00:09:08.460And at the time of my brother's perpetrator sentencing, there were 57 known victims.
00:09:14.700But we now have had many victims come forward since I started a website called factsaboutcanacuck.com with other survivor families to get the facts out there to parents and warn the public that this is much more widespread than what had been reported upon massive cover up, which is not unusual in a lot of these situations because of NDAs.
00:09:35.400So that's what we're addressing with Trey's law that's now been introduced to Congress.
00:11:00.680And for healing and closure. Thank you.
00:11:03.640I say that because I have friends that worked at CannaCuck during the time period you're talking about.
00:11:08.800I also know people that were abused at CannaCuck.
00:11:13.660And this story, when I saw we were doing it, it's I've lost friends who've committed suicide because of sexual abuse.
00:11:19.960But CannaCuck is a place where I went to Ole Miss.
00:11:23.140A lot of people I grew up with from Memphis, from Houston, they went to CannaCuck.
00:11:27.600and the cover-up word that you use there is i think one of the most sad parts about all this
00:11:34.220is there was so many of these ndas center i i didn't realize it like how much this was going
00:11:39.800to just bring up in me but when you know people that were abused there and you've sat with them
00:11:45.340and you hear how the system did not protect them but i actually think made them a victim a second
00:11:50.380time over by the way that they use these ndas it is infuriating because you realize that like
00:11:56.620everything in this situation worked against him for years yeah and that's what came in the texas
00:12:02.920hearings i was calling this institutional abuse on top of child sexual abuse so you're exactly
00:12:09.180right and yes memphis is a huge market for uh canicuck and kids across america which is another
00:12:15.960ministry and brant outside of branson that joe white still runs to this day there's been no
00:12:21.420change in leadership. No one's been held accountable because of these crimes. And
00:12:25.640so you were asking about my story and how we got to this point. And
00:12:29.360really, it was because I learned more about my brother's trauma and his death than I knew in
00:12:35.780his life because of the NDA. So until Trey's law went into effect in Texas, September of 2025,
00:12:42.360I never saw what he signed. He wouldn't talk about it. He was so terrified, even in therapeutic
00:12:47.540settings, even trying to get sober in AA, for example. He was worried Kanakuk would come after
00:12:54.180him if he mentioned all of the people involved that knew about what Pete was doing and didn't
00:12:59.600report the crimes to the authorities or disciplined him internally. And that allowed this perpetrator
00:13:07.380to go on and abuse what we now know as hundreds of more victims. And that's one perpetrator alone.
00:13:13.740So victims of Kanakuk have asked for three things, admit to known failures, release NDAs, and commission an independent investigation.
00:13:22.140Since, as I mentioned, the Taney County Sheriff's Department missed a few spots, we don't need to rabbit hole on that right now.
00:13:29.160But that's the three asks of survivors, very common sense steps they could take.
00:13:33.220So we've done Kanakuk's job for them, and we've found out that we now know of over 90 perpetrators with allegations against them,
00:13:40.840affiliated with CannaCuck and its associated ministries and programs across the country and
00:13:45.240world. 90. Over 90. So 90, how many have been held accountable? I've got to know that number
00:13:53.500because as I was told about this several months ago, they said that not only are there still
00:13:59.140people in the 90, as you're describing that are affiliated, there are some that are still in
00:14:03.860major leadership roles. And around children. Yes. So we're calling it out again, doing
00:14:10.280Kanakuk's job for them. I think as parents, we have an expectation that if a child molester or
00:14:16.640sex offender is caught at an institution where your child was attending or enrolled,
00:14:22.340that you will be informed if they are ever charged with anything criminal. That is not
00:14:28.540what Kanakuk has done. So we've done that job for them. So factsaboutkanakuk.com, we have a known
00:14:33.820abusers page where we name 13 and might even be more now uh that have convictions that are
00:14:41.500yeah they have criminal indictments convictions or formal allegations in the media collaborated
00:14:47.100by multiple victims and then the rest of the perpetrators in our database are just still out
00:14:54.180there living their lives and a lot of them um have never been held accountable we know who they are
00:15:01.040We've turned that database over to the authorities, and we are hoping that the FBI or some sort of law enforcement agency takes action.
00:15:09.240But the normal thing to do when you're not covering up for pedophiles as an institution using NDAs and continuing to promote pedophiles within your organization or moving them around to associated ministries, which is another thing Kanakuk has done.
00:15:24.160They have a year-round ministry called K-Life, similar to Young Life, which I think is better known.
00:15:28.380they will move someone that has allegations at the camp to a chapter of k-life where they go on
00:15:34.120to continue harming children so our known abusers page is supposed to be a public facing database
00:15:39.600for when we know uh cana cuck affiliate has been convicted indicted or formally alleged of child
00:15:47.200sexual abuse and the rest of it uh will come to light over time as more and more victims come
00:15:51.600forward the list continues to grow and with exposure like this we expect even more america
00:15:56.660is entering the 250th year and the direction of this country is being decided right now in our
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00:17:33.400So one of the things you described, we did a press conference today announcing Trey's law
00:17:38.440in the Senate. And you described the pressure that was on your brother, not just from the camp,
00:17:45.120but also from his own lawyer. Share that story a little bit.
00:17:50.680Yeah. So, you know, one of the questions as we were going state by state, you know,
00:17:54.080starting in Texas, because that's my home state and that's where Trey grew up. We spent a few
00:17:59.200years also in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia's introduced Trey's Law along with eight other
00:18:03.800jurisdictions, but then Missouri passed Trey's law last August. And, um, you know, my brother
00:18:10.680was abused in so many jurisdictions that there were different options for the venue in his civil
00:18:16.700case. He sued in Texas, as I mentioned, that ended with a settlement agreement that involved a
00:18:22.820restrictive NDA. And he was an adult when he sued for the child sexual abuse that he suffered,
00:18:27.620but he hadn't fully realized. And he was afraid even to talk to his therapist.
00:18:30.880Exactly. And that therapist, after his death, I started doing my own investigation to understand what just happened to my brother. And that therapist said that he had made a comment just before he died that they would always control him and he would never be free.
00:19:18.100or trade secrets and they've since been misused to silence victims of childhood sexual abuse
00:19:27.160trafficking even adult sexual assault survivors that was addressed in the speak out act that
00:19:32.580passed in 2022 with the co-sponsor of trades law senator jillbrand but kids are being put under
00:19:39.400these ndas and kids they can't consent to contracts or clauses like this and so oftentimes it's a
00:19:46.120guardian or a parent who is signing this nda on behalf of their child the child grows up becomes
00:19:52.440a young man or woman realizes what their parents signed and that they can't own their own story
00:19:58.040um and and it's just or even feel like they can't heal because they can't talk about it
00:20:04.240because they're so afraid talking to one person that was a victim of this they described it to
00:20:09.200me this way. They said, Canada Cuck basically had enough money to buy silence to protect the brand
00:20:16.340because they knew if we were told our stories, the brand would die and all the money would stop
00:20:21.320coming in. That's a simplistic way. But you mentioned their revenue. This was, you got to
00:20:27.460spend money to save this brand and continue to grow in sports and all the other activities that
00:20:33.620they do. I mean, is that a fair way of putting it? I think that's, yeah, that's definitely a
00:20:39.180fair way of putting it and to add the other thing that's a a layer of trauma in this is that their
00:20:45.860cover-up bought enough time for these victims to be out of statute so they can't now that they know
00:20:50.920the extent of the cover-up unless under a certain discovery rule which you could speak to as a lawyer
00:20:56.100senator but uh they can't even have access to the civil courts in the jurisdiction where they were
00:21:02.420abused so in missouri the civil statute of limitations to sue an institution that's liable
00:21:07.460for child sexual abuse or trafficking has been the age of 26 and that's been unchanged since 1939
00:21:13.300and so we're doing a lot of advocacy work in Missouri to say survivors need more time as I
00:21:20.160said when you asked the first question there is a lot of research on delayed disclosure
00:21:25.440my brother was unfortunately forced into disclosure because he was named as a victim during the
00:21:32.060criminal proceedings. And so he didn't have decades to process what happened to him and
00:21:37.020then come forward. But victims that weren't named or who came forward closer to the time of
00:21:42.480Pete Newman's arrest to name one of, again, over 90 perpetrators we're aware of to date.
00:21:48.540How was he caught? How was his abuse discovered?
00:21:52.960There are a few theories on that. Kanakuk hasn't really been transparent
00:21:55.860about what led to his confession. So I would love to know the answer to that question. And
00:22:01.120that's why an independent investigation or some sort of law enforcement agency stepping in is so
00:22:04.780necessary in this he confessed allegedly in march 2009 to abusing seven boys and then he wasn't
00:22:14.400arrested until september 2009 after summer camp season went uninterrupted and then uh upon arrest
00:22:23.040they started investigating him criminally and then that led to his sentencing in february 2010
00:22:27.940Here we are in 2026. And because of facts about Kanakuk, which was created by a coalition of survivor families and then recent publicity through USA Today published five articles on this. The Dispatch published it. The New York Times. I just went on the Sean Ryan show. And we're getting more and more disclosures, not just about Pete Newman, but other perpetrators associated with Kanakuk and other leadership who covered this up.
00:22:56.580and they're calling attorneys who are saying,
00:22:59.460I'm sorry, you're 15, 30, 45 years too late.
00:23:04.800So victims don't know they're on the clock
00:23:54.320It's typically if a victim has a lawyer, that lawyer will usually be compensated on a contingency basis where they receive a portion of whatever financial recovery there is.
00:24:07.460So the lawyer has every incentive in the world to try to reach a deal, to try to reach a settlement, to have a financial amount paid, and to discount the harm of silencing their client.
00:24:24.320And so it's one of the real values of Trey's law is that when this passes, and I didn't say if, I said when, we will get this passed.
00:24:35.820When this passes, that incentive will go away.
00:24:39.780Look, if you're negotiating a settlement, I used an example earlier today.
00:24:45.920There aren't settlement agreements that say as a condition of the settlement, you have to deal crack cocaine.
00:24:52.120because dealing crack cocaine is illegal and so you can't agree in a settlement to do something
00:24:58.040that is illegal by taking ndas off the table uh for forcing victims of child sex abuse
00:25:05.600to not be able to disclose what happened to them that incentive for their lawyers to pressure them
00:25:12.480to do this will go away likewise and and importantly we drafted trey's law so that a
00:25:19.020victim can still insist on an NDA for the abuser. If a victim decides, I don't want my story told,
00:25:25.240that's your right as well. We're not going to force a victim to tell his story or her story
00:25:29.800against their will. You're protecting the victim in the way you're writing this, which I think is
00:25:33.940such an important part of this conversation. I want people to understand that. It's a lot of
00:25:37.920what we talked about with we want to protect victims, for example, when we're exposing
00:25:40.800everything with the Epstein files. It's the same mentality here. If you don't want your name out
00:25:45.320there. We want to protect it, right? That's the heart of Trey's Law, is giving survivors ownership
00:25:50.660of their own stories so that they can decide what they want told about what happened to them.
00:25:56.700The trauma alone is enough abuse. We don't need to pile that on. And you bring up a good point,
00:26:02.120Senator, around the incentives and the incentives being misaligned because this type of
00:26:08.240case falls under personal injury law and so you've been to law school and in that area of the law
00:26:15.740it's typically your attorneys who are taking auto accident cases or slip and falls child sexual
00:26:23.380abuse is a fear it's in it i like that it's a personal injury claim because it is an injury
00:26:28.300to the brain to the soul and so it should be a personal injury claim but the way personal injury
00:26:34.200law works is that you are looking to settle keep this from going i mean over 96 percent of cases i
00:26:41.720think settle outside of trial when it comes to personal injury and um so you know the victim
00:26:47.700doesn't want to have to go to trial and put themselves through more trauma they're incentivized
00:26:52.260to settle and a lawyer says this can all be behind you if you sign on the dotted line
00:26:56.160and then they can take 40 which is the typical commission on a case like this
00:27:00.320move on to the next rinse and repeat and that doesn't work when we're talking about childhood
00:27:05.460sexual abuse well and the u.s supreme court has described they've said other than murder
00:27:10.860rape is the most grievous harm that could be inflicted to a person and and i've spent a lot
00:27:19.020of my career fighting against child sexual abuse so when i was the solicitor general of texas
00:27:24.960uh i argued in front of the u.s supreme court defending louisiana's law that provided for
00:27:33.080capital punishment the death penalty for the most egregious child rapist unfortunately the supreme
00:27:38.440court 5-4 struck that down so we did not prevail in that case uh texas's law was also struck down
00:27:44.380when louisiana's law was struck down i also defended texas has a texas sexually violent
00:27:50.820predator civil commitment law that gives the courts the ability to take a sexually violent
00:27:56.200predator and put them in civil commitment, take them off the streets to protect people.
00:28:00.740And a state court of appeals had struck that law down and concluded it was unconstitutional.
00:28:06.560And I argued the case in front of the Texas Supreme Court defending that law. And we won
00:28:12.060unanimously. The law was reinstated and it's now a tool that you have to go after sexual predators.
00:28:17.140and you know we mentioned before so this bill my my lead co-sponsor is kirsten jillibrand
00:28:24.820democrat from new york and then we have on this bill as well we have katie brit republican from
00:28:30.880alabama is a dear friend uh we have eric schmidt republican from missouri another very good friend
00:28:36.040and then we also have amy klobuchar democrat from minnesota we have peter welch democrat
00:28:42.060from vermont and then gene shaheen a democrat from from new hampshire and i think we will get
00:28:48.300very widespread bipartisan support to be honest those six are the the only six i asked i started
00:28:55.100with them i've worked all of them i've worked with on on previous legislation but you know i'll tell
00:29:01.240you jillibrand and i started working on this issue more than a decade ago because she was a leader in
00:29:09.480in going after sexual assault in the military and there's been a real problem with sexual assault in
00:29:13.800the military and the way it used to work is the decision about whether to prosecute a rapist
00:29:22.120was made by the commander by and and the commander frequently knew the violator often was close to
00:29:30.040the violator and victims of sexual assault in the military were afraid to report the rapes
00:29:35.800because they didn't believe the commander would be fair.
00:29:40.020They believed the commander would be biased in favor of the violator.
00:29:44.480And so Gillibrand, and this is back 2013 when I was a brand new baby senator,
00:29:49.700had just been elected, Kirsten was leading the charge saying this doesn't make any sense
00:29:55.080and the decision of whether to prosecute should not be made by the commanding officer
00:30:00.460but rather should be made by a career military prosecutor.
00:30:04.960So in the military but not in the chain of command, so not connected to the alleged violator.
00:30:13.320And I will tell you the Pentagon fought tooth and nail.
00:30:17.060They hated that provision, and I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee with Kirsten at the time, and I heard her make the argument, make the argument passionately for changing the prosecuting decision to a career prosecutor.
00:30:31.160and it was one of those instances where sometimes you say hearings don't, you know, are kind of
00:30:37.320performance. They don't necessarily change anyone's mind. Well, I listened to her arguments and I was
00:30:41.420persuaded. And I went up to her and I said, Kirsten, I want to team up with you and let's
00:30:45.140get this done. And we did. It took nearly a decade to get it done because the Barack Obama
00:30:51.880wouldn't do it, by the way. Obama was president. He could have done it unilaterally and he wouldn't
00:30:56.200do it. And it took, we ultimately got the legislation passed, but it was a decade-long
00:31:01.580battle. This is one I'm confident will be faster. I don't think this will take a decade to make
00:31:08.320happen. You mentioned at the press conference also that we had another victim of sexual abuse
00:31:15.160share her story. Her name is Jaden Harris. And I want to play what she said at the press
00:31:21.520conference, because this was really powerful and moving. She was sharing about the sexual
00:31:29.360violence she experienced, and give a listen, give a watch. Good morning. First, I want to thank
00:31:37.700these co-sponsors for their leadership in filing Trey's law at the federal level.
00:31:44.720my name is jayden harris i'm 19 years old and i'm here today not just as a child sexual abuse
00:31:54.160survivor from branson missouri but as someone whose voice was protected by dre's law it's why
00:31:59.880i can be here today when i came forward about the abuse i experienced i was prepared for it to be
00:32:08.860difficult. What I wasn't prepared for was the intimidation not only from my abuser but from my
00:32:15.060own lawyer to sign a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for restitution during a mediation
00:32:21.880process. I was alone when it came to fighting for my voice. It was both my abuser and my lawyer
00:32:29.580that tried to require me to sign an NDA,
00:32:35.740a contractual clause that would have restricted my ability
00:32:39.780to speak about the details of what happened to me for the rest of my life.
00:32:44.460Imagine being told you can never tell your own truth.
00:32:48.480Despite the bullying for my attorney and all those involved in the case,
00:32:53.020in my heart I knew I had to stand for truth.
00:32:55.300not just for myself but for others who feel they have been silenced
00:33:00.600I'm standing here today with my voice because Trey's law protected it as a matter of public
00:33:08.560policy and I was able to achieve settlement while preserving my ability to speak out in
00:33:13.580hope of protecting others due to learning about Trey's law in Missouri I knew something important
00:33:20.540I cannot be legally forced into silence.
00:33:24.600No agreement could take away my right to speak about my own experience
00:41:19.560And let me say to anyone listening to this, if you've been a victim, it's not your fault.
00:41:23.980And that's one of the lies these abusers try to convince children that it is your fault, that you invited this, that the blame is with you.
00:42:18.180Oh, and it was very clear that the group you mentioned earlier, the ones you've asked so far, they are behind survivors.
00:42:26.260They want to protect survivors' voices, and that's what Trey's Law will do, and it does need to be national because going state by state creates an imbalance, protects the people in power, the predators, and the institutions that harbor these predators over a child having ownership of their story.
00:42:44.640Right. And that's the core of our mission here. And thank you for taking time out of not a slow
00:42:51.380news day to make this a priority to hear from people like Jaden and others who spoke.
00:42:55.920This is important to happen. And to go to the really corrosive power of shame.
00:43:02.440Last year, and we talked about this earlier today, a law that I authored and we passed into law was
00:43:08.520the Take It Down Act. And the Take It Down Act makes it a crime to post non-consensual
00:43:14.960intimate imagery, either real pictures and you see so-called revenge porn of explicit
00:43:22.080photographs or videos that a couple breaks up and one decides, okay, I'm going to hurt
00:43:28.320my former lover and publicist. And no one has the right to make that public and to do
00:43:34.780that to someone else but we've also seen with ai the rise of deep fakes and and this problem
00:43:42.840has increased more than 3 000 in the last year and and more than 90 of the victims are either
00:43:48.240women or teenage girls and when we were pushing to pass it and building the coalition to pass it
00:43:54.780one of the things we did uh the first lady became very actively involved in this legislation and i
00:44:00.080appreciated she i hosted the first lady on capitol hill and she was at a round table where she met
00:44:06.340with a number of the victims and to give you a sense there there was one person who testified
00:44:13.220who is a a state legislator in south carolina whose son had received it was online and he was
00:44:24.640a teenager and he thought he was talking with a cute teenage girl and the supposed cute teenage
00:44:33.260girl was flirting with him and and teenage boys everyone can make foolish decisions but teenage
00:44:40.800boys in particular uh this this cute girl convinced him to take uh revealing and naked
00:44:49.260pictures of himself and to send those pictures uh it turned out that the cute girl was not a cute
00:44:56.480girl but rather was a predator um a predator a foreign predator who then began blackmailing him
00:45:05.900and saying i'm going to take this picture that you just took you just took a naked picture of
00:45:11.700yourself and sent it to me i'm going to send this picture to your family i'm going to send it to
00:45:16.920your parents i'm going to send it to your friends i'm going to send it to everyone unless you give
00:45:21.200me money sextortion and tragically this teenage boy took his life the entire exchange from the
00:45:30.020first interaction to when he took his own life was 90 minutes and his father shared that story
00:45:38.620but that's the power of shame of the of this teenager who had taken a picture thinking he
00:45:43.500was flirting and then the terror of if I get exposed for that, which look, compared to being
00:45:51.300a victim of sexual assault, taking a picture of yourself is not nearly as severe. And yet that
00:45:58.320shame was so powerful that that teenage boy took his own life. I mean, this is the pressures on
00:46:06.660our kids. They're enormous, and they face things that technology amplifies all of this.
00:46:14.320Yeah, it's really an epidemic. And as a mom of three, I know you have two girls,
00:46:22.840the threats are different than they were in our childhoods.
00:46:27.400Very different. We were playing Super Mario Kart.
00:46:30.080One in three kids will be propositioned sexually online. One in three.
00:46:33.780And so, again, thank you for championing the Take It Down Act and your co-sponsors and the survivors and sadly the families victimized in that situation.
00:46:44.320The National Center on Missing and Excelled Children just put out a very powerful video on that issue in particular.
00:46:49.860And when I was the board chair of an anti-trafficking organization, the FBI put out their notice on sextortion.
00:46:55.260We had something come through a case around girls being trafficked on Venmo.
00:46:59.340So it's sometimes often these apps parents aren't even thinking about, but Roblox, especially atrocious, so many examples of abuse happening on Discord, and then what they do is they take it live.
00:47:14.760So in my brother's story, it was an institution that covered up abuse.
00:47:19.900Now it's these tech companies covering up abuse, and the bad actors are a step ahead of us.
00:47:26.520and the legislation can't continue to be reactive.
00:47:30.840What I think Trey's Law does is it removes that barrier
00:47:34.300because the shame is already inherent in the crime itself.
00:47:38.160And it removes that barrier so that victims come forward quicker,
00:53:19.140And thank you for taking action with me, with all the survivors in the room today who flew in from across the country.
00:53:25.600They'd been advocating in Georgia and Alabama and Missouri and Texas.
00:53:30.060And they showed up in that room and it was, yes, full of tears, but also full of hope.
00:53:34.740And there are some other bills right now that need support, like the Renewed Hope Act and the Defiance Act, which is a complement to the Take It Down Act.
00:53:43.280And so this Congress can achieve a lot to protect victims, and if people do call their elected legislators, then we can get this done.
00:53:54.660And I love hearing you say that over and over, that it's not an if, it's a when.
00:53:59.580And, you know, with this kind of thing, there's never a win.
00:54:03.660It is a lose-lose in my family's case, but we can, like you said, we can prevent this from happening.
00:54:10.860we can catch it sooner and this era can end amen don't forget we do this show three days a week
00:54:17.460monday wednesday and friday i ask you if you get to see this please share the video uh youtube
00:54:23.900video on facebook as well you can share it on x and share this podcast you can hit that little
00:54:29.620forward button and share it wherever you are on social media hopefully you can help others
00:54:33.220and victims come forward and understand what's happening with the laws and how they're changing
00:54:37.380Also be an advocate. Talk to your senator and call their offices and let them know about this law.
00:54:42.440They may not know what's going on with it. Let them know why you're in favor of it, why they should get behind it.
00:54:47.440So it doesn't take 10 years to get this passed. And the senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.
00:54:53.740This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.