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  More Abuse Claims against Camp Sen. Brown Attended

By M.R.F. Buckley
Boston Channel
November 17, 2011

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/29795613/detail.html

A second person has joined a Florida woman suing Camp Good News on Cape Cod, both saying they were sexually abused at the Barnstable camp while enrolled there as children.

The pair has both filed a civil lawsuit against the facility, claiming that the camp was negligent in hiring and employing workers who abused them.

One of the plaintiffs, Cheryl A. Madden, who now lives in Florida, came forward with her allegations last August. In the suit, she alleges that she was raped at the camp when she was 7 years old. The second plaintiff, identified by the pseudonym Robert Roe in the lawsuit, claims he was raped at the age of 8.

Both are seeking reparations for injuries, damages, and pain and suffering, from the camp and its operators, Faith Willard and Hope Willard Brooks, as well as the two unnamed employees, according to the lawsuit filed by their attorney, Carmen L. Durso.

The Barnstable camp first made headlines after Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown revealed in his book “Against All Odds,” that he had been abused at a Christian camp when he was a child. He never revealed the name of the camp, but the facility later acknowledged that he had been enrolled at Camp Good News and apologized to him.

Last April, longtime camp employee Chuck Devita was found dead after a third camper said he was abused there. Devita shot himself in his pickup truck on the camp property. A Boston attorney said at the time that Devita abused one of his clients at the camp back in 1985.

The camp lost the accreditation it had held since 1959 from the American Camp Association and did not open this summer. At that point, a group of five men and one woman had come forward with abuse claims.

Madden, who is now in her mid-40s, said she was “sexually assaulted, battered and raped,” during the summers of 1973, 1974 and 1975 by a janitor at the camp. She said she was digitally penetrated during the course of the assaults, and during one occasion, a camp counselor, identified as Mary Moe, witnessed one of the assaults in the girls’ bathroom but did nothing to intervene or take steps to protect her.

She was so young at the time, Madden said in the lawsuit, that she did not realize the full extent of what had happened to her until a few years ago. She said she believes at least one other girl was assaulted by the same man.

Roe, the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, said he was assaulted and battered by a now-deceased camp counselor while enrolled there as an 8-year-old during the summer of 1970.

Roe claimed in the affidavit that the counselor orally raped him, causing injury to him on one occasion that required medical treatment by the camp nurse. He said when the counselor learned that Roe had told the camp nurse how he had been hurt, he physically attacked him.

“To punish Robert for disclosing to the defendants that he had been abused, (the counselor) picked up Robert by his legs and banged his head on the ground until he was nearly unconscious.” the affidavit says.

The lawsuit claims that the camp and its operators knew or should have known that it wasn’t properly supervising its employees and that its practices were likely to provide opportunities for children to be sexually attacked. It also claims that the camp should have known that the janitor and the counselor were not fit to be working around young children in a boarding camp environment and should have known they were abusing children. It claims the camp was negligent in keeping them employed.

Both plaintiffs said that as a result of the attacks, “Each been seriously and permanently injured, and they each continue to suffer at present from psychological disease, which impairs and affects all aspects of their lives.”

 
 

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