I just finished watching the movie “Camp Hell,” this movie took me back to the night when an old fishing buddy and I, were on an overnight fishing trip with our children. My friend and I were telling the children “ghost” stories. I have always found it most interesting that when you raise children without religious superstition and ignorance, just how that they have little to no fear of the supernatural either. And despite the fact that our children, except for two, were all still preteen; most of our children found most of the stories interesting, but not so scary. In fact, the older ones had gotten so bored that they simply went back to playing with their handheld video games. At that point, my friend began telling the story of his experience at a Catholic summer-camp, that he had when he was in his early teens. He said that the first day that he had arrived, that the priests started talking to them about sex and masturbation – and how sinful masturbation was. The priests told them that “god” sees everything that they do, including masturbating, and if they happened to die after masturbating, and if they happen to die before they were able to “confess” this horrible “sin” of masturbating, that they would be sent to “purgatory,” where they would then suffer great pain in cleansing them of this “sin,” before they could then continue on their way to “heaven.” He then went on to tell us how the priests had privately told most of the other campers, that it was ok with “god,” for them to have sex with priests – and after he had this private conservation with one of the priests, who then started fondling him – he said he told the priest that if he didn’t stop touching him, that neither of them would be “happy campers.” He said that he had his dad pick him up at the camp, the next day; however, his dad never believed him about the priests.
Two of my children found his story so frightful, that they both had nightmares that evening.
I found the movie Hell Camp both interesting and entertaining for the most part, and slightly better than most other B-movies of this type – however, it gives a good look into the mindset of these ignorant priests, and into one of the ways in which they use fear in controlling child behavior, and how they can so easily victimizing a child as well – however, none of the children are raped in this movie.
