Lawsuits Accuse Duke University of Concealing Child Sex Abuse at Its Camp for Chronically Ill Kids

Every July for nearly forty years, Duke University offered children and teenagers with chronic illnesses—cancer, asthma, lupus, heart disease—a chance to do a normal-kid thing that, for them, had seemed out of reach.

They could go to summer camp.

Most sleep-away camps couldn’t accommodate them. Counselors didn’t have the right training. Facilities didn’t have the right equipment. So they were forced to miss out on formative experiences that their peers took for granted.

In 1979, three Duke employees—a physician, social worker, and play therapist—set out to change that. The university rented a Girl Scouts campground overlooking Kerr Lake in Henderson, about an hour’s drive northeast of Durham. Kids between the ages of seven and sixteen who were being treated at Duke University Children’s Hospital could spend a week there free of charge, their stays funded by donations. Camp Kaleidoscope lasted three weeks, each week dedicated to a different age group. Duke residents, students, social workers, child life specialists, and other employees served as counselors and staff.

More than a thousand children attended Camp K, as it was known, over the next thirty-eight years, many of them repeat campers. For some, it was their first time away from home. They played sports and learned to swim, did arts and crafts and were entertained by magicians. By all accounts, Camp K was beloved.

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