While victims of the Satanic Panic such as Melvin Quinney and Dan and Fran Keller spent decades behind bars and have only been released from prison or exonerated in the past decade, the ones who were most responsible for legitimizing and popularizing the conspiracy that devil worshipping cultists were abducting and abusing thousands of children largely faced no consequences. One notable exception was Bennett Braun, a psychiatrist whom the New York Times rightly claims “fueled” the Satanic Panic, who lost his medical license, not once but twice, after a series of lawsuits brought against him by former patients. Those of us who’ve made it our business to dispel the myths of satanic cults and we Satanists who’ve had to weather the accusations of child abuse may take solace in learning that as of March 20, 2024, Bennett Braun has died.
According to Jane Braun, one of Bennett’s ex-wives, his death at eighty-three had been the result of complications from a fall while on vacation in Lauderhill, Florida. His death came just four years after losing his medical license (for a second time) and decades of controversy around his malpractice in diagnosing and treating dissociative disorders. What exactly led to Braun’s disgrace? What do dissociative disorders have to do with satanic cult conspiracies, and how did all three come together to ruin people’s lives?
DID or Did Not?
For various socio-cultural reasons during the 1980s, there was a veritable explosion in diagnoses of Multiple Personality Disorder (later called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID) and repressed memories. Patients would enter therapy with a fairly typical list of complaints—depression, anxiety, marital problems—and psychiatrists would conclude the neurotic symptoms were the product of childhood trauma. In the case of DID, the trauma caused children to “split” into separate and distinct personalities or “alters,” each of which compartmentalize the memories to spare the original host personality from the burden of remembering. Repression is likewise a response to childhood trauma, but one in which the memories of the abuse are repressed—banished from conscious awareness—into the unconscious mind.
Over time ranging from years to decades and given the appropriate stressors and triggers, the physiological symptoms of trauma will begin to resurface in the patient’s daily life. Some authors propose that this is the result of the imperfection of these defense mechanisms, while others make the even more extraordinary claim that the conscious mind somehow makes the determination that the patient is “ready” to confront and deal with their past trauma, so fragments of the repressed memories begin to resurface.
As more and more patients underwent the long and arduous process of therapy to unpack their trauma, common themes began to emerge of incest, satanic cults, cannibalism, and ritual sacrifice. Rather than question whether these alleged memories accurately related to true events and were not instead the product of suggestive therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, psychiatrists concluded that if so many people shared similar and bizarre stories they must, therefore, be true.
Which brings us to Bennett Braun. After earning his medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1968, Braun treated his first patient diagnosed with DID in 1974 working at Barclay Hospital. At the time, diagnoses of DID were rare. Following the 1973 publication of the book Sybil, written by author Flora Schreiber about patient Sybil Dorsett (real name Shirley Mason) and her treatment for DID by psychoanalyst Cornelia B. Wilbur, cases of DID skyrocketed. Between the period of 1970 to 1980, there were roughly 400 reported instances of DID; between 1980 and 1992, there were an estimated 5,000. After becoming a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, Braun began work at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center in 1985. Later that same year, Braun met future patient Pat Burgus at a conference in Chicago, setting the stage for his eventual downfall.
Bennett Braun, from Frontline’s “The Search for Satan.” 1995.
‘You don’t have evidence one way or the other …’
Patricia Burgus started therapy in 1982 after suffering from postpartum depression and anxieties from a difficult second delivery. Her psychiatric social worker, Ann-Marie Baughman, concluded that because Burgus referred to her and her baby as “we” therefore she must have multiple personalities. I suppose Baughman was unfamiliar with the concept of personal pronouns. According toChicago Magazine, Baughman consulted six other psychiatrists, none of whom agreed with her diagnosis. That didn’t stop her from encouraging Burgus in this belief, leading Burgus to file for disability in 1985 and eventually contact the National Institute of Mental Health who directed her to Bennett Braun.
Dissociative disorder and repressed memory therapists assumed that if they believed a patient met the diagnostic criteria, then it was a matter of fact that they had been abused as a child. When patients expressed disbelief, as in the case of Patricia Burgus, their protests were ignored. When a consulting psychologist expressed his belief that Burgus was suffering from depression and had borderline personality disorder, Braun ignored him, too, and proceeded treating Burgus with a combination of hypnosis and medications such as Inderal, a beta blocker used to treat high blood pressure and heart palpitations, and Halcion, a highly addictive Benzodiazepine prescribed as a sleep aid. With the combination of hypnotic suggestions, drug-induced nightmares, and the bizarre belief in satanic cults that motivated Braun, Burgus began to recall her time as a “high priestess” for a cult in which:
she claimed to have tortured, raped, murdered, and cannibalized 2,000 children a year while her husband was at work. She claimed to have taught John and Mikey (her two children) how to commit human sacrifice while they were toddlers. She claimed to have been raped by panthers, tigers, and gorillas at the zoo while cult members watched. She claimed to have been buried alive on numerous occasions. She even claimed to have had sex with President Kennedy.
Braun’s satanic cult conspiracy didn’t end with Burgus. Braun became convinced that Burgus’s family (who had initially abused her and inducted her into the cult) had practiced cannibalism, and he encouraged Burgus to ask her husband to bring her a hamburger from the family barbecue. Braun sent the beef patty to the hospital’s lab for testing, and despite finding no traces of human remains, Braun brushed it off (no, not the hamburger) claiming later in a sworn deposition “You don’t have evidence one way or the other because this may be the sample that didn’t have [human remains].” At Braun’s insistence, John and Mikey Burgus were hospitalized under his and another doctor, Elva Poznanski’s, care for nearly three years, during which time “They were encouraged to develop ‘alter personalities’ and to display behaviors consistent with a supposed MPD. Braun, the Complaints state, used suggestive and coercive techniques including exposure to guns (including a .9-millimeter Browning High Power) and handcuffs in order to encourage the children to ‘remember’ episodes of abuse as part of a supposed transgenerational, organized satanic cult.”
For her part, Patricia Burgus was overcome with guilt at her children’s hospitalization and tried to hang herself. Without Burgus’s permission or even consulting her husband, Braun began administering sodium amytal, a barbiturate tranquilizer used as “truth serum.” For Braun’s efforts, to say nothing of the estimated $3M of revenue the hospital brought in treating Burgus and her two children, Rush allowed Braun to open a special “dissociative disorders unit” at the hospital’s North Side facility in 1987.
‘Well, I’ve given you the ammunition to sue me.’
In January 1989, Poznanski took legal custody of John and Mikey Burgus, disagreeing with Braun that Patricia Burgus was in a condition to care for her children. After a vicious legal battle, the children were returned to their family in June. The three years of hospitalization at Rush under the care of Poznanski and Braun left both children emotionally traumatized and academically stunted. Ironically, Braun encouraged both Patricia and Mike Burgus to sue the hospital and Poznanski for damages, which in 1993 they decided to do. When Patricia Burgus confronted Braun with the fact that he massively overdosed both her and her children and that her memories of satanic ritual abuse only came after she was highly medicated, Braun dismissed her accusations telling her, “Well, I’ve given you the ammunition to sue me.” After presenting their case to Zachary Bravos, an attorney who had previously represented former DID patients who brought lawsuits against their therapists, Bravos filed a second malpractice suit against Braun.
Patricia Burgus told her story to the PBS Frontline documentary series for a 1995 special called “The Search for Satan,” in which she blamed both Braun and Rush for malpractice explaining “These were the experts. They were in a very well-respected teaching institution. I turned to that teaching institution for state-of-the-art medical care, cutting-edge medical care. I didn’t turn to them for fringe therapy, some goofy, controversial crap.” Perhaps embarrassed by the negative publicity, in 1997 the insurance company representing the defendants reached a settlement agreement with the Burgus family much to the chagrin of Bennett Braun who called it a “travesty.” Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center agreed to pay $3.5 million with the remaining $7.3 million of the settlement coming from Elva Poznanski and Bennett Braun.
‘Just a little dyskinesia.’
The misdeeds of Bennett Braun, unfortunately, didn’t end there. In August 1998, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation took the first steps toward suspending Braun’s medical license. Braun agreed to a two-year suspension and five-year probation period, although ultimately, he moved to Montana to pursue a medical license in that state. By May 2000, he was acting as the Clinical Director for the Shodair Children’s Hospital in Helena, although he later came under investigation by the state Board of Medical Examiners after allegations by hospital staff that he was diagnosing and treating patients without a license.
After partially retiring from practice “in or around” February 18, 2016, Braun once again came under investigation, this time by the United States’ Drug Enforcement Agency for “practicing outside the scope of his license” (State Medical Board 2021). To avoid criminal prosecution, Braun agreed to hand over his controlled substance license effective July 28, 2017. Nearly a year later, on March 6, 2018, Braun renewed his medical license defending his actions as he “had not admitted any wrongdoing” and didn’t need to prescribe narcotic medications in his practice. Then, in 2019, Braun was sued yet again by a former patient. Ciara Rehbein, a thirty-three-year-old woman who had been referred to Braun for treatment related to anxiety and post-concussive syndrome following a 2014 motorcycle accident, was instead diagnosed with “bipolar 2 disorder, acute stress disorder, panic disorder with agoraphobia, traumatic brain injury (post-concussive syndrome) and alcoholism in remission.” Braun’s proposed treatment? Antipsychotic medications! Specifically, Ziprasidone, otherwise known as Geodon and Seroquel, the latter of which has “the highest potential for abuse when it’s taken without a prescription or taken in a way other than suggested by a health professional,” which, given Braun’s history with medications, was a very serious concern.
Eventually, Rehbein began to suffer from uncontrollable facial tics, which Braun dismissed as “just a little dyskinesia.” After nearly a year of treatment, that “little dyskinesia” led to difficulty controlling Rehbein’s head and torso and a lifetime of Botox injections to settle her muscles. Surprise surprise, the neurologist she consulted “was shocked I could stand there with the Seroquel I was being prescribed and Geodon way over what I should’ve been taking.” Rehbein sued not only Braun but the state of Montana Board of Medical Examiners claiming they shouldn’t have issued him a license to practice medicine given his … oh I don’t know … history of malpractice. Finding his conduct unprofessional, the state of Montana Board of Medical Examiners ruled on November 23, 2020, to revoke Braun’s license.
‘I want to help people. That’s the most important thing in my life.’
Bannett Braun ruined lives. His zealous belief in satanic ritual abuse and dissociative identity disorder motivated him to pursue courses of treatment that created false memories of childhood abuse and psychologically and emotionally traumatized both adults and children. His overmedicating Ciara Rehbein led to her being permanently disabled. Never once did he express any remorse or take any responsibility for his malpractice. He was sued numerous times by former patients to the tune of several million dollars and lost his medical license—twice.
Some might say it’s in poor taste to gloat over the misfortunes of a man such as Bannett Braun, or to celebrate his death as a grotesque display of schadenfreude. He was, however, a dangerous man who, despite his perhaps sincere wish that “I want to help people. That’s the most important thing in my life” would not or perhaps could not recognize when he was engaging in unethical and unprofessional conduct. Like most of those involved in the Satanic Panic, Braun remained convinced that he was doing good and never relented in his belief that the satanic cults victimizing children were “a national-international type organisation that’s got a structure somewhat similar to the communist cell structure,” a groundless conspiracy theory that continues to be propagated to this very day. With Bannett Braun gone, there’s one less conspiracy theorist in the world, and we should consider that a net gain.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Henry Manning and Neil B. Smith. Not Bennet Braun. Life everlasting, world without end.
References
State of Montana Board of Medical Examiners. 2021. Case No. 2019-MED-95 Final order in the matter of Bennett Braun. January 22.