Washington Free Beacon senior investigative reporter Alana Goodman said Monday that Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock cannot avoid addressing abuse allegations about the camp he once ran.
Goodman went on Fox News @ Night With Shannon Bream Monday to discuss her investigation into the church camp Warnock ran, where Anthony Washington, now 30, said he suffered abuse as a 12-year-old camper.
"[Warnock] has really avoided addressing questions on this, and he has really gone after people who bring this situation up, and said, 'It's a political attack,'" Goodman said. "I think he is going to have a harder time dismissing this, because [Washington] is a person who is telling his story. He has no stake in this, and really, it was just a traumatizing and disturbing situation."
The Georgia pastor-turned-politician has avoided answering Free Beacon inquiries into his record running Camp Farthest Out, where Washington said counselors doused him in urine for wetting the bed and made him sleep outside. Warnock was arrested for obstructing police investigations into abuse at the camp, but the Warnock campaign has maintained that he cooperated with police and was not at fault.
A Maryland state trooper, however, said Warnock repeatedly disrupted her interviews with counselors while she was investigating allegations of child abuse. Warnock and another reverend were charged with "hindering and obstructing" police, although the charges were later dropped by the state prosecutor.
Goodman argued the evidence shows a pattern of problems at the camp.
"This was not a trivial kind of one-off issue: This was something where you had three separate state agencies investigating child abuse allegations at this camp under his tenure," Goodman said. "You had at least five cases that were brought for child abuse, brought against the camp's director under Warnock's tenure, and the camp had its license revoked for failing to report child abuse."
Bream also noted that the Warnock campaign has not answered Fox's requests for comment on the allegations.
Warnock is running against incumbent senator Kelly Loeffler (R.) in one of the two Georgia Senate runoffs.