jill

No, I didn't attend the Cedars camp. I did spend a few weeks at the Adventure Unlimited camps in Colorado in about 1971. Did you enjoy your visits to Cedars?

I went to AU twice too.  It must have been the summers of 1970 & 1972.  (1972 was the summer of Love).  We made love on the bus all the way from Toledo.  The chaperones sat in the front at the bottom of the stairs, and us kids made love way in the back of the bus upstairs.  It was my first time with the opposite sex, though it wasn't my first time.  That honor goes to some CS babysitter at the age of 8.

AU killed a friend of mine.  The summer of 1974 the camp forgot to bring an emergency oxygen supply on a hike to a 14,000 ft. peak.  Tim was from the Cleveland, OH.-area, 13,000 ft. lower.  It was a CO State law, but I know that the mere act of carrying an emergency oxygen supply would be like admitting that there is such a thing as high-altitude sickness, and that would be "against our religion".  One thing is for sure:  By the time someone got back with the emergency oxygen, Tim was gone.  It should have been "reckless endangerment" and manslaughter, but Tim's parents refused to file a lawsuit.  They claimed that his death was an act of God.

There was lots to be proud of at CS summer camps!  I still remember my first girlfriend's name 36 years later.  She lived right down the street from my friend Tim.  Nothing like forced skinny-dipping with a couple of adult males leering at you when you are 11 years old.  I went to a YMCA camp in Michigan and the worst thing that ever happened there was a little bullying.  I can still remember taking a Church-sponsored ski trip to a ski area about 200 miles from home in 1972, and riding all the way back in the bus with some kid that had broken his leg.  Every bump in the road there was an anguished scream from the back of the bus, as the chaperones had provided their best customary level of treatment in his case too.  I wonder if that kid is still alive today, and what his feelings towards the Church are, etc.  It was like my trip to the ER at age 12, but several times worse.  Pain medication is "against our religion", my mom told the ER doctor.  And this kid got none either.

Mark, from Franklin Meadowlake, a dead CS church if there ever was one.  Whatever happened to all of those people who used to attend there back in the 60s, when it was brand-new?  I know why I quit going there.

As to my claims about the Cedars.  I was 10 or 11 when this incident happened.  There were at least 25 or 30 boys involved in the skinny-dipping incident.  And at least one other in the molestation incident.  It is interesting that when my mom first published her book entitled "Healing, a Spitirtual Perspective", one of the first people to threaten a lawsuit over being included without permission, though he wasn't specifically named, was the CS ex-Marine who molested me from 1970 to 1972.  At the time he had threatened to kill me if I ever told anyone.  His threat was very believable as he was many times as strong as I was and bragged about killing the Cong with his bare hands.  How do I tell anyone my story without stepping on some unsubstantiated toes?  Have you ever taken a 200-mile bus ride with some luckless victim of CS radical reliance screaming on every bump?  And this was after my own experience with setting a bone in the ER at Pontiac General Hospital in Pontiac, MI, in the first week of January, 1970.  That incident shouldn't be too hard to find though it could go either way with the ER doctor, if he is still alive.  The CS-sponsored ski trip was when I was age 15, to what was then called Bear Mountain Ski Area in Grayling, MI.  We left from our church at the time, Franklin-Meadowlake, at Maple (15 Mile Road) and Inkster Rd, in western Birmingham, MI, sometime the Winter of 1972-73.  The luckless kid that had to suffer through 200+ miles of torture at the hands of his CS protectors was from that church.  That narrows it way, way down.  No, I don't know the name of the man who molested me at the Cedars.  He was not my regular counselor at the time.  Mic Hunter, a nationally-respected authority on childhood sexual abuse in Minneapolis would call you all kinds of names for questioning a 10 year-old's memories on lack of substantiation.  I was his patient at one time.  Here in Denver, Jeffrey Casebolt is another well-respected authority on the subject.  Trying to deny a kid's memories on substantiation grounds is what happened to me.  That is why this problem wasn't dealt with from the start.  I did tell my mother, who beat the *** out of me, allegedly for lying about someone from the Church.  I learned that anyone from the Church was above the law, and that I had better stay silent.  Staying silent had it's own set of consequences though:  Out-of-control illegal drug and alcohol use, terminally-low self esteem, loss of trust of religion and authority figures, etc.  It took many years of counseling and two trips to Hazelden to get to where I'm at.  And still there are those who question a 10 year-old boy's memories?

Let me ask you?  Are you still a Christian Scientist?  Is this site mainly designed to catch and attempt to discredit former CS members stories of abuse?  There is a site in Minneapolis that is a little closer to my own beliefs.  It is a site about Atheists.  I have met a couple of the people on the site years ago following treatment at Hazelden.  Their site is for the promotion of non- religious ideas.  They have a couple of ex- CSers there with stories like mine.  I wish that I had more faith in your motives.  Lack of faith caused me to suffer with athlete's foot all through childhood from the age of 7, or at least that is what my mother told me.  Do you question whether this statement is substantiatable?  Will she admit saying that now, 43 years later?  Probably not.  Would someone at the Cedars admit that they knew or found-out later that they had employed a sexual predator as a counselor back in 1968 or 1969?  Get real.  I never even knew his name, just have the memories.  I remember jumping on the trampoline there too, and I remember going into some caves rather ill-equipped, and I remember some fat kid getting stuck in the cave.  It was a painful experience getting him out.  I wonder if they would know when they had to get the fat kid rescued out of the cave because my molestation occured at about the same time.  Then there is the "great Chief" who's fire wouldn't start despite all of the gasoline.  I cut the power cord with my Cub Scout knife.  I must say that he looked rather silly when the fire wouldn't start.  That happened within one week of my molestation there.  I'm sure that the "great Chief" would remember his fire not starting.

Well, you have a lot more information to research now.  I'm sure your site has had to deal with many bitter ex- CS-types over time though.  How do you handle them?  Do you banish them to other sites?  Please read my full story, which I accidentally sent on a private basis to "all in one".  I thought that it was being sent to all.  I first met Kathy at EXCS-UK.  Her story has many similarities to my own story.  I even got an email all the way back from Great Britain.  She never questioned my story.  She knew all too well what I had gone through in the name of MBE and CS.  As for the case of Tim at AU, I met with Tim's parents and with my former girlfriend of the Summer of 1972 at AU, in Westlake, OH, just a couple of weeks after his death, and found-out all of the details then.  I know way more about it then you do.  Do you think that anyone currently at AU will divulge any details or remember much?  It's been 34 years since their lack of respect for law concerning juvenile campers and emergency oxygen policies at high altitudes cost Tim his life.  Tim would have lived if State law was followed.   I wonder if they carry emergency oxygen now and what made them change their minds about doing so?  I'll bet that they wouldn't be willing to discuss the origination of their high altitude emergency oxygen policy though.

Mark (new)

I am just coming into this discussion as I've been away from my computer all day. Welcome! I'm glad you have found us.

Some of your experiences remind me of my own:

I attended the AU camps in Colorado on 1971. (We seem to have just missed each other since you were there in 1970 and 1972!) I did the 13 day mountain climbing trip which included climbing around on some of those 14,000 ft. peaks you mentioned. It was a life-changing trip (overall for the better), although pretty challenging at the time since I couldn't get enough rest the first 10 days of the trip (couldn't get warm at night so hardly slept). One of the guys on the trip was rock climbing and fell of a cliff when he slipped and the safety rope broke. He survived with remarkably few injuries, but it has troubled me that he was taken down the hill the next day on a donkey that was brought up from the main camp. I don't know if other arrangements (like a helicopter) would have been made had his injuries been more severe.

I remember those boulder fields, as I crossed one with our group -- a tough but pretty neat experience. Like your friend, I lost my balance while climbing one of the rocks and fell backwards. Fortunately, I managed to get my arms out of my backpack so that I fell straight down rather than toppling backwards; the guy behind me was pretty impressed by my quick reflexes.

I don't know if I'm thinking of your friend Tim or not, but I do remember hearing that a boy died on the mountain not long after I was there (I thought it was 1972). The story I heard was that he had some kind of heart condition that his parents didn't disclose. After he died, one of the counselors picked him up and carried his body several miles back to the main AU camp. If the kid I know of wasn't Tim, then Tim's death would be the second camper to die in a couple of years (can't verify this one way or the other).

Like you, I went on an AU sponsored ski trip when I was in high school. Three of us on the trip were injured. Jan broke her foot and I badly sprained my ankle. After I was carried off the mountain and my ski boot was removed, a practitioner on the trip had me put my regular boot on and we walked (limped) up and down the mountain road while "knowing the Truth" about the situation. The pain was excruciating. Jan and I both made the several-hour bus trip home without having our feet bandaged. Another boy broke his leg and did get medical care; we heard that he went to the hospital because of his non-CS father. In all fairness to our chaperones, I'm sure they would have called my parents and even taken me to the hospital had I requested it -- but I was as caught up in trying to heal the situation as they were and it never occurred to me to call my parents. After I got home I limped around for weeks on the unwrapped ankle, trying to look like it wasn't sprained.

I never saw the type of sexual behavior you described in your camp experiences; I'm sorry to hear that you went through all that. The CS culture was promoted as very moral, and the discrepancy between that and what happened to you must have made things even worse.