Introducing: Camp Shame

Camp Hell: Anneewakee

iHeartPodcasts

History, True Crime

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hi, Camp Hell listeners! We're excited to share with you a sneak peek at iHeartPodcasts' latest release, True Crime Tonight.

Camp Shame: One of America’s longest-running weight loss camps for kids—promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But there was some dark truths behind Camp Shane’s facade of happy, transformed children. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. More than 50 years after its founding, host Kelsey Snelling is bringing the real story of Camp Shane to light.

In this eight-episode series, she unpacks and investigates stories of mistreatment and reexamines the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. Along the way, she reveals and weighs the heavy price of shame.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Camp Shane was once the most popular weight loss camp in America.
0:04.8	It was the best summers of my life.
0:08.0	Thousands of kids and teens spent their summers at Shane,
0:11.5	and together lost hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
0:15.5	I went from 160 to 140.
0:17.5	I lost 27 pounds.
0:19.5	I lost 87.6 pounds in nine weeks. From the outside, Camp Shane
0:25.7	seemed like a utopia for kids who felt unwanted by the real world. It was a family business
0:31.6	whose mission was to help campers change their lives. And business was good.
0:38.7	Real good.
0:40.3	We were busting at the seams at that point.
0:43.1	575 kids.
0:44.9	It was a lot.
0:46.7	But beyond the profits and the accolades, Shane had some sinister secrets.
0:52.6	There was no guidance.
0:54.0	It was more or less, throw a bunch of kids at a place, call at a fitness camp.
0:58.6	They see a bunch of kids that go in heavy, and they come out thin, and they're not asking
1:02.9	any other questions.
1:04.3	What I didn't know at the time, though, is that he was grooming me.
1:07.5	I don't know that I fully understood body shame until I went to a fat camp.
1:15.5	And it's why it was called Camp Shame.
1:20.1	Then, in the middle of summer, 2021, camp closed.
	...

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