The fall ritual of homecoming is a memorable event on any school’s calendar, but it was especially poignant this year in North Port, a small town near the south-west Florida coast.



Old friends and classmates scattered at colleges and universities across the country returned to North Port high school to reminisce in the bleachers as their beloved Bobcats football team took on the rival Bayshore Bruins.

Marcus Freeman, a stand-out athlete once destined to star as the school’s starting quarterback until he was killed in a 2011 car accident at the age of 16, would likely have been a guest of honor. Also remembered this weekend were Wesley McKinley and Brittany Palumbo, two other teenage students who died in a series of tragedies that ripped the community apart.

All three died within weeks of each other – McKinley and Palumbo killed themselves after being hypnotised by George Kenney, the school’s disgraced former principal and self-appointed mind healer.

Kenney was an unlicensed amateur practitioner who ignored repeated orders from his bosses at the Sarasota school board to desist, yet was said to have hypnotised at least 75 students and staff over a five-year period.

Kenney was said to have hypnotised at least 75 students and staff over a five-year period

Under the floodlights on Friday, the treasured Bobcats emerged victorious, downing their opponents 21-12 in a bruising encounter. But in the stands much of the talk was of the once popular Kenney, and the $600,000 wrongful death settlement announced just days before the homecoming game that reopened old wounds and propelled the heartbreaking episode back into the school community’s conscience.

“It’s something they will never get over,” said Damian Mallard, the attorney who represented the families of the three victims.

“Probably the worst loss that can happen to a parent is to lose a child, especially needlessly because you had someone who decided to perform medical services on kids without a licence.

“He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it.”

What makes it worse, he said, is the fact that the man whose “extreme negligence” cost the children their lives escaped punishment.

Kenney served a year of probation in a 2012 plea deal on a misdemeanor charge of practicing hypnosis without a licence, but was allowed to retire from the school board on a full pension and now runs a small bed and breakfast close to the Smoky Mountains on the banks of Lake Junaluska.

Wesley McKinley agreed to be hypnotised because he was worried about an upcoming audition at Juilliard. Photograph: Facebook

“He never apologised, never admitted wrongdoing, and is now living comfortably in retirement in North Carolina with his pension,” Mallard told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

As an employee of the school board Kenney was exempt from individual action and as part of last week’s settlement, which headed off a trial that was set to begin on 11 October. The board accepted no liability for the teenagers’ deaths.

Each family will collect $200,000, the most that could be awarded without the approval of the Florida legislature. But there is still plenty of anger directed at the board and Kenney himself.

“Kenney was known to be performing hypnosis and no one stopped him,” said McKinley’s parents, Charles and Margaret, in a statement.

“He was committing crimes by engaging in hypnosis. We hope the school board will change the way it operates to prevent these types of tragedies from occurring in the future. We will move forward with the hope our wonderful son’s legacy will be that the school board puts children’s physical and mental welfare first and foremost.”

Before the settlement headed off a trial, the Sarasota school board was preparing a defence that there was no link between the hypnotism and the teenagers’ deaths. The district’s lawyers hired a licensed hypnotherapist and psychotherapist, Dr Ellyn Gamberg, as an expert witness to testify that the families’ claims were unfounded, and that on the day of his death Freeman could not have hypnotised himself using knowledge gained from his sessions with Kenney, as the lawsuit alleged.



“I can go through some of the literature with you that says one of the hallmarks for putting yourself into self-hypnosis is to enter a very relaxed state of attention and focus, and I think that would be extremely impossible while driving a car,” she said, according to court documents obtained by the Herald-Tribune.

The three students had all sought out Kenney’s help with individual problems they were experiencing and agreed to subject themselves to hypnosis without knowing that it was against Florida law for anybody to perform it without a licence.

In depositions for the trial it emerged that Kenney, who had studied hypnotism online and who had been conducting sessions with numerous students and employees since 2006, was specifically told three times by the board’s director of high schools to stop.

He never apologised, never admitted wrongdoing, and is now living comfortably in North Carolina with his pension Damian Mallard

Mallard, the attorney, spoke to other students who said they were hypnotised by Kenney in a hotel room during a school trip to Orlando in 2009.

“I was in this trance,” according to one unnamed student in a written deposition. “I was told I wouldn’t be able to find my room because all the room numbers would be changed to Chinese. I was lost for about 20 to 25 minutes walking around. I was seeing the Chinese lettering, the weird lines and all.”

He added: “He made a couple of the guys put lipstick on. Everybody thought it was funny because it was, you know, teenagers putting lipstick on.”

Less than two years later, three students were dead. The first was Freeman, a “humble yet confident” young man in the words of the school football team’s former head coach Matt Pryer, and an outstanding athlete who was also a two-time state BMX cycling champion.

Kenney taught Freeman to “self-hypnotise” to help him overcome pain during games, according to police reports, and lost control of his car in March 2011 driving home from a dentist appointment. His girlfriend, who was badly injured but survived, told police that Freeman “had a strange look on his face” moments before his car veered off an interstate.

“There’s nothing that can bring Marcus back, but we hope that this can bring us some closure,” said the boy’s mother, Dana Freeman, after last week’s settlement was announced.

Less than a month later, McKinley, 16, was found hanging from a tree outside his home. The talented guitar player was applying for a place at the respected Juilliard School of Music and agreed to be hypnotised because he was worried about an upcoming audition and wanted to improve his performance.

But on the day of his death, friends testified, McKinley was acting strange. One said McKinley asked him to punch him in the face as they got off the school bus together.

“We want Wesley’s friends to know they did not let him down in any way and his tragic death was the result of extreme negligence on the part of George Kenney,” his parents said.

Brittany Palumbo, a cat lover and keen mathematician, was upset about some disappointing test scores and was hypnotised for anxiety Photograph: Facebook

Palumbo’s parents found their 17-year-old daughter Brittany, who they called “the light of our lives”, hanging in her bedroom closet three weeks later. The cat lover and keen mathematician was upset about some disappointing test scores and was hypnotised by Kenney for anxiety, her family said. When her scores did not improve she became despondent.

“What I believe happened is my daughter went into her room that night and blinked her eyes and she entered a calm and relaxed state that allowed her to go through what she went through,” Brittany’s mother Patricia said.

The $600,000 settlement was “a hollow victory”, the Palumbo family said in a statement.

Lawyers for the Sarasota school board would not discuss the case, announcing only that an out-of-court settlement was in everyone’s “best interests”.

Kenney, meanwhile, did not return calls seeking comment. But clues to his behaviour come in legal interviews conducted for the trial. Everything he did, he insisted, was in the best interests of the children he hypnotised.

“I don’t think I was unreasonable,” he said in a deposition obtained by the Herald-Tribune. “I took steps to get trained at an appropriate level. I could have performed it in private practice but I chose to do it for kids who asked me if I would help them.”