(Al Drago/Reuters)
Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler says voters deserve answers after new allegations of abuse at her opponent’s former summer camp were published Monday.
A man who said he attended Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock’s former church camp when he was a child claims that counselors threw urine at him and forced him to sleep outside after he wet his bed, according to a Washington Free Beacon report.
Anthony Washington attended Camp Farthest Out as a 12-year-old in 2002, after he and family moved to Maryland from California. At the time, Warnock was a 33-year-old senior pastor at Douglas Memorial Community Church, which ran the camp.
Loeffler, Warnock’s Republican opponent in the Jan. 5 runoff election that will determine control of the U.S. Senate, called the allegations of abuse “disgusting” and “alarming.” She said Georgians have a right to know what Warnock’s involvement with the camp was, and how much he knew about the alleged abuse.
“Clearly something was going on here,” Loeffler said in an interview with National Review. “This is the camp that he ran, that he oversaw, that he was involved in every single day, that was later shut down and he left the church.”
Washington, 30, said that after he wet his bed, counselors forced him to sleep alone outside on the camp’s basketball court. He also claimed that camp counselors, who were all their teens or early 20s, threw urine on him from a bucket they used when there wasn’t a bathroom nearby.
Attempts by National Review to reach Washington and his family were unsuccessful Monday.
“I went through that experience myself,” Washington said. “I don’t even like talking about this.”
Washington said that campers were not allowed to call their parents. After he told his mother what had occurred, she was furious, he told the Free Beacon. Washington’s name appeared in a lawsuit against the camp. He said that his family received a large financial settlement.
Warnock’s campaign did not respond to an email from National Review seeking comment.
Maryland State Police who were called to the camp for reports of physical abuse arrested Warnock after they say he obstructed their investigation by attempting to interfere with interviews and discouraging camp counselors from speaking with them. During a debate with Loeffler in early December, Warnock said the officers “actually later thanked me for my cooperation and for helping them,” and the deputy state attorney told the Baltimore Sun the same in November 2002. The state eventually shuttered the camp.
Washington expressed surprise when told Warnock was running for U.S. Senate.
“I don’t think nobody like [Warnock] should be running for damn Senate nowhere, running a camp like that,” he told the Free Beacon. “He should not be running for government.”
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