Bennett Braun, a Chicago psychiatrist whose diagnoses of repressed reminiscences involving horrific abuse by satan worshipers helped to gas 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 former wives, mentioned he died in a hospital from issues 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 professional in two of the most well-liked and controversial areas of psychiatric remedy: repressed reminiscences and a number of persona dysfunction, now often called dissociative id dysfunction.
He claimed that he might assist sufferers uncover reminiscences of childhood trauma — the existence of which, he and others mentioned, was liable for the splintering of an individual’s self into many distinct personalities.
He created a unit devoted to dissociative problems at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Middle in Chicago (now Rush College Medical Middle); was incessantly quoted within the information media; and helped to discovered what’s now the Worldwide Society for the Examine of Trauma and Dissociation, an expert group that at this time has greater than 2,000 members.
It was from that sizable platform that Dr. Braun publicized his most explosive findings: that in dozens of circumstances, his sufferers found reminiscences of being tortured by satanic cults and, in some circumstances, 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 folks, youngsters in addition to adults, who claimed to have been abused by satan worshipers. It started in 1980 with the e-book “Michelle Remembers,” by a Canadian girl who mentioned she had recovered reminiscences of formality abuse, and it spiked following allegations of abuse at day care facilities in California and North Carolina.
Components of popular culture, equivalent to heavy steel music and the role-playing recreation Dungeons & Dragons, had been looped in as supposed entry factors for cult exercise.
Such tales had been fodder for in style tv codecs that reveled within the salacious, together with speak exhibits like “Geraldo” and newsmagazines like “Dateline,” which broadcast segments that promoted such claims uncritically.
The psychiatric occupation 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 saved medicated and underneath supervision for years.
Amongst them was a lady from Iowa named Patricia Burgus. After interviewing her, Dr. Braun and a colleague, Roberta Sachs, claimed not solely that she was the sufferer of satanic ritual abuse, but additionally that she herself was a “excessive priestess” of a cult that had raped, tortured and cannibalized 1000’s of kids, together with her two younger sons.
Dr. Braun and Dr. Sachs despatched Mrs. Burgus and her youngsters to a psychological well being facility in Houston, the place they had 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, dwell burials and consuming the physique components of as much as 2,000 folks a 12 months. After her dad and mom served her husband meatloaf, she had him get it examined for human tissue. The assessments got here again destructive, however Dr. Braun was not satisfied.
Dr. Braun saved different sufferers underneath comparable situations at Rush or elsewhere. He persuaded one girl 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 youngsters 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 in the US, and a 1994 report by the Nationwide Middle on Youngster Abuse and Neglect surveyed over 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse and located that not a single one held up underneath scrutiny.
“The largest factor was the dearth of corroborating proof,” Kenneth Lanning, a retired F.B.I. agent who wrote the 1992 report, mentioned in a telephone interview. “It’s the form of crime the place proof would have been left behind.”
Many individuals distanced themselves from their earlier enthusiasms; in 1995, Geraldo Rivera apologized for an episode of his present that lined the falsehood. Nonetheless, even in 1998, the NBC sequence “Dateline” ran an episode 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 courtroom in 1997 for $10.6 million.
“I started so as to add a number of issues up and realized there was no method I might come from just a little city in Iowa, be consuming 2,000 folks a 12 months, and no person mentioned something about it,” Mrs. Burgus instructed 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 obtained a two-year suspension of 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. His father was a professor of orthodontics at Loyola College. He graduated from Tulane College with a bachelor’s diploma in psychology in 1963 and earned a grasp’s in the identical topic in 1964. He obtained his medical diploma from the College 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 demise. He’s survived by 5 youngsters and 5 grandchildren.
After quickly shedding his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Braun moved to Montana, the place he obtained a brand new state license and opened a personal follow.
However in 2019, considered one of his sufferers, Ciara Rehbein, sued him for overprescribing medicine that left her with a everlasting facial tic. She additionally filed a criticism in opposition to the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for permitting him a license, regardless of figuring out his previous.
Dr. Braun misplaced his license to follow medication in Montana in 2020.
