The Shawn Ryan Show
#272 Elizabeth Phillips - Inside Camp Kanakuk: One of America’s Darkest Child Summer Camps
19 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Elizabeth Phillips, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
You're welcome. Been looking forward to this.
Same.
But yeah, so interesting. I think it was a couple months ago. I think maybe late October, sometime in November. Tim Tebow called me and told me about your situation, what you're doing, the laws that you're getting passed. And he told me about... what happened with your brother, who was sexually abused at Camp Canacook in Missouri.
And Tim asked me if I would be interested in doing an interview with you. And so when he told me about the situation, Immediately, I was like, yep, I'm in. Let's do it. This is a topic that we've covered several times on this show, and I think a lot of people are scared to talk about this subject. I don't know why. I don't know what's more important than saving our kids, but...
We're here for it. And so thank you for being here. This is going to be a very heavy interview. And, man, you know, I've just heard amazing things about Camp Cannecook. In fact, one of our team members here today has been there. I think she said she's been going there since she was three years old. And, yeah, but...
Thanks for being willing to have the conversation and to enter the darkness a little bit so we can expose it.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: What led Elizabeth Phillips to advocate for child protection laws?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Have you ever been to Branson?
Oh, yeah.
It's like a Christian Las Vegas. Yeah. It's so wild.
It's the only theme park I've ever been to that doesn't sell any booze. Yeah.
Silver Dollar City. Yeah, I was like, what's that called again? Silver Dollar City? Exactly. So, like, yeah, the whole Canna Cuck situation is like that show Ozark meets Righteous Gemstones, if you've seen those shows. And you've got Joe White, who's this big character, and... people worshiped him next to God.
And he was really high profile in the 90s and wrote, I mean, 14 at least books, published by Focus on the Family. They've sent, Focus on the Family's taken all of that down since this has been exposed. But he was a megastar stadium speaker. He would give the commencement at Liberty University's graduation or whatever.
He would go to Promise Keepers events and be a featured speaker at those types of conferences.
He's the guy that runs the whole thing.
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Chapter 3: How does Elizabeth Phillips describe her experiences at Kanakuk Camps?
When we have witnesses who were on those trips saying, we saw Pete Newman filming these boys getting massages and having the massage therapists activate their groin areas so he could film it. So, they were abused all over the place. There were trips to Haiti, um... you know, in the name of Kanakuk International Mission Trips. Um... There were, I mean, Trinidad and Tobago, all over the world.
And, um... So... Where was I with that? The... Basically, like, I didn't really know the extent of what happened to my brother until... So... He was not doing well. And then he decided to pursue civil litigation against Kanakuk. After the criminal case closed, he was named as a victim.
right when Pete Newman got arrested, Joe White flew down on his private plane to Dallas and asked for a meeting with my dad and Trey, man to man. Like, leave my mom out of it. He didn't want to angry mom involved.
And, uh, this was before the story really broke, and he was like, it's gonna come out that Pete Newman was abusing boys, but it was really just boys being boys, typical middle school masturbation and experimentation. Like, minimized it, downplayed it, with my brother Trey right there. Basically saying, here's the story and you're sticking to it. It wasn't a big deal.
Holy shit. Now, do you think this guy knew that your brother was abused?
Yeah, because he was on a list. Pete Newman provided a list of victims.
So, this is after he was arrested.
This was, uh, so, the exact chronology is, like, March 2009, he, uh, confesses to Kanakuk leadership that he's been abusing boys.
What year? Hmm? What year?
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Chapter 4: What insights did Elizabeth Phillips share during her Zoom call with law enforcement about Kanakuk?
I'm not getting off this island. I just got on this island, but I'll do a Zoom call. And so I did a Zoom call with the lead criminal investigator for the IRS in that central region. And he brought in the SAC agent and another agent who leads the task force on child exploitation somewhere in Missouri. They're blacked out because they're on location somewhere. They can't show where they are.
But I can see the IRS agent, and he's fired up. Like, he sees this for what it is. And I go through a presentation. I have it right here. This is what I presented to law enforcement. I had, like, two all-nighters to pull this together, because I was not in town. It's... I had... My right-hand woman was on maternity leave, and her deputy was helping me scramble to put something together.
We organized all this information we'd been digging up for years at this point, like, three years' worth of tips, and just pulling numbers where we could, claims Kanika had made, and... So I went through this deck and I get through the page about their money and private inurement and the IRS agent goes, well, where'd you get these numbers?
Chapter 5: How does Kanakuk's financial transparency impact its operations?
And I was like, oh, we just pulled this from their 990 forms. So 990 forms are what you send to the IRS if you're a nonprofit. You don't have to do 990 forms if you're a church. So their transparency has gotten less and less since 2015 when they became a church.
But we were able to dig up what we could through the 990s, and we were able to trace $380 million in gross revenue to this camp in southwest Missouri. Wow. And then we calculated that, net that out, 25% was leaving the country and going to failed states like Haiti.
25% was leaving the country.
Yeah. Yeah. So you've got Kanakuk who's soliciting donations. They have revenue from their summer camps, right? I mentioned it's very expensive to go there. Thousands of dollars a week to go to Kanakuk. So they have earned revenue.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of Trey's Law on child protection and NDAs?
But then they also fundraise for the poor children in Haiti. And Joe White does his whole thing about this.
Wait, how can they charge for the camp if it's a non-profit?
Oh, it's not unusual. It's a faith-based camp, and they charge per term for their service. So that's not unusual. There are a lot of for-profit camps too, like Camp Mystic, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But Kanakuk was a for-profit camp. then they became a nonprofit camp, then they became a church nonprofit, which is a different tax status. So anyways, the IRS is looking into this.
They're like, you know, this is, the numbers in their bank accounts, when they said, where'd you get these numbers? I said, 990 forms. They go, well, you should see their bank accounts, which tells me it's a lot more than what I know. And then I showed them the money, follow the money, right? follow the money to Haiti.
And they were funneling money to... And this is, I'm telling the FBI this, you know, the IRS has brought them in. It's like, not like out of the blue, I'm cold calling the FBI on this. There's an active investigation, right? And so, they bring these guys in, and I'm like, yeah, so we have, at this point, Here's a chart of all their entities. I mean, there's so many of them.
You broke down the entire organization.
Broke down the entire organization. We found that the White family earned $11.7 million in revenue from CannaCook Ministries personally between 2006 to 2020. $9.1 million of that is rental income to the White's for-profit holding companies that they don't pay taxes on. They got the county to alleviate their taxes, even though they're for-profit.
2.6 million in compensation to Joe and Debbie Jo White between 2006 and 2020. So, you know, I started with the numbers because this is an IRS angle. And from my experience working with the anti-trafficking nonprofit I mentioned earlier, she and her other friend got rescued because... the IRS got their pimp on money laundering and tax evasion, not on sex trafficking.
So that's oftentimes how these trafficking rings get busted up. It's because all of the money, not the crime itself. So that's how I knew to, like, go this angle, right? Here it is, when Rick Brashler becomes the director of risk management in 2003, they had a 4,000% increase in their insurance coverage. They knew what was coming.
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Chapter 7: What pivotal moments led to the passing of Trey's Law?
Did he help out?
No.
Did you reach out to him?
No.
You didn't?
No.
You probably should.
I'll get right on that. But Toth, he's a good guy because he stood with Rep Leach on the House floor when the House was gonna vote on Trey's Law. And, uh... I couldn't be there in Austin for some reason, so I was watching it, like, on my laptop. And you can see, like, right there next to Jeff Leach is Steve Toth.
And he has this look of fury on his face as Jeff's redoing the bill outlay, which is basically like saying, I'll send you the clip. I mean, it's super powerful. And then Mitch Little had some powerful comments too.
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Chapter 8: How does Elizabeth Phillips view the future of camp safety regulations?
That's good to hear.
There's a lot more behind the scenes on that Texas bill if you want to talk about it, but we landed the plane and victims have their voices back. And the most poignant memory in this work from last year was when I got to tell that student of Angela Paxton, Senator Paxton's former student, September 1st, two words, be free.
I love that.
Be free.
Elizabeth, what do you have to accomplish to move on with your life?
I just think when you lose someone under these circumstances and crimes are involved, you have to understand the issue, first of all. Figure out how to prevent it from happening to others. Because I hold this information now. My brother's not alive to talk about it. So I have to talk about it. And now I work with a lot of other survivors who are ready and willing to talk about it.
And as long as they need me, I'm here. And I don't know what that looks like. I've thought about, I told you my faith was shattered, like deconstructed it, reconstructed it. Like I've thought about going to seminary. I've thought about going to law school.
And then I realized, you know, in helping pass these four laws in one year, I'm probably best served, best service to others if I keep advocating with them for them. Sometimes they need a voice, sometimes they just need a mic. You know, Trey doesn't have a voice right now. Since my brother died, I've been trying to be his voice.
Then there are other survivors who have just been silenced and suffering in the shadows, and having them testify at a hearing for a lot of them is so healing. So these hearings are healing for them. Sometimes I'm just the first person they've ever disclosed their abuse to, and I just hold that as sacred. Like it's holy ground when a survivor discloses their abuse to you.
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