Introducing: Camp Shame

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 behind Camp Shane’s facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of exploitation and neglect. 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Camp Shane was once the most popular weight loss camp
in America. It was the best summers of my life.
Thousands of kids and teens spent their summers at Shane
and together lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I went from one sixty to one forty.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I lost twenty seven pounds. I've lost eighty seven point
six pounds in nine leaks. From the outside, Camp Shane
seemed like a utopia for kids who felt unwanted by
the real world. It was a family business whose mission
was to help campers change their lives. And business was good,

(00:39):
real good.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
We were busting at the seams at that point, five
hundred and seventy five kids. It was a lot.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
But beyond the profits and the accolades, Shane had some
sinister secrets. It was no guidance.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was more or less throw a bunch of kids
at a place call at a fitness camp.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
They see a bunch of kids that go in heavy
and they come out thin, and they're not asking any
other questions.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
What I didn't know at the time know was that
he was grooming me. I don't know that I fully
understood body shame until I went to a fat camp
and It's why it was called Camp Shame.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Then, in the middle of summer twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Camp closed, parents left scrambling.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
The state is now investigating the sudden closure. What led
an acclaimed weight loss camp to suddenly close its doors
after fifty years in operation? What happens when the goal
is weight loss at any cost. I'm Kelsey Snelling. I've
spent over a decade uncovering the dark truth behind Camp

(01:47):
Shame and the culture that fueled it's decades long success,
and it turns out there's a very heavy price to shame.
This experience still hurts to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
It's still haunts me to this day.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Listen to Cam Shame starting on June fifth, on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.