“Justice”

After years of court hearings, a settlement is finally reached. Conclusion and final thoughts on the aftermath of Anneewakee.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Camp hell an Awake is a production of I Heart Radio.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the author and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media or its employees. Due
to discussion of traumatic, sexual, and violent content, listener discussion
is advised. I remember when the lawsuits started. I remember

(00:25):
walking through my mother in law's house and stopping dead
in my tracks because the news was on, and I
heard the word and Waki, and all the hair on
the back of my neck stood up, and I walked
over to where the TV was and I just stood

(00:46):
there staring at the TV, listening to them say that
things were going down and that people were getting arrested,
and that lawsuits were happening. And I remember starting to
I and my mother in law did not know at
the time that I had been to Anna Waki, and

(01:07):
she knew then. She knew then. I was so glad
that it was finally happening, and I was so mortified
at the same time because even though things happened, that
we're bad there, we were so brainwashed. We loved Ann Wakey.

(01:28):
This is Kelly, a survivor of van A Waki remembering
her reaction to first hearing about the scandal. With Louis
Petter now in jail, multiple civil suits had been filed
against him and Anna Wake Incorporated. Attorney Pat edel Kind
worked tirelessly along with her partner in the suit, attorney

(01:48):
Randy Blackwood. With the number of clients and suits filed,
this case would take over three years before it finally
went to court. Here's Pat. Once it hit the press
of the Atlanta paper and somewhere around the id state,
it became known and people would come or they would

(02:10):
call me, and they would be interested in talking. And
I had dedicated my life to to talking to them.
Working on this case. We've basically consolidated in his office,
although I had by our own and uh we turned

(02:31):
down a ton of paper. We had so many, so
many people working for us at someone one time. It
was just impossible to keep up with it, but we
did it. I've been runched through the sweet much because
I talked to all the clients. That was really difficult.
That's the one thing that Randy did not want anything

(02:55):
to do with. So I did all of that, all
the client contacts, and and you can imagine people are
talking about their children, and then we're talking to the adlaceness.
They were usually adolescents, but the older ones had more
to say about everything that happened there because they were

(03:17):
just older. They could relate about the sexual abuse that
wasn't pretty what they could say it. The younger ones
no difficult. At any point in time in the day.
I could be called day and night and I would
talk to them. You just had to hold their hands

(03:39):
as listen to the parents as well as the kids.
Over the past several weeks we have received number of
very serious allegations concerning both the facility out there in
a number of individuals involved with him. It was just
a from of this therapy. They were told to do it,

(04:01):
and at the time he was fourteen and a half
fifteen years old, they didn't know any better. I asked him,
why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering
up for Louis Batter He had no answer to that question.
Involved having and this sitution paid it off little, such
shock destricable place, and to do absolutely the contrary of

(04:27):
what they should have done. I'm disturbable the fact of
something He's still one on it and awake you I'm
Josh Stean and this is Camp hell an Awake. Since
the initial lawsuits against in Awaki were filed, there had
now amassed a total of eight different lawsuits, including up

(04:49):
to thirty one defendants associated within Awaki and over one
and thirty plaintiffs. The first to go to trial was
one involving patients from the inn Awaki North campus in
rock Mart for girls. Terry was one of these plaintiffs. Actually,
what happened the five girls, which I was one of them,

(05:12):
three of us were able to testify. They hadn't even
gotten to the boys yet. It was really scary testifying
in court. But at the same time it was a
good feeling because I had a lot of anger because
I felt like I had been stripped at four years

(05:32):
of my life with my parents growing up. UM, I
was robbed those years and ended up coming out with
really no education and UM probably more problems. So it
felt really good to be able to testify UM and
share about the manual labor that they made us do

(05:54):
day in and day out, and the abuse, the physical abuse,
the sexual abuse. Just to be able to get that
all out and hold them accountable was really a good
feeling and It helped me personally to let go and
move on. They were originally a good nine form of

(06:17):
girls who were in that lawsuit, and Stilt just dropped out.
They couldn't take it, or they were fearful, or they
were frightened into physicious, but nonetheless um we ended up
with four pat says. The proceedings that took place in
this first civil trial were shocking and showing the abuse

(06:38):
the girls had endured at the rock Mark campus. Difficult
as it was, the plaintifts testified and gave their stories.
In the one case that went to trial that ended
up four rals. They were subject across examination and almost
that the sexual abuse, the denial privileges they would be denied,

(07:04):
told visits if they told terrupt too much about what
was going on, what was really going on, and then
come to find out that it was all true. It
was just astonishing. That was horrific, really, but we've prepared

(07:25):
them very well and they get well. On December nine,
after four years of working on the case and a
ten week trial at Fulton County Superior Court, jury awarded
five point two million dollars to four young women who

(07:45):
had been victims of forced labor at Anawaki. At the
time of the settlement, this was anheard of number for
a suit dealing with child abuse, and one that an
Awaki's insurance, who would end up paying out the amount,
was not expecting. They were really basically shocked. The insurance

(08:05):
to chances lawyers were shocked at what we got for
these four girls. They never thought for four girls they
would have to pay five point four millions dollars. Know
what's all that? It was just I wouldn't be believed,
but now it would. Carl Moore was subject to these

(08:29):
lawsuits along within a Wiki and its board of directors.
He remembers his reaction to the civil suits as they
began to go to trial. Oh, I just wanted to
crawl under a rock. I thought a trial was coming.
I told everybody in the investigation everything that I knew,
and I was prepared to do that in trial. And

(08:51):
but then there was a civil suit also, and I
was named in the civil suit. It's like a perfect
storm this whole thing. So I was being suit. I
didn't know if I was what was going to happen
to me criminally. This went on for a long time.
It was at least a couple of years, I think
before they finally got around to take him my deposition,

(09:14):
it was a really hard thing. I mean, the plaintiffs
needed me to testify they were suing me. The insurance
company was only representation I had. Because Carl had chosen
to testify against an Awaki, he would have no help
from them when it came to him being sued or

(09:35):
any other litigation he would incur. An Awaki's insurance with St.
Paul would be the only legal defense team he would have,
as he had been an employee of Anawaki at the time.
Antawaki was not going to do anything to help me. St.
Paul was being sued. I mean, that's where the money
was going to come from, so they had a vested

(09:58):
interest in knowing what I new. I guess I don't
think they wanted me to become a plaintiff, which is
ultimately what I did. So that's what I mean by
conflict of interest. As far as I know, the day
after my deposition they settled the case. So I spent
a lot of years in agony about that, I mean,

(10:18):
trying to get on with my life and not knowing
how this thing was going to work out. After in
Awaki had lost this initial suit at a cost of
over five million dollars. The desire to go to trial
with each of these civil cases dwindled quickly, yet again

(10:38):
a settlement and negotiation was in the works. For this
to happen, however, all one and thirty one plaintiffs would
need to agree to the terms of a settlement. They
were really right at the verdict that came in with
the girls who they saw that they had best settled
or jewish again, all these kinds of things would add

(11:02):
up to an awful lot of money. They didn't imagine
that they would get a verdict like we got. Well,
we wanted to settle and they wanted something out that
that was the bottom line, and just to show them
that it was fair. Who was pretty much disclosed. We
disclosed what they were going to get, and we had

(11:25):
to get them to agree what patience held out. But
eventually opted in the settlement and signed the relief. The
insurance paid at all really except for that time in jailed,
and they's like that. By March nine, a settlement had

(11:49):
been agreed upon by the St. Paul Insurance Company in
the thirty one former patients who had sued the organization,
a settlement, a thirty four million dollars had been awarded.
This amount would be the largest civil suit payout in
the history of the State of Georgia at the time.
This was the most important case that I've been involved in,

(12:12):
because at the time is settled for thirty five billion
dollars in today's dollars. I looked you up yesterday and
into my amazement, it would be a hundred and fifty
million dollars today. While the payout for this civil suit
was the largest in the state's history, how the payments

(12:34):
were split up is a little more complicated. Because Annawiki
had agreed to a settlement, this lump sum would be
divided between the victims with a point system that would
deduce how much a victim would be paid depending on
what they had been through. I remember Judgester should us
while your now will keep both of you because he

(12:58):
gave us our chair. The Wias did not trust Randy
Blackwood with it, with any thirty five billion dollars, and
they were planned about that he was going to put
it in his trust fund. However, they thought he was
going to take off to REvil or something. Not the
most trusting people after their experiences. In any event, I

(13:22):
relaid this to the judge and he liked to also
get Randy in on it, and he ended up being
in the Courts Trust Fund, so held in trust for
the plainest. Well. He had a part of formula of
a certain amount. I think it was fifty thousand to

(13:44):
the parents who were also joined in the lawsuits and
who went to the Statue of limitation to pass on.
And everyone got something, but the ones who were really
hurting at that in time, which that was within the statue,

(14:04):
they got much much more worm under the three hundred
thousand dollars. They did it on a point system, and
so you would get a certain amount of points depending
on how long you were there, and I think that's
what I benefited from because I was there for four years,

(14:26):
I got more points. And then you've got a certain
amount of points for what kind of sexual abuse you
suffered or mental abuse, and then you got points for
actually how many days and hours of labor, and so
it all just added up. So each person had their

(14:47):
own sets of points. And my understanding was when I
testified and two other girls testified, I guess the jury
awarded us each like two or three million dollars a piece,
but we didn't get that. Instead they settled for like
thirty two million. This is what we were told. They

(15:09):
saw that the three girls from the very beginning were
awarded two to three million dollars apiece, and they were
just getting started. So I think in a wig he
probably got scared and said we better settled now because
this is going to get really big. I ended up
getting about three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. I had

(15:30):
no idea. I just got married and had my first child.
I think it was only like twenty one or twenty
two at the time, and so I remember when we
were going to court to testify and I was trying
to explain everything to my husband. I said, I think
I might get like a thousand dollars or something like.

(15:53):
I had no clue as far as the money. I
had no idea. So it was a shock. Some of
the victims of Anawaki would never hear about the civil
suit and would receive no restitution for the damage they
had endured. Here's Cheryl, a survivor of the sexual abuse
which took place in Rock mart I was not involved

(16:16):
in any lawsuits whatsoever. I wasn't aware of any lawsuits.
No one called us or told us anything about that
or the possibility of getting money. I do know that
one of I don't know if she was in my
group or in someone else's group, but one of the
girls her dad was a lawyer. I think that's helped

(16:36):
to spearhead it. I don't know if they just chose
to keep it small and not involve all the girls
are all the people, or they just weren't basically in
the capacity to deal with all of us per se.
For me, it wasn't worth it because no amount of
money would have changed what happened to me. It would
have been nice, you know. But I do know that

(16:58):
some of the girls that got money, they went on
to buy drugs with it, not necessarily spent it in
the best of ways, because it was a devastating experience
for a lot of people. A lot of the payouts,
and nobody who got to pay out is healthy and happy,
nobody that I know of. None of the girls who

(17:18):
got to pay out still benefit from that money. That
money is long gone. I think I was vaguely aware,
but again I was really just saying, Nope, saved my life,
didn't see nothing wrong, nothing bad, nothing wrong. And the
reason for that attitude was again, I did not want
my parents feeling like they put me in that position

(17:42):
because I know it would it would kill them with
the guilt. And if I had missed out on a
two million dollar settlement, I don't care as long as
they had that for the rest of their lives. Not
knowing what all really went on there, I wish I
hadn't known about it. If I known about it, I
would have been I didn't find out it until I

(18:02):
would say twenty years later. I was living a mine
the beach at the time, and actually a bunch of
the girls came down. It was a mini ran and
thebody said that there was a lawsuit and they got money,
and I was like what. And that's the first time
I learned about it, that there was even a lawsuit.

(18:23):
I found out about it after the fact. I was
at an Awaking longer than anybody that ever went to
an Awaki. I was a younger than anybody. Yeah, no
one said anything. I didn't get anything. I I never
called me. I was on the West Coast. I was
out of the loop. I had gotten a phone call

(18:44):
months before they had asked if there was a lawsuit,
would I be available. And at the time I had
a my son was a toddler and he had pediatric cancer,
and I was too busy try to make sure that
my baby lived, and he did, he survived his cancer.

(19:05):
But I was too busy to even think about helping
this lawsuit. And I was still conflicted with my emotions
about it because I was just a few years out
of Antiwaki and the brainwashing and the fear was still there.
I still dreamed about it. I still dream about it,
and in the dreams, they're always chasing me, trying to

(19:27):
get me to come back. And when I was a
young mother, I used to dream they were chasing me
and my children and trying to get us to go
to Antiwaki to try and help in the cases of
victims who had not been included in the lawsuits. A
one million dollar trust fund was established. Pat explains actually

(19:52):
settled I had of the former anawacupatients who had not
been included in the money that we left. I left
five hundred thousand dollars and Randy Brentwood left five hundred
thousand dollars to form a crust for those patients who

(20:13):
we won't representing so that could receive some money. At
the time, it was more than it would be today.
And this kid pumps up in his car and he's
in my driveway and he says, I don't want that
because I told him we have a trust fund for you,
and he says, I want money. He booked for rather frightening,

(20:38):
but he sure got my attention. We all did agree
to put a certain amount of money aside for a
trust fund for those that didn't get involved in the lawsuits.
Some people didn't know about it, some people knew about
and chose not to, but there were still a lot
of people out there didn't that needed help, so there
was a certain amount of money for that. Kelly was

(21:02):
one former patient who later received some help from the
trust fund. I don't know how much that care trust
fund was, but it was supposed to be for us
to get therapy and education. I also felt as if
Annawaki had given me an eating disorder and I wanted

(21:22):
to get help for that. They paid for me to
go to career assessment and a psychological assessment, and then
they paid for me to have therapy, and they paid
for me to go to school. So I went to
school to be a surgical tag and then they gave
me a three thousand dollar check. And it was near
the end. It was my understanding that the fund was

(21:45):
coming to an end, that the funds were going away
and the board was dissolving. I do not believe what
I got from the trust fund was retribution for what
I went through at Antiwaki. And I don't believe that
even the people who got large sums of money, no

(22:08):
matter how much money you get, it doesn't rebuild what
was broken in us. It doesn't. I asked Pat edel
Kind if she felt justice was brought to the victims
from an Awaki. It's difficult to say, because it's really
difficult to take that those kinds of experiences that they suffered.

(22:32):
But in some small way it did. It shows me
do it gave him something to starve on to recuperate,
So in that sense it did. But have lived what
they lived through, No one would trade money for that.
An Awake He changed my life. I had no idea

(22:54):
but I would be doing stuff like this, But just
is where I ms it up. And I had decided
to go out with Felo practitioner, and I never knew
I'd be doing something like this, but I feel that
I have done something that matters in this world. I
feel that I have helped people, and that is the

(23:16):
greatest feeling I've ever had and be able to give.
You know, yes, I became wealthy, However, money is not
the only thing that satisfies this feeling of having done
well from my self, of human beings matters m M.

(23:56):
While the civil suit against an awake he was taking place,
Louis Petter had been serving out his sentence of eight
years in a Georgia prison. Petter would go on to
serve seven just shy of his full sentence. Petter had
been tried for parole in n and was initially denied
after a flood of calls were made to the parole board. However,

(24:20):
on January nine, at the age of seventy six, Louis
Petter was granted parole with the stipulation that he remained
on probation and that he not returned to Douglas County
or have any contact with miners. By nine, Petter attempted

(24:40):
to appeal the ruling that he not be allowed to
return to Douglas County due to the fact that his
probation officer had been moved to Douglas County. The appeal
was upheld and considered moot. The governor of Georgia at
the time was Roy Barnes, a former attorney. Barnes had
represented in a week Key during litigation over its status

(25:02):
as a nonprofit in the nineteen eighties. It is this
same year that the long outdated sodomy law in Georgia
was overturned. Due to this overturning of the sodomy law,
Louis Petter would no longer have to have his name
on a sex offender's list. Petter would soon after attempt
to overturn his conviction as sodomy was no longer against

(25:25):
the law. His reason for doing so was that he
could quote travel out of the country to see family
and visit property he owns in Mexico. For the last
years of his life, Louis Petter would live in a
small ranch home in Lawrenceville, Georgia, with his wife, Mabel,

(25:45):
and two German shepherds. Petter would go on to live
another nearly twenty years as a freeman. Former patient Kelly
Lewis says that after reconnecting with other Innawaki survivors. She
went on what she called Petters Death Watch. When we
began the first it was message boards back in the

(26:07):
eighties for Anawaki survivors, and we would get on these
message boards and we would yell and scream at each other,
but we also had very close bonds to each other.
We went through trauma together. So when you as a
child go through trauma, you bond with the people who
help you through it. And I am still very very
close with a lot of the people who went to

(26:29):
Anna Wake with me. I mean to the point of
where I see them once a month, twice a month.
They come to my house and eat food and and
we go and do events together and and that kind
of thing. I'm very close to them. And I remember
at one point people arguing after Mabel Petters death. I

(26:50):
found Mabel Petters obituary online and I posted it. I
can't remember at the time if we had a Facebook
group or if it was a message board. By I
think it was a Facebook group. We had graduated from
uh you know, the dial ups, squealing too real Internet,
and we were on Facebook and I remember announcing and

(27:11):
posting the obituary and it said she was survived by
her husband, Louis Petter. So it was at that time
that I went on death watch, and that's what I
ended up calling it. I went to obituary dot Com
and I had them send me a notice every month
to tell me if there had been any Petters who

(27:32):
had an obituary. And for years I didn't trust it.
So I would actually drive by his house to see
if he still lived there. And eventually he didn't live
at his house anymore. He I guess was probably and
I guess this probably in some sort of nursing home.
He was a very old man when he died. Now,

(27:55):
the first time I saw his house, I was shocked
because it was just a brick aunt's house. I expected
that he lived in this big, beautiful, fancy house, but
he didn't. So I remember going by his house. I
would drive by his house to see if he still
lived there, and I could tell that he lived there

(28:15):
because of the dogs there, Because he had German shepherds
with him at all times. It was known that no
matter where he went, those dogs went with him. They
were trained German shepherds and they were with him all
the time. So when I would drive by his house,
if I saw the dogs in the yard, I knew
that he was still living there. And then the dogs

(28:37):
weren't there anymore, and I started panicking because I didn't
know how to trace him anymore, and I, you know,
would express this on the Facebook page or to other
people who went to Anna Waki and I ended up
going to where Mabel was buried to see the gravestone,
and I saw that his marker was next to hers,

(29:00):
and it had a birth date on it, but the
death date was still open. And that cemetery actually was
not too far from the house that I lived in
in Atlanta for eleven years. So for eleven years, at
least once a month I would go by the cemetery
to see if they added a death date onto it,

(29:21):
because I didn't trust that they would do an obituary,
which they did not. On January, Padder passed away at
the age of one day, I went and the death
date was there, and I took pictures of it. I
remember shaking, and I remember having to steady my hand

(29:45):
to take pictures of it. He hurt so many people.
I was so glad he was dead. I felt like
the balance between good and evil on this planet shifted
when he died, and I was I was glad to
bring that news to people who had been abused by

(30:09):
him and affected their lives changed because of him. And
I posted the pictures, and I wouldn't tell them at first.
I made people work for it, because I'm not going
to be the one that causes somebody to go and
desecrate a grave or a graveyard. I don't remember telling

(30:33):
them what graveyard it was, but that but that it
had happened. And I posted the pictures, and I knew
that people could find out if they were smart enough
to look the way I always looked. I was glad
that he went to prison for the short period of
time that he went to prison, but it infuriated me.
Only the good die young, and that's why he lived forever.

(30:55):
So that was death Watch, and I was glad when
it was over. And I remember my husband that night
holding me and telling me it's okay now, because it
was okay. He's gone, and and now our story is
being told and we won't be forgotten anymore. And I'm

(31:18):
glad of that. We deserve for people to know, and
not only do we deserve it, but future children deserve
for people to know that these kinds of situations where
they isolate children are dangerous. They're dangerous, and humans can't

(31:38):
be trusted in situations of power and money. They just
can't be trusted. In the end, the only time served
by any of the staff from Anawaki was the seven
years Louis Petter spent in prison, and an additional three
years served by Jim Wamack Walmac was eventually released due

(32:02):
to a statute of limitations ruling against dis charges. Louis
Petter and family had turned over eight hundred thousand dollars
of property to Douglas County in the settlement, with over
five million dollars worth of real estate left in the
control of Anawaki Incorporated, it's nonprofit branch of the organization.

(32:23):
By January of seven, the Hospital Corporation of America, or
the h c A, agreed to take over day to
day operations of an Awaki's three campuses. This deal would
prevent the Department of Human Resources from taking away an
Awake's license to operate as a medical facility for a

(32:43):
few years. The campuses would go by the new and Awake,
eventually changing hands again and dropping any name connecting it
to the scandal. Much still remains unknown about where the
payment for the Anawaki takeover ended up, or who profited
from such items as the sale of the Carabell campus

(33:03):
or the marina. Since Antawaki's demise, a whole industry of
quote emotional growth schools has been established. Many of these
seem to have taken pages out of an Awake's playbook,
from solitary confinement to force labor, and some of which
have also seen charges of abuse, both sexual and physical.

(33:26):
The amount of oversight given to these organizations is often lacking,
varying from state to state, with no federal organization to
regulate them. Journalist Albert Edgin, who covered the Anawaki case
for over seven years, says he is still concerned that
some of the former abusers from Antawaki may still be

(33:46):
involved in child treatment. The most troubling thing to me
about the implications, long term implications, is that there are
still people who were abusing patients at an Awakey who
are in the health care systems around the South, who
are providing treatment for troubled children or people. And we

(34:10):
know that because Florida had made a list of abusers
that were elsewhere they weren't able to do anything about it,
or they didn't do anything about it. There were at
the time attempts, particularly in Florida, to review the way
the state managed places like an Awake. I think that's
one piece of evidence that it had at least the

(34:34):
positive effect of getting the attention of the bureaucrats long
enough where they could issue a report that maybe some
people have paid attention to through the years. I think
in terms of the American culture that Annawaki is one
of the many things that woke the country up in

(34:55):
the seventies and eighties to the kinds of manipulation and
abuse that on institutions were going through. That was a
very gradual process, and now it's become something that we
read about the papers every day. It's not just institutions
like an Awake. He has institutions like Hollywood, and we've
become because of little things like an Awake. He became

(35:19):
exposed and people became aware than we are more aware
of this kind of thing today. For many in Awaki survivors,
coming to grips with what they went through has been
a year's long process. Many of them have connected with
each other over the years through the Internet and later
at Facebook group which was created specifically for former patients.

(35:42):
They will still have reunions from time to time. Many
would attempt to track down their own records from the
time they spent it in Awaki. A few I spoke
with were able to do so up to a point
past that point, though, according to the facility, all records
from an Awake were distry. Foyd Here's survivor Chris McKnight.

(36:03):
He is currently working on a book about his experience
at an Awaki. There was a window of opportunity for
us to get our medical records. I found out this information.
We have a chat group, an Internet chet group that
only an Awaki students can be a part of, and
we vet you know, we know what questions to ask someone.

(36:25):
You know, we've had group leaders that tried to get in,
you know, like no, a couple of bad ones too.
You know, we know the question is to ask that
to tell if someone actually has been an Aniwaki. You know,
what's the crest mean, what was your laundry number? What
was the name of your first school group? Who is
you know, we know the questions to ask. So anyway,
it was found out that we could get our medical records.

(36:47):
I want to say this is two thousand three. I
think two thousand four. Actually, basically you had to um
just sign a release and pay the copying costs. I
think it was seven dollars. Because I stayed twice, I
had to pay fourteen. I had four pages of paperwork
to copy, so I signed the release center to him.

(37:08):
Every day you were at Annawaki, there is something written
about you. Most days there are two entries, some days
three if you saw a doctor and maybe a nurse
that day, and to be somebody group leader. My second day.
Reading my records, every day there's probably three entries from people,
sometimes four. So they up the ANNIE against the insurance

(37:30):
company later on about entries into your records. So a
lot of us were able to get our records. And
then we had a reunion in two thousand five, and
right after the reunion a bunch of people came to
this reunion. They accommodated us at Douglasville. It was the
first time I had been back to that campus since
I had left, and it was it was very healium

(37:53):
for me, but it was also really heavy, bizarre. It
was emotionally ranching. It's just I couldn't eat for days,
but I needed to do that. It was painful, but
I went back and I'm glad I did. So they
got a whole run glutton of people asking requesting the records.

(38:13):
You know, I had gotten my records right before the reunion,
so because all these people on site requested their records,
they had a whole mess of papal requesting. And then
shortly after that, within I want to say two or
three months, it became known that there was a fire
at the warehouse where they were keeping our records. Had

(38:34):
been an employee of Annawaki. I heard he was hired
around eighty three and had actually worked for an Awaki.
So there was anybody that was still working there from
prior that probably knew any Shenanigans or something. He probably did,
but he said that there was a fire in the
warehouse and that no one could access the records anymore.

(38:56):
They were gone, And he said that the warehouse was offsite,
was close to the downtown Atlanta area, but wouldn't stay where.
No one knew an address when you sent for your records,
that it was too old Annawaki Douglas Phil address. So
I don't know if our records were actually offside or not.

(39:16):
It could have been fabricated. And because the whole bunch
of people at once asked to see the records, my
suspicion is that there really wasn't a fire and they
just don't want to release any more records, not necessarily
for liability reasons, maybe for liability reasons. Maybe they're afraid
of kids that were there. Later on that there's still

(39:38):
a statue limitations that they can't get from out under.
I I don't know, but it seemed very very suspicious.
I highly doubt that there was to fire, and if
there was, somebody said it on purpose. It's just too
many weird coincidences about it all. Either they got rid
of those records or there somewhere, and I got a

(40:01):
feeling that they're not very far from the Aniuaki campus.
I really doubt that they would have hauled all that
records thousands of kids there. If my records was one
file box. You're talking about thousands of file boxes. You know,
it's a lot of manpower. That's a lot of records
to move. When I first began to look into the

(40:38):
Innawaki case, I had no idea how far this story
went or where it would take me. Two years of
trying to track down the many facets of its history
has taken me on a journey all around the Southeast,
speaking with dozens of survivors. The effects of an Awaki
are still seen today in the hundreds of former patients

(40:59):
still dealing with the backlash from the abuse they endured.
Many survivors that I have talked to have long term
health issues due to what they've been through, not to
mention the years of therapy and counseling it takes to
heal from something like that. Even with everything which the
patients of an Awaki went through, many still say while

(41:20):
they were abused, the program did have some benefits. I learned,
I learned how to be, I learned how not to be.
I learned everything I thought I was supposed to learn
to be a man and to go out into the
world and do my thing. You know, tell me a
whole lot. There are positive ways that Antawaki affected me.

(41:44):
I built a lot of inner strength because of the
struggles and the hard work that we had to do
and everything. But there was also very negative effects that
it had on me because I was robbed of my
education and I was robbed of age fourteen to eighteen,

(42:07):
of being a teenager and live in a normal life.
You know, I felt like I was in jail for
four years working. I mean, it was like a punishment,
and the worst part is it didn't help me, and
I still suffer from depression to this day. For other survivors,

(42:27):
their history with an Awaki still comes up in their
day to day life. Friends and family's reaction to this
are not always the most understanding. I would have to say,
having to explain to people. Look, I went to this
boys school. There's a lot of sexual most conduct, there's
a lot of force laborers. You get to know someone

(42:52):
you want to know, Oh, where do you go to school?
And that's the hardest thing. I still got that way
in my childer. I'm still carrying it around and I
still have to expose it every once in a while.
It's still really hard to talk about because I felt
like I've been punished for it several times by people

(43:13):
that I trusted, a group groups of my peers. It
was kind of kind of rough. I know that I
was a kid, I was a teenager, and I know
that I didn't do anything to deserve it. I know
all those things, but I also think that for a
place that was supposed to try to teach us to
learn how to communicate and deal with people on a

(43:36):
daily basis and and the social aspect of it, it
really messed a lot of us up. It made a
lot of us angry, and it made a lot of
us uh. I feel like in relationships. I know I've
heard this from a lot of people that went there.
Is they struggle because everything is a confrontation. Everything is
we need to sit down and talk and we need

(43:57):
to you know, figure this out, and we need to
hit this head on. And in a lot of ways,
I feel embarrassed to talk about it. It's hard to
talk to my kids, my parents, my siblings about this.
There's so many details, and it's so complicated. It's so
complicated that it's almost just easier just to not think
about it. It helped my communication skills in a lot

(44:19):
of ways. I've had to work really hard to undo
damage that happened to me there, and that happened in
the ways that they taught us, you know, to communicate.
I mean, they had us teenagers policing each other, which
never should happen because teenagers our brains weren't developed. We
didn't know what we were doing. I have grandkids that

(44:40):
are pushing on the age of when I went to Anawaki,
and I have three daughters. I would never want that
to ever ever happen to them. I just hope that
something comes from this. I hope that as a group,
those of us that are survivors that have had, oh
my gosh, such a huge gamut range of experiences. Some
people laim it saved their lives, but it also messed

(45:02):
up their life. That's kind of where I am. I
think while in a week He's program may have had
some benefits for its patients, the harm for many greatly
outweighed the good. I've had a lot of problems diagnosed
with bipolar PTSD in and out of psyche hospitals. I
didn't deal with it for a long time. I pushed

(45:23):
it down for a long time. And then when I
started reading these reports coming up and what really happened there,
and feeling sorry for all of my friends I had
to go through it, you know, it just really started
to affect me the fact that I really didn't have
any guidance in my life except our antiwiki because my

(45:44):
dad was not a guide for me. You know. Once
I got in an Antiwaki, he still wasn't there to
guide me. So I just had to figure it out
on myself. Started with a little job, became a bigger job,
became a bigger job. But uh, it has caused me
definite mental problems. I think that some people have managed

(46:11):
to cope and deal with their experience at ant Waky
more so than others, and I think that that's to
be expected because we're all different human beings. We all
deal with situations in a different manner. So I know

(46:32):
for myself and some of the people that I know
have had a very hard time dealing with all of
the pain and the things that they've witnessed and experienced there.
Um it has absolutely changed my life. It changed my body,
It changed the entire course of my life having been there.

(46:55):
So I think that there is a tremendous amount of
unrest and I'm hoping that by doing this podcast that
it will bring me some closure. Some of the long
lasting results from being Anna Waki is the aggressive confrontation.

(47:15):
I feel like learning to confront people the way that
I did has affected my relationships, not only with partners,
in life, but with my children, we always had to
sit and talk out our feelings, and we always had
even if they were angry feelings, which a lot of
people would say, oh, that's a good thing, Well it isn't.

(47:36):
When you are screaming and yelling. You know, it's good
to talk out your feelings, but it isn't. It isn't
okay to scream and yell. It isn't okay to scream
and yell at children, or to encourage children to scream
and yell at each other. I do want to say
that I'm I'm grateful that the story is being told.

(47:57):
I think a lot of people who went to Awakey
are grateful. They may not agree with exactly how the
story will be told, because everybody's story is different. And
Awake both saved and ruined my life, and that's a
difficult thing to explain to people. I most likely would
not have been a successful adult. Without the work ethic

(48:22):
I gained from getting up early every day and working
every day and knowing the importance of work and knowing
the feeling of accomplishing my goals, I wouldn't be the
person I am today. But I also wouldn't be broken.
There are parts of me that are broken, that are
stuck in the woods of an Awaki, that won't probably

(48:45):
ever come out. And I have to remind myself sometimes
that you're not in the woods anymore. You're out, you're
an adult, you're grown, you're past all of that. But
it rears its head and you have to reckon with it.
And a lot of people will say either or either
Anna Wicky saved their life or ruin their life, and

(49:05):
for me it's both. For many victims of childhood abuse
or people that were in the vicinity of it, survivor's
guilt is a feeling that often haunts them for years.
I still live with survivor's guilt. I still deal with

(49:26):
group members that For example, staff member Mr Goldberg was
taking a student down the road what we called the
boulevard there south campus. We were coming in taking showers,
walking through the breezeway, and we saw his car and
the student leaving with them, and I got so frustrated,

(49:49):
and so I was just angry because it's told one
of them. I told my group member George, I said, George,
look at such and such. He gets to ride home
with Mr Goldberg almost every night and we're stuck here
taking showers, getting eaten up by mosquitoes and dealing with
all this crap. And I had animosity towards that student

(50:12):
until later on in life I realized what was happening
to him. Now, obviously I wasn't there wasn't a fly
on the wall. But if it looks like a zebra
and it walks and talks and smells and looks and
everything else, then it's probably a zebra. And after what
had happened to me, I would say that that staff

(50:32):
member was getting abused nightly, and I still live with that.
I still have bad dreams of being in that passenger
van but running Shotgun. That was a big thing for us,
and Antawaki Crest members got to ride choking, and I
still have dreams to this day of being in that
van writing Shotgun and group members being in the back crying, screaming,

(51:00):
and me turning around and seeing no one, you know,
knowing there's no one driving and we're just going down
a road real fast and may not be able to
do anything. And I know now from therapy and group
and working with counselors and dealing with my own stuff
and investigating on my own that it's survivors guilt. I

(51:23):
don't know if that'll ever leave me. Some former patients
still have yet to try to unravel the damage done
to them. Since my interviews with the survivors of an Awaki,
some have reached back out to me saying they finally
decided to go to therapy after all these years after
telling their story, are finally decided to tell their parents

(51:45):
what actually happened to them. I don't think I realized
until recently what an effect Annawaki has had all my life.
You know, from the trauma that that I went through
there that I'm not able to to this day. I mean,
like I said, I'm doing fine, but I know that
going through therapy would have been really helpful. But they

(52:08):
they kind of took that away from me. So that's
one thing. But you know, my wife, when I told
her about this podcast and everything, she was really happy
about it because, you know, she's like, I think it
could beat therapeutic for you to to actually kind of
talk about this stuff. Because she's the only one that
I've I've really told the whole thing too, and that
was just a couple of years ago. Um didn't even

(52:28):
tell her that much until a couple of years ago.
Many survivors found solace in each other through the network
of former patients who have connected through the Internet and
reunions over the years. Some even managed to find love.
I'm very close to a lot of them as adults,
and I think we all share that same mentality of

(52:51):
we have to discuss this, we have to talk this out.
We have one Facebook you can go to that say
anytime and there's something. Yeah, it's a place for jokes,
it's a place for fun, it's it's a place for seriousness.
It's a place for planning reunions and many reunions, and
it's a place that everybody feels so safe that they

(53:14):
can talk about any single thing that's going on with
them that they can't talk with anybody else. Yeah. I know.
I've had to reach out a couple of times. What
I do, I'm in a situation, and I get tons
and tons of feedback. It's a survivor site. A little
over twelve years ago, I finally decided to do some research.

(53:37):
I guess at that point Google had just come out,
and I decided to just Google and away heat to
see what popped up, if anything, and I was really
surprised by some of the information that I read regarding
the lawsuits, regarding you know, a lot of the things

(54:01):
that I was not privy to. In the initial lawsuit,
there were a compilation of stories that different survivors told,
a brief synopsis of whatever it was that they wanted
to say. And I read my husband's story and it

(54:24):
touched me so much. Even then that had brought tears
to my eyes. And once I joined this group, a
situation came up and he ended up private messaging me
and we just started talking and just had so much

(54:45):
in common, either through our childhood experiences or our experiences there.
We actually lived at different states. The initial part of
our relationship was just through email and calls, and eventually
we lived in the same town and and several years

(55:06):
later we got married. We've actually been together for about
twelve years. While the Anawaki treatment center is no longer
in operation, there are still many long term stay treatment
centers for youth all over the country. It is now
more important than ever that parents know exactly where they
choose to send their kids and what to look for

(55:29):
if they do choose to go that route. Former an
Awaki counselor Carl Moore had some words of advice for
both survivors of abuse such as himself, and parents who
may be thinking about sending their children to a program
such as ANAWAKI. I would say to anybody who had

(55:50):
been to an Awake that it's uh. I still was
thinking about this the other night. I know a lot
of people think of themselves in terms of surve divers,
and it's funny and Awake you had. The name of
the football team was the Warriors. So that's how I think, Oh,
not as survivors, but as warriors. And that's a good

(56:13):
thing to take something that would break you and take
that thing and make it a part of rebuilding your life.
People that matter to me, we're compassionate with me about this.
That's the way I like to be with other people.
It took me a long long time to get to
where I could do that. You have strengths that nobody

(56:38):
will tell you about because of the things you've been through.
You're not going to be easily fooled. You can go
too far with that. You have to learn it, but
it's there and it's a strength. There's the saying pass
it on or pass it back, pass it back, don't

(57:01):
pass it on. Is there anything else you would say
to a parent who's thinking about sending one of their
children to his treatment center? Find out everything you can
about it before you do it, and again, trust your instincts.
I think that's it. I think there's nothing more difficult

(57:24):
for a parent than trying to deal with something like
this with their child. I don't think you can be
any more vulnerable than when you give someone your child.
Looking at it from the point of being a parent,
if someone is going to restrict your access to your kid,
I think that's a no. You're gonna have to work
that out somehow. There are some absolute declaration that no,

(57:49):
you're just not gonna be able to communicate with your child,
and there's always exceptions. If there's an exception to that,
then there there had better be a I'm kind of
advocate in place, because you know, I can hear people saying, well,
the parents are part of the problem, Well, then make

(58:09):
um part of the solution. If not, you you know,
maybe it's not the right fit. And trust your instincts.
When when you think something wrong, you've got to look
into it. Thank you all for listening to this podcast.
I hope that it is in some way help the
survivors of an Awaki come to terms with their past

(58:33):
and help bring light to this sometimes hard to speak
of issue of child abuse. The reaction to this podcast
has continued to surprise me as we worked on it.
If you would like to see some of the correspondence
and other pictures and stories about in Awaki, you can
check out the Camp hell in Awake podcast discussion group

(58:53):
on Facebook. It has quickly become a place for survivors
and listeners alike to share and discuss subjects from the podcast.
If you have enjoyed listening, or just want to tell
us what you think, please consider leaving a review. We
always can learn from any feedback you'd like to give.
I would also like to give a special thanks to

(59:15):
Rima il k Ali, one of our producers, who was
especially helpful in finishing out this season. Thank you again, Rema.
If you're looking for another good true crime podcast, I
would suggest checking out Algorithm, a show one of my
co producers, ben Kiebrick, is currently making. It deals with
the tools used by authorities to detect serial killers. Until

(59:39):
next time, Camp Hell Anawaki was created and hosted by
Josh Thane, with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex
Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written and performed
by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage provided by

(01:00:00):
ws B and CBS News. Find us on Instagram at
camp hell pod. That's c A M p h E
L L p O D. Educate yourself about the issue
of child abuse and things that you should look for
at the Darkness to Light website d too well dot org.
That's d the number two l dot org. Camp hell

(01:00:22):
Anawaki is a production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.