wasn't so, and all of the social workers did that,
and the social workers was killed. The parents that you
can't believe what's your son tells you or order because
(34:00):
they are a big step to begin with, and that's
why they came here. They just want to go home
and astra a while. That just did not wash. The
social worker would say, oh, that didn't happen, or that
didn't happen. The parents might have gone said, look, he
said he didn't have the arpy, or he said that
(34:21):
he didn't get educated, or whenever they were supposed to do,
they were not doing. All the child was doing was
laboring to build the house, whether his head was roof,
and all of the social workers would deny an abuse whatsoever,
But these children were getting abused. There was one that
(34:46):
would beating so badly and knocked into the wall then
it broke his ear drum. Not with appalling. Pat would
initially foul a counter suit on behalf of her neighbors
who had been sued by Anawaki for back payment. The
civil suit would soon come to cover an umbrella of
charges against an Awaki. I first filed on their behalf.
(35:11):
I filed accountter plane and spent awake to hit sis them.
I could see them back, and I did, and I
alleged frog moult practice violations of RICO and also physical abuse.
That's suxual abuse. And of course an't wait to deny that.
(35:37):
But as a matter of fact, other hear I started
coming to me because they did word well. And then
I associated with Randall Blackwood that he would handle trial
work and I would take care of all the plain
(35:57):
of some of the depositions that those kind of thing,
which it was a lot of things that handled because
eventually we had one underd and thirty one wanted in
separate lawses. These were individual lawsses. However, they were tried
in multip pursuits. I think we had about eight. PAD
(36:21):
would work side by side with well known attorney Randall
Blackwood and his wife Florence, assisting in handling all of
the documents as well. With such a large case, PAD
would need reinforcements. Randall Blackwood was a renowned trial lawyer
and I was just one person, so I needed someone
(36:45):
who was really excellent exact so I associated with him
and we ended up splitting the sea. I did a
lot of the paper work, most of it, but Randy
did the trials and I helped, of course, but he
was the presence in the courtroom. And we had one
(37:07):
judge assigned to ostin Hooly, Judge Jack Frich And he
was actually very good too, because there was such a
massive paper that we did one dedicated judge just to
keep it straight. Here's Judge Jack Etheridge remembering the circumstances
(37:28):
involving the trial. This is taken from a video clip
thanks to the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research
and Studies at the University of Georgia. Another case I
remember quite well was called the Anawaki case. One lawyer
essentially took over the claims of all of these people,
(37:49):
and there was more than guess and it was just
too complex a case to ask any sitting judge to handle,
and so I was asked to take own aces and
did and we took maybe a year or two to
deal with all the preliminary motion a lot at stake
and uh at the end, I was able to segregate
(38:14):
about ten young men as the plaintiffs against a few
of the defendants, and then we were gonna try the
other cases incrementally as we've been along. We set up
a separate courtroom. We built courtroom for that trial and
it was tried over a period of I think ten weeks.
(38:37):
In order to be able to go into trial at
any time, they used a former Riches department store to
make an ad hoc courtroom. Yeah, Riches department store had closed,
but in the part department store we had a courtroom
(38:58):
built so that the much would litigate the cases. We
could adate the cases and get them thuttled and have
the access. It is the time, So that's what Judge
jack Etheridge healthy hearings. After we had putting the money
(39:19):
into making a court room and we uh tried the
one case that went to trial. Papled work in tandem
with Frank Wynn and Douglas County authorities by sharing their findings.
They would help each other with their cases. The District
Attorney of Douglas County where the institutions were it was
(39:44):
Fright wyn And at the time there has been a
case of cases where people had gone to Mr Wynn
that have complained about sexual abuse and battering and those
kinds of things, and so he's looking into it. So
(40:06):
I shared my knowledge with him, and he kept other
placest to me and that's how it got so many.
But something needed to be done about. Sarah Tillis would
also have a hand in making sure these civil proceedings
did all they could to take Petter down. Journalist Albert
(40:28):
Egen says that her diligent notes kept during her last
few years as a board member greatly helped the case.
Four people involved in developing the narrative of the civil case,
which dealt with an awakes management and the deterioration of
Lewis Petter's control. Those four people were Sarah Tillis, patal Kind,
(40:55):
Randy Blackwood, and Randy's wife Florence and those documentations that
shows how Sarah Tillis went through weeks and weeks and
weeks of recounting what she had experienced day to day,
keeping notes, collating notes, and finally what emerged was a
narrative of the way the place fell apart, and Sarah
(41:17):
was at the core of that. Sarah Tillis's experience with that,
Sarah Tillis's determination and uh fortitude was what really really,
in the end of the day, exposed everything. Randy Blackwood
was just a bulldog of a lawyer, A really nice guy,
a little guy, kind of slightly built, but man, he
(41:40):
was tough and he was pissed. He took this personally.
Randy was meticulous in his research, but Randy was screwed
and manipulative. Randy told me a lot of things through
the course and working on the story. There was a
point in time when I was pulling all those documents
(42:02):
from the state archives that showed the hospital licensure manipulation
between Parmam and Petro and also showed the long term
relationship between Parma and Petro. Albert says that he too,
would share documents from his covering of the Nawaki story.
All of these factors would help paint the picture of
(42:22):
how bad in Awaki had gotten. Randy had a good case.
But when I brought that material to him and showed
him what I had found and asked him about it,
then he and Florence decided that Florence would go back
and do the same research I had done, so they
would have it independently of me. But at the same time,
Randy and I developed a I would call it a partnership,
(42:45):
even because I was working on the story and he
was working on the case, and at the end of
the day we were working on the same thing, so
we became friends. And um, you know. He was very
helpful to me in that he would leak things to me,
he would give me in formation, he would guide me
towards things that he was working on. But at the
same time, his goal was to do two things. One
(43:07):
was too in the public's eye to turn Petter into
into a demon, which was not difficult to do, but
Randy was determined to do it. That's what he was
doing with a whole range of reporters and people in
the public eye. So his goal was not just to
to collect the information and to help the you know,
(43:28):
the children that had been abused. But from a strategic,
from a tactical point of view, his goal was to
make sure that by the time he got this litigation
to court that there was going to be a very
very negative view of Anawaki and Petter in the public's eye,
and he succeeded. Taking on a year's long case can
often be personally and financially taxing to the council's involved.
(43:52):
This was especially true for Randall Blackwood and Pat edel Kind.
My understanding is that Sarah Tillison her husband, helped fund
the litigation. Randy and Florence I know they had to
borrow money along the way. At the end of the day,
they were so certain of the outcome that they were
(44:14):
willing to financially risk what they had to risk. All
of the lawsuits from financed by myself and Randy Berkley.
So there came a time when a very heavy load
to carry, but we did. However, I came close to bankruptcy,
and I believe Randy did also. I was fearful of
(44:37):
losing my house. We were, although we plowed plenty of
money in it and took out roans, it got to
be pretty frightening. When it came trying to pay the piper,
I just despised them. I have been personally moved, but
also legally it was for render. We thought, having in
(45:00):
this stitution paid it a hospital, to be such shut
desticable place and to do absolutely the contrary of what
they should have done. The supern holes should have been
talked to the NAT school. They weren't being taught either.
(45:23):
They were there to be helped, and they weren't. That's
the sad truth of it. In fact, they were harmed.
Pattel Kind was attempting to take down a million dollar operation,
one involving political figures, a board of trustees, and the
whole staff of upper management. Handling a suit like this
(45:46):
is something that can certainly make you a target. Pat
says it is during her involvement in the civil suit
that she believes someone from the Anawaki organization may have
tried to harm or even kill her. I was leaving
warning sized Virginia Higla's area and I was on I
(46:08):
eighty five going north and my car suddling when I
was controlled and hit the divide a wall and rolled
in front of three lanes of traffic, which I luckily survived.
I broke in my hid in the crash. She believed
(46:29):
that this was no accident, but that someone had knowingly
tampered with her car in an attempt to hurt her. Well,
my car, which had been parked on the street at
that occasion, was tampered with, and when our control on
I five rolled across three lanes of traffic, I was
(46:52):
fortunate to survive, and it was a new car, so
I thought, what on earth? And then I received us
to call from a psychologist formerly went that awaking, who
didn't get me his name, but what he said, I'll
never forget it was chilly. He said, this is what
(47:13):
Louis Petter raise his lackeys to do, is to do
go the tricks on people, to try and hilpe them.
She thinks they're hurrying him. By November seven, nine women
(47:50):
had to come forward to sue in Awaki on counts
of racketeering, conspiring to abuse them, and attempting to defraud
them financially. Just a few weeks later, the case would
grow to twenty two former patients suing the center, naming Petter,
Jim Parham and other board members as defendants. Once again,
(48:14):
one of the hardest things was attempting to get victims
to come forward to speak in court. Mark Barber remembers
his reaction when first finding out about the suit. We
first heard about the lawsuit, and I guess it was
a class action lawsuit. My mom got some paperwork in
the mail and I want to say eight somewhere around there,
(48:39):
and my mom asking me, do you want to talk
to anybody about this? And at this time I had
my film full of counselors and therapists and psychologists, and
I really didn't want to speak to anybody about anything anymore. Um.
But I got to a point where I just kind
of shoveled it real eep and just told my mom
(49:01):
I didn't have anything to say. Nothing really happened to me.
I don't want to talk about it. Pat Edelkind says
that trying to get the younger patients to admit to
the sexual abuse was very challenging. Fortunately, some older former
patients would be willing to come forward well. The other
(49:22):
ones would admit to the battery and physical abuse, never
the sexual abuse. But we eventually learned to put on
the older ones that were more comfortable with talking about
what happened. Even though the satural limitations has asked, they
(49:46):
were able to tell what happened in the sexual abuse
and it was pretty astalding. One key witness that agreed
to come forward in the civil suit was one of
the earliest instances of Petter's abuse. Bob Camp. Camp had
been one of Petter's victims during the trial, actually living
(50:07):
with him while the trial happened. Journalist Albert Edgin was
able to speak with Camp at length during his time
covering the Antawakey story. Bob Camp was a troubled young
man who was treated at anawakey whom Petter lured into
(50:30):
a sexual relationship. Petter had him stay in his home.
Petter went to Mexico with him. Petter made him into
a counselor. Petter uh detigrated Bob Camp's father, who was
an alcoholic, and brought Bob's mother into his confidence. Bob
(50:52):
Camp was a vulnerable person whom Petter exploited. Bob was
a really a brilliant man, but severely troubled in his youth.
But he was smart about dealing with his troubles. He
knew he was troubled. His behavior would range from being
(51:16):
emotionally out of control to being very, very determined to
analyze his own behavior into and to deal with it.
Randy Blackwood told me about Bob Camp and said that
his story was the clearest case of abuse that Randy
intended to use in his litigation, but Bob understandably was
(51:39):
hesitant to talk. Uh. Randy Blackwood's first job was to
persuade Bob to talk in a courtroom, but before that,
because as I said, part of randy strategy was public
vilification and getting this story out before the case came
to trial, Randy wanted me to talk to Bob. Bob
(51:59):
wouldn't talk to me, but finally Randy persuaded him too,
and I had a long conversation with Bob Camp, who
told me his whole life story, including the abuse by
Louis Petter, sitting in a truck in the parking lot
outside the Decab County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia. And among
the things he told me was that he was so
(52:20):
troubled at the time he was in his thirties, that
he had had such a rough time that he didn't
have any male friends his age. He was a basketball fan,
and he didn't even have somebody that he could go
to see an Atlanta Hawks game with. And it was
an emotional moment for me, certainly for him to hear
(52:43):
that that was the depths to which Louis Petter had
driven some of the children that he should have been helping.
At that point, I decided that I was going to
do everything I could to take Louis Petter's story, make
it public, and take him out. You'd have to have
been sitting in that truck and listen to that man,
(53:05):
this thirty year old man whose life had been destroyed,
who had been manipulated, and he knew it. He The
thing about Bob Campus that he's so damned smart and
so analytical that he knew what had happened to him.
And Bob has written and really a very clear headed
and honest account of the whole deteriorating relationship between him
(53:29):
and Petter, and which he documents that he documents how
Petter did it. But the thing about the documentation is
not that what's stunning is not the narrative. What stunning
is Bob Camp's analysis of the narrative, which is built
into that piece that he wrote. He actually knows what
(53:49):
happened to him. He's able to analyze it as it's happening,
and he can't do anything about it because he is
so troubled. Because the reason he's in an awake he
is to take care of that, but instead that is
is exponentially made worse by this guy who is a
(54:14):
real estate salesman. Bob Camp would write a sixty seven
page essay detailing his abuse by Petter's hands. It would
trace his first instance of moles station during his first
interview with Petter, to living in Petter's house for years,
to eventually committing himself to psychotherapy and realizing the manipulation
(54:38):
he had been subjected to for so many years. The
analysis is the most amazing part of it because Bob says,
and this is in retrospect, but he had to have
been than having these thoughts along the way. One of
the things that comes through is Bob has stunned at
how much control Petter has over him. But he's able
to say, here's how he got it. He knows how
(55:00):
Petter controlled him, but he can't stop it. When Petter
was going through this investigation that Ren and Dagostino precipitated,
Bob Camp was living with Petter in his home. Petter
had such control over Bob Camp at the time that
the person that probably could have been the best witness
(55:21):
for the Dagastino ren accusations was under Louis Petter's thumb,
and it took him another fifteen years to get out
from under his thumb. He was a child at the time,
he was a teenager. Bob was such an honest guy
and so determined to get better that he checked himself
(55:43):
into Georgia Regional Hospital for six months voluntarily because he
wanted to help himself. He had had a downturn and
he wanted to help himself. Now significantly, he didn't check
himself into an awaking He goes to Georgia Regional and
he gets good treatment there. He gets he's got good people,
professionals who are dealing with his troubles, and he tells
(56:03):
them all about it, and there's a blow by blow
account of what happened to him there, and one of
the things that happens. Of course, as the counselors there
began to learn about his relationship with Louis Patter, so
they bring Patter in and Petter admits all of this
to Bob and yet in his meeting with Bob and
Bob's mother, he tries to manipulate Bob. Still at that point,
(56:29):
in a document from Bob Camp's therapy, he had managed
to get Louis Petter to admit to his years of abuse.
Petter had been so certain that this document would never
see the light of day that he spoke openly of
his manipulation and sexual acts with the then minor. Bob
Camp managed to get copies of his records and shared
(56:50):
those with Albert years later. Lewis Petter at that time
apparently reassured himself that because this was a confidential meeting
in a psychiatric treatment program facility, that this will never
come up. So he was, for once in his life,
he was honest and forthright, although still manipulative. He was
(57:14):
honest to the degree that he admitted that he had
had this relationship with with Bob Camp. When he didn't
count on it was that eventually Bob would get well
enough to make it public, that he would be able
to be strong enough to handle that pet Her underestimated
Bob Camp. Bob eventually became probably the the headliner litigant.
(57:36):
He was the guy that Randy and Pat used as
the example of the whole Earth manipulation. Bob Camp was
important to the litigation because his story was the clearest,
the oldest, the most persistent, and really the most horrible
of all, and he was willing to talk about it.
(57:58):
He had the courage to stand up and say this
happened to me. He had a lot of support and
I never met his wife, but man, I have a
good impression of her because one of the things that
he told me repeatedly was that she was supportive, and
she didn't have to be supportive. You know, that was
a horrific situation that she found herself in and she's
(58:20):
stuck with that guy. The civil suit against Petter had
ballooned to involve over one and ten patients from Anna
Waki due to Bob Camp's testimony. Had edel Kind and
Randy Blackwood would have basically a spoken confession by Petter
in one case of his abuse. With the civil trial
(58:43):
going on upboards of three years or more, Blackwood and
edel Kind were struggling financially to try and keep the
trial going an attempt to bring some type of justice
to the victims of Lewis Petter and Company. Next time
(59:04):
on the conclusion to Camp Help in Awaking. It gave
him something to start on, move to recuperate, but haven't
lived what I lived through. No one will trade money
for that. I still live with survivors guilt. I don't
know if that'll ever leave me. It has absolutely changed
(59:25):
my life. It changed my body. I'm hoping that by
doing this podcast that it will bring me some closer.
The most troubling thing to me is that there are
still people who were abusing Patience in any way. He
who are in the health care systems around the site.
(59:49):
He hurts so many people. I felt like the balance
between good and evil on this planet shifted. M Camp
Hell an Awake was created and hosted by Josh Thane,
with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex Williams and
(01:00:11):
Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written and performed by Josh
Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival 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
(01:00:32):
that you should look for at the Darkness to Light website.
D two well dot org. That's d the number two
l dot org camp hell an Awake 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.
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