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.
In 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.
Braner, who was then the director of a Kanakuk camp in Colorado, told Summersett to “not make a mess of this” and that “now [was] not a good time to talk,” Summersett, who was 22 at the time, alleges in the court papers.
He added that Summersett should “back off, given the circumstances,” according to the lawsuit.
Braner and Johnson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
The same year, Newman, who was still employed with Kanakuk, confessed to having sexually abused “numerous children,” according to the lawsuit. In 2010, Newman was sentenced to two life terms in prison plus an additional 30 years for numerous sex crimes involving underage boys while he was working at Kanakuk Kamps from 1995 to 2009. Summersett wasn’t one of the victims involved in Newman’s criminal trial.
In 2010, the lawsuit alleges, Kanakuk had drafted a letter to “8,000 Kanakuk families admitting that ‘several years ago’ they became aware of Newman’s sexual misconduct and failed to take necessary actions” but were ultimately advised by their liability insurance company, ACE American Insurance Co., not to send the letter.
“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on legal matters,” a Chubb Corp. spokesperson said. ACE acquired Chubb in 2016 and operates under the Chubb name.
Now, Summersett is seeking damages and demanding a jury trial for the camp and what he alleges was the insurance company’s cover-up of Newman’s conduct.
Sumersett told NBC News that “it never occurred to me that Kanakuk would lie” and he “looked up to their leadership and even aspired to be like them.”
“I hope that the truth will shatter the perception of perfection surrounding Kanakuk, giving victims a safe space to come forward and begin healing by holding those responsible for their abuse accountable,” Summersett said.
The lawsuit — which details several years of abuse allegations against Newman in which it alleges Kanakuk leadership was notified after the incidents — names Braner and Johnson as defendants, along with the various Kanakuk companies, ACE American Insurance Co. and Kanakuk President Joe White.
“Due to Kanakuk, its leadership, and its insurance carrier actively concealing the scope and scale of Pete Newman’s sexual misconduct with children, Andrew Summersett and other victims and survivors were prevented from seeking full justice against the organization for the harm and suffering they endured,” one of Summersett’s lawyers, Robert Thrasher, said in a statement. “This lawsuit is giving them the opportunity now and a chance to hold the organization accountable.”
Guy D’Andrea, another of Summersett’s lawyers, said, “Kanakuk leadership chose to prioritize financial interests over the safety and well-being of the children entrusted to their care.”
The allegations of abuse go back to 1999, according to the lawsuit, when a parent reported that Newman had participated in swimming and other activities with several boys while they were nude.
Summersett alleges in the lawsuit that White, a popular evangelical speaker and a self-described “expert on raising Godly teenagers,” was told as far back as 2006 that Newman was “ministering” to children “in his hot tub on a nightly basis.”
Kanakuk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. White, in previous interviews, has denied any knowledge of what Newman is alleged to have been doing to children.
It isn’t the first legal action against Kanakuk, which operates overnight camps in southwestern Missouri and elsewhere. It has played host to more than 500,000 children since it was founded in 1926 and has, for years, been supported by prominent Christian leaders.
But Newman is just one of a dozen former Kanakuk staffers and associates who have been accused of preying on children, according to court papers and news reports.
Kanakuk has also been the target of numerous lawsuits and media reports alleging, as Summersett does in court papers, that camp officials turned a blind eye to the predators on their staff, like Newman, who used “Bible studies” and other related camp activities as a means of sexually abusing innocent children.
