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The “Smoking Gun’s” intro reads:

Wedgies. Toilet dunkings. Getting lashed to a tether ball pole. Those are just a few of the indignities allegedly heaped upon an 11-year-old boy attending a “Christian-based” summer camp in Michigan. The kid’s parents, of course, have made a federal case of it…

In other words, get over it Ezekiel. Be a big boy. What you endured is part of the time-honored torturous rite of passage from American child to American adolescent, and you’re a geek to complain, and were a geek in the first place which is why you were submitted to particular humiliating procedures.

Now, granted, Christians who send their child off to a Christ-centered PATHFINDERS camp just seem to be asking for it. When you pack your child off to Michawana with the uber agenda of developing him “spiritually, mentally, physically and socially through evangelism and discipleship in accordance with the word of God”, it’s a good thing to turn to the bible first and see what God does with those pour souls who’ve gotten on his wrong side (much less his good side, as his son’s story seems to attest). Raising a child up by the rod seems to be the least of it. For freakin’ sake, the website for Michawana itself says it provides “a passion for guests and campers to have the opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as Savior.” Didn’t they watch Mel Gibson? When Christians say “passion” they don’t mean boundless enthusiasm. Go to your dictionaries. You’re looking for:

Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin passi, passin-, sufferings of Jesus or a martyr, from Late Latin, physical suffering, martyrdom, sinful desire, from Latin, an undergoing, from passus, past participle of pat, to suffer.

You’re lucky Ezekiel came out alive.

But, no, Jill Losoya, herself having a lifelong love with Camp Michawana, chose to send her son there.

Jill either used to be an uber child and has forgotten the rigors she visited on others, she is one of the many who sleepwalks awake past stocks and lynching trees while drinking her sweet tea, or she was one of the less fortunate of campers and she married, became pregnant, gave birth and reared Ezekiel with the intention of one day exacting vengeance in her own sick, twisted way, through subjecting her son to America’s toddler version of Gitmo.

Which, come on, it was. Tell me why, if we’re going to decry as inhumane, prisoners being pissed on at Gitmo, we’d turn around and tell eleven-year-old Ezekiel to suck it up. Because some of us are uber kids who suspect Ezekiel must be a geek, or were ourselves pissed on and sucking it up and honoring the code of silence of the aspiring Skull and Bones set is how we made our own transition to self-respecting adults?

Here are, paraphrased, some of the humiliations Ezekiel is given as being submitted to by either counselors or counselors who permitted his peers to visit upon him the joys of Christendom:

1. Pinching and twisting Ezekiel’s nipples until he would cry.

This is a common form of male-on-male torture. Do a Google search of “I hated summer camp” and you’ll realize how buried are our collective memories, though the NY Times did apparently do an article on it, the concern over the bullying. But there is one man who remembers a counselor who insisted on picking up, off their bunks, the campers in his cabin by their nipples.

2. Terrorizing Ezekiel repeatedly, including telling Ezekiel a man named “Injun Joe” would kill any child the counselor told him to.

Yes, of course, old Injun Joe would be a staple of Camp Michawana as a respected First Nations Warrior.

3. Giving Ezekiel “wedgies”, pinning him on his bunk and holding him by his underwear over the side of his bunk.

4. Smashing Ezekiel’s camera.

5. Preventing Ezekiel, through intimidation, from calling home.

6. Allowing Ezekiel to be kicked in the privates and then telling him to stop crying like a baby and get up.

7. Making Ezekiel “moon” a cabin in order to get cookies provided other campers and then locking him out of the cabin.

8. Showing him a trap door under the bed and threatening to put him there.

9. Telling him about sex and about the counselor’s pregnant girlfriend.

Sigh.

10. Refusing to give Ezekiel a package of candy sent him by his family until he cleaned the cabin and then allowing campers to bully him into giving most of the candy away.

11. Taking homemade cookies Ezekiel’s mother sent him, giving them to the other campers, allowing them to spit them on the cabin’s floor and smashing the cookies on Ezekiel’s head.

12. Telling Ezekiel’s sister that her brother was “crazy in the head”.

13. Interrupting Ezekiel’s medically required naps (low blood sugar) by screaming in his ear and laughing about it.

14. Allowing campers to push Ezekiel’s head in the toilet and then taking his picture.

15. Allowing campers to urinate on Ezekiel’s leg and his bear.

Man, poor Ezekiel, going to camp with a teddy bear. The moment the kids saw that they were going to be after him. He’s lucky he didn’t mention he still watches Sesame Street.

16. Allowing campers to call Ezekiel “stupid”, “retarded”, “idiot”, “moron”, “mental” and swearing at him.

17. Tying Ezekiel to a tether ball pole with a rope and to the porch post of the cabin.

18. Allowing campers to drag Ezekiel by his arms and legs, allowing campers to spit on him and submit him to other humiliations.

19. Whipping Ezekiel with a towel.

Oh, the joys of summer camp. Camp Michawana sounds even worse than the Girl Scout camp I attended at age eleven (I was not a Girl Scout and yes it was all sorts of fun I’d not expected).

Camp Michawana, where we gaily smother the faces of others with whipped cream, sprinkle them with fruit loops and force acquaintance by having fellow campers feast upon the fruit loops, sans hands.

Where, sans hands, we dunk for marshmallows in water.

Where we have others dunk their faces in powdered sugar, again sans hands.

Where we have campers dunk their faces in a communal, sanitary, brown goo in search of gummy worms, again sans hands.

Patriotic Camp Michawana. Saluting the flag. Then reading our bible.

Camp Michawana, “Where Christ Comes First”. No doubt they are telling children that the Holy Ghost showed up at chapel and this is proof.

The thing is, there’s no reason that Ezekiel should be led to believe he should stomach these humiliations and get over it. And we can only hope that he has gotten a clue that there’s more where this comes from in Christ-focused Bushamerica, that humiliation is par for the course guilt-bonding and is a generations’ honored method of induction into the adult games of justice and business.

The director who worked at Camp Michawana in 2003 is no longer there. The current director would not comment on camera, but says they haven’t been served with the lawsuit. Roger Bird says the allegations sound crazy. He also says that they carefully screen all counselors and would never allow a child to be put in danger.

Source: WoodTV News.

Need I say more?