Original subtitles

We're trying to hypnotize her.

You should just lay there calm after that.

Are you going to be calm now?

You can't be hypnotized.

Everybody loved Principal Kenney.

He was very highly spoken about and very popular.

There's a rumor that

the school principal hypnotizes kids.

This isn't like the movies where it's,

"Ooh, you're now hypnotized, and you're gonna go do this."

This is something that can really help you.

But it just never seemed harmful at first.

Marcus was, like, not himself.

Like, he looked like he was, like, demonic.

You're altering their mind, and that's OK with you?

La-di-da? I mean, seriously?

And then the kids fall into his lap?

It's like Marcus passed away,

Wesley passes away, Brittany passes away.

Dr. Kenney's tied in the middle of all of this.

I mean, yeah, there's sinister people in this world.

Well that's Satan knocking at your doors.

I haven't been in this yearbook in so long.

Here's the seniors.

So there's Markeisha, there's Shanice, and there's Nikki.

There's Zach, and there's Cody.

So apparently enough people thought of me as a gossiper.

Here's where I'm the biggest gossiper.

It's not my fault everyone talks to me, tells me things.

So I-- I refuse to take blame.

It fits, though.

My name is Paul Balcomb.

I'm 32 years old, live in Punta Gorda.

Uh, varsity letters...

weightlifting, and football.

I transferred to North Port end of my sophomore year

to go ahead and play football.

North Port was a place I was looking for a quarterback,

so I transferred in.

It was kind of like sort of small-town vibes,

a lot-- almost everybody knew each other.

In most high schools, right, you have these groups.

And they would hang out with each other and not anyone else.

At North Port, it just kind of felt like more people were

friends with, really, everybody.

Going into the junior year, I was starting quarterback.

Marcus Freeman was on the team.

He was one of my best friends.

He was a couple of grades behind me.

I'd call him my little protege.

I remember sitting down with the school principal and a few

of the other administrators and stuff like that.

When you met Dr. Kenney, like, you had a principal that

you felt cared.

I've been principal of North Port High School since

a year before the school opened,

and this is our 10th year in operation.

Of all the principals, George Kenney, he very quickly

became a part of our community.

He was heavily, heavily, heavily involved in all of the students.

He was always present for anything

that happened in the school.

During the football games, he's in the stands playing

his flugelhorn with the band the whole game.

He was a fun guy. The kids liked him.

He developed an almost cult-like following.

George Kenney was a respected role model

and father-figure for so many.

A lot of parents felt like George Kenney had their back,

that their kids were in good hands.

There's a rumor that Dr. Kenney hypnotizes kids.

I had psychology class around 2009.

So when we went into section where you go into hypnotism,

Dr. Kenney would come into

the class for a presentation on hypnosis.

He showed us that this isn't like the movies where it's,

"Ooh, you're now hypnotized and you're gonna go do this."

It is just your subconscious mind at work.

And it's like, OK, so there's nothing that can, like, not--

real harm that's going to come from this.

Because I was immediately like, "Dr. Kenney, yeah,

I'm your guy. Let's go ahead and do this."

I went to the office for a private session.

There's a lot that goes into being a high school athlete.

And for me, there was a lot of anxiety.

That's what we were really working on.

And once you're under,

he's tapping the back of your head,

talking to you about whatever

it is that you're working on, right?

So, with me, just, "You're good enough.

Don't have to be so worried about football."

I would say that I was hypnotized

at least 50 times, give or take.

You just feel much better about yourself.

It's kind of like this, like the cloud that you feel

like was over you is gone.

That's where, like, I started realizing, like, man, this is

something that can really help you.

I think majority of people thought it was

helpful, beneficial.

But one of the administrators had a problem with it.

Hey, buddy. Hi, Georgie. Can you give me a kiss?

You a good bird? Are you a good bird?

Can you be an eagle? Be an eagle.

Be an eagle. Ow.

What are you biting me for? You a good bird?

I'm Mark Gilliland.

I've been an administrator in Sarasota County

for 29 years. Retired.

Found him behind my school at Booker High.

23 years, 22 years ago. Right, George?

Nobody loved you because you pluck yourself.

You're a mother plucker.

I was an assistant principal at North Port High

from 2006 to 2009.

George got to hire the whole staff for the school

when it opened.

And so the staff who he hired

and brought on board, loved him.

So when I got to North Port, I was the new kid on the block.

You know, going back to that first year I was there,

at the end of the school year, they had a lock-in

for the seniors.

Project Graduation is an all-night lock-in for seniors.

So after they've graduated, you provide them with a very

safe place to be at for, you know, six to ten hours.

So that they're not out partying.

You had various staff members there helping out,

you know, chaperoning.

You had parents there, too, chaperoning.

And I'll never forget, it was around 2 or 3 in the morning,

they told the kids, "Hey, we're all gonna go in the gym now."

And there was about 15 or 20 students on the stage,

and then Dr. Kenney came out

and started to hypnotize them on stage.

I was there throughout the night,

and the students thought it was hilarious.

He would count them down and say,

"You're going in this pageant and you have to look your best."

And 17-year-old football players

would put on lipstick and wigs and they would march around

like they were in a beauty pageant.

I would take close-up pictures of these kids

and walk up to them afterwards and I'm like,

"Hey, did you know you were doing this?"

"Absolutely not."

Had I not had the photographs,

they would have never believed it.

George Kenney was clearly putting people under

some sort of spell.

This is not hypnotherapy. It's parlor tricks.

There's a big difference between therapy

versus entertainment purposes.

If it's done for entertainment, well, it can be done by

a certified hypnotist.

But in order to do therapeutic hypnosis, you have to have

a license in a medical field.

He was certified, not licensed.

This is a guy who got into the therapeutic purposes area

once he starts hypnotizing

students in his office for anxiety.

I immediately felt this is not right.

Hypnotizing kids in the middle of the night, having them doing

silly stuff on stage.

You know, this isn't something an educator does.

I reported him the summer of 2007.

I called the director of high schools and told him,

"Did you know George was hypnotizing kids on the stage

during their lock-in?"

And he kind of was flabbergasted and said, "What?"

After I turned it over to him, I expected, well,

I did my due diligence, so it's up to the powers-that-be

to deal with it now.

Years later, when questioned,

the director of secondary schools says he spoke

to Kenney after Gilliland reported him,

and told Kenney he could only do hypnosis

in a classroom setting with parental permission.

Apparently, he kept doing it in his office in private

for three or four years after I reported it.

Now, years later, the director of high schools

calls me and says, "Hey, Mark, remember, I think

you reported it the second or third year you were there."

I said, "No, I'm pretty sure it was the first year because it

was the lock-in in 2007."

He goes, "No, I'm pretty sure it was third year."

I said, "Well, yeah, that's in my memory,

I just wanted to try to confirm with you on the timeline."

So the light bulb went on in my head.

Did they ever deal with this guy after I reported it?

I definitely believe that the school board

tried to cover their ass.

All right, catch me a big bass.

Honestly, though, if I catch a fish, I'm probably gonna scream.

My name is Carley, formerly known as Carly O'Boyle.

I am a mother now to a four-year-old.

I am married as well.

- Ready to fish, hun? - Let's go.

Just don't hook me, all right?

- I already hooked you, baby. - Oh, dear.

We are here in Port Charlotte, Florida,

right next to North Port.

I walked into Spanish class,

and like, here comes Marcus Freeman, like,

walking through the door.

He was a popular kid.

Like, he was friends with everybody.

And one day, I just had a really rough day at school.

I got home that day, and the first thing I do

every day when I get home is like,

"Oh, I gotta go check my MySpace," like...

And I had a message from him.

And it was, "Hey, cutie" with a smiley face.

And I was like, "What?"

I remember he was like, "I hope you're OK.

"I could tell, like, something was wrong

"with you today in class.

Like, I like you. Like, I think you're cute."

You know, and I was like, "All right."

And I remember him being like, "Will you be my girlfriend?"

And I was like, "Yeah."

You know, it's like that-- .

He was so just, like, caring, passionate,

lovable, like-- mm!

But I was the cheerleader, and he was still,

like, quarterback.

You know, it's like, cheerleader, quarterback.

I just remember him telling me, "Dr. Kenney, I think, is gonna,

like, start hypnotizing me."

That was just, like, what the athletes did.

They all got hypnotized by Dr. Kenney

to do better on the field.

But he really did not speak about the hypnosis.

I don't think anybody actually knew exactly what was going on.

But he was with Dr. Kenney a lot.

He used to have to go before every single game

to get hypnotized.

So I'm like, "Dr. Kenney's taking you

away from me."

Woke up, regular day.

Marcus, he had a dentist appointment.

And then we went back to my house for, like, a little bit.

We normally take back roads, but he took 75 that day.

We were driving down the road,

and then...

I just literally remember him,

his arms were like this--

and his head was like--

I, like, see it in my head.

Like, his head was just, like, to the back.

I think I was, like...

screaming his name.

We just kept going 100 on the interstate, like,

no braking, no moving.

And everything just...

like, went to the right.

There's nothing in my mind that I remember more than him being

stiff the way he was.

Like, that image is in my head, like, all the time.

Like, OK, explain the stiff arms, like...

explain, like, the head, like, tilting back.

Like, why-- why-- why did that happen?

There's something weird, like, going on.

Like, so bizarre.

Like, he was kind of, like, not himself.

He looked like he was, like, demonic.

And that's the last thing I remember.

After that, I remember waking up...

in the hospital bed.

Like...

"Where am I?" Like, "What the heck?"

Ugh, I'm shaking.

And they told me...

Marcus passed away.

I don't have him here anymore.

Like, that light in my life at the time that I needed so bad,

like, was gone.

I was waiting for Marcus Freeman in the locker room.

Every day we were working out, and we were going to

the field and throwing.

I texted him. Not hearing back from him.

And I remember I went home with my girlfriend at the time,

and we hear the phone ring.

And you hear the-- the--

the message come across as Dr. Kenney.

And he's saying like how

he regrets to inform us that a student has passed.

And then when he said Marcus Freeman,

it-- it-- it kind of just, you just hit.

I've known Marcus very well.

He's a great student, a great athlete, um...

An outstand-- .

He was a great student,

a great athlete, and an outstanding person.

My initial thought was, jeez, this kid was at

the dentist, and he goes into

a trance-like effect behind the wheel.

That anesthesia that they give you has some side effects.

And then that's when, like, more of,

like, the dentist stuff started coming about.

But this autopsy was obviously done on Marcus,

and he was not overly medicated.

No-- no sign of brain aneurysm, nothing.

It's like, OK, well, what else happened then?

I do believe that the hypnotizing

had a huge factor...

in Marcus's death.

I was the last person to see him, and I know that he looked

like he was in a self-hypnotic state.

So one of the reasons that Marcus Freeman's death was so

suspicious, and some were tying it to George Kenney,

is because at autopsy,

there was no obvious reason for him to go into the state

that his girlfriend described.

Marcus died from a broken neck in the accident.

He was not having a seizure or a stroke or anything

like that. But here's something else.

That was troubling to me.

There was a teacher who was supposedly hypnotized by him

who died in a car accident.

Ms. Thornton, she was a teacher at North Port.

She was the first one. She died in November of 2010.

Then Marcus, same exact kind of accident on 75,

hit a tree, no weather, in the daytime.

We were told that George Kenney had paid for her funeral.

And we had heard that Ms. Thornton may have been

hypnotized, just like Marcus.

There's a correlation there

that is just too bizarre. I'm sorry.

What happened to Marcus?

It was just such a horrific thing.

But then I another student who was being hypnotized by

Dr. Kenney passes away right after Marcus,

like a month later.

I think that George Kenney

is a sociopathic, narcissistic type of person,

and he is the reason why my brother is gone.

So this is my project. This is my Viking.

I bought it as a restoration and a fun project for myself.

My name's Blake.

I live here in Fort Pierce, Florida.

I own and operate a marine restoration company.

Growing up, my family was really close.

Wesley was my younger brother.

He was a 16-year-old at North Port High School,

and then there was my mom and dad.

Look at this smiling child. Look at this.

Look at that happy face helping his mommy cook.

My name is Peggy Jacobson McKinley,

and I am very proudly Wesley's mother.

These are all his guitars.

So when we went and moved to North Port,

there was music class that he could play his guitar

in-- in the class.

He loved music, he loved all aspects of it.

The music teacher had suggested to Wesley,

"They're coming for an audition for Juilliard,

"and you should audition.

I think that you're-- you're a candidate."

And, you know, he was all excited.

Wesley loved my chocolate chip cookies.

Couldn't get him to stop eating the batter.

He would just eat spoonfuls

out of the bowl before I could get them baked.

That morning, I said, "I'll make some cookies."

And he said, "Perfect."

He got on the bus.

Everything was fine.

When he came home from school, he walked in the door

and walked past me.

No, "Hi mom," nothing like that.

I said, "Wes, I made cookies."

Nothing. And he walked out back.

And I was banging on the window and he just ignored it.

And about an hour and a half later, I heard the sirens.

After that, um...

three detectives came to the door and asked...

if Wesley McKinley lived there.

I was in Fort Lauderdale for spring break.

And we were walking down the beach.

And... I remember my mom calling.

As soon as I answered, then I knew something is wrong.

I called him and said,

"I'm sorry to do this to you, but you need to come home."

And he was like, "Why?" You know, real--

"For why? What reason?"

I said, "Because...

because Wesley killed himself"-- .

And I didn't know how to even comprehend it.

What do you mean he's gone? He's gone.

And I just... I dropped to my knees and cried and screamed.

We couldn't believe that he would do that to us,

because he knew how much he loved us.

Really was out of character.

After all the deaths, a student left a comment

on Facebook saying that all the kids that have died

have been hypnotized by Dr. Kenney.

Someone had said,

"Is anyone asking anything about the hypnosis?"

I was like, "What?"

We didn't know anything.

So we made arrangements to go the next day to his office.

George Kenney said to me,

"I'm so sorry for your loss.

"I didn't know Wesley. He was one of 1,200 students.

But I heard he was a really good kid."

That was a lie.

Total lie.

He knew who Wesley was.

He was videotaping the kids during their-- their sessions.

I mean, that's a big red flag.

And then the kids fall into his lap.

The videos have their own optics to it.

And yes, the optics are bad. So I get it.

Your initial thought is, "Ew!"

There should be maybe another...

a pillow.

Unless the student's a threat to themselves or others,

you don't put your hands on a student.

I remember a time where I got pulled under,

and I fell into his knee,

and he supported my head there.

You can remember the entire thing.

As a, what, 17-year-old,

highly sexual, heterosexual boy,

if I felt weird, that would have been the moment where I'm like,

"Yo, what the [bleep]?" Right?

I felt confident in the person that was doing it.

I'm not sure why Kenney is

videotaping his sessions with the students.

The students' heads are right there on his legs.

Sometimes he's leaning over, touching something

you can't really see.

It's weird, it's creepy, in my opinion.

It doesn't take much to make that final leap to, "Uh-oh,

"was he doing something with these children

"that was more than hypnosis?

Was he doing something to them while they were under hypnosis?"

Something he recorded so he could have the pleasure

of watching it again?

You can't do this to these kids.

You can't do this.

The parents got to be there, and the parents would stop it.

It just made me sick to my stomach.

I'll be honest with you.

I just don't know how he thinks this was appropriate

in any way. You can say what you want.

"Oh, I was trying to help." No, I'm sorry.

It's not tracking.

It's just a lot of--

a lot of weird stuff that went on.

And that's when it clicked.

That's why he doesn't want a window on his door.

You know, if the window's there, people can look in

and see what's going on.

Door's shut, I don't know what's going on behind there.

When we met with him the next time,

he was pretty rude, actually,

and would not claim any responsibility whatsoever.

He said that Wesley came to him and told him that he felt

kind of anxious about this Juilliard audition.

And so he started hypnotizing him for anxiety.

I didn't agree to that. He said I did.

He showed me a paper and said, "See, you signed this paper."

And I looked at the form and I said, "I never signed that."

And my signature was on the bottom of the paper.

And the only thing I could bring back to memory was Wesley

one morning, at six o'clock in the morning, shoved a paper

and said, "It's a field trip for track and field,"

and I signed it.

And it wasn't. Apparently it was this waiver.

Here's the permission slip.

"I am the parent of blank, and I give permission for

"Dr. Kenney to work with my child using hypnosis

"and hypnotherapy to improve his/her athletic performance,

standardized testing skills, and academic performance."

So George Kenney was called Dr. Kenney by most people,

but he was not a doctor of psychology

or a medical doctor, right?

He's a doctor of educational training,

but the title, "doctor" may have thrown off some people,

maybe some parents who didn't dig a little further, right?

And it says he's a certified hypnotherapist,

which is really troubling.

I don't know. Is he a hypnotherapist?

I don't think that's right. And I'm going to tell you why.

I don't give a [bleep].

So in the state of Florida,

you can be a certified hypnotist by just taking

a course from a private company.

And that's what George Kenney did.

But he's not licensed to do hypnosis

for therapeutic purposes.

You're not gonna portray me as an alcoholic on this, are you?

When you talk as much as I do,

something's got to lubricate the throat.

My name is Richard Barker, The Incredible Hypnotist.

I work on major cruise lines, major festivals,

fairgrounds, corporate events all across the country.

I remember, I saw a story

of a principal who was hypnotizing students.

My understanding is Mr. Kenney was trained through

the Omni Hypnosis Center, which is in Deland, Florida,

which is where my training came from under Dr. Gerald Kine.

The course was a week, something like that.

You had a week training to become a hypnotist,

and now you're gonna go out in the world and change lives

after a week, and you're an expert now?

Can I tell you that he's very lucky to be standing right now?

Because I-- my knee-jerk reaction

was to leap across the table and take him out.

You're-- you're altering their mind, and that's OK with you?

La-di-da? I mean, seriously?

I was seeing red. I really was.

I mean, he was a principal of the school.

He had no business doing this at all.

We found out that he had had a hypnosis session with Wesley

the day he died. Maybe he felt still hypnotized,

and was trying to get himself out of it.

Let's look at the things that are problematic

with these scenarios here, OK?

He didn't want windows on his door, so he's able to have

privacy in his office.

He's got a student in there, a minor, that he's putting

under hypnosis, many times with no parent present.

He's recording them without parental permission,

because that's not in the permission slip,

and Florida is a two-party consent state,

so that is unlawful.

And he's got their heads in his lap.

He was asked what happened to the tapes,

and he said he erased them.

Did you videotape some of your sessions?

Yes.

What happened to all those videotapes?

I erased those.

Yet, years later, tapes emerge.

Maybe he erased some. What is he deleting?

Who is he deleting? What was on those videotapes?

He had such a cavalier attitude, and was so disrespectful.

Ask your last question.

I mean, there's sinister people in this world.

There's people that have...

capabilities that are very, very, very

disturbed individuals.

You like my ringtone?

What's up?

Not much, what are you doing?

I'm interviewing for a George Kenney story, so.

Remember that nut job?

At that point, towards the end of that school year,

the rumor mills were going about George,

and that's when you-know-what hit the fan.

Come on.

Hi, Egg Nog. Come here.

Wait. Nope.

I'm Elaine Allen-Emrich, and I am a newspaper reporter

for the Daily Sun and a parent.

Both of my children went to North Port High School.

Both of them had Dr. Kenney as their principal.

We're trying to hypnotize her.

So what are you supposed to do, just--

I think you're supposed to just tuck them and sway them,

and it's supposed to relax them.

They should just lay there, calm after that.

- Really? - Are you gonna be calm now?

You can't be hypnotized. That's not how that works.

We gotta train.

After the deaths,

I received an anonymous letter one day at work.

As a newspaper reporter, we always receive information.

But this time, it was different.

It hit too close to home.

Because it was about George Kenney, the principal,

where both of my children went to school, and so it was really

important to me to investigate all of this.

I'm Jenna. I'm 32 years old.

My family just moved back from Ramstein Air Force Base

in Germany. I have five children.

So I met Brittany Palumbo probably around kindergarten.

We kind of grew up together,

and we both went to North Port High School.

Brittany kind of seemed like she was shy or timid,

but once you got to know her, she was really, really funny.

She could make anybody laugh.

We honestly didn't really go out too much, but we liked to

go get some crunchwraps at Taco Bell after school,

and then we'd go home and watch, like, "CSI" on TV.

Senior year, Brittany was focusing on her test-taking

to get into college.

She wanted to go see Dr. Kenney for her anxiety.

Her mom did not want her to do it,

but then she was very insistent.

So she said, "OK, if you're gonna go,

Brittany, then I will go with you."

When he had put Brittany into a hypnotic state,

she was completely, like, leaned over, like,

head on her legs with her arms dangling down.

And after that, her mom told her that she didn't want her to

do it anymore, that it freaked her out.

A few months after she was hypnotized by Dr. Kenney,

Brittany's mom found her.

She had hung herself.

I was... shocked. I had no idea.

I didn't see it coming. It...

it killed me.

After Brittany died, Brittany's mom found out that

she was hypnotized again without her knowledge.

It's like, Marcus passed away,

Wesley passes away, Brittany passes away.

Dr. Kenney's tied in the middle of all of this.

So I published my story

exposing Principal Kenney's hypnosis practices

in May 2011.

It was a bombshell. It-- it rocked North Port.

There weren't any sectors of our community

that weren't talking about it.

The laws in Florida is you can practice hypnosis

non-therapeutically or therapeutically.

So everything he did in his office with those students,

anxiety about Juilliard, test-taking,

athletic performance, that's all illegal.

After three students died, George Kenney was charged with

two misdemeanor counts of unlicensed practice of hypnosis,

and he took a no-contest plea, meaning he didn't say,

"I am guilty," but he acknowledged that

the prosecution has enough evidence to prove him guilty

and he got one year probation.

Slap on the wrist.

Community service, $100 fine.

It didn't matter that three kids died.

The other parents joined forces with us, so that's when

we hired the attorney.

And it was suggested to us to go after the school board.

He did a lot of things that were shady at best,

he needs to be questioned

and held accountable for this stuff.

George Kenney was deposed for the civil suit filed by

the parents, and he's under oath in the deposition,

and hopefully the truth will come out.

Kenney's confronted about treating anxious or depressed

people with hypnosis.

And he makes a startling admission.

But when asked if he knew depressed people

could be made more depressed through hypnosis,

Kenney said, "Yes."

And in his deposition,

he's pressed on that point further.

How dare he?

Who gave him the right to be God?

I didn't.

I did not.

And if he thought that these kids had issues or problems,

he would go the extra step and contact the parents

or a real doctor.

These students who are anxious about taking exams

or they're failing and failing, they can't pass a test,

and they're depressed about it-- "Please help me."

It's treating depression. I'm sorry.

And then he goes on and says but if he--

that putting someone under hypnosis

who is already depressed can lead to

suicidal ideation. He says yes to that?

And two students that he treated did take their lives?

I mean, this is a no-brainer.

This guy was going to go down.

In addition to that, the school district was aware

of what he was doing.

Marcus, Wesley, and Brittany all died

within months of each other.

Four years after the lock-in, when the school district became

aware that George Kenney was hypnotizing students,

they were all hypnotized by him.

So that made it, uh, very likely

that the school district would be held responsible

for their deaths had it gone to trial.

And that's why they settled.

The families of three North Port High School students

who died after being hypnotized by their principal will receive

$200,000 each from the Sarasota County School District.

There was no amount of money

that's gonna make it right. No amount of money.

You could give me a million dollars and I wouldn't take it

if I could have Wesley.

Miss him every day.

These kids need to be remembered.

They were kids in high school.

Still trying to live their life

and figure out what they needed to do.

Marcus, Brittany, Wesley were not just people

who got hypnotized.

They were so much more than that.

And that's what needs to be said.

The town was ugly to us. They did not like us.

I couldn't get away from there fast enough.

There are kids still to this day that will,

you know, go, "Oh!"

You know, he did such wonderful things because

that was the-- the town felt that way,

you know, he was their savior.

People said that we were brainwashed right into

loving him and and that's-- we're just defending him

because of all that, and it's like,

let's not get it twisted.

I love Dr. Kenney, not something that's on my mind every day,

Right? We don't talk.

I haven't talked to him in years, right?

So it's not something where I am obsessed with this man

and this man groomed me into thinking that he is my Messiah.

Furthest thing from it.

He was just a guy that wanted to [bleep] help.

And that's it. And he [bleep] helped.

George got out of North Port

and moved to Waynesville, North Carolina.

He got to go to the mountains

and open a bed and breakfast and a stained glass art studio.

He's got his wonderful life going.

It's unfair as a whole that Mr. Kenney gets to just move on

to the next town.

If the guy's a predator, he's doing it to somebody else,

and that's just the bottom line.

She told us pretty early on that she needed pads changed.

I think she really wanted the things that she lied about.

She pulled up in the wheelchair and she stood up.

I couldn't sleep the whole week.

There's something not right in there.

We have to be afraid for our lives.

I said, "Sarah, run!"