This episode contains mentions of sexual abuse against children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Please check the show notes for resources.

You know, you'd have like your first boyfriend or girlfriend at camp.

I had my very first kiss.

But during a movie night.

I'd be walking.

I'd be walking by and all of a sudden, I'd hear Hi Seth from Thirty Girls.

Remember Seth Kwitko, the shaner from the eighties who was trying to impress a girl at a skating rink and got fat shamed by a full ass, grown adult.

Well, at camp, Seth found himself surrounded by kids with a history of similar experiences.

Away from the haters and more importantly, away from the watchful eye of parents.

He and his fellow campers were excited to finally get their flirt on.

You add a lot of kids that were filled with hormones and probably didn't have a chance outside of camp, and you let them loose amongst kids who they're filled with hormones and they're going to go at it.

And there was a lot of that going on.

Campers often looked forward to hook up opportunities like free play, a daily camp wide hour of unstructured, co ed mingling.

And that's where all the action happened.

That's where people met people.

That's where we were allowed to hang out.

That’s Arielle Berger, a camper from the 1990s.

Free Play was the only period of the day that campers got to use their time however they pleased.

This is where I first got the bianca and gum, and you would trade it and you know, you'd try and find an area and make out.

Prime makeout spots might be a bush, behind a building or on an empty bench, like the ones on Lover's Lane.

The campgrounds were vast, and you already know Shaner's were crafty.

The staff did set up a few rules.

Occasional handholding, hugs and pecks on the cheek were permitted.

Anything beyond that was not.

But to enforce those rules, counselors had to first find the misbehaving campers, and to do this they went on patrol.

So we had this nookie patrol.

That's Merryl Winter, a staff member from two thousand and three to twenty fourteen.

First, the counselors they loved being on this patrol.

I mean they just loved it.

They would get creative.

They'd bring flashlights and all alarms and you know, and as soon as they would catch kids, they'd say hand check, you know, like find your hands and you know.

And a few of them caught kids in very hairy situations, and I wanted to make sure the kids were safe.

And then there were the movie nights.

Movie nights, which were held on the hills of Shane beneath the Catskills Stars were the perfect place for romance.

Now, while some kids watched the Mighty Ducks or Heavyweights for the hundredth time, others made their move.

First Kisses, hand holding, innocent cuddling all happened on these hills, but often it went further.

Here's Stacy Toth.

She was a camper for two summers in the nineties and.

I remember specifically there were movie nights where it was like on a hill and it would happen at like twilight, which meant that as the movie was going, it would get dark and kids would have sexual experiences on that hill that were not monitored and not restricted the way that they were supposed to be for camp rules or whatever, right like let's not have sex acts in public, but everybody was and if you were with someone, then it was expected that you do things when you have a movie night.

For every staff member who tried to protect campers – there was a counselor who ignored the hookups.

According to our sources, there were instances where staff members flat out encouraged them.

Seth remembers a time he got away with sneaking around with his girlfriend because his counselor was sneaking around, too.

I actually remember going to my camp girlfriend's cabin in the middle of the night, and I remember coming back and as I was walking back into my cabin, there was a female accounselor walking out the back door of our cabin.

Sneaking around is what Shaner's did best, be it for food, general mischief, or a romantic encounter.

As a counselor, I did my best to keep an eye on my kids, but I wasn't always prepared for their eagerness.

And eagerness is exactly what happens when you put a bunch of kids together who have been told by the outside world that they're undesirable.

These teens had been taught that they weren't going to be viewed as attractive if they're in larger bodies, or that people are not going to want to date them, and many of these teens probably did sadly experience that.

This is doctor Rachel Millner, a licensed psychologist and fat activist.

Many higher weight teens have had the experience of not being invited to prom or not being asked out on a date, or being told that they're not attractive, and so when they were in an environment where that was removed from the equation and they were seen as attractive and people wanted took interest in them, I think that probably led to a lot of the consensual interactions between the teens that can.

The mindset Dr.

Millner talks about also led some campers toward experiences they maybe weren’t ready for, which were sometimes not fully consensual.

We used to call them CCRs camper counselor relationships.

Former staffer Merrill Winter.

Again, those were hard to control too, because the campers would especially be the older ones.

We had a young adult program, some of the counselors with the same age as campers.

These CCRs could refer to a relationship between two legally consenting adults, a twenty year old counselor and an eighteen year old hamper for example, or sometimes not like a sixteen year old camper and an older counselor.

Either way, they were inappropriate and represented a big power imbalance.

To reiterate, CCRs were not allowed, and the headstaff did their best to stop them, but they were often really difficult to police.

You know, you tell a nineteen year old they can't date someone, they think is pretty or handsome or whatever, but we did, and we'd have to let people go.

Also, we'd have to let people go if that happened, and we would tell them constantly, please do not do this, be responsible, but it would happen.

Many campers told me stories about their relationships at Shane.

Some were lovely and uplifting and fully consensual.

Others felt a bit gray, and then there were stories that no one should ever have to live through.

Former camper Seth quit Coo and I got to know each other a lot during the making of this project.

I first heard about his story from another former camper and got in touch with Seth in November of twenty twenty.

I've interviewed him formally on three separate occasions, I've met his whole family, and we've spoken on the phone many times since then.

Seth is one of the sweetest and most charismatic people I've met, and what happened to him at camp is devastating.

When Seth first arrived at Camp Shane in nineteen eighty three, he was almost eleven years old.

He was excited to be there and to meet his bunkmates.

That's also when he met his counselor.

Peter.

Here's Seth.

It was his first summer and my first summer, and he was actually one of the counselors in my cabin.

Everyone liked him.

He was generally a nice counselor, got involved with the kids.

He was overweight himself, so he you know, he had that sort of connection to all of us.

Seth was happy to have a counselor who understood his weight struggles and accepted him for who he was.

And since Peter was nineteen at the time, Seth felt he was less like an adult and more of a cool older brother.

He made me forget about being away from home.

He made me enjoy the camp more.

He made me feel less homesick.

He made me feel comfortable.

He did what I thought a counselor should do.

Peter listened, He was friendly, and he even brought Seth snacks, which technically is not exactly what a weight loss camp counselor should do, but from a camper's perspective, best counselor ever.

He would ply me with food, as we know, and camp food is currency.

Food is a bargaining chip, so he would bring me.

He would sneak in things and he would give them to me.

The following year, in nineteen eighty four, Peter became the camp's drama director.

This meant that he started spending his days in the stadium, away from the day to day activities.

The stadium soon became a commonplace for him and Seth to hang out.

It was in the stadium where they held the place.

It was a covered area, big covered area.

They would have benches, and they had a stage at one end.

On ones on either side were offices, and the main office was if you were looking at the stage to the left, and they had a dad skin.

They had costumes and everything, and there was a way to crawl underneath the stage from one side to the other, so that you could you go off here and appear over there.

And I would spend time in there, and he would sneak me a you know, some cookies or whatever it may be.

On top of sneaking Seth food, Peter used his power as drama director to score Seth some additional perks.

I always hated swimming, so any opportunity I could get to get out of swimming was a good opportunity.

So when he let me get out of activities because I had to rehearse or whatever.

I was fine with it.

Seth says that Peter also made him the star of the shows, boosting his confidence and making him feel even more important.

One former counselor I interviewed said that Seth was Peter's favorite.

At first, the special treatment was great, but then conversations with Peter started to get inappropriate.

That counselor is gay?

Did you know that?

And then things would sort of evolve from there.

So he would start, you know, chipping away at those at those barriers, and the conversations would become more and more sexual, and then eventually it was, well, I think you would like it, Seth.

I think you would be into it.

From the first time I met you, I knew that you would be into this.

I knew, you know.

I think it was him admitting that he was bisexual or you know, he had had sex with men or something along those lines, and then it was I knew you were.

I knew others were, but I knew from the moment I saw you that you would be into it.

Seth was shocked and uncomfortable, but by this point in their friendship the two were really close.

Seth says he didn't realize it at the time, but Peter had isolated him from the other campers and he didn't really have another person he could talk to that he trusted.

So they continued to spend time together, and according to Seth, Peter continued to push his boundaries.

From there, things escalated quickly.

A warning to listeners, what Seth is about to say may be hard to hear.

And he just kept chipping away and chipping away and chipping away.

And I really wish I could remember how it started.

But eventually we we had mutual masturbation, and it's sort of escalated from there.

He would masturbate me, and then he would want to kiss me, and then he would do fillatio, and then it just kept going.

And it was it was more of the same of him telling me that this is what I want and this is he knew it, and don't tell anyone, and it would just continue.

And of course afterwards, after we were finished, I would I would a wave of guilt and emotion would come over me, and I would say to myself, what am I doing?

Because on one hand, I was young, you know, I was I was a hormonal team and it felt good and all this confusion was in my head.

You know, why should this feel good?

It shouldn't feel good, you know, And then you know, guilt and anger and sadness and just a whole groundswell of emotions would come over me as these things were happening.

And then and then, for some reason, fear, I don't know, I would go back.

I would go back, and he would do the same thing.

The stress and confusion weighed on Seth.

He felt ashamed of what was happening, but was afraid to talk to anyone about it.

He wanted to forget it, and when summer ended, he went home as if everything was fine.

I just was afraid to let my parents know something was wrong.

And it could have been very easy to just say I don't want to go back, but it was almost kind of like, you know, hey, no, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong.

No, I want to go.

I want to go.

I want to keep going every year.

No, no problem, no problem here.

I mean, one of the big reasons why I would go back was just to kind of get a sense of feeling normal, you know, not not sitting on the sidelines and being picked last, or even if you're picked last, you still don't get to participate, so you know, there there was a sense of some normalcy, you know, feeling what normal kids might feel.

And then after, you know, a lot of this stuff happened.

I think it was just a way to keep myself busy, to kind of escape.

Determined to feel normal again, Seth put on a brave face and returned to camp for another year.

Unfortunately, so did Peter.

Seth was worried, but at first things didn't seem so bad.

Abuse is not linear.

There were times where he and I would just be pals.

But then the abuse would begin again.

And then there were times where you know he was taking advantage of me, and then you know, I was angry.

I was angry at him, I was angry at myself, and then you know, I didn't want to be there.

But then at the same time I was there, you know, I was confused about sexuality.

Seth felt trapped in this cycle, and says Peter continued to push things further.

I think the last straw was when I was in the office on the side of the stage.

I was hungry because here we are in fat camp and I was looking for some food.

Maybe he had it tucked away in a closet somewhere like he would do hide food every now and then.

He wasn't there at the time, and there was a counselor in there, a female counselor, and I went into the closet and I grabbed this paper bag and I opened up the bag and inside were condoms and vasilin and I asked her what is this for, and she rather almost gleefully, said this is for you.

And I wasn't sure at the time what that meant, so I put it back and I left

Seth knew he had to end it.

The next time he went back to the stadium, he confronted Peter.

Then I came back one last time and he was there and he was trying to kiss me.

He was trying to, you know, perform oral sex, and I just sort of I had that wave of emotions coming over me as he was doing things, and for whatever reason, it just snapped in my head at that moment that this is not right.

And I said, no, that's it.

I'm out of here, and I pulled up my shorts and I walked out.

And after that it was, you know, I started becoming a lot more withdrawn and I wouldn't go near him.

I had enough at that point, but at the same time, I felt how I was damaged.

And so at this point, you're eleven.

I was.

I think I was actually thirteen.

My heart shatters for Seth knowing that he felt damaged in that moment.

Fear, shame, and guilt are all common feelings among survivors of abuse, and the shame was made worse when Seth started to think that word of his relationship had gotten out.

And I remember I was hanging out in a like one of the it was like B ten or something B nine, and we were just hanging out and some one of these counselors was like, Seth, I heard you were gay, like just out of the blue.

Seth was terrified of people finding out what Peter had done to him.

He just wanted things to go back to normal, and wasn't that the whole point of going to Camp Shane to feel like a regular kid, So he didn't report it.

In the few years that followed, Seth's history with Peter haunted him.

I didn't know what to think of myself, and I was afraid to let on anything.

But you know, I was also kind of self destructive.

I was I was going out and partying when I was in high school and drinking a lot and doing drugs and doing horrible in school, and you know, sort of that self medication anything, I guess to get your mind away from what was what had happened.

It wasn't until a few summers later Seth began to process that what happened to him was not his fault.

It didn't mean I was gay, It didn't mean I was straight.

It didn't me and I was by It meant that I succumbed to an abuser who took advantage of my dislike of swimming, took advantage of my low self esteem, took advantage of the situation where we were, and just used it all those feelings against me to gaslight me, to groom me, to get me where he wanted.

Seth was finally able to call it abuse, but still could not forget it.

In the late eighties, he returned to Camp Shane yet again and was relieved when he heard Peter would not be back.

Seth had a camp girlfriend that summer, and for the very first time he told someone his story.

Then, one day, while Seth was in the nutrition room, his girlfriend saw Peter walk into the stadium.

Here's Seth's recollection of what happened.

I remember the girl I was with.

She burst into the nutrition room and she says he's here, and I ran out with her, and I saw that he was there in the stadium.

And then I remember the owner or maybe it was David, and a couple of the head counselors, and we were telling them what was going on and that he had done this.

Another counselor told us she spoke to Peter after this incident and that he had told her that David sent him home quietly and did not notify the police.

This despite a New York state law mandating that all child abuse must be reported.

Seth was not the only person Peter was accused of abusing.

In twenty twenty one, another former camper filed a lawsuit against camp Shane, alleging that Peter sexually abused him during an excursion to a swimming hole in nineteen eighty four.

The camper claimed that Camp Shane was negligent in hiring Peter and giving him access to children.

Camp Shane denied these claims.

The case was later discontinued after an apparent settlement Sadly, this was not the beginning or the end of sexual abuse at Camp Shane, and it would not be the last time allegations were mishandled.

While talking to former shaners, I learned that allegations of abuse were not isolated to only the Ferndale campus.

These abuses also happened in the satellite locations.

In twenty seventeen, a fifteen year old autistic boy was sent to Camp Shane's Georgia campus.

According to a twenty twenty lawsuit against Camp Shane, the family was told by the camp's director that their child would have supervision in his living area.

They alleged that the camp did not have enough counselors to uphold that promise, and that the Georgia camp director notified David Ettenburg that the campus was understaffed.

According to the lawsuit, no action was taken to fix the staffing problem, and the child was left unsupervised in a dorm with a camper with known aggressive behavior.

The family further alleged that their son was raped by his roommate multiple times.

According to the suit, the boy was only able to verbalize what had happened to him months later when asked if he wanted to return to Shane for another summer.

The family sued Camp Shane for damages.

The camp was settled out of court.

According to the family's complaint, the offending camper pled guilty to one felony count of second degree cruelty to children before the settlement.

A question abuse survivor is often here is why didn't you come forward?

Commonly, there is fear of retaliation.

There's also the stigma and shame associated with abuse.

It can be very difficult for victims to tell someone about their abuse, and even harder when they don't think they will be believed.

And for Shaner's there's an added layer here.

If you look at the way that fatness is represented in our culture as early as, Disney movies, the fat person is usually the villain or the fat person is lonely.

And the representation around fatness that kids see starts so young.

That's doctor Rachel Millner again.

Fat kids are taught that they're not desirable, not and I'm not talking about for any kind of dating relationship.

I'm talking about friendships right, or to be included in activities like they're told they're going to be isolated or be left out, and so of course then that impacts self confidence and self esteem, and then kids can feel like if somebody does show them attention or interest, they're supposed to just be grateful for it, and because they've already feel like they don't deserve it.

This is why the sexual culture at Shane was so different from other summer camps.

That feeling that bigger bodied people need to be grateful for attention makes them more susceptible to this type of abuse.

On top of that, there is a real worry that others may not believe them when they report sexual misconduct or assault.

I've also worked with a lot of adults who were higher weight kids and adolescents who did experience sexual trauma, and they talk about the fear that if they did speak up, they wouldn't be believed, and I can you know, it breaks my heart when they talk about that.

And if you look at so many stories through the Me Too movement, and anytime somebody who is in a higher weight body talks about being sexually abused, there is something in the media about, well, why would somebody want to abuse them?

Or that can't be true, and it's horrifying that that's what happens, but it is what happens.

Abusers may even weaponize these concepts to further manipulate their victims.

Here’s former camper Stacy Toth again

When you feel valued, you're able to then stand up for yourself when abuse is coming your way, when manipulation is coming your way.

When these things are happening, you feel like someone will listen to you, because for me, what happened is my self worth just thanks so much that then when I left Camp Shane and my teenage years in high school, I was raped and the person said, go ahead, and who are you going to tell?

Who's going to believe you?

No one would believe that I was interested in you, and I believed that, and I did nothing for years.

Stacy carried feelings which were reinforced at Camp Shane, that her body only had value when she was thin, and this same idea was used against her when she was sexually assaulted.

I wholeheartedly believe that that happened because of the roots that took place at Camp Shane and the belief that my value my self worth was so low.

Tragically, fat women are significantly less likely to be believed about sexual abuse than thin women.

This has been reflected in multiple studies.

Stacy felt she should have been grateful to be with anyone because of her larger body.

It took Stacy years to heal from her abuse.

The healing journey for Seth was also hard.

In the years following camp, Seth dove into a deep depression.

I wanted to tell both my parents, but I was I was scared, and I was scared to tell my mother because I wasn't sure how she was going to react.

And of course there were so many times where I wanted to just blurt it out, but I was I didn't know what would come of it.

Are they gonna say I don't believe you.

Are they gonna say why didn't you tell me sooner?

Are they gonna say, I'm going to kill the guy?

How could you go back to that camp after this happened.

I didn't know what to expect.

Depression was a big part of that lack of trust, you know, self harm in the sense, not that I was like cutting myself, but you know, I just didn't care about my appearance.

I didn't do well in school.

I tried to make friends with the people, and I just didn't you know, I still kept to myself regardless, you know, made friends, found excuses why I couldn't hang out, or I had this apartment.

I was on my own.

I was an absolute I mean the apartment was a wreck because I just didn't care, you know, and I did nothing to help myself or you know, I would fail before I started to avoid the pain of failure that kind of thing.

Had a couple of relationships here and there, but nothing really meaningful.

So I just sort of I did just enough, I guess to live another day for a long time, you know.

And then then met my wife, and that's sort of when things changed.

Well into his adult years, Seth opened up to his then girlfriend about what happened at camp.

And then one day she's like, you know, I'll tell you my deepest, darkest secret.

So she told me the whole deal.

And then I was like, when I was twelve, I was sexually abused, and she's like, wow, you know, like she wasn't thinking that I was like my deepest, darkest secret.

You know, she understood this is me telling her because I needed healing.

Then in 2019, something caught Seth’s attention.

His wife told him that New York State had just passed the Child Victims Act (or CVA).

Prior to the act, any victim of childhood sexual abuse could sue for damages only until they were 23 years old.

The CVA extended the statute of limitations to the age of 55.

It also granted a one year window to file a civil action of damages with no age limit.

With the passage of this law, Seth knew it was time to publicly tell his story and bring Camp Shane to account.

You know, I said, Mom, I got something to tell you.

And then I remember we were standing out in front of our house and we were walking around, and I was like, listen, do you remember when I was at camp?

And then I proceeded to tell her everything that happened.

I was seventy five when I found out.

This is Carla Kwitko, Seth's mom

And he said to me, I was molested.

I said, what, what do you mean molested?

Did somebody touch you?

You know, and then he, you know, said, it was at Camp Shane.

And it was like, what do you mean?

I mean, it, it, it's like it hits you, but you, you're not ready for it.

You don't, it's like, I can't even explain it.

Her first reaction was, believe it or not, of guilt.

I should have protected you.

I should have known.

And I said, mom, I didn't say anything to you.

You, you wouldn't have known.

And, you know, she, she kind of took it hard, and she was really, really upset about it.

Um, you know, that she felt like she failed me as a parent.

And I was like, no, you didn't, you know, you didn't know.

Know, And that guilt quickly transformed into a profound sense of loss.

Then I remember one day, I have this bowl on my table and it has pictures of you know, the family and vacation whatever.

And I saw this picture of Seth at Camshane.

He must have been around eleven, and I just when I saw that, I just I started to cry.

It hit me what he did to my little kid, beautiful little child, what he did to him.

Four years later, Seth’s case was settled out of court.

Now, he’s finally able to breathe a little lighter.

Telling my wife was huge doing the lawsuit was huge.

Those were all These are all things that have really helped me along my way of course, going for therapy and speaking about you know, the effects, the long term effects of what happened, and that the more I speak, the more cathartic it becomes, the more I open up to people because there's no shame, there's no embarrassment.

My hope is that I'm not just healing myself, but I'm going to get others to start healing as well, that they know that what happened to them, what happened to me, was not their fault, and that there's nothing to be ashamed of, and there's you know, there's only moving forward and all these things are going to be behind me and there's no reason to look back anymore.

They'll never go away.

But you know, like I said, with the kind of like those stages of grief, you just you know, you accept it, you understand that it happened, and you just keep moving forward.

By the time Seth filed his suit in 2020, The Camp Shane campgrounds had already been sold off, David was drowning in lawsuits, and Shaners both mourned and celebrated what was surely the end of Camp Shane’s 50-year reign.

They were campers leaving or counselors were leaving, kids were getting sick, kids were getting hurt.

They shut the camp down.

And what were you feeling when you saw this or heard about this?

This can't be used against me in a court of law.

A little schadenfreude, you know?

Good.

Right.

I'm glad.

But at the same time, I was, I, I, I said to myself, man, I wish that was me.

I would've felt good if, if I was the one who caused that to happen.

Next time.

On the final episode of Camp Shame.

It was something out of a horror movie.

The way it felt when I pulled up, There was not an adult anywhere to be seen.

Pamela: Nothing about that camp was right.

We reached out to David Ettenberg, Ziporah Janowski, and Peter for comment.

At the time of this recording, we have not received a reply.

Camp Shame is a production of iHeartPodcasts.

I’m your host, Kelsey Snelling.

Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Luci Jones and Alyia Yates Grau.

Our Editor is Courtenay Hameister with additional Editorial support from Lindsey Kratochwill and Grace Lynch.

Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rudder and me, Kelsey Snelling.

For iHeartMedia, our executive producer is Cristina Everett.

Fact checking done by Madeline Goore, Luci Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pestana.