Kanakuk Kamps sex abuse accuser says camp leadership told him to ‘back off’ when he reported abuse
A 37-year-old Colorado man who says he was sexually abused by a director at a Kanakuk Kamps, one of the biggest Christian summer camp operations in the country, has sued the organization and one of the camp’s insurance providers, alleging fraud.
A 37-year-old Colorado man who says he was sexually abused by a director at a Kanakuk Kamps, one of the biggest Christian summer camp operations in the country, has sued the organization and one of the camp’s insurance providers, alleging fraud.
Andrew Summersett said that after he revealed to Kanakuk Kamps directors in fall 2009 that, years earlier, he’d been abused by Pete Newman, then director of the Kanakuk Kamp in Branson, Missouri, high-ranking officials in the organization denied knowing that Newman had been accused of molesting other children and told him to keep quiet about it, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Taney County Circuit Court in Missouri.
Summersett attended the camp every summer from 1994, when he was 7 years old, until 2005, when he was 18. For the next two summers, he nannied for two of the camp’s directors, Andrew Braner and his wife at the time, Jamie Jo Johnson.
Peter Newman at a 2009 court appearance.News-Leader file photoIn the lawsuit, Summersett says Newman was visiting him at his home in Texas when he was first abused in 2001 during what’s known as “Winter Trail,” when Kanakuk workers hit the road to recruit new campers.
Summersett, who would have been about 14 and 15 years old at the time, said Newman abused him again in 2002 while he was at a Kanakuk camp in Branson. But according to the lawsuit, Summersett kept the abuse a secret until 2009, when he called Johnson and asked whether she knew that Newman had abused children at the camp. She said she “did not know” and asked him to speak to Braner, according to the lawsuit.
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