Conn. summer camps rarely disciplined for violations

Study of 74 complaints finds state sanctions imposed only once

Last summer, several parents reached out to state officials with a series of concerns about a summer camp in Lebanon called Camp Laurel.

In formal complaints registered with the state, the parents claimed counselors had yelled at children, threatened to deny them food and imposed extra chores as punishment for poor behavior. In one instance, the camp later admitted to state investigators, staff had accidentally taken home a child’s medication. In another, a counselor had shown young campers a graphic tattoo.

The state’s Office of Early Childhood, which oversees private camps in Connecticut, substantiated the complaints and cited the camp for, among other things, its staff’s failure “to exhibit the personal qualities to work with children.” The camp, run by the Girl Scouts of Connecticut, voluntarily closed for the rest of the summer. Camp management declined to discuss details of the complaints with CT Insider.

This summer, though, Camp Laurel applied for and was granted a license to reopen and once again began welcoming campers. And because the program was never formally disciplined and submitted a corrective action plan to state officials, it has not been subject to any further monitoring from the state beyond a routine annual inspection.

Nearly two years ago, CT Insider reported that the state had disciplined camps only four times from 2015-20 and had not suspended or revoked a camp’s license during that time, prompting lawmakers to call for greater oversight. Today, however, officials say the system remains largely unchanged, with six OEC investigators monitoring hundreds of camps and discipline still rare.

According to documents obtained by CT Insider, the OEC reviewed 74 complaints against camps in 2021 and 2022 — ranging from improper supervision to inappropriate sexual comments to substandard facilities — and found violations of state regulations in more than half of instances. Yet the agency considered formal discipline against only three camps, records show, and imposed sanctions only once, when a camp in Durham had its license revoked amid a long list of sanitary violations.

Instead of disciplining camps found to have committed violations, OEC officials typically ask them to submit corrective action plans, explaining how they intend to address the cited issues moving forward.

“Our goal is to try to have all programs in compliance without having to refer them to legal,” Amy Schwarzkopf, the investigative supervisor for OEC’s licensing division, said in an interview, referring to the branch of the agency that handles the most serious complaints.

No follow-up visits

In all but the most egregious cases, OEC officials say, this ends the complaint process, and investigators do not conduct follow-up visits to confirm corrective action plans have been put into practice.

“If there are violations cited at an inspection and we get a corrective action plan that adequately addresses the violation, we might not do a follow-up,” said Elizabeth Proietti, OEC’s director of licensing.

According to interviews with officials and records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, three camps drew particular scrutiny from OEC staff during 2021 and 2022. Two prompted the state to eventually pursue discipline, while the third did not.

Reports of bullying

One was Camp Shane, a weightloss camp in Kent whose staff was accused in state records of leaving campers unsupervised, bullying, falsifying documents and more. The day before the camp eventually shut down, an 8-year-old girl suffered a serious head injury while playing soccer on a tennis court.

An OEC investigative summary states that “multiple families, many from out of state, reported trying to contact the camp about concerns with their child and not receiving any response via email, text or phone for extended periods of time.”

Before the OEC could impose discipline, the camp closed permanently and its owner, David Ettenberg, surrendered his license. Though he surrendered his license, Ettenberg denied wrongdoing and said he closed the camp due to a staff shortage. After Ettenberg surrendered the license, the OEC and the Department of Children and Families ended their joint investigation.

Reached by phone recently, Ettenberg denied the charges against his camp, which he blamed on disgruntled employees lying to investigators. He said he’s now working with someone else who runs camps to open another program, possibly in Connecticut.

“It would be wherever the person that I work with — he’ll have to find a place to go,” Ettenberg said. “And we like Connecticut. I like Connecticut.”

The second program that drew scrutiny from investigators was Camp Degel Hatorah, an Orthodox Jewish summer camp in Durham. After receiving a complaint in August 2022 that a teenage staff member had suffered serious burns in a camp kitchen, an investigator reported that the camp “was observed to have multiple hazards and was in a state of extreme filth” and cited it for a series of violations.

Rabbi Joseph Deutsch, who owned Camp Degel Hatorah, said by phone this past week that the camp was messy at the time of the inspection only because it was the last day of the summer. He said the kitchen was used exclusively by staff and that the child who was burned has since recovered.

“The boy fully recovered, thank God, and he’s fine, and he actually wanted to come back, if he could have come to camp this year,” Deutsch said.

The state brought formal charges against Camp Degel Hatorah in March and revoked its license the next month, after Deutsch declined to contest the allegations. The camp has since reopened in Pennsylvania under the same name, according to a local newspaper there, The Morning Call.

A representative from Pennsylvania’s Department of Health confirmed to CT Insider that Camp Degel Hatorah was registered there. Deutsch declined to comment on the camp’s relocation.

The third camp, called Camp Mountain Laurel, is located in Hamden and run by the Central Connecticut Coast YMCA (and is not to be confused with Camp Laurel, in Lebanon). In 2021, the OEC received a complaint, later substantiated by investigators, that a student had nearly drowned at the camp after being coaxed by a counselor to jump into the deep end of the pool despite not being a strong swimmer.

Camp Mountain Laurel had not reported the incident to the state, as was required. And according to documents obtained by CT Insider, accounts of the incident from camp management were inconsistent and eventually contradicted in part by cell phone footage of the incident.

“I am very concerned,” Debra Johnson, then the OEC’s licensing director, wrote in an email to her staff. “Not just due to the incident but it appears that staff did not follow a safety protocol, staff are trying to cover things up and staff are not being truthful.”

This time, though, the allegations didn’t end with a camp closing, or even with a consent order — a type of formal discipline that requires camps to pay a civil penalty and submit to extra monitoring moving forward. Instead, Camp Mountain Laurel was permitted to submit a corrective action plan and the matter was closed.

In an email, an OEC spokesperson said the decision not to issue formal discipline in this case came after a compliance meeting at which Camp Mountain Laurel staff was offered a chance “to both dispute violations and demonstrate compliance with the regulations.” The decision was reached collectively between the agency’s licensing and legal teams, the spokesperson said.

David Stevenson, CEO of the Central Connecticut Coast YMCA, said he could not discuss the specifics of the near-drowning due to “an agreement with the family to protect their privacy.” He said since that incident he has begun personally conducting aquatic safety inspections and that protecting children is the organization’s “very first priority in anything that we do.”