Episode 6: When the Sh*t Hits the Fan

Summary

Camp Shame: Episode 6 - "When the Sh*t Hits the Fan"

Release Date: June 26, 2025
Host: Kelsey Snelling
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In Episode 6 of Camp Shame, titled "When the Sh*t Hits the Fan," host Kelsey Snelling delves deep into the tumultuous events that led to the decline and eventual closure of Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for children. This episode uncovers the hidden struggles behind the camp's façade of transformation and happiness, highlighting the physical and emotional toll on both campers and staff.

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Camp Shane's Crumbling Facade (02:28 - 05:00)

Kelsey begins by setting the stage in the mid-2010s, a period when Camp Shane was grappling with severe operational issues. Nelson Giancaterino, a former camper turned counselor, provides insight into the deteriorating conditions:

"In the mid 2010s, Camp Shane was a shit show. Literally." ([02:28])

Nelson describes the camp's infrastructure failing—buildings in disrepair, subpar equipment, and cabins often flooded with unsanitary conditions. The promise of weight loss and transformation was overshadowed by neglect and mismanagement.

A Toxic Work Environment (04:25 - 07:08)

Harrison Davies, a marketing associate at Camp Shane in 2014, shares his harrowing experience:

"When I say that summer 2014 was the worst summer of my life, it's the worst summer by far." ([04:25])

Harrison highlights the grueling work hours, often 10-11 hours a day, six days a week, coupled with inadequate food provision for staff. The camp's leadership imposed strict dietary restrictions on employees, mirroring those of the campers:

"In a nutshell, you were given the same amount of food as the overweight campers were who were in their teens. That's what you were given." ([06:20])

This policy not only affected morale but also led to health issues among staff members, including Harrison, who faced significant weight loss and stress.

Deceptive Marketing Practices (07:37 - 13:37)

Camp Shane's marketing was meticulously crafted to portray an ideal environment, often at odds with reality. Harrison recounts his role in editing promotional materials to fit the camp's image:

"One part of Harrison's job was editing out parts of the promotional material that didn't fit Camp Shane's brand." ([09:01])

Promised amenities like working go-karts and Olympic-sized swimming pools were either non-existent or grossly misrepresented. The camp also engaged in dubious practices, such as creating fake Yelp reviews to bolster its online reputation:

"He was obsessed with online reviews... he would say, you know, write one at camp and then go down to McDonald's or another IP address and write another one." ([11:02])

Lack of Qualified Medical Support (13:37 - 16:27)

A critical aspect of Camp Shane's operations was the advertised presence of medical professionals, including a registered dietitian and cognitive behavioral therapists. However, these roles were often filled by underqualified individuals:

"The people who were supervising these therapy sessions were often inadequate... filled by college kids." ([15:12])

This lack of genuine medical support posed significant risks to campers, many of whom had underlying health conditions like diabetes and asthma. The camp's claims of being "medically supervised" were largely deceptive, leading to potential insurance fraud as parents were billed for unrendered services.

Escalation of Problems in 2015 (17:07 - 24:22)

The subsequent year, 2015, marked a significant downturn for Camp Shane. Without Simon Greenwood, the camp's beloved director, tensions between him and David Attenberg, the owner, intensified. Harrison reflects on Simon's absence:

"That was the first summer that Simon was not there and you could tell." ([19:45])

The camp's infrastructure continued to decline, culminating in an infamous incident where a camper's room was flooded with human waste due to a faulty converter:

"I see Turds floating in the water in my... I'm like, what the fuck? It is disgusting." ([20:32])

This event underscored the severe neglect and lack of proper maintenance, further eroding trust among staff and campers.

Failing Satellite Camps and Escalating Crisis (24:22 - 30:34)

Satellite camps, such as the one in California, mirrored the main camp's struggles. Counselor Derek recounts the chaos:

"We opened the supply closet, and it was literally a single Rubbermaid container with... a basketball that had... survived the Reagan administration." ([22:38])

In Florida, Kelly Holdridge's daughter, Sadie, experienced terror and poor communication, leading to a tense rescue operation:

"She breaks out crying, 'Come get me. Please come get me.'" ([26:37])

These incidents highlighted the camp's widespread failure across different locations, fueled by mismanagement and a toxic organizational culture.

Underlying Societal Issues: Fatphobia and Individual Blame (31:21 - 32:40)

Kelsey introduces Tigris Osborne, Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAFA), who provides a critical perspective on the camp's existence:

"The longevity of a place like Camp Shane is all about our continual obsession with being thin." ([31:21])

Osborne argues that Camp Shane capitalized on societal fatphobia, placing the burden of weight loss solely on individuals rather than addressing systemic issues. This fundamental flaw contributed to the camp's enduring yet problematic presence.

Final Decline and Closure (33:38 - 37:37)

By 2016, Camp Shane's condition had deteriorated further. Nelson returned to find a camp lacking experienced counselors, with operations marred by inebriation and poor management. Harrison reflects on David's frailty:

"Is this guy gonna die? Like, does he have a heart attack?" ([34:22])

2018 marked the final summer for Camp Shane in Ferndale, New York. The camp was sold in early 2019 for over $6 million, a stark contrast to its original purchase price of $50,000 in 1968. The closure symbolized the end of an era filled with unfulfilled promises and hidden hardships:

"For 50 years, the cabins at Shane had been filled with hopeful kids and raucous laughter. Now they were silent." ([37:08])

Conclusion

"When the Sh*t Hits the Fan" serves as a poignant exposé of Camp Shane's downfall, revealing the dark truths behind its outward success. Through firsthand accounts and investigative journalism, Kelsey Snelling underscores the heavy price of shame and the pervasive impact of fatphobia. The episode not only chronicles the camp's operational failures but also challenges societal norms surrounding weight and self-worth.

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Notable Quotes

• Harrison Davies
  "When I say that summer 2014 was the worst summer of my life, it's the worst summer by far." ([04:25])

• Tigris Osborne
  "People think you have a choice about it, that if you don't want to be discriminated against, then just change your body." ([31:33])

• Derek (Counselor)
  "It's like we were the indie picture that punched way above its budget." ([23:35])

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Key Takeaways

1. Mismanagement and Neglect: Camp Shane's decline was precipitated by poor management practices, lack of maintenance, and inadequate support for both campers and staff.

2. Deceptive Marketing: The camp engaged in misleading advertising, creating a false image that concealed the underlying issues.

3. Lack of Qualified Medical Support: Critical health services were inadequately provided, posing significant risks to the well-being of campers.

4. Societal Fatphobia: The camp's longevity was fueled by societal obsessions with thinness, placing undue blame on individuals rather than addressing systemic issues.

5. Closure and Aftermath: Ultimately, Camp Shane's operational failures and ethical breaches led to its closure, leaving behind a legacy of unhealed wounds and unfulfilled promises.

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Further Listening

Stay tuned for the next episode of Camp Shame as Kelsey Snelling continues to unravel the complex web of stories surrounding Camp Shane. Subscribe to ensure you don't miss any revelations in this compelling eight-episode series.

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Follow Camp Shame on Instagram @CampShame for updates and more stories.

Transcript

[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Harrison Davies]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[David Attenberg]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Tzipporah Janowski]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Derek]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

This episode contains descriptions of disordered eating and diet behavior. This language could be sensitive for some listeners, so please take care. In the mid 2010s, Camp Shane was a shit show. Literally.

[Harrison Davies]

I'm walking up this short hill to get to boys camp and I see a waterfall pouring out the back of my cabin. And I'm like, oh, a pipe must have busted in the bathroom. My room, my cabin flooded with about three feet of human waste.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Nelson Giancaterino, the camper turned counselor we talked to earlier in the show, spent his final year at Shane as a sort of pseudo maintenance man. He was well acquainted with some of the issues going on at camp. Nelson had been at camp for years, but in the mid 2010s, things seemed to be getting worse. Many buildings needed renovating, equipment was subpar, and cabins were overflowing with water and other, ahem, less desirable substances. How the hell did we get here? This is Camp Shane. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. This episode, things go down the drain, or should I say come back up fast. As you know, Camp Shane was less than perfect. Kids were not eating enough food, counselors were often untrained, and staff could be fired for what seemed like no reason. But even though there had been rocky years in the camp's past, 2014 was one for the books.

[Ryan Reynolds]

When I say that summer 2014 was the worst summer of my life, it's the worst summer by far.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's Harrison Davies. He was a marketing associate and part of the office staff at camp Shane in 2014. Because he was a salaried staff member and not a counselor, he was expected to work year round. Harrison is a bubbly guy with a lot of enthusiasm, and at the time, he was excited to land his first full time position post college. He started the summer hopeful about the opportunity to help out at Shane. But it didn't take long for him to realize he was walking into more than he had bargained for.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It was just a toxic work environment. I've never had a work environment that would come nearly as terribly close on its worst day than any given day in that office down the hill.

[Kelsey Snelling]

What made it so bad? Where to begin? First, Harrison worked long hours.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You were looking at no less than a 10 to 11 hour work day and sometimes six days a week at least.

[Kelsey Snelling]

As a marketing associate, Harrison worked in the Office, which was attached to the dining hall at the bottom of the hill. The conditions were not ideal. For one thing, there wasn't much to eat. Harrison told me that David policed how much food the office team got for lunch and didn't allow them to store much, if anything, in the fridge in the staff office.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And the tiny little fridge that we had in the storage cabinet. The only thing I think that we were potentially allowed to have in there was maybe like Diet Coke or Diet Sprite and maybe coffee, all of which we had to purchase ourselves.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Many counselors we spoke with saw weight loss as a benefit to working at camp, but not Harrison. He thought this was supposed to be a camp where the kids lost weight.

[Ryan Reynolds]

In a nutshell, you were given the same amount of food as the overweight campers were who were in their teens. That's what you were given.

[Kelsey Snelling]

In fact, in the fine print of staff contracts, it stated that if employees exceeded the, quote, Camp Shane designated guidelines for desired weight, they had to participate in the same program as the campers. In reality, this extended to all staff because, remember, everyone was fed the same thing. Now, some counselors and staff members were permitted to get seconds at mealtime if leftovers happened to be available. But since Harrison was bogged down in the office, he rarely got to meals before extra helpings ran out. And once when he did successfully get more food, David reprimanded him.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I do remember David sitting me down one day saying, listen, Harrison, you're on salary here. That's awesome. Just so you know, we do see you eating a little more than the campers. And you know, we have to pay for that. He would get very upset if we made alternative lunch arrangements. But then again, he was also rationing how much we could eat. The office actually, we attempted to order out and David blocked our order, and he actually took our order and threw it in the trash.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So, of course, the food situation sucked. Plus, the job itself wasn't really what Harrison had signed up to do. He had originally been hired by David and Zipporah to do marketing work with something called the Shane Diet Resorts. We haven't talked about the Cheyne Diet Resorts yet because they were kind of a side project in the world of Camp Shane and only ran for a handful of years. The diet resorts fell under the Camp Shane umbrella, but were designed for adults. One was in Texas and one just a few miles from Ferndale in New York. Both run out of upscale ish hotels. The program supposedly offered a customized daily schedule, a variety of day trips and healthy meal Options, classes and activities. So this is what Harrison was told he would be working on. But he quickly got roped into doing marketing and additional administrative office work for the flagship Camp Shane as well. In fact, he was moved to the Camp Shane Ferndale location where he both worked on site in the office and lived in a cabin on the premises. Marketing at camp seemed to entail a complex set of twists and and turns. David's marketed version of camp was, let's say, a little different from reality.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So you laugh a lot when you're at camp. You really want to be here.

[Harrison Davies]

You get up in the morning and.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You say, it's so awesome.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Mm, awesome indeed. In some of these videos, it seems difficult to prompt happy responses out of campers. We're happy Shaners, how are you?

[Ryan Reynolds]

We're great.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We all love each other. You say, we love Camp Shane, we love Camp Shane. What's your favorite part of Camp Shane?

[Ryan Reynolds]

The friends.

[Derek]

The hot sauce that always runs out.

[David Attenberg]

The one bottle of it.

[Kelsey Snelling]

One part of Harrison's job was editing out parts of the promotional material that didn't fit Camp Shane's brand. The video sold a version of Camp that did not fully exist. A version of Camp that had, wait for it, working Go karts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There was a lot of activities that they promised in their brochures and marketing that would cost money and they just didn't do them. I think Go Karts is probably one of the best ones that never happened.

[Kelsey Snelling]

As for the people riding the go karts, well, that depended on who was allowed to be in the promotional materials. Harrison said that in one of his videos, David asked him to cut out a key member of the staff.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She didn't fit the body image of.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Camp Shane videos, brochures and the website also guaranteed that there would be a beautiful lake and other water activities. But people like Nelson, the camper turned counselor who'd been at camp for many years, knew this wasn't quite the case.

[Harrison Davies]

The one big thing is people were like, oh, we were told that the lake was on camp. No, it's like a two mile drive away. Like you have to load in a van and you have to get bus there.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Camp Shane also advertised an Olympic sized swimming pool. But in 2014, the pool water was.

[Harrison Davies]

The consistency of lake water because it didn't have chlorine or any chemicals in it. Like it was disgusting.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And then there were the online reviews which should have been more reliable. But Nelson remembers that David would have him write fake Yelp reviews about how amazing the camp was from different usernames and IP addresses so that it looked like they were done by real customers. We talked to two staffers who say they were asked to do the same thing.

[Harrison Davies]

He was obsessed with online reviews. So he would say, you know, write one at camp and then go down to McDonald's or another IP address and write another one. I remember telling him about Facebook reviews and his face dropped. He was like, you can review us on Facebook.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Clearly, Camp Shane's marketing could be misleading. One particular example of this involved the medical support parents were told their children would be receiving while enrolled. When you logged onto campshayne's website, it claimed to be a medically supervised camp. On the homepage, there were three professionals prominently featured. A medical advisor, a registered dietitian, and a cognitive behavioral therapist. The professionals within these roles sometimes changed year to year, but were always credentialed. Campers at Shane were going through intense changes and challenges, both mentally and physically. So having people like this involved in the programming was crucial. The problem? These doctors and experts often weren't at camp Shane. Now, to clarify, the website was careful not to use the language on site or on location. But parents and campers that I've spoken with had the impression that these professionals would be directly involved. Especially when the website says things like, quote, our experts blend in with the non stop fun atmosphere that is 100% camp. Or when a YouTube video shows a dietitian cooking a meal with a camper, it's all a bit deceptive. Harrison says he did see some of these experts, but only on parent visiting day.

[Ryan Reynolds]

These experts, doctors and psychologists were giving their stamp of approval would come that one day to, you know, talk to the parents about all the important stuff, but using their supposed medical expertise, you know, all the letters after their name to give a verbal, you know, reassurance to the parents that everything was great.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So in the absence of an on site medical advisor, registered dietitian, and cognitive behavioral therapist who was actually on the ground working day in and day out with these campers, let's start with the nutritionists. This role was filled by young college students with little to no official credentials or licenses. One former camper that I spoke with told me that she once learned to make a healthy wrap in nutrition class, which only consisted of raw carrots and cucumbers rolled into a tortilla with no dressing. Sounds like top notch guidance to me and the nurses. They were critical because not only were kids exercising a lot of but some campers were coming in with heart conditions, diabetes, or asthma. While we do know that there Were licensed nurses on site? Some years there were, others when the nurses weren't around every day. And some years they weren't on site at all. Sometimes David would claim that the nurse was on their way and then no one would ever show up. Lastly, the cognitive behavioral therapists. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or cbt, is a style of therapy that can be effective when done right. In fact, it's one of the most effective evidence based treatments for all eating disorders because it's aimed at changing negative thought patterns, giving people with eating disorders tangible ways to overcome low self esteem and trauma. CBT was pitched to parents as equipping kids with, quote, the tools for long term success. Maybe the idea of making fat kids slimmer was flawed to begin with, but if that's what parents and campers wanted, this feature of camp assured them that it was happening as safely as possible. However, the people who were supervising these therapy sessions were often inadequate. Like the nutritionist role, these were often filled by college kids. In my research, I only spoke with one CBT counselor who even claimed to be qualified for the role. And even she admitted that her own colleague that summer had no qualifications to be leading CBT sessions. Not only were kids at Ferndale most likely not receiving the therapy they'd signed up for, their parents were still paying extra money for it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They billed the parents for this service under the instructions of trained doctors and so on and so forth. So the parents were supposedly to be sent an invoice at the end of camp for all the sessions at the higher rate, which the parents could then turn into their own insurance companies with the hopes of getting reimbursement.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We don't actually know if anyone was successfully reimbursed, but Campshayne claims on its website that sessions were reimbursable between 40 and 70%. And if insurance companies were indeed covering costs for therapy given by unqualified providers, that might be a little something called insurance fraud. And not only was Harrison watching this general dysfunction play out at camp, he himself was struggling. The combination of not eating enough and being overworked took its toll. Harrison's mom even came up from Florida to visit him at camp because she was so concerned.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And she goes, you know, well, Harrison, I'm a little concerned about you. Let me, let me, you know, you look skinnier, you do seem stressed. Let me come and check on you.

[Kelsey Snelling]

She took Harrison out for a day in the city to go see a Broadway show, but he couldn't stop checking his phone because he was getting blasted with texts from David and Zipporah. Even on this one day off I'd.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Already dropped a lot of weight, lost all my muscle mass that I had gained in my college days and my hair was falling out. I remember her crying, holding me like what are they doing to you? Like this isn't you.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So that was 2014. It wasn't great but remember when I said that 2014 was one for the books? Well that's because 2015 hadn't happened yet. And 2015, well it lit the books on fire. Even though 2014 was rough to say the least, Simon Greenwood was still at camp as the director. As I've mentioned before, many people I've talked to feel that Simon was what held camp together. Nelson is one of them.

[Harrison Davies]

He was an amazing director. He had so much knowledge because he started there in like 1990 and then by the time he's director like he know he ran Camp David ran the business part for the most part and then Simon ran the day to day activities.

[Kelsey Snelling]

However, by 2014 tension between Simon and David had been mounting for quite some time. The last few years he and David would argue almost daily. Often I'm told it was about how much to pay counselors. Other times they argued more specifically about how much Simon was being paid. According to staff who were there at the time, the tension between the two reached a boiling point and in 2015 Simon did not return to Camp Shane. It's unclear if Simon chose to leave or if he was forced out by David. David, who hadn't fully managed day to day operations in decades, took over Simon's role. He was now acting as owner and director simultaneously.

[Harrison Davies]

That was the first summer that Simon was not there and you could tell.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The camp was already on its last legs and without Simon, counselors like Nelson watched as Camp Shane limped onward.

[Harrison Davies]

All the good stuff was Simon, all the bad shit was David. And as their relationship broke down and we saw was like a loveless marriage by the time that they just went.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Their separate ways the facilities had been damaged and degrading for years and in 2015 things got especially messy. All because one of the international campers plugged in a converter to charge their phone and well the shit hit the fan or I guess the cabin.

[Harrison Davies]

So the from 11 through 17 year olds had backed up into my room, came up through my toilet, through the sink and through the shower. Luckily I'm a slob and I had everything mostly on my bed so my room is flooded, not with water. I want to make this perfectly clear, not with water but with human and water. I see Turds floating in the water in my. I'm like, what the fuck? It is disgusting.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And when Nelson called David to tell him what happened, this was the response he remembers getting.

[Harrison Davies]

And he was like, oh, my God. So he sends the. I felt so bad for them. The two women who were like, the cleaners. He gave them masks and, like, some gloves to clean up, and then I helped them clean.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So that was at Ferndale. And it doesn't seem like the other locations were much better. Counselors like Derek, who worked at the satellite camp in California in 2015, were thrown in the deep end without any warning. Derek is not this counselor's real name. He asked that we keep that information private. When he first arrived at camp, another staff member pulled him aside and told him something that freaked him out.

[David Attenberg]

She was like, don't believe everything you've read about David. And at this point, I haven't read anything about David. And then she tells us that he went to prison, and we're like, what? What happened?

[Kelsey Snelling]

To be clear, David hadn't actually gone to prison. As I mentioned before, he had been sentenced to four years of probation and 400 hours of community service in 2004 for dodging income taxes related to the camp. Nevertheless, Derek didn't really trust David. As he tells it, Derek fought every day to keep the camp afloat and the kids entertained without any training schedule or guidance from the Ferndale headquarters.

[David Attenberg]

It felt like every day we'd sit down at breakfast and be like, what on earth are we going to do today?

[Kelsey Snelling]

Derek and his fellow counselors weren't working with much.

[David Attenberg]

We opened the supply closet, and it was literally a single Rubbermaid container with, like, seven, you know, double XL XXXL Camp Shane shirts, a promotional Frisbee, two baseball gloves, and then, like, a basketball that had, you know, literally survived the Reagan administration and was. Was still kicking. It's like, oh, my God, we're in real trouble here. Like, we are in serious trouble. We have no idea how we're gonna do this for six weeks.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And that equipment was supposed to be enough for the roughly 60 kids attending the California camp in 2015. Camp in California lasted six weeks that summer. And for each of those weeks, Derek and his staff improvised. He told me that it was a lot of walking around aimlessly and a lot of basketball, but at least they kept the camp running.

[David Attenberg]

It's one of those things where, I guess if you go and see, like, a blockbuster movie that comes out on July 4th weekend, and it's got a $250 million budget, you're expecting these great things and like it has to live up to that expectation. And so were we the summer blockbuster? No, absolutely not. But for what we had and the group of people that we had, like we were the, the indie picture that punched way above its budget. Like we somehow put something together.

[Kelsey Snelling]

As counselors like Derek and Nelson struggled to navigate a path forward without Simon, Camp Shane's happy facade was getting harder to maintain. Derek was barely holding Camp Shane, California together. But Shane's other locations were also struggling. Kelly Holdridge saw through the facade the moment she brought her 10 year old daughter Sadie to the satellite camp in Florida. At drop off, Kelly and her husband John realized something was off.

[Kelly Holdridge]

They then called this little girl who was around Sadie's age and said, take Sadie to her room and show her parents around. So we found that very odd. So we went up to the dorm room and the little girl was saying, I've been here almost all summer. She goes, I hate it. You're gonna hate it. She goes, you know how they advertise on the pamphlet that you go horseback riding and you do this and you do that? She goes, you don't do any of those things.

[Kelsey Snelling]

For Kelly, this was not a promising start and it only got more ominous. A lot of the campers who were much older than Sadie seemed to be struggling with more than just their weight in the dorms.

[Kelly Holdridge]

There were much older boys that had their rooms like right down from her. And she said that she had heard that one young man, that he was disturbed and that he was telling everybody that he tried to kill his family, tried to set the house on fire.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Kelly begged her daughter to reconsider, but Sadie was determined to stay. It had actually been her idea to go to a weight loss camp in the first place. She told her parents she would be fine. So Kelly chose to trust her daughter and reluctantly left. She hoped she was overthinking it and things were better than they seemed. While Sadie was at camp, Kelly and John tried checking in. It was difficult for them to get in touch with their daughter. It seemed to them as though the communication between campers and parents was being monitored. Every time Kelly reached out to talk to Sadie, the person who answered the phone would just tell her that their daughter was doing great. They couldn't even get a hold of Sadie on her birthday. Kelly didn't hear from Sadie for about a week and grew increasingly anxious. Finally, after several long days with no communication, Sadie made contact.

[Kelly Holdridge]

Finally we got connected and Sadie is on the phone with her dad at the time and she just breaks out crying, Come get me. Come get me. Please come get me.

[Kelsey Snelling]

She told.

[Kelly Holdridge]

She told her dad. She said she was scared. She said, I'm scared. And so he's like, oh my, I guess I gotta go. I was like, go, go, go.

[Kelsey Snelling]

John raised from South Carolina back to Florida to get Sadie. The entire time he drove, neither parent could make contact with the main office in New York to get David on the line. Luckily, when John finally arrived, Sadie was safe. When he did eventually get David on the phone to demand a refund, David pushed back. As Kelly and John remember it, David insisted that it wasn't the camp's fault if certain children, like their daughter, couldn't handle the Camp Shane experience. Kelly had been on to Camp Shane from the get go. She thought the business was a scam.

[Kelly Holdridge]

There was no guidance. It was more or less throw a bunch of kids at a place call at a fitness camp by starving them naturally, they would lose some weight after two weeks.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Sadie wasn't the only camper who left early. Derek had a similar experience in California with one of his campers. At this point, Derek was thinking about quitting his job at camp, having grown so frustrated with the working conditions. Around the time he decided to leave for good, a camper in his care was also reaching a breaking point.

[David Attenberg]

The director and myself had taken a kid to the hospital and the doctor said, like, he's lost way too much weight, he's extremely dehydrated, and like, if he's gonna stay at this camp, you know, he needs to get supplemental nutrition.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Derek figured the camper couldn't stay at Shane any longer, so he went rogue.

[David Attenberg]

I had called the parent of this kid that had gone to the hospital, and I said, I don't think your child is safe here. I think that he is in risk of going to the hospital again because he's being denied, like, the nutrition that he needs and the calories he needs.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And after that call, with parental permission, Derek and the kid snuck out of camp.

[David Attenberg]

Everybody was asleep, and I went into this camper's room and I said, pack your things, we're leaving.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The duo escaped together to meet up with the camper's father in West Hollywood. If a counselor and a camper fleeing the premises isn't a sign that things were falling apart, I don't know what is. Derek actually expressed his concerns about the lack of care at Shane early on that summer before he quit. When David asked him to be the new director of the California satellite camp.

[David Attenberg]

I said, well, one of my concerns David, is that you promised these parents that there's going to be a nurse on staff and there's no medical personnel at all. And me being the director, like, I don't have plausible deniability. I sit at the top of this thing. The buck stops with me.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It may seem surprising that more parents didn't catch on sooner, but it seems that communication was restricted at the satellite camps. In a similar fashion to the main camp in Ferndale, it may have been hard for parents to know what their children were experiencing.

[David Attenberg]

So you had five minutes to call your parents. And the director from the New York office is, if they start to say anything negative about camp, you hang up the call and move on to the next kid. And that was like, that was the directive of what we were supposed to do. So if a kid says, like, I hated here, this or that, hang up. All right, next person in the office.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So, yes, some of this stuff would have probably been impossible to know. Even a thorough parent could be tricked by advertising, Yelp reviews, and the reality that sometimes kids exaggerate about their experience. And if this were any old camp, maybe parents would have noticed the red flag sooner. But there's another piece to this, a piece that I think has been pervading since well before 1968, when Selma Ettenberg first opened the doors of Camp Shane. It taps into one of society's longest held insecurities. At a fundamental level, I believe Camp Shane held tremendous power over people with the promise of a transformed life.

[Tigris Osborne]

There's a huge amount of industry around weight and weight loss in the medical establishment and in the commercial diet industry and in the sort of, like, health and wellness world.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's Tigris Osborne, the executive director of the national association to Advance Fat Acceptance, or nafa, a nonprofit that advocates for fat people's civil rights. She suspects that the longevity of a place like Camp Shane is all about our continual obsession with being thin.

[Tigris Osborne]

Definitely one of the differences between body size and some other forms of discrimination is that people think you have a choice about it, that if you don't want to be discriminated against, if you don't want to be treated poorly in your community, at your school, at your church, at your job, whatever, well, then just change your body and you won't have to worry about that anymore.

[Kelsey Snelling]

But putting the burden of weight loss on the individual doesn't address the root issues.

[Tigris Osborne]

When we locate the problem in the body, not in the discrimination, we do that across the lifespan of people, all along the spectrum of your whole life. If you are Fat at one point on that spectrum, or if you're fat for the whole spectrum, people will locate the bad things that happen to you in you instead of in the bad behavior that is happening to you.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Nearly 50 years after it opened, Camp Shane was finding ways to exploit society's obsession with weight as well as the belief that it could and should be managed at an individual level. As long as the formula made sense, many people were willing to pursue thinness by any means necessary. Necessary. In 2016, Nelson came back to work at Ferndale. And to him, it was pretty clear that Shane had not recovered from 2015. Barely any counselors had returned from the year prior, and the crew was pretty inexperienced. Some may have been inebriated as well. Several people have told me that there was an irresponsible party and drinking culture among the counselors at that time. By now, Camp Shane and David were under a lot of pressure. Nelson started asking about the future of camp, knowing that it had struggled the summer before. He had questions.

[Harrison Davies]

Who's direct? Who's this? Who's doing what? What's happening? Blah, blah. He didn't hire the right people, didn't hire enough people.

[Kelsey Snelling]

As usual, it seemed like David was cutting corners. Not to mention David was also getting older. Counselors like Nelson started to notice that he couldn't keep up with camp. Like Simon had.

[Harrison Davies]

Like, it really went from someone with 20 years of experience who, like, ran that camp to David trying to step in and do something he hadn't done for 20 years at, like, 70 years old. There was a, like, few times we were like, is David gonna make it? Like, he's exhausted. And then there was. There was one time where I'm like, on the golf cart, on the four wheeler, and I see him just, like, like, leaned up against the building. I was like, is this guy gonna die? Like, does he have a heart attack?

[Kelsey Snelling]

And like David, the camp seemed to be getting weaker too.

[Harrison Davies]

It was, like I said, slowly watching something you loved in a place you called home, like, die in front of you in real time.

[Kelsey Snelling]

As camp struggled onward, Nelson remembered a conversation he'd had with Carl, another camper turned counselor, years before.

[Harrison Davies]

I remember talking to Carl, and I said, carl, you were here for so long. When did you know it was time to leave? And Carl said, it's the summer after the summer you spent trying to chase. The summer before.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Simon was gone. Buildings were in disrepair, and David was now in his 70s. Parents were getting fed up, and children were getting hurt. 2018 was the last summer for Camp Shane in Ferndale New York. What finally shut down Camp Shane is hard to say. Maybe it was the after effects of Simon leaving. Maybe it was Camp Shane's focus on money over the well being of the campers Shane claimed to serve. Maybe it was a changing culture that was starting to question this form of weight loss. Maybe it was doomed to fail from the beginning. Whatever the reason, it came to fruition in early 2019. That year, David sold the Ferndale property to a group of investors for over $6 million. Salma originally bought the campgrounds in 1968 for about $50,000. I think she would have been rolling in her grave if she knew how much money herself son had made off of it after as she saw it, stealing the business and kicking her out. I don't think the old Edinburgh family wounds ever healed. It's spelled out on Selma and Irving's headstones. Irving's reads loving husband, father and grandfather. Selma's has no mention of her role as a mother or grandmother. It simply reads devoted wife. Oof. For 50 years, the cabins at Shane had been filled with hopeful kids and raucous laughter. Now they were silent. After the camp closed, Nelson went back one last time to say goodbye.

[Harrison Davies]

It was deserted. Like all the stuff in the office was gone. Everything that we like knew and loved about it. Like all the plaques from all from like from decades of college days and color war and the bunk plaque. Everything gone.

[Kelsey Snelling]

But maybe the utopia Nelson and others were mourning never existed in the first place. Next time on Camp Shame and he.

[Harrison Davies]

Just kept chipping away and chipping away and chipping away and I really wish I could remember how it started. And it sort of escalated from there.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We reached out to Simon Greenwood, David Attenberg and his wife Tzipporah Janowski for comment. At the time of this recording, we have not received a reply. Camp Shame is a production of I Heart Podcast. I'm your host Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez, Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schlied, Lucy Jones and Aaliyah Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtney Hommeister with additional editorial support from Lindsey Cradlewill and Grace Lynch. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Emily Rutter and me, Kelsey Snelling for iHeartMedia. Our executive producer producer is Christina Everett. Fact checking done by Madeline Gore, Lucy Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Shaun Patel. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram ampshame. That's with an m if you or or anyone you know went to campshayne, Reach out with your camp stories.

[Derek]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Derek]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

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[Tzipporah Janowski]

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[Kelsey Snelling]

8Th through the 11th. This is an I Heart podcast.