Decades of abuse at Kanakuk evangelical camp leads reporter to St. Louis ministry

For more than a year, author and journalist Nancy French has steadily exposed the decades of abuse at Kanakuk, a massive evangelical summer camp that welcomes thousands of campers annually to its facilities in Branson.

For some of those campers, those summers left them with lifelong trauma. In 2009, Kanakuk counselor Pete Newman was arrested and ultimately confessed to sexually abusing more than a dozen campers, though prosecutors said the number is likely far higher.

“He's one of the most prolific serial abusers that I've ever heard of,” French said during Wednesday’s St. Louis on the Air. “I started digging into it and realizing that many of the camp leaders, including the ones that are still running the camp today, were aware of a lot of this abusive behavior and looked the other way — not only looked the other way, but promoted him repeatedly.”