A popular high school principal in Florida has been charged with two criminal offences after using hypnosis on two students who later committed suicide.
The Sarasota County state attorney charged George Kenney on Tuesday with two misdemeanour counts of “unlawful practice of hypnosis.”
Kenney, who has been on leave as principal at North Port High School since last May, is to appear in court Jan. 31.
The state attorney’s office has been investigating the 52-year-old since October, when the North Port police turned over their investigation with recommendations to prosecute.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported Thursday that Kenney has told the school district he’ll resign his job as of June 30. He has been working in district administration during the investigation.
The misdemeanour charges carry a maximum of a year in jail. The state attorney’s office declined to press more serious felony charges of unlicensed practice of health care.
Support for Kenney among the 2,300 students at the high school remained strong throughout months of investigation and tragedy.
“Dr. Kenney was an incredible leader throughout all the tragedy we had this year,” student Mariah Harshbarger told the Herald-Tribune at her graduation ceremony last June.
She and many other students wore “We love Dr. K” signs on their mortarboards.
Two students killed themselves last school year shortly after undergoing hypnosis sessions with Kenney. Another student and a teacher died in separate car accidents.
During a district investigation last spring, Kenney said he was certain hypnosis was an extremely valuable tool, the newspaper said. For several students, Kenney said, “it was a life changing thing.”
While principal, Kenney hypnotized up to 75 students, staff, parents and staff’s children at the school and initially denied one of them was Brittany Palumbo, who killed herself five months after the session.
“We're dealing with, beyond question, a very good man,” Kenney’s attorney Mark Zimmerman told the Herald-Tribune before the charges were laid.
Police told the newspaper Kenney used hypnosis to help people stop smoking and to improve academic and athletic focus and performance. One basketball player said he was hypnotized by the principal up to 40 times, the newspaper quoted police as saying.
District Superintendent Lori White has called hypnosis “outside the scope of normally accepted student counselling practices.”
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