Anthony Washington, now 30, attended a church camp that was overseen by the Democratic Candidate. Anthony Washington was just 12 at the time and said counselors threw urine on him and locked him outside his cabin overnight.
Washington ended up filing a lawsuit against the camp, which lasted 2 years. Washington and his family ended receiving a large financial settlement.
When Washington found out that Warnock was running for Senate, he was really surprised and told the Free Beacon, “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.”
From about 2001-2005, Warnock served as a pastor at Baltimore’s Douglas Memorial Community Church. He also oversaw the church’s sleep-away camp, Camp Farthest Out, which served inner-city children.
In an interview Washington, said, “I just wanted to get the hell away from that camp,” “I didn’t want to spend another day there. … That camp was real messed up.”
Washington said this was the first time being away from his family, and the mother sent him to camp hoping he would make friends after moving to California.
Washington describes the counselors as being in their early ’20s, and they showed little concern for the young campers. For wetting his bed, the counselors punished him and made him sleep outside on the basketball court, alone.
“I’m like, ‘Hell no I’m not, it’s cold out there,’” he said. “[The counselors] wouldn’t let me in the house, not at all. … Shut the door to the cabin, locked it,” he said. “It was dark. There wasn’t nothing out there but the basketball court. I ain’t never experienced nothing like that. Like, you’re not in a tent, you’re not in nothing. You’re just out, God knows where.”
When the counselors needed to empty their urine bucket, they tossed it on Washington.
Washington added, “I went through that experience myself. I don’t even like talking about this shit. That shit happened. … It was like in a bucket. They would keep that shit in a bucket,” he said.
Washington also said he saw the camp-counselors “grab” kids but didn’t know what really happened to them. Washington said, “I just knew that shit happened to me, and that’s what I was worried about, me and my sister.”
The time Washington attended the camp, the campers could not call their parents, and when Washington told his mother, she was distraught, “I can hear her in there, screaming at them. “Next thing I knew, my mother was going to court. … I thank my mother for doing what she did. She is a lifesaver,” Washington explained.
During 2002 and 2003, various health agencies such as the Maryland State Police, the Department of Social Services, and the Department of Health investigated the child abuses that occurred in those years.
On July 31, 2002, Warnock was arrested by a Maryland state trooper after repeatedly disrupted an interview that interviews that happened the campers who attended the camp.
Warnock, as a well of another reverend, were arrested for “hindering and obstructing” police, but later that charges were dropped by the state prosecutor.
When the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene inspected the camp, they concluded the camp violated multiple health and safety violations.
“Staff are not supervising campers,” wrote a health inspector in a July 31, 2002, report. “Conversations w/ medical staff & pool staff indicate that this is routine among the counselors. It was observed during inspection today.”
The camp was denied by the Health Department Camp Farthest’s ability to operate a camp. The camp was denied its ability to operate because it failed to report the five cases of child abuse against Brian Carter, by the Department of Social Services, the director.
