“I handed my son over to the devil,” Joe Alarcon told me during an interview for BNG’s upcoming podcast, “Non-Disclosure,” which features interviews from survivors and their families about the serial sexual abuse that occurred at Kamp Kanakuk. Alarcon’s son, Ashton, is one of the survivors featured in the podcast.
The “devil” he was referring to was Peter “Pete” Newman, a serial child sexual predator who worked at Kamp Kanakuk and was convicted on felony charges in 2010 for sexually abusing 57 boys during his tenure there. Today, the victim advocacy organization Facts About Kanakuk says the number of survivors is at least in the hundreds, although some crime experts believe it’s possible there are thousands of Kanakuk abuse survivors.
For years, many families believed Newman’s abuse was just a one-off thing. He was just one bad apple, and when Kanakuk leaders learned of the abuse they reacted immediately to prevent him from having access to more children. Their child was simply an unfortunate victim in a tragic and unpredictable crime.
But during her multi-year investigation into Kamp Kanakuk, Nancy French discovered this might not be true.
Dating back to 1999, Kanakuk had received reports of Newman engaging in “naked activity with children,” and years later in 2003 he was given a disciplinary “test” by leadership regarding his sexual misconduct with kids.
Yet, he was not reported to law enforcement for his felonious behavior. Instead, he was promoted to director of K-Kountry, the camp for elementary-aged children, in 2005.
After Newman’s confession and conviction, many survivors and their families entered into settlement agreements with Kanakuk, which included restrictive Non-Disclosure Agreements. These barred them from telling their stories to the public, and some even felt restricted from talking to their peers, therapists and families about the matter.
But when French published what she found in March 2021, survivors everywhere became aware they were not alone. And that Kanakuk might have had something more to hide with their NDAs than Newman’s nefarious actions.
In an interview with BNG for the podcast, French told me she’s only published “probably 3% of the information I discovered” in the grand scheme of her investigation.
Four years later, a few brave survivors and their families agreed to join me to tell their stories in our podcast, “Non-Disclosure: The Silenced Stories of Kanakuk Kamps Survivors.”
Throughout the podcast, their stories touch on topics like law, theology and the power of churches to respond to abuse, so we’ll also hear from some field experts who can help us understand those ideas in more concrete ways.
The first two episodes of “Non-Disclosure” will drop next week. Look for them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by searching your favorite podcast distribution source. This limited series is part of BNG’s “Change-making Conversations” podcast platform.