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  Bad News for Camp Good News in Cape Cod, Ma

NECN
August 18, 2011

http://www.necn.com/08/18/11/Bad-news-for-Camp-Good-News-in-Cape-Cod-/landing_newengland.html?blockID=550890&feedID=4206

[with video]

"I remember he had brown hair. I remember he was thin. I remember he said if I told anyone he'd kill my mother," said Cheryl Madden with tears in her eyes.

Forty-five-year-old Madden says a former janitor at Camp Good News in Sandwich on Cape Cod started sexually abusing her in a camp bathroom when she was just seven years old.

"He would fondle me," she said. "Pull my pants down, things like that."

The South Boston woman -- now living in Florida -- says she's angry camp leadership allegedly turned a blind eye to abuse like hers for decades.

Camp Good News first made headlines in February when U.S. Senator Scott Brown revealed in his memoir that he had been abused as a child at a Christian Camp on the Cape. Camp Good News confirms he was a camper there in the 1970s.

Since then more than a dozen people have come forward to say they too had been abused by different camp employees. In April, the camp's groundskeeper killed himself after a criminal investigation was launched against him.

Criminal statutes have run out for Madden, but she says she's suing in civil court to help give kids the courage to come forward.

"If you think you have to hold this in for 30 years, you don't. Tell an adult," she implored with tears streaming down her face.

Madden -- who says she was abused for three summers by a man she thinks is now dead -- told the camp directors about the abuse after her father died in 2009 and had left his estate to the camp. She says Hope Brooks only reacted when she learned Brown was coming out.

"She told me that Scott Brown was going to be on 60 minutes and she wanted to know if I was going to come forward," she said.

Brown has never named the Christian camp where he was abused and, for tnat, Madden calls him selfish and cowardly.

"I think that Scott Brown knew exactly what he was doing here," she fumed. "He just wanted me to do his dirty work for him."

Brown's press person did not return our call requesting comment. Camp Good News released a statement in response to the allegations. The camp voluntarily shut down as a criminal investigation is ongoing.

 
 

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