June 19, 2025 • 50 mins
**Audio Updated 7/17/25
What do you get when you mix disordered eating, soap-laced Jell-O, and a diet camp stuck in the past? A summer from hell. In this episode, Kelsey returns to 2011, her first and only summer at Camp Shane — where the dysfunction runs deep and the cost is more than anyone bargained for.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideation, you can call 988 for free and confidential support, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. 988lifeline.org
References:
- The biggest (and weirdest) wellness trends we all witnessed in the 2010s
- The history of the ‘ideal’ woman and where that has left us
- What is Laxative Abuse?
- Rethinking Anorexia Treatment Requires Clinician Collaboration, End-of-Life Care Options
- Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison
- National Eating Disorders Association
Camp Shane—one of America’s longest running weight loss camps for kids—promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.
But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane’s facade of happy, transformed children. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. More than 50 years after its founding, host Kelsey Snelling is bringing the real story of Camp Shane to light.
In this eight-episode series, she unpacks and investigates stories of mistreatment and reexamines the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. Along the way, she reveals and weighs the heavy price of shame.
Subscribe to Camp Shame so you don't miss an episode and follow us on Instagram @CampShame
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kelsey Snelling (00:00):
This episode contains mentions of disordered eating, mental illness, and suicide.
Please take caution while listening and check the show notes
for resources. It's June twenty second, twenty eleven, camper arrival
day at Camp Shane. It's also my twenty first birthday.
(00:20):
But there's no alcohol and there's definitely no cake. And
for the next nine weeks, I'm in charge of a
cabin of a dozen or so thirteen year old girls.
It's my first time as a counselor at a summer camp,
and I'm giving each and every camper an enthusiastic welcome
to what will be, if I have anything to say
about it, the best summer of their lives. Some campers
(00:46):
are excited, they know that good times and freedom from
their families await, but some of the girls are apprehensive
and uncomfortable, resistant to being left behind by their parents.
One camper is actively and inconsolably crying. Her mother leaves
and I sit on the bed next to her, trying
to offer comfort. I tell her what I've been repeating
(01:08):
all day long. Trust me, this is going to be
an amazing sum mer. I explain all the crazy activities
we have planned, all the wacky counselors and the old
camp traditions. I figure she's just a little scared to
be in a new place. But eventually she takes a
breath and says something that stops me cold. You don't
(01:31):
understand this is not my first time here. She knew
something about Camp Shane I didn't, something I would soon
see for myself. This is Camp Shane. I'm Kelsey Snelling.
This episode we're zooming in on my summer at Camp Shane,
(01:52):
the experience that set this whole podcast in motion. Today
we're talking about twenty eleven, a summer filled with disordered eating,
mental health issues, and a giant pit of jello. By
the time I got there, Camp Shane's heyday was in
the rear view mirror. Fewer campers were signing up. This
(02:16):
was in part because the cultural tides were turning. Traditional
diet culture was starting to be overshadowed by wellness culture.
Super skinny was deprioritized in favor of fitness and strength,
or at least that's how it was sold. Wellness culture
is just diet culture with a minimally disparate ideal. Plus
(02:37):
the aftershocks of the two thousand and eight recession meant
families didn't have as much money to send their kids
to summer camp anymore. Shane was reaching a tipping point.
David was seeking bodies to fill the camp, and according
to multiple sources, tensions were high between David and his
right hand man, the hands on camp director, Simon Greenwood.
(03:00):
I tried to talk to Merryl about it when I
interviewed her last spring. What was Simon and David's relationship like?
Merryl (03:06):
I would like to not go there?
Kelsey Snelling (03:12):
Yikes. In the spring of twenty eleven, I didn't yet
know about any of camp's shortcomings. I was a junior
in college and I hadn't even heard of Camp Shane.
I'd seen the movie Heavyweights, but I didn't realize fat
camps were a real thing that actually existed until one
day when my older sister called me on the phone
(03:33):
and said...
Robin (03:35):
I found the coolest job ever and we need to apply.
Kelsey Snelling (03:38):
So I said, okay, what is it? And she sent
me the link to the Camp Shane website.
Robin (03:45):
I had finished college, I wasn't quite ready to get
started on a career yet, but I had this laundry
list of jobs that, for one reason or another, I
had always wanted to try and at the top of
that list was being a camp counselor.
Kelsey Snelling (04:00):
That's my sister, Robin, but you'll never hear me call
her that. To me, She's just Bobby.
Robin (04:06):
So I did an internet search and one of the
very first results that came back was this camp that
wasn't too far from where I lived. It was in
a beautiful part of the country. It had tons of
celebrity endorsements, and it just looked like a really fun
place to spend a summer based on all of the
(04:27):
activities that they had on their website.
Kelsey Snelling (04:30):
At this point, Bobby and I were drinking the Camp Shane
kool aid or maybe crystal light in this case. The
way the website sold it, camp seemed like a fun,
positive environment. We looked forward to the chance to teach
kids about fitness and how to love themselves, and maybe
we'd lose a little weight ourselves. Sign us up. So
(04:52):
we applied and both got jobs, her as a general
counselor for the young adult women and me as the
arts and crafts teacher. I'd also be in a bunk
with thirteen year old girls. We were stoked.
Robin (05:05):
I really was going in with a very optimistic view
that This would be a place where kids that were
struggling with their weight really could get some guidance on
how to develop better habits, how to be healthier, develop
their body image, that sort of thing.
Kelsey Snelling (05:24):
There was one downside. The pay sucked. Base salary five
hundred and fifty dollars, completion of contract, stipend two hundred
and seventy five dollars, travel stipend two hundred and seventy
five dollars, for a total of one thousand, one hundred
(05:44):
dollars spanning about eleven weeks of work and about ninety
hours of work a week. That amounted to basically a
dollar an hour. But I didn't care. I was young.
Any amount of money was exciting to me. Employees had
staggered start days, and as the arts and crafts teacher,
(06:05):
I had some setup to do. So I arrived at
Camp Shane a few days before my sister, and right away
I realized the food was less than optimal. All of
the work Simon had put into elevating the cuisine at
camp didn't seem to matter much when the portions were
so minimal.
Robin (06:23):
I remember you called us to let us know how
camp was going, and this was of course, before all
of the counselors and campers had arrived, in the early
days of just getting things set up, and you said
something about we had breakfast and it was one silver
(06:44):
dollar pancake and five blueberries. And I remember talking to
Mom and saying this, she has to be exaggerating. There's
no way they would be feeding adults this for breakfast.
And then I got to camp myself and realized that
was not an exaggeration. It was quite accurate.
Kelsey Snelling (07:03):
Thank you. I get accused of exaggerating.
Robin (07:05):
Well, not this time.
Kelsey Snelling (07:08):
Another thing that needs no exaggeration. The camp was in
complete disrepair. My first three or four days were spent
just cleaning with my new colleagues, rearranging mattresses, dusting and
cleaning windows, and sweeping the floors, which had huge gaps
between the wooden planks. In some areas you could see
down to the ground below, and when you looked up,
(07:30):
the roof leaked too. As the Arts and Crafts teacher,
I also had my own classroom of sorts to prep.
It was in my favorite building on campus, tucked into
the woods, away from the busiest parts of camp, with
a big balcony looking onto the lush greenery below, but
inside it was gross. There were unclaimed art projects that
(07:54):
had grown moldy from years in storage, Bottles of glue
had completely hardened, and empty tubs of what was once
glitter were filled with dead bugs. I threw everything into
trash bags and started from scratch, which included repainting the
walls and sanding the splintering floors. One day during this
(08:14):
orientation week, a few counselors and I went down to
explore the campground's creek, which was a bit of a
walk from the main part of camp. A dip into
the cool crystal water surrounded by towering pine trees sounds idyllic, right?
Well in this case, no. The creek was filled with trash.
(08:35):
There were old car parts scattered around, and at one
point I felt something bump my leg. When I looked down,
I saw a bloated dead beaver circus staring up at me.
I still think about its eyes. Now here's the thing
I'm all about, that rustic life. Okay, I camp, I backpack,
(08:57):
I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care. By twenty eleven,
families were spending nearly ten thousand dollars to send their
children to camp and at that price point, I was
pretty shocked at the state of things. Now. I refer
to this time as orientation week quite loosely, because really...
Casey (09:18):
Training was just kind of like cleaning up the camp
and getting to know each other, and we really weren't
given any sort of formal training. Like I think I
knew what to do if there was a fire in
the cabin, but I feel like that's that's probably where
it stops. Now looking back, I'm like, none of us
were trained or qualified or really knew what we were doing,
(09:40):
but like some of us really were there for the
right reasons.
Kelsey Snelling (09:44):
That's another Camp Shane counselor from my twenty eleven summer.
She requested to be anonymous, so we'll call her Casey.
Casey was hired to be a group leader at Camp Shane,
meaning in addition to counselor responsibilities, she would also be
managing other counselors in her cabin's age group. When she
arrived at camp, she was amped up and ready to
(10:05):
bond with the girls in her bunk she had the
sixteen year olds. When the kids eventually arrived at Camp Shane,
they were told to strip down to a swimsuit in
front of everyone to be photographed. This would be the
before picture, which would showcase their inevitable big transformation over
the summer.
Casey (10:26):
And my campers were so anxious.
Kelsey Snelling (10:29):
Understandable. Can you imagine showing up to a completely new
place where you know no one, and then you're asked
to take off your clothes and show off your body,
which is perhaps your biggest source of shame and insecurity.
Casey (10:42):
And I went ahead and took my T shirt off
and I had like a sports bra and shorts on.
I was like, come on, guys, we can do this,
like we'll do it with you, And so all my
counselors all removed their outer T shirt and from that
point on we were known as like the naked bunk
(11:04):
because we were always like, you know, fuck what anyone cares. Like, okay,
we have fat on our stomachs.
Kelsey Snelling (11:11):
She even came up with a special name for her
girls to help boost their confidence.
Casey (11:16):
We called ourselves the Honey Badgers because like I would
encourage them to like work out in the sports bra
and just not care what anyone fucking thinks about them.
Kelsey Snelling (11:26):
Honey Badgers named after that viral video that was everywhere
in twenty eleven.
Honey Badgers Clip (11:33):
The honey badger has been referred to by the Guinness
Book of World Records as the most fearless animal in
all of the Animal Kingdom. It really doesn't give a shit.
Kelsey Snelling (11:41):
In addition to these photos, at the start of the summer,
there were the infamous weekly weigh-ins that tracked kids progress.
The weigh-ins had been around since the camp's inception, and
kids were desperate for their number to go down each week.
Sometimes they'd completely starve themselves the day before, they'd refuse
to drink water, they'd cram in a couple of extra
(12:03):
sit ups, and they'd even make trips to the nurse,
claiming to be constipated so that they'd be given laxatives
or prune juice. Now, laxatives are a huge red flag
of disordered eating. You'd think a nurse at a weight
loss camp would recognize that and not pass out laxatives
willy nilly, But it happened, and Casey remembers the toll
(12:27):
these weigh-ins took on her campers.
Casey (12:30):
My girls would not want to eat Saturday night, they
wouldn't want to drink water so that they would weigh
more with water weight. It was a giant obsession with
the number on the scale, and so there was always
a lot of anxiety walking over to weigh-ins, and there
was tears, and there was high fives, and there was
(12:52):
just a mix of disappointment and pride depending on the
kid what they saw when they got in.
Kelsey Snelling (12:59):
Casey had her own struggles with weight, which had inspired
her to apply for a job at Camp Shane in the
first place. As she tells it, she started gaining noticeable
amounts of weight when she was around twelve.
Casey (13:11):
I grew up in a house which was a pretty
conservative house, I would say, and I hid a big
secret for a while to my family, which was that
I struggled with my sexuality. I started gaining weight right
around the time I realized that I was gay, or
(13:31):
maybe after. I mean I think I knew when I
was younger, but I'd say around the age of twelve thirteen,
it got pretty out of control.
Kelsey Snelling (13:42):
Struggling emotionally, Casey turned to binge eating.
Casey (13:46):
Just reading other people's testimonies. As an adult, I'm like, man,
that's like a thing where you actually eat your feelings.
Kelsey Snelling (13:54):
Throughout high school and college, Casey continued these habits and
continued to gain weight. It didn't stop until one day
she had a difficult conversation with a close friend.
Casey (14:06):
I kind of had a hard conversation with a friend
of mine in college who was like, why don't you
ever go to the beach with us, Why don't you
ever go on cruises with us when we go for
spring break? You're really missing out. And I would always
come up with these horrible excuses like, well, I have
a really big thing I have to study for, or
(14:26):
I just want to go hang out with my family,
or oh, I have other plans, And I really didn't.
I just didn't want to be in a bathing suit
or in shorts or anything showing any body part. So
at about twenty one, I just decided enough is enough,
threw away all the food in my apartment, and I
(14:46):
went to the grocery store and just like started from scratch.
Kelsey Snelling (14:52):
Now it's important to say that big changes like this
don't always lead to big weight loss. In fact, they
usually don't, But for Casey, changing her eating habits and
exercising more did lead to significant weight loss. By age
twenty four, she was in a completely transformed body. A colleague
(15:12):
then suggested she apply for a summer job at Camp Shane,
and Casey thought it was a great idea.
Casey (15:19):
I wanted to inspire people, as cheesy as that sounds,
and use my transformation as like an inspiration to pass
it on. And that's really why I was there. I
wasn't I definitely wasn't there to find a hookup. I
wasn't there for the money, because god knows they didn't
(15:39):
really pay. But I thought making friends would be fun,
and I thought being a good model for these kids
was a great idea since I never had one.
Kelsey Snelling (15:51):
I also had struggled with eating and body image throughout
my life. Casey, Bobby, and I were all at Camp
Shane for similar reasons. We thought this was going to
be a body positive, progressive environment, teaching kids to love
their bodies and enjoy active lifestyles. But Camp Shane being
Camp Shane, that's not how things panned out. Camp Shane
(16:21):
wasn't what my sister and I had hoped it would be. First,
the meal plan. We've talked about the food plenty already,
but as Casey pointed out to me, there didn't seem
to be a specific strategy around the small portions. It
wasn't low carb, it wasn't about filling up on greens.
It was random food in a calorie deficit.
Casey (16:43):
Their motto was live, laugh, lose, But I wasn't really sure,
you know what they if they agreed or aligned with
a certain nutrition philosophy or weight loss management philosophy. It
was just no one really knew like how to lose
weight health in a healthy way and keep it off,
(17:06):
and so people just did their best with their own knowledge.
Kelsey Snelling (17:10):
The Camp Shane no-strategy-strategy didn't sit well with Casey.
Casey (17:16):
I didn't feel like the kids were learning how to
maintain any sort of weight loss, which led me to
start having thoughts like, oh, they want kids to gain
weight back so that they come back next summer. It
makes sense, it's a business.
Kelsey Snelling (17:31):
Throughout the years, the camp advertised on its website a
professional chef on staff, as well as licensed nutritionists to
put Shaners on the path toward a better lifestyle. But
Casey noticed that the people teaching nutrition classes didn't seem
qualified to make sure her girls were getting the education
they had signed up for. Casey took matters into her
(17:52):
own hands.
Casey (17:54):
The girls would come in and be like, I'd be like,
what'd you do a nutrition class and they're like, we
learned how to bake chicken with certain seasonings. And I'm like, okay,
that's good, but why is the chicken healthy? And they're like, oh,
I didn't tell us. So I used to sit down
with my campers like a couple times a week, and
they would bring their notebooks and I would share what
(18:17):
limited knowledge I had. I tried to introduce them to
like nutrition one oh one, like from a scientific sort
of thing, but also how you could incorporate it into
like a regular life, Like instead of going for fruit loops,
you could eat hard boiled egg or whatever in the
morning yogurt or Greek yogurt because it's very low in
(18:39):
sugar and high protein. And they were just furiously taking notes,
and I'm like, this is what you should be doing
a nutrition class, but I did it on my time off.
Kelsey Snelling (18:51):
Casey wasn't a licensed nutritionist or dietitian, and some of
her tips were still steeped in a diet culture mindset.
She was just using her own experience to try to
fill in some gaps in the camp's programming. She also
got special permission to cook her girl's dinner one night
so they could get a taste of a meal that
was healthy, nutritious, and didn't leave them starving.
Casey (19:13):
Afterwards, I was allowed to go to the grocery store
with a couple of my counselors and we did like,
you know, baked Greek chicken. We did like a side
of roasted vegetables and Greek yogurt for dessert, sweetened with
like stevia or something like that. It was it was
really good. It was a really healthy, very protein packed
(19:36):
and that was probably the most special night I ever
had with my girls. I think these kids needed a
safe space to divulge their sort of emotional issues surrounding food.
I feel like they needed education. I feel like they needed
(20:01):
a lot of love, a lot of forgiveness.
Kelsey Snelling (20:07):
Outside of her ad hoc nutrition lessons, kids at camp
that summer were subject to a whole host of problematic
approaches to food. Camp Shane prided itself on unique and
immersive activities throughout the summer, many of course attributed to
Simon and his head's staff. There was a Vegas casino night,
(20:29):
a carnival, and something called Fear Factor Day inspired by
the NBC game show. For the most part, these were
creative and memorable experiences for the kids, but sometimes they
turned out to be memorable in all the wrong ways
and only reinforced negative relationships with food Like the jello
(20:51):
pit a truly unsettling site to behold. A few counselors
were asked to dig a four foot deep pit in
the ground, then fill it halfway with red jello. This
was for an activity where kids could jump in two
at a time and compete in a wrestling match. Many
of the campers were shirtless, sweaty, and covered in mud,
(21:15):
but that didn't stop them from attempting to sneak a
little taste of the dessert, in which they literally swam.
As you can imagine, this posed a threat to that
week's weigh-in, so staff started mixing soap in with the
jello to discourage any snacking. This deterred only about half
of the attempts. Then there was the Apache Relay, the
(21:37):
last part of the famed Color War, which we talked
about last episode. This race was the culmination of summer
and every single person on campus was involved. Essentially, everyone
was assigned a different leg of the competition. You might
be tasked with a dizzy bat run or rolling an
orange across a field using only your nose. My sister
(22:01):
Bobby was assigned the second to last stretch of the
relay race for her team.
Robin (22:06):
And so the baton has passed to us. We're running
the end of the course and we turn the corner
and the end of our leg of the race is
two picnic tables. One is full of blueberry pie, the
other is full of watermelon. I'm talking of full watermelon,
(22:29):
not slices of watermelon. And I had to watch my
female co counselor eat an entire blueberry pie as fast
as she could, and one of my male co counselors
eat an entire watermelon in front of all of the campers.
(22:51):
This is pretty messed up, right, Like someone decided at
a weight loss camp they were going to have counselors
down as much food as they can while all the
kids are watching and cheering. After my co counselor ate
the blueberry pie and I did watch her make herself
throw up, we had to swim together on a raft
(23:16):
across the pool.
Kelsey Snelling (23:19):
Bobby wasn't the only one who witnessed puking. The counselors
couldn't help but throw up publicly in trash cans in
front of the crowd. I have photo evidence. But beyond
being gross, these events were reinforcing dangerous ideas about food.
We've already established that Camps Shane's diet was hmm problematic
(23:43):
to say the least. There were the minuscule portions, the
ever present weigh-ins, the pig out room, and now the
pie eating contests and giant pits of jello. All of
these things set up a damaging cycle of restriction and excess.
It encouraged campers to covet for bit foods and then
feel guilty afterwards for eating them. All of this, combined
(24:16):
the lack of nutritional education, the restrictive diet, the emphasis
on food without taking into account the mental toll it
takes on kids, it's dangerous. Bobby started witnessing disordered eating
from her campers.
Robin (24:32):
One of them had a total breakdown because she, in quotes,
slipped up and ate a single potato chip and she
wanted to go talk to the counselor about it. So
there were there were a number of little things like
that that were happening all around me that, you know,
(24:52):
I started to realize this is not just a group
of people who are looking to lose a little bit
of weight, like there are some deep seated things here
that this camp is not not only is it not
able to address, but is doing things that may actually
(25:14):
be detrimental by pushing the weight loss and pushing the
restricted eating and really spending no time on the deeper issues.
Kelsey Snelling (25:24):
And again, Bobby was not a trained psychological professional. She
didn't know how to handle this kind of distress kids
were experiencing, so she brought it to Simon.
Robin (25:37):
I was having a conversation with a couple of other
counselors and staff members. I was saying how distressing it
was to learn about the trauma and the eating disorders
and the body dysmorphia that a lot of my campers
were revealing to me, and I didn't necessarily know how
(25:58):
to handle it. And he said something along the lines of, oh,
everybody at camp has an eating disorder, and he said
it in such a nonchalant way, and I just remember thinking,
I never want to get to the point where I
normalize children having eating disorders. I just I couldn't get
(26:21):
over it the way that it was just breezed over
like it was totally normal.
Kelsey Snelling (26:29):
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone left camp
with an eating disorder just by the nature of the
camp environment. Here's weight inclusive physician doctor Lisa Erlanger, who
you've heard from throughout this series.
Dr. Erlanger (26:43):
Dieting in childhood and adolescence is one of the best
predictors of disordered eating behaviors later in adolescence. Behaviors like
binge eating, fasting alternating with eating, compulsive exercise, and eating
disorders rob people of life. They're like any other mental
(27:04):
health disorder. They consume so much time and they become
solitary pursuits. It makes it hard to eat with friends,
it makes it hard to exercise in public. People develop
so much hatred of their body, they don't want to
be with other people, and it becomes hard to do
things that we know support health, and that's not what
(27:26):
any of us want for kids.
Kelsey Snelling (27:29):
Many people don't understand the severity and danger of eating disorders.
They are not to be taken lightly.
Dr. Erlanger (27:39):
Eating disorders are the most lethal mental health disorder, second
to opioid use disorder. Anorexia, which is under recognized, vastly
under recognized in larger bodied kids, is a deadly illness.
So not only does it rob kids of joy and
(28:03):
well being in their childhood and their adolescence. It kills them.
Kelsey Snelling (28:12):
More than five percent of anorexia patients die within only
four years of initial diagnosis. Symptoms of anorexia include thinning bones,
dry and yellowish skin, low blood pressure, slowed pulse, heart damage,
brain damage, infertility, and organ failure. People with anorexia are
(28:33):
at risk of dying from medical complications associated with starvation,
and suicide is their second leading cause of death. Anorexia
is perhaps the best known eating disorder, but bulimia or
binging and purging is also common and can have physical, emotional,
and even financial effects. Stripped tooth enamel, esophageal issues, shame,
(28:59):
and of course other poor health outcomes from eating piles
of fetishized foods. At Camp Shane, I succumbed to binging myself. Remember,
counselors were on the same restrictive diet that the campers were,
so my fellow counselors and I used our nights off
to visit the local diner and gorge ourselves on all
(29:19):
the foods that were forbidden at camp.
Robin (29:23):
Once the evening activities were over, a percentage of the
counselors were sort of set loose to go out into town,
get off of the campgrounds for a couple of hours,
and do whatever they needed to do. So we're in
the middle of nowhere. There's not a ton to do.
But the one thing that every single counselor wanted was
(29:46):
to get as much food as they could as quickly
as possible for.
Kelsey Snelling (29:51):
On our elaborate binge missions, Bobby, our friends and I
would drive down the street to the Liberty Diner. My
meal of choice was usually French fries, a plate of
buttered toast, chocolate milk, and a big brownie sundae complete
with four scoops of ice cream and a brownie of
magnificent size, served on a literal silver platter in a
(30:12):
moat of whipped cream, topped with a cherry.
Robin (30:15):
This was meant to share with I'm going to say
six people. People would eat it by themselves, no problem.
Kelsey Snelling (30:21):
During the production of this podcast, I actually went back
to that diner and thank god, they still sell the
brownie sundae.
Robin (30:29):
The diner was like the place that you went to
just find comfort in food, but then also just all
of the emotions came out.
Kelsey Snelling (30:39):
We'd dig into our food and let out our frustrations
about how dysfunctional camp was. Then we'd go to the
gas station and buy pastry cakes and candy bars. If
we had any leftover time, we'd hit up McDonald's for
quadruple topping Rollo McFlurries, and sometimes we'd even venture to
the grocery store for a few tubs of Nutella. At
(31:01):
the time, this ritual was the only thing getting me
through the stress and calorie restriction of working at Camp Shane. Casey,
on the other hand, felt an obligation to her new
body to stick to the Camp Shane diet, but she
sometimes got dragged along to other counselors binge missions. One
(31:22):
involved a Dunkin Donuts and a trash bag.
Casey (31:25):
Dunkin Donuts has this policy, or at least they used to.
If you rolled up to the Dunkin Donuts drive through
at like eleven fifty five as they were closing because
they closed at midnight, they would give you donuts for free.
One time, I went with some counselors and we rolled
up and there was a literal like huge garbage bag.
(31:50):
I'm talking like four feet tall garbage bag, like very
big for those big industrial trash cans filled with Dunkin donuts.
It was literally like pounds and pounds and pounds, and
they brought it back and snuck it in.
Kelsey Snelling (32:06):
The doughnut syndicate was a clear indication that things were
out of control. How were we supposed to help kids
develop healthy habits when many of us were dealing with
our own disordered eating? And eating disorders weren't the only
mental health issues campers were struggling with. Cole Perry was
a staff member in twenty ten and twenty eleven.
Cole (32:30):
I think that eating disorders and or being overweight, or
having body issues, or having a hard time with food,
They're not a singular issue by any means. I think
that those issues are often fueled by depression, self esteem issues, anxiety.
(32:53):
They relate to each other very heavily, and I think
a lot of the kids that came to Camp Shane
definitely had one or the other.
Kelsey Snelling (33:04):
Cole was the camp videographer. They didn't directly oversee any campers,
but they got to know many of the kids quite
well as they walked the grounds each day gathering footage
for promotional videos.
Cole (33:17):
At Camp Shane, there was definitely a lot of kids
who had a lot of self esteem hardship, and a
lot of them were bullied in school. A lot of
them got made fun of. A lot of them had
parents who were upset with the fact that they were
not a skinny kid and would shame them. They were
looked at as a product that could be changed.
Kelsey Snelling (33:39):
That mentality wasn't just the fault of the camp. Most
kids were receiving the message that they'd better lose weight
all year round, sometimes from their own families. After all,
these kids wouldn't be at Camp Shane if their parents
didn't sign them up and bring them there. There's one
example of this that really struck me. One of my
(34:02):
campers was thin but still sent to Shane to lose weight.
Her brother was sent too. Their mom told them whoever
lost the most weight would get a five hundred dollars
gift card at the end of the summer. There were
plenty of parents who bribed their kids with shopping sprees,
gifts and vacations and somehow had absolutely no idea how
(34:24):
messed up it all was. Pretty quickly into that summer,
the pressure of caring for a bunch of tween girls
was taking a toll on me. Us counselors were acting
as parents and coaches and nutritionists and therapists for dozens
of kids at once, in many cases, while still being
(34:46):
kids ourselves. Even if campers wanted to talk to their
parents about what they were going through while at camp,
they couldn't. The whole summer, campers didn't have their cell phones.
They were taken away on the first day, supposedly to
promote a fun environment where kids aren't just sitting around
texting all day. Kids could use corded landlines to call
(35:08):
their parents once a week, but counselors would be standing
steps away, listening in on the conversation. If the camper
said anything negative, counselors were supposed to hang up the phone.
I ignored this rule, but the fact that it even
existed is absurd and left us counselors offering what emotional
support we could.
Cole (35:29):
You're basically taking care of this kid. You are their
parent for twelve weeks. They look up to you for
absolutely everything. They are going to you for When should
they eat food? When should they go to sleep? What
am I doing? When they're going to you for all
of their love and care that they want from a
parent that they're not receiving at home. You are everything
to them as a staff member at a summer camp,
(35:52):
and especially at Camp Shane, because these kids are not
getting what they need from their parents most of the time.
Kelsey Snelling (35:59):
Remember I was freshly twenty one, and I'll be the
first to say that at that age I was not
equipped for the things that were thrown at me. I
had a camper run up to me screaming about how
another camper was cutting with a razor in the shower.
My co counselor was battling a serious case of bulimia,
and there was absolutely no support for her, for me,
(36:22):
or any of us. And on top of all of that,
it might not be surprising to hear that threats of
suicide were popping up among campers. About three weeks into camp,
the head counselor is called a staff meeting. We were
told that an eighteen year old male camper had been
(36:42):
sexually inappropriate with a thirteen year old girl at camp.
The male camper was not asked to leave because he
had a bit of a developmental disability and the higher
ups didn't want him to feel bad. That evening happened
to be my night off, so my friends and I
went to the diner. I ordered the brownie sundae I
loved so much and overwhelmed, cried into it. Sitting with
(37:08):
me was Bobby, my friend Amy, and Cole. It felt
abundantly clear that no one was going to protect our
kids and that that responsibility fell on us alone, though
we were powerless. It was a heavy and hopeless weight.
There was a silence between tears and that's when Cole
(37:30):
announced they were quitting, along with the other videographer, Danielle.
For the two of them, the incident with the young
girl was the last straw.
Cole (37:41):
So we were just waiting to see if anybody had
said anything about like the police were called, maybe a
professional was called to talk to the kid, or like,
were the girl's parents even called. Absolutely nothing, to our
knowledge was there that should have been done for this girl.
So we just were like, what do we do. We
(38:03):
are here as a videography team promoting this camp and
it is our job to promote a camp now that
is essentially condoning behavior that we don't agree with, that
is actually really fucked up behavior. So we just didn't
feel good about being there. And Danielle really, the point
for me that like drove it home when she was like,
(38:24):
I have a young daughter if I ever sent her
to a camp and this happened to her, and nobody
called me about it, like I would raise hell, I wouldn't,
I don't even know how I would react. And I was just like,
you're right, like that's absolutely fucking terrible. And she was like,
I have to leave, like I just I can't be
here anymore. I have to go. And I was just like,
(38:46):
you're right, like we're leaving, pack up your stuff.
Kelsey Snelling (38:51):
Looking back, knowing what I know now about Camp Shane,
this situation wasn't just one egregious misstep. It was a
whole series of poor judgments, starting with letting in kids
that had higher needs than the camp staff could handle.
Then add on top of that, not supervising campers enough,
(39:12):
not training staff to prevent these situations from occurring, not
kicking out campers when they should have definitely been kicked out,
and then not providing support to the victim.
Cole (39:24):
I wish I knew what David told himself in order
to go to sleep at night.
Kelsey Snelling (39:35):
A note to listeners. Since this episode first aired, new
information has come to light. An employee from twenty eleven
reached out to say that the police were notified about
the situation. The source claims that the police ended the
investigation without bringing any charges against the male camper, but
the timeline and extent of police involvement remains unclear.
(40:04):
You might remember when I mentioned my Camp Shame contract
had a completion stipend. David would pay counselors half of
their paycheck at the midpoint of the summer. The final
half of their payment was to be received at the
end of the summer. So if counselors quit before one
of those two payments, like Cole and Danielle did, they were shit
out of luck. They never received payment for the work
(40:27):
that they did put in, and tons of staff members,
despite this system, quit. By the end of the summer,
Camp Shane was operating on a skeleton crew, and as
the session neared its close, counselors were suspiciously fired. This
happened summer after summer, including twenty eleven. Here's Casey.
Casey (40:50):
He would fire people at the end of every camp
session so he wouldn't have to pay them. And we're
talking like twelve hundred dollars like it was, and you know,
and kids paid something like nine grand to go there
for a few weeks, and so you know, to withhold
of thousand bucks from like a twenty year old kid
(41:13):
who just worked for all these weeks seemed a little
ridiculous to me, and I definitely was like, well, that's
not going to be me, because I'm going to follow
the rules and be good and you know, show who
I am.
Kelsey Snelling (41:28):
One of the people who got fired just before payday
was Casey. Casey wasn't interested in hooking up or drinking
after hours like some of the other counselors. She was
really trying to make a difference with her kids. She's
the one who just said.
Casey (41:47):
That's not going to be me because I'm going to
follow the rules.
Kelsey Snelling (41:54):
It all started during the last week of camp when
she took a day trip to New York City with
a group of counselors on their day off. On the
way back from their day of debauchery, as often happens
when driving in or around New York City, they hit traffic.
Casey was driving.
Casey (42:12):
Curfew was midnight for the counselors and it was one
in the morning for group leaders, so I knew I
was okay, but I was worried about getting the counselors
back on time, and anyway, we rolled up to camp
and it was a negligible amount of minutes that we
were late. So we went to the girl's head counselor's
(42:36):
office and everyone was extremely apologetic that we ran into traffic.
It was an accident and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I felt bad, but I was also like, wow, this sucks.
We're probably gonna get a slap on the wrist. And
so I went back to the bunk. Woke up the
next morning and I was called into the office again
(42:59):
and she was just she looked at me and she
was like, you're done, and she slapped a piece of
paper in front of me and like made me sign it.
It was a termination paper, and I remember my heart
was beating so fast, and I was like, what does
this mean. She was like, get off camp as soon
(43:21):
as possible, is what this means. And I've said, well,
I mean all my stuff is in my bunk. She
was like, yeah, don't care. You can just grab it
and here's trash bags.
Kelsey Snelling (43:34):
It was a flimsy excuse. People came in late all
the time. It wasn't a fireable offense, at least based
on precedent, and Casey hadn't even missed her own curfew,
but she felt like there was nothing she could do.
She went to her room, collected her things, and then
got picked up by a staffer in a golf cart
(43:54):
to remove her from campgrounds. But just in those few minutes,
word had spread to Casey's campers and they were not
going to let her leave without putting up a fight.
Casey (44:06):
And then like this swarm of kids runs out of
like all these buildings and they were just like stop
the golf cart and they just surrounded me and they
were like jump, jump jump. I told him, I was like,
can you stop. I want to say goodbye to my kids.
(44:26):
I was like, they're my kids. I need to say goodbye.
He was like I can't, I can't, and he was
so nervous. He's like I'm not supposed to. And I
was like, well, you know what, I'm gonna jump and
he was like ah, and the kids were like jump
jump and so I did. And then they just flocked
around me and just huge hugs, all these tears and
(44:46):
they're like, don't let them do this to you. And
it was like it was like a lot of love
and support and I was very overwhelmed.
Kelsey Snelling (44:57):
Casey was fired days before last payday. She never got
that completion stipend. You may be wondering at this point,
why didn't we all just leave? Why didn't I leave?
There were red flags from the very first day, and
the pay was a joke anyway. I spent eleven weeks
(45:17):
straight overwhelmed, overworked, and underfed. I talked to my sister
about this. Did you ever consider quitting? And why did
you not quit?
Robin (45:29):
Oh boy, there were many times I thought about quitting. Honestly,
if you hadn't been a counselor, I think I would
have been out of there because it was just too
overwhelming for one person to process without having somebody that
they trusted to talk through it with. What kept me
(45:52):
there at the end of the day is like knowing
that it would be easy for me to walk away,
but that my campers would still be there, and that
I trusted myself more than I trusted the quote unquote
professional staff to give them a memorable and positive experience.
So you know that's not great. I have no background
(46:17):
in this, I have no training on how to deal
with some of this trauma and these like really challenging
situations that campers are coming from, and yet just by
being a moderately mature and like sensitive person, I felt
(46:38):
like I could change their experience if even a little bit.
Kelsey Snelling (46:44):
Bobby and I made it the entire summer, and once
campers were gone and the days of cleanup had gone by,
we collected our pathetic paychecks and left with zero desire
to ever go back.
Robin (46:56):
I realized that camp had really no understanding of the
situation its campers were in. It certainly didn't have the
solutions that they needed, and it didn't really seem like
owners were invested in making it better. They had a
(47:18):
model that worked and they were sticking to it. I
felt like for a short period of time, all I
thought about was food. That was like a new thing. Luckily,
I kind of with time got out of that stage,
but I completely looked at food differently and not in
a good way.
Kelsey Snelling (47:39):
After the summer ended, I was messed up for a while. Depression? PTSD?
I never got an official diagnosis. Camp Shane felt like
a fever dream. What I saw left me exhausted and empty.
I felt like I couldn't go to the police necessarily,
but maybe I could create something that would reveal what
(48:00):
was happening to these kids, something that would expose this place,
which is just one cog in a huge societal machine
that teaches people to feel shame about their bodies. So
I started interviewing everyone i could. I've also wondered about
Simon's role in all of this. Despite his missteps, nearly
(48:22):
every person I've spoken to characterizes him as the absolute
heart and soul of the community and magic of Camp Shane.
I'm left wondering how someone so revered could also allow
such terrible things to happen. But maybe Simon was in
the same position as me, financially under David's thumb and
(48:43):
emotionally bound to Camp Shane through the campers. Maybe Simon
was exhausted and depleted, but was sticking around to make
sure things didn't get worse. Next time on Camp Shane.
Kellye (48:59):
Finally we got connected and Sadie is on the phone
with her dad at the time, and she just breaks
out crying, come get me, come get me, please, come
get me. She told her dad. She said she was scared.
Kelsey Snelling (49:13):
We reached out to David Ettenberg, his wife Ziporah Janowski,
and Simon Greenwood for comment. At the time of this recording,
we have not received a reply. If you or someone
you love is struggling with an eating disorder, wou can
call the free hotline of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.
The number is one eight s ixty six six six
two one two three five. Camp Shame is a production
(49:37):
of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame
is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schleede, Luci Jones,
and Alyia Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtenay Hameister, with
additional editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch. Our
executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me Kelsey Snelling.
(50:02):
For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett. Fact checking
done by Madeline Gore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams,
and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Sean Petell.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or
(50:23):
wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at
camp Shane. That's with an M. If you or anyone
you know went to Camp Shane, reach out with your
camp stories
This episode contains mentions of disordered eating, mental illness, and suicide.
Please take caution while listening and check the show notes
for resources. It's June twenty second, twenty eleven, camper arrival
day at Camp Shane. It's also my twenty first birthday.
(00:20):
But there's no alcohol and there's definitely no cake. And
for the next nine weeks, I'm in charge of a
cabin of a dozen or so thirteen year old girls.
It's my first time as a counselor at a summer camp,
and I'm giving each and every camper an enthusiastic welcome
to what will be, if I have anything to say
about it, the best summer of their lives. Some campers
(00:46):
are excited, they know that good times and freedom from
their families await, but some of the girls are apprehensive
and uncomfortable, resistant to being left behind by their parents.
One camper is actively and inconsolably crying. Her mother leaves
and I sit on the bed next to her, trying
to offer comfort. I tell her what I've been repeating
(01:08):
all day long. Trust me, this is going to be
an amazing sum mer. I explain all the crazy activities
we have planned, all the wacky counselors and the old
camp traditions. I figure she's just a little scared to
be in a new place. But eventually she takes a
breath and says something that stops me cold. You don't
(01:31):
understand this is not my first time here. She knew
something about Camp Shane I didn't, something I would soon
see for myself. This is Camp Shane. I'm Kelsey Snelling.
This episode we're zooming in on my summer at Camp Shane,
(01:52):
the experience that set this whole podcast in motion. Today
we're talking about twenty eleven, a summer filled with disordered eating,
mental health issues, and a giant pit of jello. By
the time I got there, Camp Shane's heyday was in
the rear view mirror. Fewer campers were signing up. This
(02:16):
was in part because the cultural tides were turning. Traditional
diet culture was starting to be overshadowed by wellness culture.
Super skinny was deprioritized in favor of fitness and strength,
or at least that's how it was sold. Wellness culture
is just diet culture with a minimally disparate ideal. Plus
(02:37):
the aftershocks of the two thousand and eight recession meant
families didn't have as much money to send their kids
to summer camp anymore. Shane was reaching a tipping point.
David was seeking bodies to fill the camp, and according
to multiple sources, tensions were high between David and his
right hand man, the hands on camp director, Simon Greenwood.
(03:00):
I tried to talk to Merryl about it when I
interviewed her last spring. What was Simon and David's relationship like?
Merryl (03:06):
I would like to not go there?
Kelsey Snelling (03:12):
Yikes. In the spring of twenty eleven, I didn't yet
know about any of camp's shortcomings. I was a junior
in college and I hadn't even heard of Camp Shane.
I'd seen the movie Heavyweights, but I didn't realize fat
camps were a real thing that actually existed until one
day when my older sister called me on the phone
(03:33):
and said...
Robin (03:35):
I found the coolest job ever and we need to apply.
Kelsey Snelling (03:38):
So I said, okay, what is it? And she sent
me the link to the Camp Shane website.
Robin (03:45):
I had finished college, I wasn't quite ready to get
started on a career yet, but I had this laundry
list of jobs that, for one reason or another, I
had always wanted to try and at the top of
that list was being a camp counselor.
Kelsey Snelling (04:00):
That's my sister, Robin, but you'll never hear me call
her that. To me, She's just Bobby.
Robin (04:06):
So I did an internet search and one of the
very first results that came back was this camp that
wasn't too far from where I lived. It was in
a beautiful part of the country. It had tons of
celebrity endorsements, and it just looked like a really fun
place to spend a summer based on all of the
(04:27):
activities that they had on their website.
Kelsey Snelling (04:30):
At this point, Bobby and I were drinking the Camp Shane
kool aid or maybe crystal light in this case. The
way the website sold it, camp seemed like a fun,
positive environment. We looked forward to the chance to teach
kids about fitness and how to love themselves, and maybe
we'd lose a little weight ourselves. Sign us up. So
(04:52):
we applied and both got jobs, her as a general
counselor for the young adult women and me as the
arts and crafts teacher. I'd also be in a bunk
with thirteen year old girls. We were stoked.
Robin (05:05):
I really was going in with a very optimistic view
that This would be a place where kids that were
struggling with their weight really could get some guidance on
how to develop better habits, how to be healthier, develop
their body image, that sort of thing.
Kelsey Snelling (05:24):
There was one downside. The pay sucked. Base salary five
hundred and fifty dollars, completion of contract, stipend two hundred
and seventy five dollars, travel stipend two hundred and seventy
five dollars, for a total of one thousand, one hundred
(05:44):
dollars spanning about eleven weeks of work and about ninety
hours of work a week. That amounted to basically a
dollar an hour. But I didn't care. I was young.
Any amount of money was exciting to me. Employees had
staggered start days, and as the arts and crafts teacher,
(06:05):
I had some setup to do. So I arrived at
Camp Shane a few days before my sister, and right away
I realized the food was less than optimal. All of
the work Simon had put into elevating the cuisine at
camp didn't seem to matter much when the portions were
so minimal.
Robin (06:23):
I remember you called us to let us know how
camp was going, and this was of course, before all
of the counselors and campers had arrived, in the early
days of just getting things set up, and you said
something about we had breakfast and it was one silver
(06:44):
dollar pancake and five blueberries. And I remember talking to
Mom and saying this, she has to be exaggerating. There's
no way they would be feeding adults this for breakfast.
And then I got to camp myself and realized that
was not an exaggeration. It was quite accurate.
Kelsey Snelling (07:03):
Thank you. I get accused of exaggerating.
Robin (07:05):
Well, not this time.
Kelsey Snelling (07:08):
Another thing that needs no exaggeration. The camp was in
complete disrepair. My first three or four days were spent
just cleaning with my new colleagues, rearranging mattresses, dusting and
cleaning windows, and sweeping the floors, which had huge gaps
between the wooden planks. In some areas you could see
down to the ground below, and when you looked up,
(07:30):
the roof leaked too. As the Arts and Crafts teacher,
I also had my own classroom of sorts to prep.
It was in my favorite building on campus, tucked into
the woods, away from the busiest parts of camp, with
a big balcony looking onto the lush greenery below, but
inside it was gross. There were unclaimed art projects that
(07:54):
had grown moldy from years in storage, Bottles of glue
had completely hardened, and empty tubs of what was once
glitter were filled with dead bugs. I threw everything into
trash bags and started from scratch, which included repainting the
walls and sanding the splintering floors. One day during this
(08:14):
orientation week, a few counselors and I went down to
explore the campground's creek, which was a bit of a
walk from the main part of camp. A dip into
the cool crystal water surrounded by towering pine trees sounds idyllic, right?
Well in this case, no. The creek was filled with trash.
(08:35):
There were old car parts scattered around, and at one
point I felt something bump my leg. When I looked down,
I saw a bloated dead beaver circus staring up at me.
I still think about its eyes. Now here's the thing
I'm all about, that rustic life. Okay, I camp, I backpack,
(08:57):
I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care. By twenty eleven,
families were spending nearly ten thousand dollars to send their
children to camp and at that price point, I was
pretty shocked at the state of things. Now. I refer
to this time as orientation week quite loosely, because really...
Casey (09:18):
Training was just kind of like cleaning up the camp
and getting to know each other, and we really weren't
given any sort of formal training. Like I think I
knew what to do if there was a fire in
the cabin, but I feel like that's that's probably where
it stops. Now looking back, I'm like, none of us
were trained or qualified or really knew what we were doing,
(09:40):
but like some of us really were there for the
right reasons.
Kelsey Snelling (09:44):
That's another Camp Shane counselor from my twenty eleven summer.
She requested to be anonymous, so we'll call her Casey.
Casey was hired to be a group leader at Camp Shane,
meaning in addition to counselor responsibilities, she would also be
managing other counselors in her cabin's age group. When she
arrived at camp, she was amped up and ready to
(10:05):
bond with the girls in her bunk she had the
sixteen year olds. When the kids eventually arrived at Camp Shane,
they were told to strip down to a swimsuit in
front of everyone to be photographed. This would be the
before picture, which would showcase their inevitable big transformation over
the summer.
Casey (10:26):
And my campers were so anxious.
Kelsey Snelling (10:29):
Understandable. Can you imagine showing up to a completely new
place where you know no one, and then you're asked
to take off your clothes and show off your body,
which is perhaps your biggest source of shame and insecurity.
Casey (10:42):
And I went ahead and took my T shirt off
and I had like a sports bra and shorts on.
I was like, come on, guys, we can do this,
like we'll do it with you, And so all my
counselors all removed their outer T shirt and from that
point on we were known as like the naked bunk
(11:04):
because we were always like, you know, fuck what anyone cares. Like, okay,
we have fat on our stomachs.
Kelsey Snelling (11:11):
She even came up with a special name for her
girls to help boost their confidence.
Casey (11:16):
We called ourselves the Honey Badgers because like I would
encourage them to like work out in the sports bra
and just not care what anyone fucking thinks about them.
Kelsey Snelling (11:26):
Honey Badgers named after that viral video that was everywhere
in twenty eleven.
Honey Badgers Clip (11:33):
The honey badger has been referred to by the Guinness
Book of World Records as the most fearless animal in
all of the Animal Kingdom. It really doesn't give a shit.
Kelsey Snelling (11:41):
In addition to these photos, at the start of the summer,
there were the infamous weekly weigh-ins that tracked kids progress.
The weigh-ins had been around since the camp's inception, and
kids were desperate for their number to go down each week.
Sometimes they'd completely starve themselves the day before, they'd refuse
to drink water, they'd cram in a couple of extra
(12:03):
sit ups, and they'd even make trips to the nurse,
claiming to be constipated so that they'd be given laxatives
or prune juice. Now, laxatives are a huge red flag
of disordered eating. You'd think a nurse at a weight
loss camp would recognize that and not pass out laxatives
willy nilly, But it happened, and Casey remembers the toll
(12:27):
these weigh-ins took on her campers.
Casey (12:30):
My girls would not want to eat Saturday night, they
wouldn't want to drink water so that they would weigh
more with water weight. It was a giant obsession with
the number on the scale, and so there was always
a lot of anxiety walking over to weigh-ins, and there
was tears, and there was high fives, and there was
(12:52):
just a mix of disappointment and pride depending on the
kid what they saw when they got in.
Kelsey Snelling (12:59):
Casey had her own struggles with weight, which had inspired
her to apply for a job at Camp Shane in the
first place. As she tells it, she started gaining noticeable
amounts of weight when she was around twelve.
Casey (13:11):
I grew up in a house which was a pretty
conservative house, I would say, and I hid a big
secret for a while to my family, which was that
I struggled with my sexuality. I started gaining weight right
around the time I realized that I was gay, or
(13:31):
maybe after. I mean I think I knew when I
was younger, but I'd say around the age of twelve thirteen,
it got pretty out of control.
Kelsey Snelling (13:42):
Struggling emotionally, Casey turned to binge eating.
Casey (13:46):
Just reading other people's testimonies. As an adult, I'm like, man,
that's like a thing where you actually eat your feelings.
Kelsey Snelling (13:54):
Throughout high school and college, Casey continued these habits and
continued to gain weight. It didn't stop until one day
she had a difficult conversation with a close friend.
Casey (14:06):
I kind of had a hard conversation with a friend
of mine in college who was like, why don't you
ever go to the beach with us, Why don't you
ever go on cruises with us when we go for
spring break? You're really missing out. And I would always
come up with these horrible excuses like, well, I have
a really big thing I have to study for, or
(14:26):
I just want to go hang out with my family,
or oh, I have other plans, And I really didn't.
I just didn't want to be in a bathing suit
or in shorts or anything showing any body part. So
at about twenty one, I just decided enough is enough,
threw away all the food in my apartment, and I
(14:46):
went to the grocery store and just like started from scratch.
Kelsey Snelling (14:52):
Now it's important to say that big changes like this
don't always lead to big weight loss. In fact, they
usually don't, But for Casey, changing her eating habits and
exercising more did lead to significant weight loss. By age
twenty four, she was in a completely transformed body. A colleague
(15:12):
then suggested she apply for a summer job at Camp Shane,
and Casey thought it was a great idea.
Casey (15:19):
I wanted to inspire people, as cheesy as that sounds,
and use my transformation as like an inspiration to pass
it on. And that's really why I was there. I
wasn't I definitely wasn't there to find a hookup. I
wasn't there for the money, because god knows they didn't
(15:39):
really pay. But I thought making friends would be fun,
and I thought being a good model for these kids
was a great idea since I never had one.
Kelsey Snelling (15:51):
I also had struggled with eating and body image throughout
my life. Casey, Bobby, and I were all at Camp
Shane for similar reasons. We thought this was going to
be a body positive, progressive environment, teaching kids to love
their bodies and enjoy active lifestyles. But Camp Shane being
Camp Shane, that's not how things panned out. Camp Shane
(16:21):
wasn't what my sister and I had hoped it would be. First,
the meal plan. We've talked about the food plenty already,
but as Casey pointed out to me, there didn't seem
to be a specific strategy around the small portions. It
wasn't low carb, it wasn't about filling up on greens.
It was random food in a calorie deficit.
Casey (16:43):
Their motto was live, laugh, lose, But I wasn't really sure,
you know what they if they agreed or aligned with
a certain nutrition philosophy or weight loss management philosophy. It
was just no one really knew like how to lose
weight health in a healthy way and keep it off,
(17:06):
and so people just did their best with their own knowledge.
Kelsey Snelling (17:10):
The Camp Shane no-strategy-strategy didn't sit well with Casey.
Casey (17:16):
I didn't feel like the kids were learning how to
maintain any sort of weight loss, which led me to
start having thoughts like, oh, they want kids to gain
weight back so that they come back next summer. It
makes sense, it's a business.
Kelsey Snelling (17:31):
Throughout the years, the camp advertised on its website a
professional chef on staff, as well as licensed nutritionists to
put Shaners on the path toward a better lifestyle. But
Casey noticed that the people teaching nutrition classes didn't seem
qualified to make sure her girls were getting the education
they had signed up for. Casey took matters into her
(17:52):
own hands.
Casey (17:54):
The girls would come in and be like, I'd be like,
what'd you do a nutrition class and they're like, we
learned how to bake chicken with certain seasonings. And I'm like, okay,
that's good, but why is the chicken healthy? And they're like, oh,
I didn't tell us. So I used to sit down
with my campers like a couple times a week, and
they would bring their notebooks and I would share what
(18:17):
limited knowledge I had. I tried to introduce them to
like nutrition one oh one, like from a scientific sort
of thing, but also how you could incorporate it into
like a regular life, Like instead of going for fruit loops,
you could eat hard boiled egg or whatever in the
morning yogurt or Greek yogurt because it's very low in
(18:39):
sugar and high protein. And they were just furiously taking notes,
and I'm like, this is what you should be doing
a nutrition class, but I did it on my time off.
Kelsey Snelling (18:51):
Casey wasn't a licensed nutritionist or dietitian, and some of
her tips were still steeped in a diet culture mindset.
She was just using her own experience to try to
fill in some gaps in the camp's programming. She also
got special permission to cook her girl's dinner one night
so they could get a taste of a meal that
was healthy, nutritious, and didn't leave them starving.
Casey (19:13):
Afterwards, I was allowed to go to the grocery store
with a couple of my counselors and we did like,
you know, baked Greek chicken. We did like a side
of roasted vegetables and Greek yogurt for dessert, sweetened with
like stevia or something like that. It was it was
really good. It was a really healthy, very protein packed
(19:36):
and that was probably the most special night I ever
had with my girls. I think these kids needed a
safe space to divulge their sort of emotional issues surrounding food.
I feel like they needed education. I feel like they needed
(20:01):
a lot of love, a lot of forgiveness.
Kelsey Snelling (20:07):
Outside of her ad hoc nutrition lessons, kids at camp
that summer were subject to a whole host of problematic
approaches to food. Camp Shane prided itself on unique and
immersive activities throughout the summer, many of course attributed to
Simon and his head's staff. There was a Vegas casino night,
(20:29):
a carnival, and something called Fear Factor Day inspired by
the NBC game show. For the most part, these were
creative and memorable experiences for the kids, but sometimes they
turned out to be memorable in all the wrong ways
and only reinforced negative relationships with food Like the jello
(20:51):
pit a truly unsettling site to behold. A few counselors
were asked to dig a four foot deep pit in
the ground, then fill it halfway with red jello. This
was for an activity where kids could jump in two
at a time and compete in a wrestling match. Many
of the campers were shirtless, sweaty, and covered in mud,
(21:15):
but that didn't stop them from attempting to sneak a
little taste of the dessert, in which they literally swam.
As you can imagine, this posed a threat to that
week's weigh-in, so staff started mixing soap in with the
jello to discourage any snacking. This deterred only about half
of the attempts. Then there was the Apache Relay, the
(21:37):
last part of the famed Color War, which we talked
about last episode. This race was the culmination of summer
and every single person on campus was involved. Essentially, everyone
was assigned a different leg of the competition. You might
be tasked with a dizzy bat run or rolling an
orange across a field using only your nose. My sister
(22:01):
Bobby was assigned the second to last stretch of the
relay race for her team.
Robin (22:06):
And so the baton has passed to us. We're running
the end of the course and we turn the corner
and the end of our leg of the race is
two picnic tables. One is full of blueberry pie, the
other is full of watermelon. I'm talking of full watermelon,
(22:29):
not slices of watermelon. And I had to watch my
female co counselor eat an entire blueberry pie as fast
as she could, and one of my male co counselors
eat an entire watermelon in front of all of the campers.
(22:51):
This is pretty messed up, right, Like someone decided at
a weight loss camp they were going to have counselors
down as much food as they can while all the
kids are watching and cheering. After my co counselor ate
the blueberry pie and I did watch her make herself
throw up, we had to swim together on a raft
(23:16):
across the pool.
Kelsey Snelling (23:19):
Bobby wasn't the only one who witnessed puking. The counselors
couldn't help but throw up publicly in trash cans in
front of the crowd. I have photo evidence. But beyond
being gross, these events were reinforcing dangerous ideas about food.
We've already established that Camps Shane's diet was hmm problematic
(23:43):
to say the least. There were the minuscule portions, the
ever present weigh-ins, the pig out room, and now the
pie eating contests and giant pits of jello. All of
these things set up a damaging cycle of restriction and excess.
It encouraged campers to covet for bit foods and then
feel guilty afterwards for eating them. All of this, combined
(24:16):
the lack of nutritional education, the restrictive diet, the emphasis
on food without taking into account the mental toll it
takes on kids, it's dangerous. Bobby started witnessing disordered eating
from her campers.
Robin (24:32):
One of them had a total breakdown because she, in quotes,
slipped up and ate a single potato chip and she
wanted to go talk to the counselor about it. So
there were there were a number of little things like
that that were happening all around me that, you know,
(24:52):
I started to realize this is not just a group
of people who are looking to lose a little bit
of weight, like there are some deep seated things here
that this camp is not not only is it not
able to address, but is doing things that may actually
(25:14):
be detrimental by pushing the weight loss and pushing the
restricted eating and really spending no time on the deeper issues.
Kelsey Snelling (25:24):
And again, Bobby was not a trained psychological professional. She
didn't know how to handle this kind of distress kids
were experiencing, so she brought it to Simon.
Robin (25:37):
I was having a conversation with a couple of other
counselors and staff members. I was saying how distressing it
was to learn about the trauma and the eating disorders
and the body dysmorphia that a lot of my campers
were revealing to me, and I didn't necessarily know how
(25:58):
to handle it. And he said something along the lines of, oh,
everybody at camp has an eating disorder, and he said
it in such a nonchalant way, and I just remember thinking,
I never want to get to the point where I
normalize children having eating disorders. I just I couldn't get
(26:21):
over it the way that it was just breezed over
like it was totally normal.
Kelsey Snelling (26:29):
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone left camp
with an eating disorder just by the nature of the
camp environment. Here's weight inclusive physician doctor Lisa Erlanger, who
you've heard from throughout this series.
Dr. Erlanger (26:43):
Dieting in childhood and adolescence is one of the best
predictors of disordered eating behaviors later in adolescence. Behaviors like
binge eating, fasting alternating with eating, compulsive exercise, and eating
disorders rob people of life. They're like any other mental
(27:04):
health disorder. They consume so much time and they become
solitary pursuits. It makes it hard to eat with friends,
it makes it hard to exercise in public. People develop
so much hatred of their body, they don't want to
be with other people, and it becomes hard to do
things that we know support health, and that's not what
(27:26):
any of us want for kids.
Kelsey Snelling (27:29):
Many people don't understand the severity and danger of eating disorders.
They are not to be taken lightly.
Dr. Erlanger (27:39):
Eating disorders are the most lethal mental health disorder, second
to opioid use disorder. Anorexia, which is under recognized, vastly
under recognized in larger bodied kids, is a deadly illness.
So not only does it rob kids of joy and
(28:03):
well being in their childhood and their adolescence. It kills them.
Kelsey Snelling (28:12):
More than five percent of anorexia patients die within only
four years of initial diagnosis. Symptoms of anorexia include thinning bones,
dry and yellowish skin, low blood pressure, slowed pulse, heart damage,
brain damage, infertility, and organ failure. People with anorexia are
(28:33):
at risk of dying from medical complications associated with starvation,
and suicide is their second leading cause of death. Anorexia
is perhaps the best known eating disorder, but bulimia or
binging and purging is also common and can have physical, emotional,
and even financial effects. Stripped tooth enamel, esophageal issues, shame,
(28:59):
and of course other poor health outcomes from eating piles
of fetishized foods. At Camp Shane, I succumbed to binging myself. Remember,
counselors were on the same restrictive diet that the campers were,
so my fellow counselors and I used our nights off
to visit the local diner and gorge ourselves on all
(29:19):
the foods that were forbidden at camp.
Robin (29:23):
Once the evening activities were over, a percentage of the
counselors were sort of set loose to go out into town,
get off of the campgrounds for a couple of hours,
and do whatever they needed to do. So we're in
the middle of nowhere. There's not a ton to do.
But the one thing that every single counselor wanted was
(29:46):
to get as much food as they could as quickly
as possible for.
Kelsey Snelling (29:51):
On our elaborate binge missions, Bobby, our friends and I
would drive down the street to the Liberty Diner. My
meal of choice was usually French fries, a plate of
buttered toast, chocolate milk, and a big brownie sundae complete
with four scoops of ice cream and a brownie of
magnificent size, served on a literal silver platter in a
(30:12):
moat of whipped cream, topped with a cherry.
Robin (30:15):
This was meant to share with I'm going to say
six people. People would eat it by themselves, no problem.
Kelsey Snelling (30:21):
During the production of this podcast, I actually went back
to that diner and thank god, they still sell the
brownie sundae.
Robin (30:29):
The diner was like the place that you went to
just find comfort in food, but then also just all
of the emotions came out.
Kelsey Snelling (30:39):
We'd dig into our food and let out our frustrations
about how dysfunctional camp was. Then we'd go to the
gas station and buy pastry cakes and candy bars. If
we had any leftover time, we'd hit up McDonald's for
quadruple topping Rollo McFlurries, and sometimes we'd even venture to
the grocery store for a few tubs of Nutella. At
(31:01):
the time, this ritual was the only thing getting me
through the stress and calorie restriction of working at Camp Shane. Casey,
on the other hand, felt an obligation to her new
body to stick to the Camp Shane diet, but she
sometimes got dragged along to other counselors binge missions. One
(31:22):
involved a Dunkin Donuts and a trash bag.
Casey (31:25):
Dunkin Donuts has this policy, or at least they used to.
If you rolled up to the Dunkin Donuts drive through
at like eleven fifty five as they were closing because
they closed at midnight, they would give you donuts for free.
One time, I went with some counselors and we rolled
up and there was a literal like huge garbage bag.
(31:50):
I'm talking like four feet tall garbage bag, like very
big for those big industrial trash cans filled with Dunkin donuts.
It was literally like pounds and pounds and pounds, and
they brought it back and snuck it in.
Kelsey Snelling (32:06):
The doughnut syndicate was a clear indication that things were
out of control. How were we supposed to help kids
develop healthy habits when many of us were dealing with
our own disordered eating? And eating disorders weren't the only
mental health issues campers were struggling with. Cole Perry was
a staff member in twenty ten and twenty eleven.
Cole (32:30):
I think that eating disorders and or being overweight, or
having body issues, or having a hard time with food,
They're not a singular issue by any means. I think
that those issues are often fueled by depression, self esteem issues, anxiety.
(32:53):
They relate to each other very heavily, and I think
a lot of the kids that came to Camp Shane
definitely had one or the other.
Kelsey Snelling (33:04):
Cole was the camp videographer. They didn't directly oversee any campers,
but they got to know many of the kids quite
well as they walked the grounds each day gathering footage
for promotional videos.
Cole (33:17):
At Camp Shane, there was definitely a lot of kids
who had a lot of self esteem hardship, and a
lot of them were bullied in school. A lot of
them got made fun of. A lot of them had
parents who were upset with the fact that they were
not a skinny kid and would shame them. They were
looked at as a product that could be changed.
Kelsey Snelling (33:39):
That mentality wasn't just the fault of the camp. Most
kids were receiving the message that they'd better lose weight
all year round, sometimes from their own families. After all,
these kids wouldn't be at Camp Shane if their parents
didn't sign them up and bring them there. There's one
example of this that really struck me. One of my
(34:02):
campers was thin but still sent to Shane to lose weight.
Her brother was sent too. Their mom told them whoever
lost the most weight would get a five hundred dollars
gift card at the end of the summer. There were
plenty of parents who bribed their kids with shopping sprees,
gifts and vacations and somehow had absolutely no idea how
(34:24):
messed up it all was. Pretty quickly into that summer,
the pressure of caring for a bunch of tween girls
was taking a toll on me. Us counselors were acting
as parents and coaches and nutritionists and therapists for dozens
of kids at once, in many cases, while still being
(34:46):
kids ourselves. Even if campers wanted to talk to their
parents about what they were going through while at camp,
they couldn't. The whole summer, campers didn't have their cell phones.
They were taken away on the first day, supposedly to
promote a fun environment where kids aren't just sitting around
texting all day. Kids could use corded landlines to call
(35:08):
their parents once a week, but counselors would be standing
steps away, listening in on the conversation. If the camper
said anything negative, counselors were supposed to hang up the phone.
I ignored this rule, but the fact that it even
existed is absurd and left us counselors offering what emotional
support we could.
Cole (35:29):
You're basically taking care of this kid. You are their
parent for twelve weeks. They look up to you for
absolutely everything. They are going to you for When should
they eat food? When should they go to sleep? What
am I doing? When they're going to you for all
of their love and care that they want from a
parent that they're not receiving at home. You are everything
to them as a staff member at a summer camp,
(35:52):
and especially at Camp Shane, because these kids are not
getting what they need from their parents most of the time.
Kelsey Snelling (35:59):
Remember I was freshly twenty one, and I'll be the
first to say that at that age I was not
equipped for the things that were thrown at me. I
had a camper run up to me screaming about how
another camper was cutting with a razor in the shower.
My co counselor was battling a serious case of bulimia,
and there was absolutely no support for her, for me,
(36:22):
or any of us. And on top of all of that,
it might not be surprising to hear that threats of
suicide were popping up among campers. About three weeks into camp,
the head counselor is called a staff meeting. We were
told that an eighteen year old male camper had been
(36:42):
sexually inappropriate with a thirteen year old girl at camp.
The male camper was not asked to leave because he
had a bit of a developmental disability and the higher
ups didn't want him to feel bad. That evening happened
to be my night off, so my friends and I
went to the diner. I ordered the brownie sundae I
loved so much and overwhelmed, cried into it. Sitting with
(37:08):
me was Bobby, my friend Amy, and Cole. It felt
abundantly clear that no one was going to protect our
kids and that that responsibility fell on us alone, though
we were powerless. It was a heavy and hopeless weight.
There was a silence between tears and that's when Cole
(37:30):
announced they were quitting, along with the other videographer, Danielle.
For the two of them, the incident with the young
girl was the last straw.
Cole (37:41):
So we were just waiting to see if anybody had
said anything about like the police were called, maybe a
professional was called to talk to the kid, or like,
were the girl's parents even called. Absolutely nothing, to our
knowledge was there that should have been done for this girl.
So we just were like, what do we do. We
(38:03):
are here as a videography team promoting this camp and
it is our job to promote a camp now that
is essentially condoning behavior that we don't agree with, that
is actually really fucked up behavior. So we just didn't
feel good about being there. And Danielle really, the point
for me that like drove it home when she was like,
(38:24):
I have a young daughter if I ever sent her
to a camp and this happened to her, and nobody
called me about it, like I would raise hell, I wouldn't,
I don't even know how I would react. And I was just like,
you're right, like that's absolutely fucking terrible. And she was like,
I have to leave, like I just I can't be
here anymore. I have to go. And I was just like,
(38:46):
you're right, like we're leaving, pack up your stuff.
Kelsey Snelling (38:51):
Looking back, knowing what I know now about Camp Shane,
this situation wasn't just one egregious misstep. It was a
whole series of poor judgments, starting with letting in kids
that had higher needs than the camp staff could handle.
Then add on top of that, not supervising campers enough,
(39:12):
not training staff to prevent these situations from occurring, not
kicking out campers when they should have definitely been kicked out,
and then not providing support to the victim.
Cole (39:24):
I wish I knew what David told himself in order
to go to sleep at night.
Kelsey Snelling (39:35):
A note to listeners. Since this episode first aired, new
information has come to light. An employee from twenty eleven
reached out to say that the police were notified about
the situation. The source claims that the police ended the
investigation without bringing any charges against the male camper, but
the timeline and extent of police involvement remains unclear.
(40:04):
You might remember when I mentioned my Camp Shame contract
had a completion stipend. David would pay counselors half of
their paycheck at the midpoint of the summer. The final
half of their payment was to be received at the
end of the summer. So if counselors quit before one
of those two payments, like Cole and Danielle did, they were shit
out of luck. They never received payment for the work
(40:27):
that they did put in, and tons of staff members,
despite this system, quit. By the end of the summer,
Camp Shane was operating on a skeleton crew, and as
the session neared its close, counselors were suspiciously fired. This
happened summer after summer, including twenty eleven. Here's Casey.
Casey (40:50):
He would fire people at the end of every camp
session so he wouldn't have to pay them. And we're
talking like twelve hundred dollars like it was, and you know,
and kids paid something like nine grand to go there
for a few weeks, and so you know, to withhold
of thousand bucks from like a twenty year old kid
(41:13):
who just worked for all these weeks seemed a little
ridiculous to me, and I definitely was like, well, that's
not going to be me, because I'm going to follow
the rules and be good and you know, show who
I am.
Kelsey Snelling (41:28):
One of the people who got fired just before payday
was Casey. Casey wasn't interested in hooking up or drinking
after hours like some of the other counselors. She was
really trying to make a difference with her kids. She's
the one who just said.
Casey (41:47):
That's not going to be me because I'm going to
follow the rules.
Kelsey Snelling (41:54):
It all started during the last week of camp when
she took a day trip to New York City with
a group of counselors on their day off. On the
way back from their day of debauchery, as often happens
when driving in or around New York City, they hit traffic.
Casey was driving.
Casey (42:12):
Curfew was midnight for the counselors and it was one
in the morning for group leaders, so I knew I
was okay, but I was worried about getting the counselors
back on time, and anyway, we rolled up to camp
and it was a negligible amount of minutes that we
were late. So we went to the girl's head counselor's
(42:36):
office and everyone was extremely apologetic that we ran into traffic.
It was an accident and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
I felt bad, but I was also like, wow, this sucks.
We're probably gonna get a slap on the wrist. And
so I went back to the bunk. Woke up the
next morning and I was called into the office again
(42:59):
and she was just she looked at me and she
was like, you're done, and she slapped a piece of
paper in front of me and like made me sign it.
It was a termination paper, and I remember my heart
was beating so fast, and I was like, what does
this mean. She was like, get off camp as soon
(43:21):
as possible, is what this means. And I've said, well,
I mean all my stuff is in my bunk. She
was like, yeah, don't care. You can just grab it
and here's trash bags.
Kelsey Snelling (43:34):
It was a flimsy excuse. People came in late all
the time. It wasn't a fireable offense, at least based
on precedent, and Casey hadn't even missed her own curfew,
but she felt like there was nothing she could do.
She went to her room, collected her things, and then
got picked up by a staffer in a golf cart
(43:54):
to remove her from campgrounds. But just in those few minutes,
word had spread to Casey's campers and they were not
going to let her leave without putting up a fight.
Casey (44:06):
And then like this swarm of kids runs out of
like all these buildings and they were just like stop
the golf cart and they just surrounded me and they
were like jump, jump jump. I told him, I was like,
can you stop. I want to say goodbye to my kids.
(44:26):
I was like, they're my kids. I need to say goodbye.
He was like I can't, I can't, and he was
so nervous. He's like I'm not supposed to. And I
was like, well, you know what, I'm gonna jump and
he was like ah, and the kids were like jump
jump and so I did. And then they just flocked
around me and just huge hugs, all these tears and
(44:46):
they're like, don't let them do this to you. And
it was like it was like a lot of love
and support and I was very overwhelmed.
Kelsey Snelling (44:57):
Casey was fired days before last payday. She never got
that completion stipend. You may be wondering at this point,
why didn't we all just leave? Why didn't I leave?
There were red flags from the very first day, and
the pay was a joke anyway. I spent eleven weeks
(45:17):
straight overwhelmed, overworked, and underfed. I talked to my sister
about this. Did you ever consider quitting? And why did
you not quit?
Robin (45:29):
Oh boy, there were many times I thought about quitting. Honestly,
if you hadn't been a counselor, I think I would
have been out of there because it was just too
overwhelming for one person to process without having somebody that
they trusted to talk through it with. What kept me
(45:52):
there at the end of the day is like knowing
that it would be easy for me to walk away,
but that my campers would still be there, and that
I trusted myself more than I trusted the quote unquote
professional staff to give them a memorable and positive experience.
So you know that's not great. I have no background
(46:17):
in this, I have no training on how to deal
with some of this trauma and these like really challenging
situations that campers are coming from, and yet just by
being a moderately mature and like sensitive person, I felt
(46:38):
like I could change their experience if even a little bit.
Kelsey Snelling (46:44):
Bobby and I made it the entire summer, and once
campers were gone and the days of cleanup had gone by,
we collected our pathetic paychecks and left with zero desire
to ever go back.
Robin (46:56):
I realized that camp had really no understanding of the
situation its campers were in. It certainly didn't have the
solutions that they needed, and it didn't really seem like
owners were invested in making it better. They had a
(47:18):
model that worked and they were sticking to it. I
felt like for a short period of time, all I
thought about was food. That was like a new thing. Luckily,
I kind of with time got out of that stage,
but I completely looked at food differently and not in
a good way.
Kelsey Snelling (47:39):
After the summer ended, I was messed up for a while. Depression? PTSD?
I never got an official diagnosis. Camp Shane felt like
a fever dream. What I saw left me exhausted and empty.
I felt like I couldn't go to the police necessarily,
but maybe I could create something that would reveal what
(48:00):
was happening to these kids, something that would expose this place,
which is just one cog in a huge societal machine
that teaches people to feel shame about their bodies. So
I started interviewing everyone i could. I've also wondered about
Simon's role in all of this. Despite his missteps, nearly
(48:22):
every person I've spoken to characterizes him as the absolute
heart and soul of the community and magic of Camp Shane.
I'm left wondering how someone so revered could also allow
such terrible things to happen. But maybe Simon was in
the same position as me, financially under David's thumb and
(48:43):
emotionally bound to Camp Shane through the campers. Maybe Simon
was exhausted and depleted, but was sticking around to make
sure things didn't get worse. Next time on Camp Shane.
Kellye (48:59):
Finally we got connected and Sadie is on the phone
with her dad at the time, and she just breaks
out crying, come get me, come get me, please, come
get me. She told her dad. She said she was scared.
Kelsey Snelling (49:13):
We reached out to David Ettenberg, his wife Ziporah Janowski,
and Simon Greenwood for comment. At the time of this recording,
we have not received a reply. If you or someone
you love is struggling with an eating disorder, wou can
call the free hotline of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.
The number is one eight s ixty six six six
two one two three five. Camp Shame is a production
(49:37):
of iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame
is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schleede, Luci Jones,
and Alyia Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtenay Hameister, with
additional editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch. Our
executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me Kelsey Snelling.
(50:02):
For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett. Fact checking
done by Madeline Gore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams,
and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Sean Petell.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or
(50:23):
wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram at
camp Shane. That's with an M. If you or anyone
you know went to Camp Shane, reach out with your
camp stories
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