Principal Charged After Hypnotizing Students Who Committed Suicide
January 13th, 2012Via: CBS:
North Port police have charged the town’s high school principal with two counts of second-degree criminal misdemeanors after students he hypnotized ended up committing suicide.
Over six months, the North Port Police Department conducted around 70 interviews with students claiming to have been hypnotized by Dr. George Kenney and 100 adults either from among the school’s staff or parent community after receiving a complaint from the Florida Department of Health Services.
In documents provided to CBS Tampa detailing the Sarasota School Department’s internal investigation, Kenney routinely hypnotized students in one-on-one sessions and in group settings. They often involved the school athletics teams or ROTC programs.
Kenney told investigators it allowed students to relax, improved their performance in tests and helped some with anger issues.
Documents show, however, that Kenney occasionally raised tempers and eyebrows within the school’s community.
He was limited to hypnotizing students during psychology classes and then only with parent-signed permission slips and another teacher in the classroom — conditions insisted upon in 2009 by Steven Cantes, executive director of high schools for the Sarasota County School System.
Kenney’s many supporters expressed gratitude for his help and admiration of his character throughout the report.
so, i get the woo-woo factor, but really… no.
anyone who knows jack sh*t about hypnosis knows that 1) you absolutely cannot coerce someone to do something they are not already willing to do, and more importantly 2) the subject is fully consciously aware of what is happening the whole time, and would remember any suggestions given during hypnosis. thus “survivors” would be able to report on any shady suggestions they received.
parsimony (and common sense) suggests that maybe he was just good at identifying stressed and unhappy kids for his sessions… not his fault that they went over the edge (though perhaps he could have directed them to more intense therapy if he recognized their angst).
it’s a little weird that the principal was using students practice his ‘art’ but his motives may very well have been directed towards helping. hypnosis is an amazing tool for relaxation… even if he is a creepy weirdo who had ulterior motives, he couldn’t have caused kids to commit suicide via hypnosis; period.
this whole thing stinks of media-created sensationalism and witch-hunting, mostly just because hypnosis is still on the fringe of “occult” stuff (though it is a valid tool according to the majority of mainstream psychology). it makes a good story to scare parents with.