By Cynthia McCormick and George Brennan
Cape Cod Times
April 6, 2011
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110406/NEWS/104060313
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FORESTDALE — An employee of Camp Good News who is being investigated for molesting a child there 26 years ago will remain on the job, at least for now, a camp official said Tuesday.
"If there's child abuse, we want to address it," Camp Good News Director Jane Brooks said in a phone call from Bangladesh, where she and her aunt, Faith Willard, run a charity for widows and orphans.
Camp officials will cooperate with investigators, she said, noting there are no children at camp now.
The Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office this week launched an investigation into an allegation that a former 10-year-old camper was repeatedly molested at Camp Good News by an employee who still works there, said Boston-based attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents the camper, now a 36-year-old man.
The alleged abuse occurred around 1985, Garabedian said. He said he notified the Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office about the allegations Monday, and by Tuesday morning an investigator from the Massachusetts State Police had contacted him.
"It's been extremely painful for my client to come forward," Garabedian said. "He hopes to make the world a safer place for children."
The former camper, who lives in the Boston area, hopes to bring some closure to his traumatic experience, Garabedian said.
Camp Good News came under scrutiny in February, when U.S. Sen. Scott Brown released a memoir, "Against All Odds," in which he said a counselor at a "Christian" summer camp on Cape Cod molested him in the 1970s. Camp Good News officials identified their camp as one attended by Brown and apologized for anything that had happened on their campus.
The employee now under investigation is not the same abuser Brown described, according to sources close to the latest investigation.
While Brown's revelations put Camp Good News in the spotlight, it is not the first time allegations of sexual misconduct at the facility have surfaced. In 2002, a current camp employee was the focus of an investigation into child pornography at the camp, according to a former counselor as well as official sources.
Chip Lewis of Louisville, Ky., said he found child pornography on a fellow employee's computer in the late 1990s. Lewis said he put the pornography on a disc and took it to Faith Willard, a member of the family that founded the camp who was the camp director at the time.
In 2002, after Lewis had moved away from Cape Cod, he contacted the Sandwich police about the pornography, but he said Willard had thrown away the disc. "Because there was no disc, there was no evidence," Lewis said.
Jane Brooks insisted Tuesday the disc contained adult, not child, pornography.
The Camp Good News employee "was sick about it" and "made a complete turnaround," she said. She described the employee as a beloved and valuable member of the community.
But the allegations cost the employee another job at the Sandwich Community School aquatics program, where the camp employee worked part-time from 1997 to 2002.
A former Sandwich Community School official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was discussing a personnel matter, said the police brought allegations about the camp employee to the school's attention.
"We can't take any chances with that stuff," he said. "We had to let (the person) go."
Sandwich Police Chief Peter Wack refused to release the police report from the 2002 investigation at Camp Good News, saying it was protected information.
The report has been turned over to the district attorney's office and also is an active investigation, Wack said.
The Times is not publishing the name of the employee associated with the pornography investigation because reporters were unable to reach the person on Tuesday. Reporters left several messages on the employee's phone and dropped by what is believed to be the employee's house near Camp Good News, located on property owned by members of the Willard family, according to town records.
There was a pickup truck in the driveway, ladders stacked next to the house and all of the blinds were drawn. No one answered the door.
On Tuesday, reporters waited for more than hour outside the camp's office to talk to Dr. Stephen Brooks, who is Jane Brook's brother and a camp official.
He called back one of the TV reporters to say he was consulting with his attorney.
Cape and Islands Assistant District Attorney Brian Glenny confirmed that a state police detective assigned to the district attorney's office is investigating the molestation charge against an employee of Camp Good News. Without going into detail, he said the DA's office has received more than one phone call regarding incidents at the camp since Brown's book came out.
Brown has indicated he is not interested in pursuing charges against his abuser. Asked whether he would cooperate with investigators concerning other abuse cases, his spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said Tuesday, "Sen. Brown has already addressed this issue and does not have anything to add."
Contact: cmccormick@capecodonline.comgbrennan@capecodonline.com
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