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A look into whether professed victims of secret cults and ritual abuse were helped by the psychiatric care they received.

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00:00two troubled women both sought help from some of the top doctors in the country
00:08the diagnosis satanic ritual abuse it was like going deeper and deeper into an abyss after
00:18millions of dollars in treatment the women now say the doctors were wrong it stopped because i
00:24stopped following dr braun's orders tonight on frontline the search for satan
00:30funding for frontline is provided by the corporation for public broadcasting
00:37and by annual financial support from viewers like you
00:43this is frontline
00:54when i look back i can't believe it ever happened to me
01:21mary s spent three years in psychiatric wards diagnosed as a victim of satanic ritual abuse
01:31i was told that i was raised in a satanic cult and when you're raised in a satanic cult you abuse
01:43people even the people that you love everybody around you is in the cult you don't know what it
01:49is to be a person but you don't even know that i'm smart enough to love your daughter and get her out of the cult
01:59going deeper and deeper and deeper into an abyss there was no end there was it was like a bottomless pit
02:09of course
02:10i really believed that i would either end up in a psych unit for the rest of my life
02:18or that when my insurance ran out that i would live underneath a bridge as a bag woman
02:26mary's journey paid for by her insurance company took her into one of the most controversial areas
02:36in modern psychiatry it began six years ago when mary lived with her husband joe and her eight-year-old son ryan in the suburbs of chicago
02:46he worked in telecommunications she was a school teacher they were um the typical loving family
02:57meredith schreiner and her husband were close friends with joe and mary they were very good friends as well as lovers and um they were very close they had a good relationship
03:09she also had a wonderful relationship with her child mary was a great mom with ryan
03:17just a great mom had tons of patience
03:21in 1988 mary fell into a deep depression
03:26i started having panic attacks um not being able to eat losing a lot of weight
03:32um not being able to sit still not being able to concentrate
03:36so i went in i went to um a psychiatrist to get medication
03:45she uh found a counselor that was recommended by a friend and went to her
03:51and within a few months um she kept getting worse anxiety attacks were very bad
03:58because i had seizures and blackouts
04:01um my therapist felt that i might be suffering from dissociative disorders
04:07and so i went for an evaluation
04:10at the best hospital in chicago with the leading experts in the field
04:15the hospital was rush presbyterian saint luke's in chicago
04:20a renowned teaching hospital with a unit specializing in treating the dissociative disorder known as multiple personality disorder
04:28there mary met with dr roberta sachs
04:33within the first five minutes
04:36i was in her office
04:38she diagnosed me as polyfragmented multiple
04:43multiplicity was something that we knew nothing about
04:48and so she described multiplicity as taking a vase and dropping it on a cement floor
04:54and that's what had happened to my personality
04:58i had shattered into that many pieces
05:01and that her job as a therapist was to glue those pieces back together into a hole
05:11mary was 38 by then
05:13her life had not been easy
05:16growing up she had a learning disability
05:20when she was 19 she was brutally date raped became pregnant and gave the child up for adoption
05:27after her marriage and the birth of her son
05:30she underwent a hysterectomy and developed seizures
05:35her husband was a recovering alcoholic
05:38finally shortly before the onset of her depression
05:42she was attacked in a hallway at the school where she taught
05:46still mary says
05:48her therapist
05:49who had attended a seminar on satanic cult abuse
05:52thought that that might be another explanation for her depression
05:56mary wondered
05:58she went to church
06:00it is my opinion that history will mark april of 1989
06:04as the month when americans were forced to pull their heads out of the sand
06:09there's a very large church
06:11uh... in our area
06:13and during the time that mary was
06:16trying to find herself through counseling and find out why she was having anxiety attacks
06:22um... they were having a series
06:25on cults
06:27in this church
06:29a series meaning eight nine weeks of sermons on that
06:35in april of 1989 satanism came out of the closet for everyone to see it in all of its ugliness
06:42the satan worshippers that pose the greatest threat to our society are the secret splinter groups
06:47scores of clandestine groups are meeting right here in our neighborhood
06:51and the amount of activity is on the rapid increase
06:54several churches in our immediate area have been broken into recently
06:58even though it was bizarre
06:59it seemed to be an answer for her
07:02as to
07:03why she was anxious and why she was scared and why she was nervous
07:14it was not a new idea
07:16ten years before
07:18the bestseller michelle remembers
07:20told the story of a young woman who had traced the source of her unhappiness
07:24to repressed memories of being satanically abused by her family
07:30soon
07:31newspapers and magazines were full of stories of abuse at the hands of satanic cults
07:37stories involving cannibalism
07:39human sacrifice
07:41blood rituals
07:43the abuse was so terrible some therapists said
07:46that it caused children to develop multiple personalities as a defense against the pain
07:56then television joined in
07:58the world
08:01by 1988
08:02when Geraldo Rivera's highly rated special on satanism was broadcast
08:07satanic ritual abuse was considered one of the leading causes of multiple personality disorder
08:13or MPD
08:14we are certain that satanism exists
08:16to some it's a religion
08:18to others it's the practice of evil
08:20in the devil's name
08:22Geraldo invited experts in MPD
08:25who firmly believed that many of their patients were survivors of satanic cults
08:29here in Chicago a group of well-known therapists from all over the country
08:33had the courage to share horror stories
08:35we're talking about people in some cases who are coming to us as patients
08:39who were raised in satanic cults from the time they were born
08:43I have letters in my file
08:45from over 40 states in the United States
08:48in several provinces of Canada
08:51and one from England
08:54with very similar data
08:56if just a tiny bit of it is true
08:59it's appalling and there's a need for somebody to do something
09:05part of the power of the cult both with the individual and with the others around it
09:09is its ability to induce fear
09:11Dr. Bennett Braun became a leading spokesman on the connection between MPD and ritual abuse
09:18it needs to be looked at
09:20it was to Dr. Braun and his colleague Roberta Sachs of Chicago
09:24that Mary had turned for diagnosis and treatment
09:28Mary's reasons for admission according to her hospital records read
09:32patient is a victim of satanic ritualistic abuse
09:37diagnosis of MPD
09:39Mary's vague fears of having been abused in a cult
09:43now received the stamp of professional certainty
09:47she was surprised to discover she said
09:50that her doctor seemed to know more about her family's history than she did
09:55Roberta Sachs came in and told me that
09:58her victims throughout the country had identified
10:02me as the fifth generation cult
10:05that we were high up in the cult
10:08that we were cult royalty
10:10who was we?
10:12my family
10:14my parents, my sisters and I
10:16eye. Once hospitalized, Mary began regular therapy sessions with Dr. Braun and Roberta
10:24or Bobby Sacks. Most of the sessions were about memory. And many of the sessions were with my
10:32husband, Joe. He would come to the sessions and the two of us would sit down and they would ask
10:38questions about who we knew from church, who was in the people in the school district, what I knew
10:48about their personal life, who we socialized with, trying to get more and more information about the
10:59cult. But is this a treatment or was this an investigation? It felt like an investigation.
11:10And in fact, oftentimes I would say to Bobby, all you want is information from me. And she'd say,
11:17no, you know, we're concerned at getting that for you to get better. But if I didn't have any
11:23information, they didn't have any time for me, especially Dr. Braun. Dr. Braun prescribed the
11:31medication. He put Mary on a variety of medications, among them Halcyon, Klonopin, Xanax, Prozac,
11:41and on experimentally high doses of the heart medication Inderol. Heavily medicated, Mary says
11:49she lived in fear. They told me that I had already been programmed, that if I divulged the secrets
11:57from the cult, that I would self-destruct. And that my programming had just been turned on at age 39.
12:07How did they know that? Because they were the experts.
12:13They were experts. They said, we've been studying this for 15 years. We've done research.
12:19You know, we've, we've, uh, this phenomena is, is happening all over the world. We're the,
12:26we're the experts. We've written books. We've, we give lectures. Uh, people come to our hospital,
12:35other doctors come to our hospital and are trained by us because we, we are the experts.
12:42In fact, Mary's doctors were considered leading experts in their field. In November of 1994,
12:53Dr. Braun was honored at the annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Multiple
12:58Personality and Dissociation. We all have tremendous debt of gratitude to Dr. Braun.
13:03Most of the big names in the field were there. Gloria Steinem was keynote speaker and guest
13:10of honor. And the burden for keeping all of this afloat was Dr. Braun's absolutely far beyond
13:17the contribution of anybody else in the field of the society.
13:23I want to assure everybody that Russia intends to continue its commitment to ongoing professional
13:28education in the field of dissociation. We are currently... It was because of her doctor's
13:33reputations, Mary says, that she persevered in her treatment, despite her fears and her growing
13:39misgivings. I had doubts all along the way. Um, my journal is just full of, of statements, you know,
13:48I, I kid, this can't be true. This is a nightmare. I've made this up. I mean, my whole life, my whole
13:56world had been turned upside down at that point. Here, you know, I go from being this teacher and
14:01having a normal life and doing normal things to a court, uh, cult royalty. In an educational video,
14:11Dr. Sachs explained. Very few patients who have been ritually abused come in and say, I've been
14:20ritually abused, you know, and I've been through this torture and that torture. And, uh, I've been
14:26pregnant this many times and aborted this many times and forced to participate in cannibalism and on and
14:32on and on. On the contrary, uh, these people do everything they can to deny the existence of that.
14:44Dr. Sachs explained in her records what was wrong with Mary. Mary had an estimated 15 developed child
14:53alters, some with twins, and a system with seven cult alters, but was unaware of their existence.
15:00Mary was encouraged to cut off contact with most family members and friends outside the hospital.
15:08Meredith had not seen her friend in months. She was lost to us totally. We had no idea where she was.
15:17She contacted Mary's husband, Joe. I asked if we could visit her and he said no. Um, and I said,
15:25well, how about if I can call her, send her a card, whatever. He said, no, you may have no contact with her at all.
15:32None of her friends could have contact. We couldn't talk to her. She couldn't talk to us.
15:37This was the doctor's orders. And, um, and that's the way it was going to be.
15:45Mary was cut off.
15:46Mary was cut off.
15:47Mary was cut off.
15:48Mary was cut off.
15:49I had no way to test my reality. There were a lot of nurses and things that I went to and I said,
15:55you know, is this reality? And they all reinforced, yes, it was, you know, that I was really in the
16:01best of care and that, you know, this was such a new field. And we were always being told we were
16:07the pioneers we were on the cutting edge of this this field and that what they were doing with us
16:16would be would shape the treatment of mpd's in future generations multiple personality disorder
16:25we've all seen it dramatized on television even though it was controversial dr braun's work was
16:30considered to be on the cutting edge of treatment for mpd there's just one facility devoted solely
16:36to its treatment and as channel 5's rick salinger reports it's here in chicago rick ron and carol
16:41it's located in that canyon of condominiums along sheridan road north of hollywood dr bennett
16:47brown founded the dissociative disorders unit one year ago as part of rush presbyterian st luke's
16:53medical center meet pat i'm 32 i'm married i have two children by outward appearances she is normal
17:01but inside are dozens of different people where would pat be without this unit i wouldn't be alive
17:09uh chances are my children and husband wouldn't be alive either pat bergus was one of the first
17:16patients on the unit in 1986. she arrived after having been in a depression for three years
17:23following the difficult birth of her second son when a social worker diagnosed her with mpd
17:30she sought help at rush these were the experts
17:36um they were in a very well respected teaching institution
17:43i turned to that teaching institution for state-of-the-art
17:51medical care cutting-edge medical care i didn't turn to them for fringe therapy some
17:57goofy controversial crap what do you hear her say
18:04that the hurting is over dr braun often treated me like his star patient
18:11um i would have to teach other residents and doctors and and media people about multiple
18:19personality disorder who's there
18:24sarah how old are you sarah four five i was supposed to switch personalities for the camera
18:34who's this karen karen you don't seem too happy i'm not dr braun and i
18:40kind of rehearsed that a few times to make sure that it looked believable for for the interviewer
18:46i was supposed to talk about how if it wasn't for dr braun i wouldn't be alive
18:52where would pat be without this unit i wouldn't be alive
18:56patty says that dr braun both pushed her to remember things that didn't occur
19:00and then believed her stories
19:04after a year in the hospital patty traced the satanic history of her family
19:09back to the 17th century satanic cult practices have been passed down through the paternal side of
19:15the family dr braun asked me to write up something to do a presentation at his conference it was
19:21supposed to be one of my altar personalities giving a history about the cult the satanic activity has
19:28been genealogically traced to a southern slavic region of europe during the middle evil ages
19:36when her forebearers were the supreme monarchs of the blood royal i believed that i was a satanic
19:43high priestess that i was controlling a satanic cult in a nine-state region
19:49revealed with the history of i took it deadly serious satanic worship torturous human sacrifice
19:56cannibalism and i think all reality and fantasy just blended together i was drugged
20:07i was hypnotized and i was mentally ill
20:12but i was told that you know until i hit bottom until i dug all of this stuff out i would never get
20:20better and i would never have a chance for any kind of a future for my children mary says she too was
20:27told she had to persevere in her treatment for the sake of her son i was told that i was the only one
20:35in five generations who was given the insight to break this cycle and if i wanted my son
20:44to live and not become you know a cult cultists or to to die then i was responsible for his life
20:58a turning point in mary's treatment came when dr sachs asked her to attend a consultation with one
21:03of the most important experts in cult programming techniques dr cory hammond professor of medicine at
21:10the university of utah dr hammond lectured often on the origins and practices of the cult
21:17a very very systematic brainwashing that comes out of experimentation from nazi doctors
21:24and experimentation in the intelligence community with mind control research
21:28and involves medical technology and is very very sophisticated
21:34in one of his lectures not available to the public
21:37hammond described his theories about the origins of satanic cult programming
21:42starting with a jewish collaborator in the nazi death camps
21:46his name was green bomb alias dr green
21:51some of the people then doing the mind control research uh were satanists the nazi doctors
21:57and they have used all the technology and in fact the kid who came over whose name was green bomb
22:02changed his name and americanized it to green and got an md in the state of new york and became known as dr green
22:12and he's at the center of this process and it's still around he's around mid 60s and still alive
22:18according to dr hammond dr green developed a secret code based on the greek alphabet which the cult used to
22:25program its members examples alpha represented general programming beta was sexual programming delta was
22:35the program for killing gamma was the one that therapists should look out for it was a deception
22:43program teaching misinformation and trickery dr hammond evaluated mary is there any part of mary
22:52who knows anything about alpha beta delta or theta he hypnotized me and put me in trance and then
23:04he asked me about the greek alphabet and asked me to name any of the greek letters of the alphabet
23:10that i knew and i named a few and then he asked me for the gamma erasure code and i didn't know what he was
23:19talking about mary remembers being told that her gamma program was still active that meant she was
23:27still loyal to the cult and possibly a danger to the staff and other patients but i believe that quite
23:33a few of them that we're treating are still involved in cults and that we should not be treating them if
23:38they are and that's a cruel terrible thing to say and that is a danger to them and a danger to us mary says
23:46that she was told that besides being a cult plant and a spy she was now strongly suspected of having
23:52ritually abused and programmed her son he had to be evaluated she had to be deprogrammed dr sachs
24:01recommended that the work be done in houston by her colleague dr judith peterson hi judy hi uh it's good
24:09to see you today the two therapists referred patients to each other and had collaborated on
24:15several training programs what you're about to see is a role play of an app reaction peterson a
24:22licensed psychologist and phd was clinical director of a special unit at spring shadows glenn a private
24:29psychiatric hospital in houston texas a small building surrounded by trees the hospital was nicknamed
24:37club med by its patients mary would stay there for two years some of her therapy sessions were taped
24:47in this session dr peterson is to mary's right
24:56by the time i got down to houston they didn't care what had happened to me
25:00they told me that there was someone some cult alter deep within my system that knew the plan
25:24about killing my husband and my son and that all i needed to do was to let that alter surface
25:44by then mary says she believed it all
25:47and tried hard to provide some useful information they would say you know let the let them come up bring
25:59them up let the the real cult loyal alters come up and give this plan
26:06i was told that i would be go i would go to prison because they knew that i had had killed people
26:28and that i had abused these children and i was part of this this international network
26:35mary's friends had no idea what had happened to her
26:46i was very concerned at that time that maybe she was dead
26:56i knew she'd call we were close friends i knew i knew she would call some way somehow she would call
27:04if she could and by that point i was really beginning to doubt what was going on with her
27:10and with joe and um i was just very scared and stop hurting people and stop abusing people that's what
27:19it means
27:22don't worry about feeling guilty just stop being a perpetrator mary's husband joe who was working
27:27with her doctors had been persuaded that his wife was indeed in a cult that was intent on killing him
27:34and that mary's alter personalities had abused their son he's been so screwed up by the cult that he has
27:41to have professional help to know what it is to be a little boy the program after program
27:50it's got him so confused and he doesn't know what it means to be a normal boy he's working hard to find
27:56out what it is ryan was admitted to the same hospital as his mother where he was being evaluated
28:04for multiple personality disorder and cult abuse although he stayed on the unit right next door to
28:11her mother and son were kept apart sally mcdonald was a nurse on the children's ward i knew ryan
28:20as a patient on the children's unit and he came in as a very normal little boy who was full of joy full
28:30of um activity very um normal uh talented little kid ryan was one of several children at spring shadows
28:43who were diagnosed with multiple personality disorder as a result of ritual abuse
28:49these children came into the hospital as really stable well-functioning kids
28:56most of them were admitted with absolutely no idea of why they were there
29:02an example of that is a 13 year old who was admitted on her 13th birthday
29:06and she was told that um that was the date that she would be initiated into a satanic cult
29:16and that they by admitting her to the hospital they were protecting her
29:21this nurse asked not to be identified what i saw our children being admitted with very normal behaviors
29:28being allegedly involved in a cult not knowing anything about
29:31the cult and then slowly over time being told about that they had parts and they had to look within
29:39themselves to find these parts of them and there was a lot of pressure on them they went into therapy
29:47sessions to identify these parts of them which eventually became alters which eventually
29:53had names and became part of the multiple personality was she uh supposedly a member of a cult
30:04she reported that dr peterson supervised the treatment of nearly all the mpd patients in the hospital
30:11eventually most of her treatment techniques would be questioned among them her alleged practice of
30:17restraining patients at nine points on their body for hours and sometimes days restraints are a very
30:25serious form of treatment to protect a patient and yet these patients were often kept in restraints
30:32for long periods of time sometimes to satisfy information gathering of dr peterson she sought to
30:41bring out different altars while this patient was tied down and and unless these patients produced these
30:50altars those patients stayed in restraints for eight 16 hours at a time
31:00the nursing staff was torn and dismayed we were truly in the middle of an ethical dilemma there was a lot of
31:08um hostility from the uh psychologist and the psychiatrist there was also a lot of discussion
31:16about the nurses that they the reason there was such a conflict was because the nurses just couldn't quote
31:22understand what was going on so the belief was if they just educated us more we would understand everything
31:31dr peterson wrote in a letter to the administrator of the hospital
31:35no education can occur with nurses who still live in the dark ages
31:41it became very clear to the nurses that if we objected there would be a reprisal and that reprisal would
31:50be a transfer off the unit a demotion in some cases in actual termination and that created a very chilling
32:01effect people were afraid to object and yet they knew these nurses knew they had to object because
32:07they feared um violating their nurse practice act i didn't feel that i could really live with myself
32:16and the kinds of things that i was seeing happen to these children i felt like these children were
32:21being robbed of their childhood dr peterson filed a child abuse report against mary with the department of
32:28child and family services in illinois citing that mary had reported electro shocking her son and abusing
32:35him in different places around the country as for ryan dr peterson wrote ryan is felt to be a youngster
32:44who is highly programmed as a structured poly fragmented mpd who has programs for suicide homicide
32:52and returned to the cult ryan was 10 years old at the time i didn't see him the last few days before he
33:01left but i recently found out that after he left he had gone on to a facility for multiple personalities
33:11and that was very disheartening to me to hear that story i was very shocked that i thought he had left
33:20the hospital because he was one of the lucky ones that had escaped
33:26the facility dr peterson referred ryan to was back in chicago next door to the rush hospital complex where
33:33his mother had first been hospitalized ryan was not the only child to be treated for multiple personality
33:39disorder and cult related abuse patty bergus's two sons mikey and john had spent almost three years
33:47under dr braun's care at rush the children were put in the hospital because i was told that multiple
33:53personality disorder had a genetic predisposition to it and that the children would definitely develop
34:00multiple personality disorder and by having them in a teaching hospital they could watch this develop and
34:05catch it and catch it and treat the children right away for it john was hospitalized first at the age of five
34:14and was quickly diagnosed with multiple personality disorder
34:27maureen gannon was the state required teacher on the children's ward
34:31she spent several hours with john every day they said john was mpd right they said john was in a
34:39multiple personality that he had a multiple personality disorder did you see that no i did not see that
34:46but i felt that that was a lack of my own training i wasn't trained as a psychologist psychiatrist
34:52and when they would talk about the various personalities and the subtle differences of them
34:56i did not see those i couldn't have told you the difference i could not have pointed out and said
35:06this was this personality and this was that personality at any time he seemed the same basically to you
35:12seemed like a kid patty's younger son mikey was hospitalized seven months after his brother
35:19dr brawn became very concerned about uh the first halloween coming up 1986 and he he told us that unless mikey
35:31was in the hospital he was in mortal danger mikey was then admitted to the hospital on an emergency basis he
35:40was four years old patty and her children who were housed in different parts of the hospital got together
35:47in therapy sessions patty remembers them as the sticker sessions i was supposed to do everything
35:54that i could do to encourage and support the children in the telling of these yucky secrets and the more
36:01yucky secrets they were able to tell the more stickers they got for that day so the kids were real
36:07motivated to do this as well excerpts from the child psychiatrist's notes john talked about being
36:15threatened that someone in his family would be killed if he didn't obey orders two stickers
36:22and another john related an incident where a black woman was seized by the cult and choked to death
36:29afterwards victim was barbecued three stickers
36:34in this california trial where dr brawn testified as an expert witness he used an example from one of john's
36:41sticker sessions to stress the validity of satanic abuse of children but i had one child who was
36:47just five years old talk to me about what is life to stick a knife in some of these abdomen and pull it
36:53down and how the intestines pop out i mean they just blow out and what it smells like the discussion that day
37:01was surrounding um john cutting open this man's stomach and uh dr brawn was pumping john for some details
37:11about how did this happen what was it like and john said how he took this knife and he stuck it in this
37:20man and how he cut it and cut the man and how his um his stomach popped open and how it smelled terrible
37:29in the description of that having done surgery myself i know what it's like to open the belly
37:35and if the anesthesia isn't done right and the muscle relaxing isn't done right that's exactly what
37:39happens the balls come right out through the wound and this here's a five-year-old that can describe
37:43to me something i know something about and have it perfectly as far as the kids went back to the
37:49unit they got their stickers that day and john got extra stickers because he did such a good good
37:54story here and i told dr brawn i said wait a minute wait a minute you know hearing him i know that's not
38:01real because i know that's a scene from a star star wars movie
38:11where luke skywalker cuts open this beast he was riding and all the guts spill out and it smells really
38:18terrible i thought they smelled bad on the outside and when i heard john tell it i knew he was telling
38:29me the story from the movie but dr brawn wouldn't believe it where does a five-year-old learn about
38:36this how many five-year-olds go in operating rooms of all the members of the bergus family only the boy's
38:43father michael was not thought to have been involved in the cult what did you make of it all well as far
38:52as i can you know determine from uh from you know what patty had said and what the doctors had said the
38:58boys were supposed to be uh being trained by patty to participate in cult activities and then at some
39:05future date take over uh i guess a leadership role in this cult and when did they first get into the cult
39:13that you know shortly after birth i uh you know they were supposedly been trained as uh even as small
39:21infants to to uh to do the these kinds of satanic rituals to do the murders uh you know to to kill
39:30other children and they were supposed to been trained to do all that but how could that have happened
39:35if you didn't know about it i i i that's what had me confused and and uh you know as things started uh
39:44you know getting into a regular routine of all you know every every week every day there was a new
39:50memory coming up you know after my initial you know shock and horror and and really fear because i was
39:55afraid for for my family's life it it became more and more difficult to believe all the stuff that
40:04happened did you ever ask dr brawn where the bodies were why there was no evidence why
40:09well of course those were the the questions why aren't you doing something about this how come
40:15the police aren't being involved in this and the answer of course was that that they were gathering
40:20evidence to be able to crack into this very secretive and dangerous cult and that people had you know
40:27gone into it undercover and had been killed or had been um actually drawn into the cult themselves and
40:35that they they were gathering evidence so that they could do something about it and that the reason
40:40why it was never uncovered was because these people ate the evidence so that there wasn't any evidence
40:47and that there were doctors involved with this so that there were cover-ups as far as um you know
40:53medical findings and things so there were always answers for every question that everybody had you know
40:59that seemed reasonable the burghis children were hospitalized for almost three years our five-year-old
41:11john who went in was there for 39 months and mikey was brought into the hospital at four years old and
41:19he was kept on a children's psychiatric unit for 32 months from the time i entered the hospital until we got
41:27the children out of the hospital by court order it was 1200 days and how much money we each had
41:37one million dollar insurance policy that was almost completely topped out so we're looking at three
41:44million dollars this is a partial list of the burghis family's hospital bills
41:51their bill for medication alone was in the tens of thousands of dollars
41:56hospital room and board was well over a million dollars
42:01mary's hospital bills also amounted to millions of dollars the rough estimate of just adding up
42:08what hospital bills we do have and therapy bills that we do have it's um over two and a half million
42:16did you pay it my insurance company paid out that amount of money
42:20the cost of mary's care at spring shadows glenn averaged twelve hundred dollars a day
42:27according to the staff this was not unusual the unit was very profitable because it was billed at an
42:35intensive care rate rather than the normal rate on another unit and these patients stayed for long
42:44periods of time dr jack leggett is a clinical psychologist who used to review mental health
42:51claims for insurance companies around the country beginning in the late 1980s he noticed a startling
42:58pattern in the claims involving mpd patients most of them had generous insurance policies
43:04the focus was generally on patients with very rich benefits plans and i would find in some cases that
43:13large numbers of uh people from single employers with those types of plans would suddenly be
43:22presenting with this diagnosis an incidence of multiple personality way beyond anything
43:28uh reasonable that could be expected for a given population of individuals so
43:36there was a targeting of the richer benefits plans dr leggett discovered that questioning the bills of mpd
43:45patients could have unpleasant consequences i was met with the most hostile responses that i came across
43:54in all the years i'd done any kind of case management or clinical supervision uh beginning with discounting
44:02the credibility of myself and the board certified experienced psychiatrists and psychologists that i used
44:10extending on to rather strange uh suggestions at times that i might be in somehow related to these satanic
44:21cults or the organizations i worked for hospital
44:24staff also felt threatened that if you resisted um the psychologist and the psychiatrist you might
44:33be labeled as one of the cult and that happened to some people that they were considered quote cult
44:40members and so you never quite knew when you might get labeled for that too it's kind of like a witch hunt
44:47according to dr leggett a lot of money was being spent while the patients were not getting any better
44:56there's sort of a cliche you have to get worse before you get better the problem was people got worse without
45:03getting better
45:10mary was getting much worse
45:12it was a snake pit it was a snake pit it was like hell
45:25i'm sure that i would die there sooner or later and probably sooner
45:30somehow i had just gotten lost and no one out there will even know that i'm i'm gone
45:49mary had been in houston for two years when her insurance company began to push for a change in
45:54status she was to be moved permanently to a nursing home somehow she says she gathered enough strength to
46:01resist
46:04i wasn't going um i refused to go
46:09i decided that i had nothing to lose i had lost everything i everything
46:14i decided i just wanted to to leave and take my chances according to mary the hospital agreed to
46:24release her on the condition that she get herself a sophisticated security system to protect her from
46:29the cult and that she find a therapist on the outside the doctor that i was released to i continued to go
46:38to therapy with him and it wasn't very long before he he said on my second visit he said do you like
46:47being multiple and i said no i hate it it's awful you know i'm really working to integrate all these
46:54parts and he says you don't have to be multiple anymore you can just stop just stop stop working
47:02stop thinking stop thinking about it we'll we'll we'll just work on getting you physically healthy
47:10because i was in awful awful physical health um and getting you off this medication because i had to
47:20go through all the withdrawal and he said that's enough we don't need to work on your personalities
47:27you don't have to be multiple anymore when i stopped working on it they it just it dissipated the
47:35memories started to stop i found out that i could go outside my apartment and no one i never got shot
47:42at i could go to the grocery store i never got poisoned i could make telephone calls i wasn't being taped
47:52nothing was happening it stopped because i stopped following dr braun's orders i stopped taking the
48:00medication and i stopped to stop being involved in the hypnosis
48:06and when my head started to clear after detoxing off of all of that medicine
48:13and my critical thinking skills started to return the switching stopped all these goofy things that
48:23were going on weren't happening anymore and i was able to finally take a look at this and say you know
48:32wait a minute where are all these bodies where are all these people that are supposed to be involved
48:39in this cult it took months and a court order to get the hospital to release patty's two sons
48:46who the child psychiatrist claimed needed long-term institutionalization
48:52today john is 15 and mikey 13. their young boys are starting to go through puberty you know how's
49:01this going to affect them john now is just uh mainstreaming into uh into a regular uh junior
49:08high school mikey still goes to a special school
49:13it's just had a a very large impact it's like there's been a hole
49:19in in in their uh in their life you know in a normal period of growing up it's like a large chunk
49:24has just taken and is missing mary was not as lucky as the burghers family who ended up together
49:35when she got out of the hospital in texas and returned home to chicago
49:39she found her husband and son who had been in treatment with dr sachs
49:44still believed that she was a member of a cult and intent on killing them
49:48she was still listed with the state of illinois as a child abuser her husband had filed for divorce
49:56there's a uh emptiness there's a void that i'll never be able to fill
50:02and until they stop until they stop the therapy with dr sachs
50:09they will they won't be able to get get out of this mindset
50:13in april of 1995 mary met with ryan and joe at a court-appointed psychiatrist's office
50:22she had not seen her son in four years he was reluctant to talk to her and did not want to see
50:28her again in the end the psychiatrist dr alan rabbits produced a report for the court it reads
50:37i am of the firm opinion that mary's initial difficulties were not a manifestation of multiple
50:42personality disorders secondary to ritualistic abuse nevertheless joe and ryan continue to believe
50:50the cult abuse explanation both of them have placed their trust in mental health professionals
50:56who genuinely believe that mary was both a victim and a perpetrator of this abuse
51:03continued treatment with a current mental health treatment team even if issues of abuse are not
51:08addressed covertly perpetuates the belief system that has destroyed this family
51:16are they evil
51:21i don't know how anyone could know what is known now and have see what it has done to families this
51:29my family was not the first family this had been going on for 15 years
51:34and i i now know of stories almost exactly like my story that were 10 years before this under the
51:42same people under the same doctors in the same hospitals so they knew what was going on
51:49and they still continued to do it um were they evil i think that's pretty evil
51:54the dissociative disorders unit at springshadows glenn hospital was shut down by the state in 1992
52:07judith peterson still sees patients in private practice she is being sued by 10 former patients
52:13including mary s front line asked dr peterson for an interview but in an exchange of letters with her
52:20lawyer could not agree to the conditions she requested the history of these meetings dr bennett braun
52:26and dr roberta sachs declined to be interviewed for this program they are still heading their
52:32dissociative disorders unit at rush hospital in chicago which remains one of the leading centers
52:37for the treatment of multiple personality disorder they have been sued by several of their former
52:42patients the burgess family and mary s among them being that we all tremendous debt of gratitude to dr brown
52:55after seven years investigating claims of ritual abuse the fbi concluded there is little or no
53:02evidence for allegations that deal with large-scale baby breeding human sacrifice and organized satanic
53:09conspiracies it is up to mental health professionals not law enforcement to explain why victims are alleging
53:17things that don't seem to have happened
53:23dear frontline last night i saw your show i discerned a bias you can interact with frontline by sending your
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53:50and next time why is corporate america spending billions of dollars in cyberspace welcome
53:56what to find out everything they can about you somewhere in your computer you'll know the
54:02movies i've seen you might be listened to you'll know the clothes i've ordered they're gonna know
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54:17it was a snake pit it was like hell
54:31i'm sure that i would die there sooner or later and probably sooner
54:47what have you seen me
54:51i'm sure you've seen me
54:53the
54:53best
54:55i've been
54:55and i've been
54:56the
54:58the
54:59it
55:01the
55:02the
55:03the
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