Green is a former Kanakuk Kamps counselor from Louisiana who, according to a May 2022 Springfield News-Leader article, is alleged to have sexually abused a camper in 1994 while visiting a camper family in Texas in the off-season (a common practice among Kanakuk families). The alleged abuse was reported by the victim family to the police and Kanakuk leadership, but just after a confession recorded by police was obtained, Green crashed his car into a highway overpass support and died the morning of December 6, 1994. Due to his death, Green was never convicted. “It is not known if the allegations against Green were shared with other parents – Goodwin, the Kanakuk Ministries president, said the camp did not have a policy at that time of alerting parents when former counselors were revealed to be abusers”.
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At least one Kanakuk counselor — Paul Green — was investigated by police years before Newman was caught.
“People thought of Paul Green as this God-like figure,” said Blake Fusch, who was 14 when he spent a summer in the 30-year-old counselor’s cabin.
Like Price and Newman, Green was popular. When he entered the room, kids chanted his name, Fusch said. “Everybody looked up to him.”
Fusch’s parents met Green when they picked their son up from camp and were impressed. When they vacationed in Florida, where Green was living, they invited him along, a common practice among Kanakuk families.
In November 1994, Green spent Thanksgiving with them in Dallas.
It was during that Thanksgiving visit that Fusch said he woke one night and could tell that Green had been reaching into Fusch’s underwear from his adjacent trundle bed.
The next day, Fusch asked to have a friend spend the night so they could sleep in the living room.
“I was trying to avoid him,” Fusch said. “He knew I knew. I knew he knew.”
Fusch said Green packed and left abruptly after hearing Fusch tell his sister about the abuse. A day later, Fusch told his parents, who alerted police and met with a Dallas detective who specialized in investigating sex crimes. The detective suggested having the boy confront Green on a phone call, which police would record.
“I know what you were doing to me at night, and I didn't like it,” he said on the phone with Green. After a few moments of silence, Fusch said, Green replied: “It was an isolated situation and it’ll never happen again.”
At a meeting with the detective the next Monday morning, the family was told to expect an arrest that week. But Green would never face charges.
Before sunrise Green — then a graduate student at Louisiana State University – had crashed his car into a highway overpass support and died, according to a report in the Baton Rouge Advocate.
“The death was harder for me to deal with than the abuse,” Fusch said, “because I felt like I had driven him to it.”
- Survivors, ex-employees say Kanakuk Christian camp 'ministered' to its sexual predators, USA Today - May 27, 2022
