A woman who appeared in the shocking new Netflix documentary Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare has recalled her traumatic experience with ‘masterful manipulator’ Steve Cartisano, who she claims continued to abuse her at his home after convincing her mother to let her live with him.
Kinney Drellich Edlinger, 48, accused Cartisano – who was responsible for starting the ‘wilderness therapy camp,’ Challenger Foundation, in the 1980’s – of sexually assaulting her when she was enrolled in the program in Hawaii, just weeks after her 13th birthday.
Steve, who died in May 2019, appeared in the documentary via old video footage. His family stated that they did ‘not wish to challenge’ Kinney’s allegations, but felt that ‘such behavior does not align with their memories of the person’ Steve was.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, Kinney said she believes his ex-wife Deborah- who also featured – has ‘her head buried in the sand’ as she claimed his alleged actions are ‘indefensible.’
Kinney Drellich Edlinger appears in the Netflix documentary Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare
Kinney, now 48, alleges that Steve Cartisano (pictured) groomed and sexually assaulted her when she was 13 years old
Kinney, pictured here as a teenager, was sent to Cartisano’s ‘therapy camp’ in Hawaii when she was 13
Former military special forces officer Steve charged parents $16,000 to supposedly tame their wayward teens as part of the 63-day program.
Kinney, who is now a mom-of-five, was ‘shipped’ off to Hawaii just one week after her 13th birthday in March 1988 because her mother ‘didn’t know what else to do’ with her. Kinney insisted she wasn’t a troublesome child and didn’t do drugs, but was simply ‘struggling with the loss’ of her father.
‘Steve was lovely when I first met him,’ she recalled. ‘We were aboard a yacht, the Lotus Flower. It was a sailing yacht and we sailed from the island of O‘ahu to the big island of Hawaii and he was so kind and so generous and so attentive.
‘He made me feel safe, and that’s why it didn’t dawn on me till later… to me it came out of the blue that he then assaulted me because he was just so nice and he wouldn’t yell at us. It’s hard because there’s so many things about that trip that I can see, as an adult, that were just so haphazardly done.’
In the documentary, Kinney detailed an incident in which Steve offered to put lotion on her body. She claims this was the first time he sexually assaulted her when he touched her breasts.
‘He was a predator, because it wasn’t just me,’ Kinney claimed. ‘One of my childhood friends – the daughter of an employee of his – was also sexually assaulted by him and when I filmed [the documentary], obviously the production crew needed to interview other people who had been through the same thing because they can’t just make accusations of “sexual predator” and so they spoke to this friend of mine.
‘He was absolutely a predator, but also the most masterful manipulator of them all because he was just so kind and he was a family man and he had these children, but he used all of that to his advantage.’
Kinney was sent on a program called Solo in Hawaii, which was described as ‘an opportunity to learn that you can survive on your own’.
She explained how Steve appointed her the role of ‘runner,’ despite the fact that she was ‘one of the youngest kids out there.’ She now believes this was all part of his ‘grooming’ attempts.
During the 90-minute documentary, Kinney claims there was an incident in which Cartisano put lotion on her body and touched her breasts
Kinney spent two months in Hawaii as part of the Solo program and was appointed the role of ‘runner’ by Cartisano
Video footage and photographs of Cartisano with some of the teenagers at one of his camps features in the documentary
Kinney thinks that Cartisano’s ex-wife Deborah Lee Carr has ‘her head buried in the sand’ when it comes to her ex-husband
‘Steve knew that I would be terrified. The particular beach we were on, it was so windy and the wind would just come howling through my campsite in the night and it was kind of scary to be out there,’ she recalled.
‘I was a child out there all by myself. I think that was definitely part of his grooming process… he wanted to be able to come see me without having the other adults around.’
Kinney, who endured two months, revealed Steve stayed in contact with her mother on her return home in May 1988 and even ‘convinced’ her to send Kinney to go and live with him in Mapleton, Utah, where she alleged the sexual abuse continued.
‘She sent me to live with him,’ she said. ‘His family, his wife and his children were in Oklahoma for the summer visiting her parents. And I thought I was crazy because I thought, “oh he wasn’t assaulting me right off the bat”, but again, he manipulated me… I won’t go into the details because I don’t care to right now.’
When asked if she thinks her own mother was ‘manipulated as well’, Kinney replied: ‘I think there’s a combination of factors. I think that, again, Steve was so good at manipulating people.
‘Honestly, watching him in action was crazy because I got to be there when he would be on phone calls with these parents who had called in and he just presented himself as the ultimate answer.
‘There are parents who are very maternal and very paternal and very nurturing and very caring and very loving, and my mother was more of a hands off parent. But I think for her it was also an easier option to allow somebody else to deal with – what she felt like – was something… too difficult.’
In the 90-minute documentary, Kinney claimed that when she told her mother about the alleged abuse, she chose not to report it to the police because she ‘didn’t want to upset the apple cart.’
Elaborating on her mother’s decision she said that when she asked her why she hadn’t told the police, she said that she felt like what Steve ‘was doing was really important’.
Cartisano founded a ‘wilderness therapy camp’ and promised to straighten out wayward teens
Kinney suspects that Deborah might be trying to ‘protect the memory’ of Cartisano for their four children
The 90-minute documentary landed on Netflix on December 27 and has been described as ‘insane’ and ‘sickening’
‘So I don’t think she would have made a different decision,’ Kinney added, before stressing that she still loves her mother.
‘I am a very different mom than my mom. My five children are my absolute world and I love them more than anything in this entire world and so I can thank her for [that],’ she explained.
Asked if she thinks that Steve’s former wife is in denial, Kinney revealed: ‘I was struck by his ex-wife and how she kept saying over and over that, “Steve wasn’t even there, so how could he be responsible?”
‘So the lack of accepting of responsibility and then continuing that message on – I don’t think she realizes… she can’t possibly realize how insanely damaging that has been for those of us who survived him and survived the survival programs.’
Kinney then claimed: ‘There’s a reason she divorced him. Because Steve was a serial adulterer as well so there’s got to be something inside of her that feels like she’s got to somehow protect the memory of him for her children or something along those lines.
‘But at this stage of the game, I think that ship has sailed and for her to try and protect somebody who is, first of all, gone and second of all, indefensible. What he did is indefensible. The way Debbie came across was very… she had her head buried in the sand or something.
‘However, at some point in time you have to open your eyes to the actual facts. These are not opinions. I didn’t share my opinion, I shared what actually happened to me. And the only reason I was willing to is… it was cathartic for me because I was sticking up for the girl that I was then.’
Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare is available to stream on Netflix now