The families of three high-school students who died after being hypnotized by a former principal are to receive US$200,000 each from a Florida school district under a settlement agreement approved on Tuesday.
The Herald-Tribune reports that the US$600,000 settlement closes a bizarre, years-long case that began after former North Port High School principal George Kenney admitted that he hypnotized 16-year-old Wesley McKinley a day before the teenager killed himself in April 2011.
An investigation found that Kenney hypnotized as many as 75 students, staff members and others from 2006 until McKinley’s death. One basketball player at the school said Kenney hypnotized him between 30 and 40 times to improve his concentration.
Among those who were hypnotized were 17-year-old Brittany Palumbo and 16-year-old Marcus Freeman. Palumbo killed herself in 2011. Freeman was in a fatal car crash after apparently self-hypnotizing, a technique Kenney taught the teenager, also in 2011.
School board attorney Art Hardy said after the board approved the agreement by a vote of four to zero, members were “just happy to put this behind them.”
Damian Mallard, attorney representing the families of McKinley, Palumbo and Freeman, said the parents did not sue for money, but to hold the Sarasota County School District accountable and to ensure something similar does not happen again.
“It’s probably the worst loss that can happen to a parent is to lose a child... He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it,” Mallard said.
Mallard said the families and the district reached a settlement agreement on Thursday last week as the case was nearing a trial.
Kenney was placed on administrative leave in May 2011; he resigned in June 2012. He was charged with two misdemeanors in 2012, including practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license.
He entered a plea of no contest as part of a deal that saw him serve one year of probation, during which he was not allowed to practice unlicensed hypnosis.
Kenney gave up his teaching license in 2013 under pressure from the Florida Department of Education and cannot reapply for another.
“They’re not happy about Kenney’s lack of punishment,” Mallard said of the students’ families.
“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,” Mallard said.
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