By Cynthia McCormick
Cape Cod Times
February 20, 2011
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110220/NEWS/102200334/-1/NEWSMAP
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| Camp Good News in Forestdale is a Christian summer camp that recently celebrated its 75th anniversary. The camp confirmed that U.S. Sen. Scott Brown spent time there as a boy. |
Officials at a Cape camp attended by U.S. Sen. Scott Brown said they applaud his coming forward with revelations that he was abused as a child by a summer camp counselor.
"I think what he did was courageous," said Dr. Stephen W. Brooks, a Hyannis surgeon and assistant president at Camp Good News in Forestdale, which Brown attended as a child.
The Wrentham Republican wrote in a memoir being released Monday that he was sexually molested when he was 10 years old at a religious summer camp on Cape Cod.
Brown told Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe he doesn't want to seek criminal charges against his alleged assailant. Camp officials say they do not know the man's identity.
Jane Brooks, director of Camp Good News, told the Cape Cod Times last week that Brown attended the family-run facility on Snake Pond as a child. She said she didn't know if the incident Brown described in "Against All Odds" occurred there.
"The presumption is it happened here," Stephen Brooks, Jane's brother, said in a phone interview Saturday. "I want to support Sen. Brown."
Brooks said he called Brown's office Thursday night and was put through to the senator's voice mail. He said he also sent Brown a letter saying camp officials were sorry for whatever happened.
"I want to support Sen. Brown," Brooks said. "It wasn't saying, 'Call us. Call us.' He's a very busy person."
Camp officials also are sending a letter to parents of campers explaining the precautions the 76-year-old non-denominational Christian camp takes to protect their children.
"Forty years ago when Senator Brown was a camper, there was far less awareness and greater stigmatization around abuse, which kept many children suffering silently into their adulthoods," camp officials wrote.
They also described the training that employees go through and how all volunteers and paid staff are put through criminal background checks.
Brooks said he doesn't know the identity of the counselor Brown described in his autobiography. Brooks said he himself was a child attending a camp in Maine run by another family member that summer, and he doesn't remember the names of his own counselors.
"We do not have staff records dating back that far," Jane Brooks said in an e-mail. "We only came into the computer age about 15 years ago."
Brown talked about being sexually abused at summer camp in the course of a hardscrabble childhood during the preview for a "60 Minutes" episode airing tonight.
A counselor in his mid-20s followed Brown into the infirmary bathroom at camp the summer of fourth grade, according to The Boston Globe, which obtained an advance copy of Brown's memoir.
The ensuing sexual encounter prompted Brown to scream and run outside.
Brown says he didn't tell anybody about the incident but unsuccessfully pleaded with his family not to be sent back the next summer.
Nothing happened when he was 11, but Brown wrote that he was always on his guard, according to the Globe.
The Globe quoted Brown saying he will never forget his abuser and "his long sandy, light brown hair; his long, full mustache; the beads he wore; the tie-dyed T-shirts and the cutoff jeans, which gave him the look of a hippie."
In the "60 Minutes" episode, Brown tells Lesley Stahl, "Fortunately, nothing was ever consummated, so to speak. But it was certainly — back then, very traumatic. He said, 'If you tell anybody, you know, I'll kill ya. You know, I will make sure that — that no one believes you.'"
O'Keefe said Brown didn't identify his alleged attacker and doesn't want to seek criminal charges against him, according to The Associated Press.
O'Keefe also said he will respect Brown's wishes. O'Keefe could not be reached by the Times for comment Saturday.
Brown released a statement saying he didn't write about his experiences "to settle any scores" but to let people know they can overcome adversity.
The State House News Service says when Brown was asked whether he thought the counselor's name should be made public, the senator said, "Listen. That's a small part of my life, and not the only part of my life. And there's a lot of good people at that camp still and it shouldn't take one person to wreck it for everybody else."
According to Massachusetts law, sexual offenses against children can be prosecuted for 27 years after a victim turns 16. But it sets no statute of limitations on sexual assaults of minors if there is independent evidence to back up the victim's allegation.
"Our hearts are with Sen. Brown right now," Stephen Brooks said. "We would continue to want to support him.
"We are in the privileged calling of trying to build up young people," Brooks said. "It doesn't always turn out the way you want."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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