“An Impossible Bond”

sexual misconduct between youngsters and camp counselors. The more than twelve acre camp is home to around one hundred children. Neighbors living here Camp an Awake say they are concerned about a lack of supervision at the camp. Two years ago, a thirteen year old boy left the facility allegedly stole a gun and while attempting to steal a car, shot and kill the homeowner. By six, word had started to get around that some inappropriate actions were being taken by

the staff at an Awake. Following Sarah Tillis's realization that there may have been sexual abuse taking place on the annual Mexican co trips, a report was made to Social Services. In June, social worker Pat Griffin laid out her concerns and a correspondence to Brett Baxley and Jim Wamack, two

heads of management at Anawaki. The concerns include secret packs, that nothing would be repeated which happened on the Mexico trip, that adolescents were encouraged to go into quote whorehouses, and that homosexual acts had occurred between a staff member and an adolescent. An internal investigation of Annawaki would follow, conducted by Director of Therapeutic Services Jim Womack, himself a known

abuser in the organization. In a letter to the then head administrator, James Henry Evans, Walmack reports quote the supervisors denied any knowledge of staff encouraging the students to engage in any of the activities mentioned. There is no corroborating evidence from any of the interviews of the people who were directly involved with the Mexico trip. Continued discussion of

the memo appears without credible value and constructive purpose. Not only was the board of directors becoming suspicious of Petter and other counselor's actions with the patients, it's financial records were narrow under scrutiny as well. Here's journalist Albert Edgin there are these money issues that they're concerned about, and they've been rubber stamping pretty much. The board has been rubber stamping everything. He suggested. Now they've lost trust, so

how do you deal with that? And we're beginning to think, well, with Pedigo dead, Pedigo was a guy that Petter was able to control. Let's just stop and see how much he was controlled. That was the important thing in their minds that they were at a at a juncture in an administrative time for Antawaiki where they could get control of things that they were frust traded that they didn't have control of before. So they began to look at things, but they wanted to look at things. At the same time,

there was talk of sale of Anna Wake. There was some rumors about sale and conversation about sale, and conversation had begun about maybe Petter and his wife should retire or resign. Further in fighting between the upper management of

an Awake was also going on at this time. This came to a head following the funeral of Chief financial Officer Bud Pedigo, a meeting between Sarah Tillis and two other heads of an Awaki, James Henry Evans and Bud's wife and Petter's daughter, Marcia Pedigo, showed some very troubling information regarding Bud's death and what occurred shortly before it. Just before his fatal car accident, Petter had directed Bud

Pedigo to take out a key man insurance policy. This is like a life insurance policy, except that it pays out the company the person worked for before their death. This policy had earned in Awake Incorporated a sum of over three hundred thousand dollars after Bud's death, leaving his wife Marcia only seventy thousand dollars. This was not the only issue Upper Management that in Awake was concerned about. During this meeting, it was also discussed that Petter was

still planning to sell in Awake. Petter's son in law James Henry Evans and Jim Womack had put in a bid to buy the organization, and we're in the process of getting their finances together. Louis Petter decided against the sale, further aggravating the family involved in Upper Management. At an annual Fellowship meeting in six Petter surprised the staff and board of directors by announcing a new head of management.

Just under Petter. One Fred Fulmer Evans was outraged after realizing he would not be able to buy in Awake and left the gathering early. The board and upper management were now beginning to become weary of Petter themselves. In short, they wanted Petter out. Their trust in him began to erode seriously with that incident in the van in Mexico, and they began rethinking some other things that they had ignored in the past. If you look at Sarah's testimony,

she says several times she regrets having been controlled. And it's not just by Petter, I mean Petter, it's Sarah tillus Is sort of examining her whole life. At one point, she says, I've been controlled by white men for too long. Sarah Tillis is having an epiphany that starts in eighty four, and by the time Pedigo dies, Sarah Tillis's epiphany is

the death knell for Lewis Petter's abuse. Over the past several weeks, we have received member of very serious allegations concerning both the facility out there in a number of individuals involved with him. It was just a form of their therapy. They were told to do it, and at the time he was fourteen and a half, fifteen years old, they didn't know any better. I asked him, why are you letting this happen? Why are you covering up for

Louis Petcker. He had no answer to that question. Involved having a new sitution, paid it little such shock district way, and to do absolutely the contrary of what they should have done. I'm disturbed over the fact of something and he's still going on it. An I wake you. I'm Josh Stean, and this is camp Hell and awake. Key members of an Awaki's upper management were beginning to see Louis Petter in a new light and starting to connect the dots of the suspicious activity they had seen before.

Sarah Tillis would attempt to have Petter removed at a Board of Directors meeting, but Petter had another trick up his sleeve. Yet again, through a technicality of the Board of Directors by laws, Petter made it known that Sarah Tillis was in fact not even a part of the board anymore. Tillis would be unable to voice her concern at the board meeting, and it infuriated her. Sarah Tillis wanted to remove Petter, believing that they were still potential

for anawaki. She would soon learn something that would change that. Sarah's purpose all along was to get it back into shape. She believed in the mission, the fundamental mission of the place, because her sons had been treated there. Then one of her sons told him that he too had been abused sexually by Louis Petter, and I changed her life. That changed her goals. At that point. Her goal was to get rid of Petter and to get him in jail. By June of six, Tillis was keeping daily notes of

her actions regarding an awake. She had attempted to have Petter removed from the board, only to find that he had in fact had her and another colleague removed first. She then decided to take matters even further into her own hands, meeting with the law firm to discuss trying to conduct her own investigation into an awake concerning misuse

of corporate funds, abuse and sexual abuse happening. Tillis writes that she was recommended to hire a former FBI agent to conduct a private investigation for the cost of up to one hundred thousand dollars. Jim Parum was included in this meeting as well. Back at the helm of Annawake's board of directors, after his stints serving in Jimmy Carter's presidential cabinet, Parum stated that an in house committee would

clean up all of the problems at Anawaki. Sarah wrote that as she and her husband left the office, Param's last words to her were this quote, Sarah, it will never be cleaned up. It will be a whitewash you watch and see. In July, Sarah Tillis went to Jim Parham again to show him some irregularity she had found

in the company's finances. A memo from Param covering the concerns mentions a laundry list of illegal actions, including embezzlement of funds from Petter regarding his pension, a new accountant keeping financial records outside of the state for quote safe keeping, shady real estate deals with questionable leasing for Anawak's properties, a salary in the form of a scholarship from Annawaki given to Petter's daughter Dana while she attended the University

of Georgia, and a large amount of lost or stolen money from last year's Mexico trip. Totaling twenty dollars in ash, as well as over twelve thousand dollars of expended jewelry. Harm was informed or at least aware of the concern of sexual abuse taking place at Anawaki as well. In a letter from PARAM to one of an Awake's lawyers from July six, he asks about in Awake's liability in the case of any child abuse or molestation taking place.

There is no mention of concern for the victims, only making sure to keep the board safe from any further litigation. In a board meeting that same month, it was decided that Lewis Petter and his wife Mabel, would leave in Awake on a sabbatical, still receiving their monthly salaries until the end of the year. After that Petter would officially retire from his role. The writing was on the wall and it was time for Petter to distance himself from

the organization. The Board of an Awake was attempting to address the issues in house as best they could, but it was too late. Local law enforcement had already begun their own investigation. While Jim Palm is documented as having known of the allegations of child abuse as early as July. Nothing was reported to local police by the Anawaki organization. PALM had, however, relaid this information to a number of

attorneys under its employment. The district attorney for Douglasville at the time, Frank Wynn, says he had his suspicions about in Awake for some time. Once Sarah Tillis decided to bring her story to him, he says, Sheriff Earl Lee began to investigate and whose scope would be far greater than they originally realized. After Earl started talking to whoever the ones were that he interviewed to start with, it

was like a snowball going downhill. Each one of them, it seemed, would have other people's names that they would suggest or tell Earl he needed to talk to, and it became overwhelming a lot quicker than either one of us thought as far as people to talk to. Now he would try to talk to some of them who would not talk to him. And this is purely an example, without no without remembering anything specific, he would talk to

one of the kids. They would give him a list of anywhere from two to six or seven other people to talk to. Maybe only two of the would talk to Earle and the others wouldn't, but the two that would talk would say yes, and it was like they were finally getting something off their chest. And one of them would give Earl a list of another five names, and again he would have five more that there would be hit or missed with which ones would talk to him.

But as that list exponentially would grow, some of the same names would come up more than once. So somebody that might not have talked to Earl to begin with, Earl would go back to him and let them know, look, you're not alone, and we know from three other people that you were somebody who was in the the right situation it looked like, and and eventually there were several people that wouldn't talk to Earl that later did. Frank said that for Earl Lee, it didn't matter what time

of day or night. If someone wanted to come forward and speak, he would be there to listen. I won't ever forget Earl getting a phone call from somebody out of state and said they wanted to talk to him, and Earl basically said, you know, I'll talk to you whenever you can get here, and he said, well, I can come now, and somewhere around two three o'clock in the morning. Earl had one of his deputies, Ryani Shattucks,

was the one that usually got to do it. Earl started with the old HS type of camera video in the interviews, and so three o'clock in the morning he's got Ryane Shattucks out of bed at the office, you know, making him video his interview of this kid that just gotten in touch with him and said he wanted to talk. Didn't bother Earl to get up at three o'clock, two o'clock in the morning and go meet a kid. This was important to talk to this kid. He needed to talk,

and Earl was ready to listen to him. It was not long after local law enforcement had begun their initial investigation until the Georgia Bureau of Investigations began getting involved with the case against an Awaki. I can tell you it's snowballed fairly quickly, and it would have been within when I say, a short period of time. I'm talking about, you know, just a few months, and it was more a matter of manpower issues than anything. Antawaki was now

in damage control mode. A letter from Antawaki's attorney, Baxter Davis, was sent to all employees of the organization, reminding them of the confidentiality of an Awaki business. Jim Parham, now heading the board of directors after Petter had stepped down, fired three staff members, one including a nurse who had sexual relations with a patient on the Mexico trip and another who quote lost control while trying to restrain a child. Frank Win says that an Awaki was anything but cooperative

with law enforcement during their investigation. Well, we had to get some search warrants, so they weren't. But of course his whole family was involved in an Awake, so some of the stuff that was going on involved getting search warrants to go out there. But I would say a lot of the people that Earl interviewed that we're not family members. I think a majority of them were were cooperative.

If it was something to do with the pet Or family, the co operation was minimal and sometimes maybe superficial would be a better description of the cooperation. Frank says that Earl Lee was now going back through any files which they had on an Awaki, one of which being the suicide that had taken place a few years back. This incident, too, seemed to fit the same pattern of abuse which they

had seen. I won't say enough about Earle and how much he worked, but one of the things he would also remember stuff about old cases, and he he never forgot that. And so one of the things he knew when we were looking at other documents was he was always wondering if there was anything related to the kid that had dove off the chimney onto the concrete slab. And he found in during a search we had taken some documents, and he found a document related to that kid.

And of course Earle would have been looking for that while while we're going through everything. Earl would have remember that kid's name and look for it. And I remember him telling me he found the file on the kid, and and the kid had been my memory without knowing all of the details of what the kids issues were. But the kid had progressed and and it appeared that Louis Petter had had some uh time with the kid.

So the Earl and to us, it looked like this kid had progressed through the hospital in a way that he should have graduated, and he was ready to graduate, and he was told that you're not graduating from the program. And in that file it also reflected that there appeared to have been some time where Louis Petter had wanted the kid to go with him some places, and he

may have actually gone with him. So, without knowing what happened, we felt like there had been possibly some rejection, but definitely the kid was ready to leave and was prevented from leaving, and so it opened up a whole another idea or questions about why the kid committed suicide. Recalls he had had some time with Lewis Petter and he had been prevented from leaving when it appeared that his

records showed he was ready to leave. By September, news had been informed that an official investigation into Annawaki was being conducted. Parents of patients were sent letters from the new head of the administration, Jim Parham. Scott Hole was a patient during this time. He was supposed to go on the annual Mexico trip that year. These plans changed, however, once the criminal investigation began. So I'll probably remember the investigation starting just before we were supposed to take the

trip to Mexico. You know, we didn't have access to media or anything like that, so we had no way of knowing anything. That was going on. We couldn't talked to our parents for the most part unless we were CRESS members, So you know, we we were in this bubble. But then when we were not allowed to go Mexico and had to go out west, that's I guess when it really dawned on me that this is a serious investigation and you know something's gonna happen. I don't really

remember an announcement about the investigation. I remember there was a lot of scuttle butt and you know, the kids talking amongst themselves of rumors that they had heard about this or about that. Carl Moore was also supposed to go on that year's Mexico trip. That summer's trip, we didn't go to Mexico. We just went around the United States. But before we left, I knew that something was going on. I didn't think too much of it. I just knew

something was going on. There weren't any details that our call at the time. That was at the beginning of the summer. I want to say, I think when we got back from that trip, it sounded like something serious was going on, you know, but it was all post is, like, you know, we got a political problem, there's a problem with the board or something like that is I think the way it was kind of played out in front

of me. Initially, Carl remembers a conversation with Louis Petter's adopted son, Gus, a quadriplegic who Carl believes went through the same abuse that he endured for years. At some point about that time, I went to visit Gus Gus Petter, who was I don't know if he was ever legally adopted or not, but probably went through the same things I did. I was friends with him, but he was a quadriplegic, and he and I never talked about it.

But when I mentioned to him that something was going on, and Gus said, what's It's not about sex, is it? And I said, I don't know, he says, well, if it's about sex, they'll they'll eat him alive or something like that. That was kind of like a moment in time where I kind of felt like there was a history there that I didn't know about. That was my first inkling of that. And it wasn't long after that

that I went down to meet Patter's attorneys. They essentially wanted a video tape me, you know, denying everything anything sexual or inappropriate, or financial or anything. I was definitely on the party line at that point. At some point I had an encounter with Thoroughly. I think they came over actually to search the house or something. I had noticed somebody was watching the house at any rate, when they came to search the house, I called the attorney and I think I left there and they gave me

an attorney. I didn't know Early. I met him there at Petter's house first time, but I knew who he was. Anyway, It wasn't It wasn't too long after that that Douglas County. Uh. They had asked me to come down there for questioning, and I did, but I called the attorney. They said, if anything happens, you call us. I called them. Carl had asked his appointed attorney if he could go pick up some of his belongings, as he was going to

be in custody for some time. I asked if I could go back and get some stuff, and he said, well, I'm gonna check with Early and see if it's okay for you get some of your stuff out of the house. So I did. I went back there and that's when they arrested me. So Carl had been arrested with the charge of sodomy with none other than his own abuser, Louis Petter. Because in the state of Georgia, the act of sodomy itself was a crime, both Petter and Carl

could be charged with the same act. I didn't know this at the time, but the way they wrote it, the statute of limitations had actually expired on it. It really wasn't even a valid warrant. But of course they brought me in and I just denied it because that's what I was told to expect and what and told what to do. But they brought me in and put me in h the room. So I just spent the night in that room. It's the same thing that technically they could have charged everybody who was in the accounts

against Petter with the same thing. That was a hard thing to get over. That was the last time I saw any of them was the day I was arrested. I never went back and saw anybody. Do you ever speak with Petter again? No, Carl says it was with the help of his attorney, David Botts, that he decided what he ultimately had to do. The next morning, I happened to be looking out the window and I saw

my dad walking across the parking lot. I hadn't seen him, and probably five years or six years, David Botts ended up coming down and he said the perfect thing to me. He said, you can tell the truth about this stuff. It's gonna be okay. He says, you can lie about it. It's gonna be okay, but it's gonna cost you a lot more money. It was something like that, and uh, what he was doing was it was helping me to do the right thing. And uh, I'll always be grateful

to him for that. I can tell you that. Well. The redeeming thing about the whole thing was that they could have treated me a lot different than they did. It wasn't easy, and I was really really precarious state, and I hadn't given them the impression I was going to cooperate. And the experience of, you know, going through that, it was like, uh, it's so hard to describe this time when it was almost like I had been blind

and all of a sudden I could see. It was almost just that dramatic, the stripping off of the denial, and it was just a brutal to do. It can't go back and change anything about it, and I don't know if it would have worked any different in any other way. It's just the way it was. Carl Moore would have been initially charged because of what we believed he had done, and all we may have known to start with would have been the side of me with

Lewis Petter. That may have been all we knew, but we believed there was more to it as far as Carl Moore helping Lewis Petter or being involved with Lewis Petter in some ways. So the charge was brought to get him to to talk in a shortcut way. That is what happened, but it's not actually what we were thinking because we didn't know that he would ever talk, and we believed he was involved, and if he wanted to protect Lewis better than he was just gonna have

to deal with consequences of what he had done. If he was a party to the crime, then he was gonna have to deal with the consequences if he if he had been trained and groomed, then we were ready to do what we could to help him. Carl Moore at the time, I believe was leaving with Lewis Better. He was either still there or had just moved out, so we believed he was involved, but Carl cooperated later. He was one of the ones that gave us a

lot of good information. We spent about I think I went in there every day for a week, and he and a couple other guys interviewed me all day long for like seven or eight days, just covered everything. As you can imagine, it was not an easy thing. At some point along the way, I met a couple of guys and I don't remember who they were, who had been through the same thing I had been through. They

were from an earlier time, maybe from the seventies. We ended up in roomed together, and uh don't remember how it happened, but we all knew and we all had the same story. Frank says that ultimately they did not pursue charges against Carl Moore. He says in an investigation like this, the line between victim and abuser can sometimes be blurred. Such was also the case with Sarah Tillis's son David, who had also been a victim of Petter's abuse,

but may have also had some accusations against him. However, no criminal charges or cases were filed against David Tillis surrounding these events. I remember vaguely that there had been some accusations about till Us. I can't tell you why he wasn't charged, because I don't remember the details of any involvement that David Tillis had, but I do know that he was someone that had been in my mind, I believe he was someone that had been abused and

groomed by Petter. That would have been the number one thought going through my mind. David was, from my perspective, just like everyone else who had gone through what I had gone through, no question about it. I mean, he definitely went through at least most of the things I did. It's like Carl Moore, No matter what we believed at the beginning, we didn't pursue the charges because we knew

he was he was truly a victim. It makes it hard for me to tell you why we did or didn't do something on David Tillis or any of them, other than I know that Better had taught them what he tried to teach several of them. After months of gathering testimony, the authorities now had enough evidence to obtain an arrestaurrant for Louis Petter. The only problem was Petter had fled the country at the advice I said Jim Parham. Louis Petter and his wife Mabel left the country to

stay at their residence in Pachuco, Mexico. In a statement from Parham, he said, quote Mr Petter went on vacation last week to Mexico. I'm sure they will return once their attorney informed them of the charges. We want everyone to know that at the beginning of the investigation we offered our cooperation to the g v I and the sheriff's officers. Psychologist Roger Wren, one of the original whistleblowers who attempted to report the abuse back in nine received

a call one day from out of the blue. I was in my practice seeing patients and my secretary interrupted. She said, Dr wrenn, I've got somebody on the phone and needs to talk to you. And I said, well, who's that and she said a sheriff. I said, oh, what sheriff And she said, Sheriff Lee. I don't know a Sheriff Lee, but I'll talk to him. And he had a very distinct Southern accent. I had met him. I found out later years before when he was a deputy with the Abercrombie. But you know, he and I

didn't get together at all at that point. But he called me but he said doctor ran and I hate to mimic his voice, but he was such a cool character. I said yes, sir, and he said this sheriff early. I said yes, sir. He said, we got the s O B. And I said what, And I had no idea who's talking about? He said, yeah, it looks like a duck. Fly is like a duck, swims like a duck, cracks like a duck. Probabilit DIDs a duck. And I said who are you talking about? And he said, louis

your room heater and I almost cried. I mean I got emotionally. My patient was sitting there one and what's wrong with that guy? And I said hallelujah. And then he told me there were something like two hundred and seventy instants is of sexual assault and that they had no question and he was really wanting the transcript of the hearing. And I told him that Bob Dextino had it and it purchased it with his own money for this day and the man. You could you can hear

him laughing on the other side. He said, I'm so happy, no matter whatever happened to uh shareff Lee. That is his proudest moment. I was very happy for him, but I was happier for the for the kids. The one reason we did this, because it was not a picnic, is to protect these kids. And I don't think the kids knew what was going on and how much pain we had because we didn't share it with him. But it was a tough road to hole. But at that moment I completely relaxed. I realized I'd been carrying that

load for fifteen to twenty years. It was just a relief off my back. And then Bob and I talked in the rest of courses history. On October five, Louis Petter had finally surrendered to the authorities. Sheriff Earl Lee, along with help from the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, were now intrenched in a full blown investigation of the operation. Jim Parham, now taking over Petter's role, has headed the

Board of Directors, issued a statement to the press. If anybody has committed acts of wrongdoing I have noticed, are whom anyway protect them from whatever the law provides. Petter was charged with three counts of si to me, one count of cruelty to children, and one count of simple battery. These charges would grow as the investigation would broaden. With Petter now in police custody, they had to make sure

he would stay in Douglas County before his trial. Frank Winn says that in order to do this they used the only tool they had, his bond. Petter's bond was set to an unheard of amount at the time of one million dollars. By many sources, this was considered to be an impossible bond and one that was not meant to be paid. When we arrested Lewis Petter, him being in charge of the biggest emotional care hospital in the state of Georgia, if not the Southeast, it was certainly

a major deal. And so he's also had enough prestige, and I say that in cheek, but certainly enough influence and enough presence in the community and in the state that that's a big deal to arrest somebody like that, especially for the type of charges that we were arresting

him for. And I don't recall what all Judge James may have said at any bond hearing we had, and I don't recall exactly how the million dollar amount came about, but it sort of was a compromise between the idea that we've uh that somebody has been arrested that is well known and possibly well respected, and at the same time we thought he was a horrible person and horrible charges. And so the bond at that time would have been ten times larger than probably any bond I'd ever dealt with.

Uh uh. I think the largest bond I had dealt with before that was a hundred thousand dollar bond that had been granted in a case. So the million dollar bond was way out of the ordinary, but we felt like at the time it gave us some assurance that he wasn't going anywhere. Nearly five weeks after Petter had been taken into custody, a group of friends and supporters had managed to pull together the one million dollars to

have him released. Two hundred thousand dollars of this money was taken from Anawaki estates, many of the other payments from members of Aniwaki's board. What had been thought to be an impossible bond had been reached, Petter was released from the Douglas County Jail on November seven. Petter expressed his thanks to the friends and family responsible for his release.

I want to express my appreciation to the many families and friends that have united together to make an impossible bond possible, and I appreciate their love and concern, and my God bless each one of a comment on the chargers. He's not guilty of the chargers, and he's gonna prove it. Petter was free from jail while the investigation into an Awake he grew. More faculty members were being charged daily. At this time, multiple civil suits against an Awake and

Lewis Petter were also being filed. Petter's world was literally falling down around him, yet the community was still in his corner. Would the authorities finally have enough evidence to put Petter away for good and put an end to the decades long history of abuse and awake he had perpetuated? Next Time Camp help in a week. I believe what we did was to take what we could from the Petter family and place it where it needed to be.

Don't you think he knew that what people we could go to and say we'd better check into this thing about Louis powder sodomizing patients, said an awake was unreasonably to expect that the head of a huge department would perform that kind of direct service. This was the most important caation that I've been involved in. We had so many simple working for us someone one time that it was just impossible to keep up with it, but we

did it. It was really scary testifying in court, but at the same time it was a good feeling because I had a lot of anger, because I felt like I had been stripped at four years of my life. Kemp how Anna Wake was created and hosted by Josh Thane, with producer Miranda Hawkins and executive producers Alex Williams and Matt Frederick. The soundtrack was written and performed by Josh Thane and Adrian Barry. Archival footage provided by ws B

and CBS News. Find us on Instagram at camp hell pod That's c A M p h E L l p O. D. Educate yourself about the issue of child abuse and things that you should look for at the Darkness to Light website d too well dot org. That's d The number two l dot org camp hell Ana Wake is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.