MIND CONTROL

Bizarre brainwashing therapy leads to $7.35m malpractice settlement

Rather than fixing her depression, Gale says psychiatrist Dr Bennett Braun and colleagues team made it worse. They reportedly convinced Gale during drug-induced hypnosis that she was repressing abuse from her childhood, that she had killed a young boy and that she would die if she contacted her family. Gale says Braun told her that her family was involved in a cult and that one of her personalities was participating in it.
'I was convinced I was what was called a breeder, that my job was to have babies for their use,' Gale said. Gale allegedly then was told to undergo a tubal ligation to avoid cult pregnancies, and she had the procedure performed with Braun's approval in 1991, Smith said.
Braun's Illinois medical license was reinstated in 2001 after being suspended in 1999 when another woman made similar accusations regarding a satanic cult. Braun also denied those allegations.
An Iowa woman and her family won $10.6 million in 1997. Braun convinced her that she sexually abused her two sons, ate human flesh, and had 300 personalities.
"At the time the care was being provided, in the mid-'80s and early-'90s, Dr. Braun and his team were recognized as national experts in the diagnosis and treatment of multiple personality disorder and the recovery of repressed memories of childhood abuse," she said.
Ken Merlino, one of Gale's lawyers, said the doctors, Bennett Braun, Roberta Sachs and Corydon Hammond, used overly suggestive questioning and unsafe levels of drugs that caused hallucinations. They also did not follow protocols for keeping patients separated, leading to what is known as "symptom sharing."
Chicago's Daily Herald reports"On hundreds of occasions, Ms. Gale was tied down, over-medicated with Inderal, a heart medication not appropriate for psychiatric disorders, and essentially brainwashed by these three defendants," a prepared statement by Merlino's firm said.
Of the $7.5 million award, Hammond will pay $175,000, Sachs will pay $3.1 million, Braun will pay $500,000, Rush St. Luke's will pay $150,000 and Rush North Shore will pay $3.6 million.
Dr. Corydon Hammond delivered what is know as the Greenbaum Lecture on ritual abuse at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality in 1992.