Survivors, ex-employees say unreported abuse at Kanakuk camps in Branson spans decades [View all]
Source: Springfield, Missouri, News-Leader
Ozarks
Survivors, ex-employees say unreported abuse at Kanakuk camps in Branson spans decades
Nancy French Special to the News-Leader
Published 6:15 a.m. CT May 26, 2022 * Updated 7:28 a.m. CT May 26, 2022
Branson-based Kanakuk Kamps and its associated ministries are a multi-million-dollar global enterprise that includes the largest evangelical sports camp in the world. Since 1926, Kanakuk has hosted more than 500,000 campers and 50,000 staffers in Missouri and its many international locations.
Thirteen years ago, one of those staff members, Pete Newman, was revealed to be a prolific child molester.
Known as a charismatic director and ambassador for the camp prior to his 2009 arrest, Newman was charged with crimes involving six underage victims and admitted during sentencing to having inappropriate activity with as many as 13 more campers, according to News-Leader coverage of the proceedings. The prosecutor who oversaw the case later estimated the actual number of victims could be in the hundreds.
{snip}
Read more: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2022/05/26/kanakuk-kamps-abuse-unreported-decades-victims-say-missouri-pete-newman/9803409002/
NotNOWMonkeypoxHat Retweeted
https://twitter.com/Popehat
Thread. Last year, when
@NancyAFrench
and I first reported on the worst Christian sex abuse scandal you'd never heard of, at Kanakuk Kamp in Missouri, we knew we'd just scratched the surface. Today, Nancy drops three new stories. Here's the first /1:
news-leader.com
Survivors, ex-employees say unreported abuse at Kanakuk camps in Branson spans decades
Kanakuk leaders have described convicted child molester Pete Newman as a lone predator but he wasn't the first or last abuser connected to the camp.