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TOPIC: School board agrees to pay out $600,000 to families of three students who died after being hypnotized by principal
The families of three Florida high school students who died after being hypnotized by their principal will receive $200,000 each in a lawsuit settlement.
The Sarasota County School District's School Board agreed to the settlement at their meeting Tuesday night.
School board attorney Art Hardy told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that they are 'just happy to put this behind them.'
The parents of 16-year-old Wesley McKinley, 17-year-old Brittany Palumbo and 16-year-old Marcus Freeman filed the lawsuit against the school district following the back-to-back suicides of McKinley and Palumbo and the car crash that killed Freeman in 2011.
After their deaths, Principal George Kenney admitted that he hypnotized all three victims - including McKinley on the very day that he committed suicide in April 2011.
Further investigation revealed that Kenney had hypnotized as many as 75 students, staff members and others from 2006 until 2011 and that he had been doing so illegally since he was unlicensed.
One school official had even warned Kenney on three separate occasions that he was not to practice hypnosis on students without their parents' written consent, but even that may have been illegal because he did not hold a license.
'We are satisfied with the overall outcome, although this is a very hollow victory,' Michael and Patricia Palumbo, parents of victim Brittany Palumbo, said in a statement.
Damian Mallard, the attorney representing the families, added: 'It's something they will never get over. It's probably the worst loss that can happen to a parent is to lose a child, especially needlessly because you had someone who decided to perform medical services on kids without a license. He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it.'
After the string of deaths, Kenney was placed on administrative leave in May 2011, and resigned the following year.
“He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it. ”
Damian Mallard, attorney representing the three victims' families
In 2012, he was charged with two misdemeanors counts for practicing hypnosis without a license, for which he entered a plea of no contest.
He served one year of probation, during which he was not allowed to practice unlicensed hypnosis.
In 2013, he gave up his teaching license and has been banned from reapplying for another. He was last known to be operating a bed & breakfast in Waynesville, North Carolina where he also makes stained glass.
While the parents say the lawsuit provides some justice for their children's loss, Mallard says they are 'not happy about' the fact that Kenney has been able to go on with his life with relatively no punishment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3263420/School-board-agrees-pay-600-000-families-three-students-died-hypnotized-principal.html#ixzz3nuk3giWE Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
The settlement was reached on October 1, just days before the civil lawsuit was set to go to trial. The settlement is the largest possible payout without needing to get special approval from the state Legislature and governor.
But the parents of the three victims say they did not sue the school district for money, but to rather make sure something like this never happens again. 'The thing that is the most disappointing to them is he never apologized, never admitted wrongdoing and is now living comfortably in retirement in North Carolina with his pension,' he said.
Freeman, the quarterback of the North Port football team, was the first of the three to die in 2011. He had allegedly been seeking hypnosis from Kenney to help him concentrate on the field.
Freeman apparently found the hypnotic therapy so helpful that he started learning how to perform self-hypnosis from Kenney.
On March 15, 2011, Freeman had a painful dental visit and while driving home with his girlfriend, appeared to be in a state of hypnosis. His girlfriend says a strange look came over his face and he veered off the interstate. Freeman later died of his injuries while his girlfriend survived.
One month later, McKinley committed suicide by hanging himself. His friend Thomas Lyle said in a deposition that McKinley had been hypnotized by Kenney on at least three occasions to help him practice for his guitar audition for Julliard.
Lyle said that sometimes when McKinley got on the bus after the hypnosis sessions, he wouldn't know his name or who his friends were. On the day he died, he even allegedly asked Lyle to punch him in the face.
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'I would say that he was in a distant phase. He wasn't all there mentally, it seemed like, after the sessions,' Lyle said, according to a deposition.
Palumbo also committed suicide by hanging the following month. She was found in her closet by her parents. They said that Kenney had self-diagnosed her with text anxiety and recommended she undergo hypnosis to help her improve her SAT scores. When that didn't work, Palumbo apparently grew depressed at her college prospects and committed suicide.
When news first broke of the charges against Kenney, several students at the school rallied behind him in support, setting up Facebook groups like the 'Bring Back Dr Kenney' page and 'Students in Support of Dr George Kenney'.
One former student Eric Williams, 20, was the first person Dr Kenney ever hypnotized. He told Good Morning America in 2012 that his SAT scores 'went up 500 points after the hypnosis'.
When asked about her fellow students' deaths, another former pupil Kallie Dremann added: 'They are just trying to pick someone to blame it on.'
He has published a number of audio CDs which are sold on Amazon. One uses hypnosis to help defeat anxiety while others focus on sports - baseball pitching and batting along with improving basketball throws.
Kenney learned hypnotism at the Omni Hypnosis Training Centre in Deland, Florida.
• For confidential help, call the National Suicide Preventi
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3263420/School-board-agrees-pay-600-000-families-three-students-died-hypnotized-principal.html#ixzz3nuk8NDZs Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
The car crash, they think he "self hypnotized" before the crash? That seems a bit of a stretch. I don't know.
I thought the same thing. It all seems like a bit of a stretch to me. He should not have been hypnotizing them without their parents approval nor without a license but I'm not convinced he was responsible for their deaths.
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