The families of three high school students who died after being hypnotized by their principal will receive $200,000 each from the Sarasota County School District under a settlement agreement unanimously approved by the School Board on Tuesday.
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After the students committed suicide, the North Port High School principal admitted to hypnotizing all three of the teenagers. Her parents said she died by suicide not long after finishing her college applications, according to ABC Action News. Another student who had been hypnotized by Kenney, Brittany Palumbo, 17, also committed suicide in 2011.
Kenney gave up his teaching license in 2013 under pressure from the Florida Department of Education and can not reapply for another, the Herald-Tribune noted.
Kenney was placed on administrative leave in 2011 and was eventually charged with two misdemeanors, including practicing hypnosis without a license. He served a year’s probation, and his current whereabouts aren’t known. “It’s something they will never get over”, he says.
Damian Mallard, the lawyer representing the three families, said they are not happy with Kenney’s light punishment. He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it’.
Kenney now lives in North Carolina where he owns a bed and breakfast and stains glass, according to the Herald-Tribune. His girlfriend, who was also in the auto and survived, said that Freeman got a unusual look on his face before he went off the road, the paper reported.
“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”.
By law, the families of the students could not sue Kenney because he was considered to be an extension of the school board. He performed hypnosis on Wesley McKinley on the same day that he killed himself.
School officials repeatedly warned Kenney that he should not be practising hypnosis without a licence, but he persisted regardless. During that time, he was prohibited from practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license.
‘I would say that he was in a distant phase. After her daughter’s death, Palumbo’s mom said, “Dr. Kenney sought all three of our children out for this hypnosis…”
He was the quarterback of the school’s football team, and Kenney had taught him hypnotisation skills to help concentrate on the field and ignore pain. “He wasn’t all there mentally, it seemed like, after the sessions”.
After the payout was confirmed Brittany’s parents Michael and Patricia said: “We are satisfied with the overall outcome, although this is a very hollow victory”.
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Brittany Palumbo commited suicide after she was hypnotised by George Kenney.
