Bennett Braun, a Chicago psychiatrist whose diagnoses of repressed reminiscences involving horrific abuse by satan worshipers helped to gasoline what turned often called the “satanic panic” of the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s, died on March 20 in Lauderhill, Fla., north of Miami. He was 83.
Jane Braun, considered one of his ex-wives, mentioned the dying, in a hospital, was from problems of a fall. Dr. Braun lived in Butte, Mont., however had been in Lauderhill on trip.
Dr. Braun gained renown within the early Nineteen Eighties as an knowledgeable in two of the most well-liked and controversial areas of psychiatric therapy: repressed reminiscences and a number of character dysfunction, now often called dissociative id dysfunction.
He claimed that he may assist sufferers uncover reminiscences of childhood trauma — the existence of which, he and others mentioned, have been chargeable for the splintering of an individual’s self into many distinct personalities.
He created a unit devoted to dissociative issues at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago (now Rush University Medical Center); turned a continuously quoted knowledgeable within the information media; and helped to discovered the what’s now the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, an expert group of over 2,000 members right this moment.
It was from that sizable platform that Dr. Braun publicized his most explosive findings: that in dozens of instances, his sufferers found reminiscences of being tortured by satanic cults and, in some instances, of getting participated within the torture themselves.
He was not the one psychiatrist to make such a declare, and his supposed revelations keyed right into a rising nationwide panic.
The Nineteen Eighties noticed a vertiginous rise within the variety of individuals, each kids and adults, who claimed to have been abused by satan worshipers. It started in 1980 with the e book “Michelle Remembers,” by a Canadian lady who mentioned she had recovered reminiscences of formality abuse, and spiked following allegations of abuse at day care facilities in California and North Carolina.
Elements of popular culture, similar to heavy steel music and the role-playing sport Dungeons and Dragons, have been looped in as supposed entry factors for cult exercise.
Such tales have been fodder for well-liked TV codecs that reveled within the salacious, together with discuss reveals like “Geraldo” and newsmagazines like “Dateline,” which broadcast segments that promoted such claims uncritically.
The psychiatric career bore some duty for the rising panic, with revered researchers like Dr. Braun giving it a gloss of authority. He and others ran seminars and distributed analysis papers; they even gave the phenomenon a quasi-medical abbreviation, S.R.A., for satanic ritual abuse.
Dr. Braun’s inpatient unit at Rush turned a magnet for referrals and a warehouse for sufferers, a few of whom he stored medicated and underneath supervision for years.
Among them was a girl from Iowa named Patricia Burgus. After interviewing her, Dr. Braun and his colleague, Roberta Sachs, claimed that she was not solely the sufferer of satanic ritual abuse, however was additionally herself a “high priestess” of a cult that had raped, tortured and cannibalized hundreds of kids, together with her two younger sons.
Dr. Braun and Dr. Sachs despatched Mrs. Burgus and her kids to a psychological well being facility in Houston, the place they have been held aside for practically three years with minimal contact with the skin world.
By then Mrs. Burgus, closely medicated, had come to consider the docs, telling them she recalled torches, reside burials and consuming the physique elements of as much as 2,000 individuals a 12 months. After her dad and mom served her husband meatloaf, she had him get it examined for human tissue. The checks got here again unfavorable, however Dr. Braun was not satisfied.
Dr. Braun stored different sufferers underneath related circumstances at Rush or elsewhere. He persuaded one lady to have an abortion as a result of, he satisfied her, she was the product of ritualistic incest; he persuaded one other to bear tubal ligation to stop having extra kids inside her supposed cult.
The satanic panic started to wane within the early Nineties. A 1992 F.B.I. investigation discovered no proof of coordinated cult exercise within the United States, and a 1994 report by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect surveyed over 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse and located that not a single one held up underneath scrutiny.
“The biggest thing was the lack of corroborating evidence,” Kenneth Lanning, a retired F.B.I. agent who wrote the 1992 report, mentioned in a telephone interview. “It’s the kind of crime where evidence would have been left behind.”
Many individuals distanced themselves from their earlier enthusiasms; in 1995, Geraldo Rivera apologized for his episode masking the falsehood. However, even in 1998, “Dateline” ran an episode on NBC claiming to point out widespread satanic exercise in Mississippi.
Mrs. Burgus sued Rush, Dr. Braun and her insurance coverage firm over claims that he and Dr. Sachs had implanted false reminiscences in her head. They settled out of court docket in 1997 for $10.6 million.
“I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it,” Mrs. Burgus informed The Chicago Tribune in 1997.
A 12 months later Dr. Braun’s unit at Rush was shut down, and the Illinois medical licensing board opened an investigation into his practices. In 1999, he acquired a two-year suspension on his license — although he didn’t admit wrongdoing.
Bennett George Braun was born on Aug. 7, 1940, in Chicago, to Thelma (Gimbel) and Milton Braun, a professor of orthodontics at Loyola University. He graduated from Tulane University with a bachelor’s diploma in psychology in 1963 and earned a grasp’s in the identical topic in 1964. He acquired his medical diploma from the University of Illinois in 1968.
Dr. Braun was married 3 times. His marriages to Renate Deutsch and Mrs. Braun each resulted in divorce. His third, to Joanne Arriola, resulted in her dying. He is survived by 5 kids and 5 grandchildren.
After quickly dropping his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Braun moved to Montana, the place he acquired a brand new license in that state and opened a personal observe.
But in 2019, considered one of his sufferers, Ciara Rehbein, sued him for overprescribing remedy that left her with a everlasting facial tic. She additionally filed a grievance in opposition to the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for permitting him a license, regardless of understanding his previous.
Dr. Braun misplaced his license to observe medication in Montana in 2020.
