Bennett Brown, a Chicago psychiatrist whose diagnosis of repressed memories involving horrific abuses by Satanists helped fuel what became known as the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. He died on March 20 in Lauderhill, Florida, north of Miami. He was 83 years old.
One of his ex-wives, Jane Brown, said his death in hospital was due to complications from a fall. Dr. Brown lived in Butte, Montana, but was vacationing in Lauderhill.
In the early 1980s, Dr. Brown became an expert in two of the most popular and controversial areas of psychiatric treatment: repressed memories and multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder. gained fame as.
He claimed he could help patients uncover memories of childhood trauma. He and others argued that its presence causes a person's ego to split into many different personalities.
He established a unit specializing in dissociative disorders at Rush Presbyterian St. Paul College. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago (now Rush University Medical Center). He has become a frequently cited expert in the news media. And he helped found the International Society of Trauma and Dissociation, a professional organization that currently has over 2,000 members.
It was from that massive platform that Dr. Brown made his most explosive discoveries public. Dozens of patients discovered memories of being tortured by satanic cults, and in some cases even participating in the torture themselves.
He was not the only psychiatrist to make such claims, and his supposed revelations were key to the growing panic across the country.
The 1980s saw a rapid increase in the number of children and adults who claimed to have been abused by Satanists. The problem began in 1980 with Michelle Remembers, a book written by a Canadian woman who said she had recovered memories of ritual abuse, and escalated after allegations of abuse at day care centers in California and North Carolina.
Elements of pop culture such as heavy metal music and the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons were incorporated as purported gateways to cult activity.
Such articles are popular, including talk shows like “Gerald'' and news magazines like “Dateline,'' which air segments that uncritically promote such claims, gleeful in their vulgar content. It became the subject of a TV format.
Respected researchers like Dr. Brown gave authority to the psychiatric profession and bore some responsibility for the spread of the panic. He and others hosted seminars and distributed research papers. They even gave this phenomenon the quasi-medical abbreviation “SRA”, which stands for Satanic Ritual Abuse.
Dr. Brown's inpatient unit at Rush became a magnet for referrals and a warehouse of patients, some of whom he medicated and supervised for years.
Among them was a woman named Patricia Vargas from Iowa. After interviewing her, Dr. Brown and his colleague Roberta Sachs discovered that not only was she a victim of satanic ritual abuse, but that she herself was a cult leader who had raped, tortured, and cannibalized thousands of children. She claimed to be the “high priestess” of the cult. Including her two young sons.
Dr. Brown and Dr. Sacks sent Mrs. Vargas and the children to a mental health facility in Houston, where they were isolated for nearly three years with minimal contact with the outside world.
By then, Mrs. Vargas was heavily medicated and had come to believe the doctors' stories, recalling torching, living burials, and eating the body parts of up to 2,000 people a year. Told. Her parents fed her husband meatloaf and then had her body tissue tested. Although the test results were negative, Dr. Brown was not convinced.
Dr. Brown put other patients under similar conditions, including at Rush. He persuaded a woman to have an abortion. The reason was that he convinced her that she was the product of ritual incest. He persuaded another woman to undergo a tubal ligation to prevent her from having any more children within his supposed cult.
The diabolical panic began to wane in the early 1990s. A 1992 FBI investigation found no evidence of organized cult activity in the United States, and a 1994 report by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Center examined more than 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse. , it turns out that not a single one was held under scrutiny.
“The biggest thing was there was no supporting evidence,” Kenneth Lanning, a former FBI agent who wrote the 1992 report, said in a telephone interview. “It's a crime that leaves behind evidence.”
Many distanced themselves from their former enthusiasm. In 1995, Geraldo Rivera apologized for an episode of false reporting. But even in 1998, “Dateline” on NBC aired an episode showing widespread demonic activity in Mississippi.
Mrs. Vargas sued Dr. Rush and her insurance company, alleging that Rush, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Sachs planted false memories in her head. They settled out of court in 1997 for $10.6 million.
“I started putting some things together and realized there was no way I could come from a small town in Iowa and feed 2,000 people a year and no one would say anything about it. “Mrs. Vargas told the Chicago Tribune in 1997.
A year later, Dr. Brown's department at Rush was closed and the Illinois Board of Medical Licensing began an investigation into his practice. In 1999, he had his license suspended for two years, but admitted no wrongdoing.
Bennett George Brown was born in Chicago on August 7, 1940 to Thelma (Gimbel) and Milton Brown, a professor of orthodontics at Loyola University. He graduated from Tulane University with his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1963 and his master's degree in the same subject in 1964. He received his medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1968.
Dr. Brown was married three times. Both marriages between Renate Deutsch and Mrs. Brown ended in divorce. The third ended with the death of João Arriola. He is survived by five children and five grandchildren.
After briefly losing his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Brown moved to Montana, where he obtained a new medical license and opened a private practice.
But in 2019, one of his patients, Ciara Levine, sued him for overprescribing drugs that left her with permanent facial tics. She also filed a complaint with the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for allowing her license despite knowing of his past.
Dr. Brown had his medical license revoked in Montana in 2020.