Lynn Stucky Failed to Protect Texas Children

Every year parents spend time, energy and money to search out and choose the perfect summer camp experience for their children. They carefully weigh the camp options and safety is of utmost concern. But for parents who chose Kanakuk Kamps, based in Kansas City, Missouri, the choice became a nightmare when the camp director was arrested and convicted for molesting campers.

What does a child rape scandal at Missouri summer camp have to do with Texas?  It turns out State Representative Lynn Stucky (R-Denton) serves on the board of directors of the Kanakuk Institute and its Kanakuk Kamp.

In February 2010, former camp director Peter Newman pleaded guilty in Taney County to several counts of statutory sodomy and child enticement involving child abuse of a boy on Kanakuk property between approximately 2005 and 2008.

The convicted camp director received two life sentences and victims settled for $20 million in civil lawsuits and Texas got Stucky’s support of a bill which would exempt culpable entities, like Kanakuk, from liability.

In addition to Stucky serving on their boards, the Kanakuk Institute and Kanakuk Kamps have other commonalities – similar names, identical addresses, similar logos and Joe White, a nationally recognized speaker who owns Kanakuk Kamps and served on the Institute’s Board of Directors with Stucky. But White and Stucky aren’t simply colleagues on the Kanakuk board, White is one of Stucky’s campaign donors.

The real problem is not Stucky’s board membership or friendship with Joe White, it’s how he voted to protect organizations like Kanakuk from being sued by survivors of sexual abuse.

In the 2019 legislative session here in Texas, Stucky voted to exempt institutions from the extension of the statute of limitations victims have for suing in civil court. After passing the House unanimously, advocates for survivors of sexual abuse came forward.

In an emotional hearing of the Senate State Affairs Committee, survivors of abuse by convicted USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar spoke strongly against the provision which would exempt culpable entities. Survivors Tasha and Jordan Schwikert and Alyssa Baumann – all native Texans – testified before the committee on May 13, 2019 and spoke of the need to hold organizations and institutions who employed sexual predators accountable.

In her testimony before the Senate State Affairs Committee, Jordan Schwikert said, “Texas lawmakers have a moral duty to allow survivors like myself to hold everyone who played a role in abuse accountable. Institutions like USA Gymnastics must be accountable. Exempting institutions from liability creates a world in which the cycle of abuse can continue.”

These three Texas heroes made a critical point – USA Gymnastics had heard allegations about Larry Nassar for years, but did nothing to protect hundreds of young female gymnasts from his perverted predations.  Had they been forced to act – by statues which held them accountable for a failure of supervision or action – many young athletes would never have been assaulted.

Their powerful testimony led the Senate to amend the bill to add back language on longer statutes of limitation to include organizations which had been protected by Stucky and his colleagues. It became effective on September 1, 2019.

Under pressure, Stucky voted for the bill, but why did he try to protect organizations like Kanakuk in the first place?

Texans have the right to know if their legislators are performing their duty to protect victims and survivors or failing them by protecting their friends and contributors.