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.”

More:Former Kanakuk counselor Peter Newman named in new sex-abuse lawsuit

Newman's abuse of campers and others he met through Kanakuk-affiliated ministries often began with casual nudity and discussions about how to control sexual desires, progressing to mutual masturbation and sodomy.

In their statements about Newman, camp leaders say they were deceived. 

“More than 12 years ago, one of our staff members was accused and convicted for abusing campers,” reads Kanakuk’s official statement. “(Newman’s) deception of family, friends, Kanakuk, and our camp families was deep.”

Kanakuk Ministries president Doug Goodwin, who also has been identified as the camp’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that Newman’s case “was the first time we've ever dealt with anything like this.” 

In a deposition in a civil suit filed by one of Newman’s victims, Kanakuk CEO Joe White said sexual abuse “wasn't even on the radar screen. ... It wasn’t a part of our culture.”

An increasing amount of evidence contradicts that narrative. Documents Kanakuk released during civil court proceedings show camp leaders were made aware of Newman’s nudity with children and other inappropriate behavior on multiple occasions from 1999 until his confession in 2009. Former Kanakuk staff interviewed for this story, including a supervisor who recommended Newman be fired in 2003, say those red flags were repeatedly excused and dismissed.

Nor was Newman alone. In the years before and after his arrest, six other men affiliated with Kanakuk have been convicted of sexual crimes involving children:

• Corbie Dale Grimes, a counselor who held a variety of Kanakuk jobs in the late 1970s and 1980s, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for sexually abusing a boy in Texas in 1999. A Kanakuk director testified at Grimes’ trial, where he disclosed that Grimes had been fired from Kanakuk after an incident involving a young male camper. 

• Robert John Morgan, who had worked for Kanakuk owner White as a pilot, pleaded guilty in 2004 to sodomizing a young female relative. White testified on Morgan’s behalf and provided him housing at Kanakuk in the off-season while he awaited trial. 

• William French Anderson, a lauded scientist known as “the father of gene therapy,” attended Kanakuk as a child and volunteered there for decades, teaching self-defense to campers. He was convicted in California in 2006 of sexually abusing a young girl. 

• Paul Kerr, a Kanakuk summer staffer from 1997 to 2005, pleaded guilty in 2012 to sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl at a daycare where he worked in Colorado. He confessed to spying on other young girls for sexual gratification. 

• Ed Ringheim, a Kanakuk counselor in the 1990s who later volunteered with the Kanakuk-affiliated KLIFE program in Florida, was convicted in 2012 of seven sex-related felonies involving underage boys, including one victim he had chaperoned from Florida to the Branson camp. 

• Lee Bradberry, a Kanakuk counselor, pleaded guilty in 2013 to four sex-related charges involving campers at Kanakuk before he was fired in 2011.

In interviews for this story, former Kanakuk campers and staff members described incidents involving other men who engaged in red flag behavior as well as alleged sexual abuse.

An anonymous advocacy website, factsaboutkanakuk.com, has collected other reports.

“Since No More Victims, LLC launched the Facts About Kanakuk website in April 2021, it has received reports of over 60 incidents of Kanakuk abuse spanning from the 1950s to 2022,” the group said in a statement released through its attorney. “When combined with the known information regarding Pete Newman’s abuse victims, that brings the total to over 100 reported victims with allegations of child sexual abuse against 30 perpetrators.”

The site, which says it is run by victims and their family members but has not revealed its organizers, has called on Kanakuk to be more accountable and transparent.

In February, the group issued an open letter demanding that Kanakuk agree to an independent investigation of abuse claims. They’ve also called on Kanakuk leaders — several of the people in charge during Newman’s tenure run the camp to this day — to "admit to known failures” and to release victims from non-disclosure agreements.

Kanakuk’s response, an open letter from owner Joe White, was panned by several victims, who said it fell short of taking responsibility and muddied the water with respect to the NDAs. (In the letter, White told victims he and Kanakuk "will not object to you sharing your story with those who can support your healing.” But, he added, because “most agreements involve insurance companies who may choose to defend their interests, you should keep the terms of your settlement confidential.”)

Victims say such confidentiality clauses have kept stories of abuse at Kanakuk from reaching a national audience — although that is changing.

In the past two years, media coverage of abuse at Kanakuk has included reporting by Christian financial watchdog organization Ministry Watch, CBS News in Dallas, VICE News and conservative online magazine The Dispatch.

In March, less than a month after White’s open letter to victims, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation included Kanakuk in its 2022 Dirty Dozen list, alleging “decades of child sexual abuse at Kanakuk Kamps have been swept under the rug by the organization.” The anti-pornography and anti-sex-trafficking charity, which said it had been contacted by three survivors of sexual abuse allegedly linked to the camp, encouraged others to join in its call for increased “responsibility, accountability, and transparency.”

More:Kanakuk's statement provided in response to the News-Leader's questions

When Ringheim was arrested in Florida in 2011 for allegedly abusing several boys — including one he had chaperoned to Kanakuk — the camp issued a statement noting it had “extensive policies in place to protect the health and safety of every child attending Kanakuk.”

The statement also sought to distance the camp (where Ringheim had once worked as a counselor), from KLIFE, the youth ministry for which Ringheim volunteered. Although organized as a separate nonprofit, KLIFE continues to refer to Kanakuk Kamps and other affiliated organizations as “sister ministries” and it is included in a list of programs on the Kanakuk website.

Asked in a March 2021 interview whether he was aware of any improper conduct while Ringheim worked at Kanakuk, president and COO Goodwin — an employee of the camp and related ministries for 36 years — said “No. None at all.”

Robert Shaffer, a Kanakuk counselor from 1991 to 1995, contradicted that claim.

Shaffer did not remember the specific year, but said at one point during his tenure he and other counselors learned that Ringheim, also a counselor, had “engaged in sexual misconduct at Kamp. A mother had made an accusation Ed had been sexually inappropriate with her son.”

Shaffer recalled that his supervisor at the time, Kris Cooper, told the counselors “Ed crawled into bed with the boy because he was homesick and was attempting to comfort him.”

Cooper encouraged the counselors “to continue to support and love Ed and to pray for him,” Shaffer said. “The general tone of the meeting was that it was an awful situation for Ed because he was just trying to be loving to the boy.” 

Shaffer said the camp reassigned Ringheim to “maintenance” after the complaint. 

More than a decade later, Ringheim volunteered with KLIFE in Orlando. Unaware of the previous allegations against him, parents sometimes hired Ringheim to escort their children to Kanakuk. One of those boys was among the victims when Ringheim was convicted of various sex crimes in 2012.

Other instances revealed Kanakuk’s tendency to support or minister to those accused of abuse rather than report them.

In 2000, when White’s pilot, Morgan, confessed to sodomizing an adolescent female relative, White gave him off-season housing at Kanakuk while he awaited trial. 

White also testified as a character witness on Morgan’s behalf and asked the judge not to imprison him. White testified he had confidence “rehabilitation on this side of prison walls is much more healthy for him than rehabilitation behind prison walls” and said he would “trust [Morgan] around my daughters.” Despite those words, the judge sentenced Morgan to 10 years.

Former Kanakuk counselor Michael Horn of Dallas, Texas said he was working at the camp in 2002 when he and his co-counselor witnessed a third counselor sleeping in a closed sleeping bag with a shirtless child straddling the counselor’s bare chest. (Horn’s co-counselor confirmed the account but did not want to be identified in this story).

Horn said he informed Chancey, the camp director, about what he saw; Chancey told him he reported the incident to White, but said they wanted to allow the counselor to stay at Kanakuk.

“The explanation that I was given was that Kanakuk’s ministry to the counselors is just as important as their ministry to the campers,” said Horn. “[The counselor] clearly had some issues to work through, so it was important that he remain on staff to be ministered to. No mention of children’s safety.”

The counselor was allowed to stay and to return the following summer, Horn said. “[He] was separated from the kids for one day. Camp went on as normal …

“Worst of all, the child’s parents were not informed.”

More:From the editor: How we reported stories about sex abuse at Kanakuk Kamps

The year before Horn reported the incident with the unnamed counselor, Newman received written warning about sleeping with campers.

“I highly recommend not sleeping alone with a kid,” supervisor Will Cunningham wrote to Newman in a 2001 letter Kanakuk shared in several victim lawsuits. “At minimum, this does not look good. At maximum, it could destroy your ministry.” 

In October 2003, after being confronted about being nude with campers, Newman signed a probationary contract. The objective, listed at the top of the document: “To help Pete understand what healthy ministry is, and to make sure Pete never places himself in a compromising position that his integrity would be in question. We want to insure [sic] that Pete be involved in a lifetime of ministry.” 

On March 16, 2009, after Newman confessed to abusing male campers, White sent an email telling Kanakuk families that Newman left the camp while "dealing with a personal family crisis. 

“He has asked that you respect his privacy and not contact him or his family, but that you keep him in your prayers.” 

(When Newman was arrested six months later, the camp issued an alert to camp families that included the sexual abuse allegations.)

On April 23, after a Taney County Sheriff's detective interviewed Kanakuk director Kris Cooper about Newman’s sexual crimes, he noted in the incident report, “Kris mainly talked about the accomplishments and good work that Pete Newman did for Kamp.”

Even after Newman’s 2010 conviction, Kanakuk leaders esteem for Newman remained evident.

“I was at camp the day Pete was convicted,” said a former Texas camper who was 15 years old at the time. “Joe White came into the dining hall at lunch and made an announcement. He talked a lot about how a great Christian man in leadership at Kanakuk made a mistake and was going to prison for it.” 

“Joe went on and on about how he was a good man who the Lord would continue to use,” said the camper, who asked not to be named publicly. “It wasn't until years later that I learned that ‘good’ man was a pedophile and the people needing the prayers were the countless victims I spent my summers with, not Pete.”

Newman himself commented on the “love” and “support” and “belief” White had shown him in a handwritten letter after his confession.

Though the last decade of Newman’s employment was marked by repeated reports of nudity with campers and other rule violations, he wrote to White: “You told me the 1st day I arrived in Branson that you would be my ‘Missouri Daddy.’ ...

“You have shown me nothing but grace through the years.”

More:Kanakuk camper says she was told to apologize, denied call home after reporting abuse

Not all reports of inappropriate behavior went unpunished. On at least two occasions prior to Newman’s confession, male counselors at Kanakuk were fired over alleged sexual touching.

Corbie Dale Grimes, who worked at Kanakuk in the 1970s and ’80s, is serving a life sentence for abusing a boy in Texas in 1999.

In a recorded 2021 phone interview, Kanakuk COO Goodwin was asked if the camp knew of “any reports, any misconduct” involving Grimes during his employment. Goodwin indicated there was nothing unusual about Grimes’ departure.

“Why did he leave? He was only a summer staff. They left all the time …,” Goodwin said. “Usually people, after two or three years in college, they have other jobs.”

In fact, Grimes — who worked summers at Kanakuk for more than a decade and had roles on the leadership team — did not leave voluntarily. 

“Mr. Grimes was terminated by Kanakuk for inappropriate behavior and poor judgment,” according to an April 3, 2021 letter attorney Ted Tredennick sent to the FactsAboutKanakuk website and No More Victims LLC demanding that the site retract statements his client, Kanakuk, said were inaccurate.

In the letter, Tredennick said Grimes’ actions “did not constitute a ‘reportable offense’ in a criminal context” when Grimes was terminated in 1989.

However, those actions were serious enough that former Kanakuk administrator Cooper — who in 2002 was co-director of the K-1 camp with Goodwin — was compelled to testify at Grimes’ trial.

“The last summer [Grimes] was with us, he had been given an elevated job, a middle management job, if you will, where he takes 20 kids at a time out of the camp facility where they spend three days and two nights camping away from the big camp facility,” Cooper said, according to a transcript of his 2002 testimony.

Cooper testified Grimes was fired after encouraging a camper to “pull his pants down, and Mr. Grimes … [was] whacking his pee pee with a stick,” which Cooper said involved Grimes touching the child’s penis with a “tent stake” in a non-aggressive manner.

Cooper characterized this as “inappropriate behavior on Corbie’s part,” which the camp deemed “inappropriate enough that we let him go.”

Another Kanakuk employee, Chuck Price, was fired in 1990, according to a victim, her mother and two former Kanakuk staff members who investigated separate complaints against him.

Jody Jones was an 8-year-old camper at Kanakuk in 1985.

“It was a night when we were going to have a swim and then watch a movie,” said Jones, who agreed to be identified by name for this story. “I had a towel around my shoulders and just the bathing suit on.”

Jones said she was laying down to watch the movie when Price sat next to her and began tickling her foot. She didn’t think much of it at first.

“Then he made his way up my leg and put his fingers in my vagina,” she said. “I laid there … then I sat up and said, ‘Chuck!’ He froze.”

Jones said Price left and she continued to watch the movie. Years passed before she managed to tell anyone.

In the intervening time, another camper reported that Price rubbed her leg and stuck his hand up her miniskirt on a Kanakuk-affiliated bus trip in either 1985 or 1986. That camper, who did not want to be identified, said she reported the incident to Kanakuk leadership. The staff member who received the report confirmed that it was made and expressed regret at not investigating more diligently.

“Pedophilia wasn’t on my radar. It should’ve been, but it wasn’t,” said the former Kanakuk employee, who was interviewed for this story on the condition of not being named. “I didn’t alert the police, which was a mistake. I didn’t know what to do … (but) even if the organization didn’t offer training it was my responsibility as someone who worked with youth in any capacity to be prepared.”

In 1990, Jones returned to Kanakuk and saw Price again.

“The camps were getting together for an activity,” said Jones, who was then 13.  “When we got there, Chuck was up on stage and the entire crowd of kids was cheering, ‘Chuck, Chuck, Chuck!’ I lost it. With all those people cheering, I got up the courage. It made me cry to think about telling my parents.

“Today it still makes me cry.”

Jones said she told a friend (who confirmed her account when contacted for this story) about the 1985 incident, as well as her counselor and a camp director. 

“I was in a room with the director, and about three other people. Nobody really reacted,” Jones said. “There was no ‘I'm so sorry this happened to you. I don't remember any kind of sympathy or, or real care or — God — 'maybe we should get a therapist in here.' It was like nothing happened.” 

A former Kanakuk leadership team member who was involved in the investigation said he witnessed Price admit to touching Jones.

“We were shocked, because Chuck never had any other incidents at all,” said the former leadership team member, who insisted on anonymity before speaking with a reporter. “Everyone loved Chuck. But when I confronted him, my recollection is that he admitted to running his finger across her waist and breast.”

“He said he didn't go under her clothing or penetrate her. Still, it was enough for him to be fired, and he was fired immediately the same day. Our policies had no tolerance for any inappropriate physical contact with anyone — staff members or campers. So, he was gone.”

Jody’s mother, Christine Jones, said a Kanakuk director “assured me Price had never abused before, and it would not happen again. It had been handled.”

The former Kanakuk staff members who separately investigated the two incidents each said they were unaware of the other complaint against Price.

Like the first incident, the second allegation was not reported to police. Christine Jones said camp leaders persuaded her that subjecting her daughter to questioning could be traumatic; the former leadership team member recalled that the Jones family asked not to contact authorities and the camp honored that request.

“We figured, if at any time thereafter they changed their minds we could immediately contact the police,” he said. “If we got any reference calls about any future employment … any job with kids ... we could nip that in the bud and prevent Chuck from ever getting a job with children.”

That was not the case. Price, who has worked with at least three schools and is a girls volleyball coach in St. Louis, continued to volunteer with the Kanakuk-affiliated KLIFE youth ministry until at least February 2022, when a reporter called the Urban KLIFE chapter in St. Louis. In a picture from 2017 posted on his Facebook page and later made private, Price posed with Kanakuk CEO White while wearing a Kanakuk visitor’s pass around his neck.

Contacted by a reporter on Aug. 26, 2021 and asked if he was fired from Kanakuk for abusing a child, Price did not answer the question. Instead he responded: “I am busy doing the work of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, and that is all I’m focusing on.”

More:‘It was just a thing at Kanakuk’: Campers and staff say nudity was part of camp culture

Kanakuk did not report the allegations against Grimes or Price to police. In court documents, interviews and other information reviewed by the News-Leader, the first reference to Kanakuk contacting authorities about potential abuse is in the early 2000s, when the camp reached out to a former Taney County prosecutor to ask whether Newman might have broken the law by being nude with children.

(Former prosecutor Merrell, who filed charges against Newman after his 2009 confession, confirmed that a predecessor had reviewed the matter and concluded Newman exercised “poor judgment” but had not violated the law.)

At least one Kanakuk counselor — Paul Green — was investigated prior to that time after allegedly abusing a Texas boy.

“People thought of Paul Green as this God-like figure,” said Blake Fusch, who was 14 when he spent a summer in the 30-year-old counselor’s cabin.

When Green entered the room, kids chanted his name, Fusch said. “Everybody looked up to him.”

Fusch’s parents met Green when they picked their son up from camp and were impressed. When they vacationed in Florida, where Green was living, they invited him along, a common practice among Kanakuk families who got to know the trusted counselors outside of camp. In November 1994, Green spent Thanksgiving with them in Dallas.

It was during that Thanksgiving visit that Fusch said he woke one night and could tell that Green, who had been sleeping on an adjacent trundle bed, had been reaching into Fusch’s underwear as he slept. Fusch said he stayed awake and when Green hand crept onto the bed again, “I kept rolling around all night and avoiding him.”

The next day, Fusch asked to have a friend spend the night so they could sleep in the living room, away from Green.

“I was trying to avoid him,” Fusch said. “He knew I knew. I knew he knew.”

Fusch said Green packed and left abruptly after hearing Fusch tell his sister about the abuse. A day later, Fusch told his parents, who alerted police and met with a Dallas detective who specialized in investigating sex crimes. The detective suggested having the boy confront Green on a phone call, which police would record.

“It was the type of thing that happens in movies,” said Susan Fusch, Blake’s mother. 

Blake Fusch said he struggled to bring up the abuse with Green on the phone, but eventually summoned the courage.

“I know what you were doing to me at night, and I didn't like it,” he said. After a few moments of silence, Fusch said, Green replied: “It was an isolated situation and it’ll never happen again.”

It was enough. At a meeting with the detective the next Monday morning, the family was told to expect an arrest that week. But Green would never face charges.

Before sunrise that same morning, Green — a graduate student at Louisiana State University – crashed his car into a highway overpass support and died, according to a Dec. 6, 1994 report in the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Fusch’s parents said they spoke to some of Green’s fraternity brothers, several of whom had been up studying the night before the crash, who told them Green had been pacing back and forth in the fraternity house and later declared he was going to work early.

“I think he committed suicide,” Fusch said. “The death was harder for me to deal with than the abuse, because I felt like I had driven him to it.”

Fusch and his parents said they informed a Kanakuk “trip director” of the abuse and were told that the information would be relayed to White, the CEO. It’s not known if the allegations against Green were shared with other parents — Goodwin, the Kanakuk Ministries president, said the camp did not have a policy at that time of alerting parents when former counselors were revealed to be abusers.

Instead, Fusch said he shared the information with fellow campers himself after asking permission from camp staff.

“I was conflicted, because everyone was grieving this icon of Kanakuk,” Fusch said. “It was something I felt needed to be done, but it was awkward because I didn’t want to go into detail. Maybe I owed them the details … It was probably shocking for 15-year-olds to hear.”

Fusch said his opinion of Kanakuk is not all negative. He hopes the camp’s leaders will read victims’ accounts and other coverage “and maybe see that there’s more to it than they’ve been willing to take responsibility for.” 

“I’m not trying to burn the camp down …,” he said. “I just want people to feel safe to talk about it.”

Despite the information provided by victims and former employees about incidents involving Ringheim, Price, Green and others, Kanakuk’s longtime leaders publicly acknowledge only two abusers: Newman, arrested in 2009, and Bradberry, whose 2011 arrest the camp credits to its Child Protection Plan.

 “In 2009 and 2011, Kanakuk discovered that two employees had violated the sacred trust that we and our camp families placed in them through abusive actions that stand counter to our mission and values,” wrote Goodwin, the Kanakuk Ministries president, in a May 4 message to incoming campers. “… While we are not aware of any other reports of abuse at Kanakuk, we will continue to apply and evaluate our safety practices to help keep Kamp safe and fun for all.”

In addition to reviewing safety protocols implemented in the wake of Newman’s prosecution, Goodwin’s May 4 message included a section warning families of a “campaign of misinformation and defamation” against Kanakuk. The letter refers to “several authors and a website run by an anonymously owned LLC,” as well as “a vocal group that includes some victims and former employees” who have “fallen prey to many of these false narratives and [have] added their voices in support.”

"We will not be surprised — and are fully prepared — if future publicity stunts by these groups should include lawsuits, online productions, or other efforts to gain media attention or disrupt our ministry operations,” Goodwin wrote. “Pursuing such actions would be unfortunate, but Kanakuk has been transparent and has nothing to hide.”

Kanakuk’s critics argue that, rather than being transparent, the camp has downplayed institutional failures and sought to limit media exposure while muzzling victims with the use of non-disclosure agreements.

Cunningham, the former K-Kountry director who was Newman’s supervisor (and in 2003 recommended Newman be fired), said he believes the camp has not come clean about past abuse.

"Joe (White)'s continued lack of transparency — by not publicly admitting he knew of Newman's nudity when he did — prolongs the pain and anger of Pete's victims," Cunningham said.

Parents whose sons were abused by Newman are among those demanding public accountability from White and others at the camp.

“The night I learned that my son had been abused for over three years at your camp, in multiple states, overseas, and in my own home by Pete Newman, I called you,” wrote one distraught father, Greg Yandell, in a March 2022 letter to Kanakuk CEO White. “I point blank asked you … if you knew of any previous signs or situations that indicated that Newman had abused young boys, or had acted in an inappropriate way around young boys. Your immediate and direct answer to me was ‘I had no idea. I had never seen anything that caused me concern. I am just as shocked as anyone.’ … 

“I have since learned you lied to me, Joe.”

Toby Neugebauer, a Texas businessman who sent his own kids to Kanakuk as well as sponsoring other children to attend Kanakuk-related retreats, contacted Kanakuk leadership after Newman’s confession.

“I immediately reached out to Joe White. My perception was that Joe was ‘camp first, victims second,’” said Neugebauer.

According to Neugebauer, White refused his call for an independent investigation and seemed more focused on protecting Kanakuk’s reputation, framing the crisis as a spiritual battle between good — the camp — and evil. 

“‘Toby, get on board,’” Neugebauer said White told him. “‘The devil’s trying to get us.’”

Those seeking to spotlight abuse at Kanakuk also have demanded that victims and their families be freed from the NDAs many signed when they settled lawsuits against the camp.

One NDA reviewed for this story stipulated that the victim who signed it could not divulge the details of the “confidentiality release” to “the news media, print media, broadcast media,” or to people associated with newspapers, magazines, periodicals, radio stations, or books. It also prohibited sharing the information with any federal or state governmental agencies.

“Kanakuk didn’t even want my son to be able to give his testimony at church,” said Joe Alarcon, a Texas father whose son Ashton was abused by Newman. The Alarcons refused the camp’s confidentiality agreement terms, after which Kanakuk’s attorneys threatened them with legal action and asked a judge to sanction them with fines.

Logan Yandell, one of Newman’s victims who signed an NDA as part of a settlement, initially agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity. Prior to publication, he and his parents decided to be quoted by name.

Yandell said the legal restrictions included in the settlement compounded the trauma of the abuse.

“I’m technically not allowed to tell a therapist, when that’s what the settlement money was supposed to be used for. It certainly has hindered the healing process,” he said. “I struggled a lot longer with substance abuse disorders ... Many days I really wished I never woke up and would ‘self-medicate,’ but I never did overdose, somehow.”

“When I was younger and when things were harder, I had a contingency plan for how I planned [to die],” he said.

Other parents say they still fear for the lives of their children. 

“Suicide is not out of the question when it comes to my son,” said one mother who believed her son’s claims of abuse after reading about Newman in recent coverage.  “I just kind of wait for it.”

No More Victims, LLC, the group behind the Facts About Kanakuk website, said in a statement it has “received reports of eight Kanakuk victims whose deaths are suspected to be related to their abuse.”

One Newman victim, Trey Carlock, died by suicide in 2019 shortly after settling his case with Kanakuk. 

His sister, Elizabeth Phillips, said her brother considered the settlement “blood money” and felt so constrained by his NDA he worried he couldn’t even talk about his abuse in therapeutic settings.

“A few days before my brother died, he told a therapist, ‘They are always going to control me and I’ll never be free,’” she said.

“He was silenced to his grave ... How many victims have to die before the camp is held accountable?”