SACRAMENTO, Calif. — District 41 Assemblyman Chris Holden introduced camp safety bill AB-262 on January 19, a measure which sustains the clash of interests between child safety advocates and the camp lobby, including the American Camp Association, Western Association of Independent Camps. Boy Scouts of America and Christian Camp & Conference Association.

The bill recommends a stakeholder workgroup to gather information and provide recommendations to the Legislature regarding development of subsequent legislation for children’s camps. A children’s camp would be redefined as a program that offers daytime or overnight experiences administered by adults, that provides social, cultural, educational, recreational, or artistic programming to more than five children between 3 and 17 years of age for five days or longer.

Stakeholder group oversight would shift from the Department of Public Health to the Department of Social Services. The group itself would consist of roughly one half dozen state agencies and third parties, including child and parent advocates, health, safety and recreation professionals, camps and researchers.

As the nation’s only camp safety foundation, Meow Meow Foundation expects to be invited to that table, should the measure succeed. Astonishingly, the foundation is the nation’s only camp safety nonprofit despite the $26 billion camp industry serving 25 million children and 1.5 million workers via roughly 30,000 camps.

The foundation asked Holden to carry its 2022 camp safety bill AB 1737. Sen. Portantino carried the foundation’s original bill in 2020.

Assembly and Senate committees voted in favor of last year’s bill, but legislator demands for amendments — coupled with relentless camp lobby influence — all but eviscerated every health and safety provision. By the time the measure reached a floor vote, the camp lobby had effectively convinced Holden and fellow legislators to further empower the American Camp Association instead of properly protect children. In a stunning public display, Sen. Richard Pan, a pediatrician, went so far as to say that he did not find any merit in expanding critical mandated reporter requirements aimed at preventing child abuse.

Foundation President Doug Forbes said he had no choice but to fervently oppose the very bill he introduced, a scenario with which he is all too familiar. “This was not our first rodeo with the camp lobby and legislator fecklessness,” he said. “Our first bill in 2020 suffered the same fate as last year’s bill, due to relentless, successful camp lobby efforts that prioritize camps over kids. I have paid the ultimate price, which is why I will stop at nothing to get this job done.”

A Los Angeles camp named Summerkids ended Forbes’s daughter’s life in 2019. Camp owners Cara, Joseph, Maria and Giancarlo DiMassa family exacted a long term scheme to provide fake lifeguard certifications to camp counselors who had not undergone required training and testing. Roxie drowned in the camp’s small pool while four fraudulently certified counselors failed to provide supervision or notice her in distress. Forbes’s wife Elena died 10 months ago from what he called “extreme, depression-fueled cancer.” His mother died three months later, under eerily similar circumstances.

“Based on what I know and have experienced, I am not head over heels about Holden’s current bill,” Forbes said. “However, I am willing to further explore our potential support.” Forbes said the bill does not set any time limits for the workgroup to report its findings and subsequently introduce bipartisan legislation. He said that children will be raped, injured and killed while government does what it does best—”have meetings about meetings.” Media reports prove that children and counselors have been seriously injured, killed and sexually assaulted at camps since Forbes introduced his first camp safety bill three years ago.

Forbes said he is especially concerned that Holden excluded his foundation from the conversation about this bill. Forbes said he had similar communication issues over last year’s failed bill, which eventually left him no other choice but to oppose the measure which the foundation largely crafted and sponsored and for which they garnered high level endorsements from the Beau Biden Foundation, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, American Academy of Pediatrics California, Los Angeles Unified School District and others.

“This must not be about ego or power or posturing or political gamesmanship. Every child that is and has been harmed at a camp — ever since we warned everyone from the Governor’s senior staff on down—is responsible for that harm due to their utter lack of urgency. Frankly, it’s hard enough for me to get up in the morning, let alone watch their lethal inertia swallow kids and families whole.”

Forbes is currently traveling the nation directing a documentary about this dark American secret of pervasive camp harm. He has interviewed survivors, families of deceased and abused children, politicians, attorneys, national advocacy organizations, social scientists, camp advocates and other stakeholders. He is unveiling the harm to educate families in their camp decisions and to enact federal legislation.