Bennett Braun, a Chicago psychiatrist whose diagnoses of repressed memories involving horrific abuse by devil worshipers helped fuel what became known as the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and ’90s, died March 20 in Lauderhill, Fla., north of Miami. He is 83 years old.
Jane Braun, one of his ex-wives, said the death, at a hospital, was from complications of the fall. Dr. Braun lived in Butte, Mont., but was in Lauderhill on vacation.
met Dr. Braun in the early 1980s as 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.
He says he can help patients uncover memories of childhood trauma — the presence of which, he and others say, is responsible for the fragmentation of a person’s self into multiple distinct personalities.
He created a unit dedicated to dissociative disorders at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago (now Rush University Medical Center); became an oft-quoted expert in the news media; and helped found what is now the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, a professional organization of over 2,000 members today.
From that massive platform announced by Dr. Braun’s most shocking findings: that in dozens of cases, his patients discovered memories of being tortured by satanic cults and, in some cases, of themselves participating in the torture.
He was not the only psychiatrist to make such a claim, and his supposed revelations led to a growing national panic.
In the 1980s, the number of people, both young and old, claiming to have been abused by devil worshipers increased. It began in the 1980s with the book “Michelle Remembers,” by a Canadian woman who said she recovered memories of ritual abuse, and escalated following 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, have been brought together as entry points for cult activity.
Such stories are fodder for popular TV formats that poke fun at the seductive, including talk shows like “Geraldo” and newsmagazines like “Dateline,” which broadcast segments that -promote such claims without criticism.
The psychiatric profession bears some responsibility for the growing panic, with respected researchers such as Dr. Braun gives it the light of authority. He and others ran seminars and distributed research papers; they even gave the phenomenon a quasi-medical abbreviation, SRA, for satanic ritual abuse.
The inpatient unit of Dr. Braun at Rush became a magnet for referrals and a warehouse for patients, some of whom he kept medicated and under supervision for years.
Among them is a woman from Iowa named Patricia Burgess. After interviewing him, Dr. Braun and his colleague, Roberta Sachs, who was not only a victim of satanic ritual abuse, but was herself a “high priestess” of a cult that raped, tortured and cannibalized thousands of children, with his two sons.
Sent by Dr. Braun and Dr. Sachs committed Mrs. Burgus and her children to a mental health facility in Houston, where they were separated for nearly three years with little contact with the outside world.
At that time, Mrs. Burgus, heavily medicated, believed the doctors, telling them he remembered torches, live burials and eating the body parts of up to 2,000 people a year. After her parents served her husband meatloaf, she had it analyzed for human tissue. The tests came back negative, but Dr. Braun was not convinced.
Maintained by Dr. Braun other patients under similar conditions at Rush or elsewhere. He persuaded a woman to have an abortion because, he convinced her, she was the product of ritualistic incest; he persuaded another to undergo a tubal ligation to avoid having more children within his supposed cult.
The satanic panic began to subside in the early 1990s. A 1992 FBI investigation found no evidence of concerted cult activity in the United States, and a 1994 report by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect surveyed more than 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse and found that none held up under investigation. .
“The biggest thing is the lack of corroborating evidence,” Kenneth Lanning, a retired FBI agent who wrote the 1992 report, said in a telephone interview. “This is the type of crime where evidence is left behind.”
Many people have distanced themselves from their former enthusiasms; in 1995, Geraldo Rivera apologized for his episode covering the lie. However, even in 1998, “Dateline” ran an episode on NBC allegedly showing widespread satanic activity in Mississippi.
Charged by Mrs. Rush is Burgus, Dr. Braun and his insurance company for claiming that Dr. Sachs planted false memories in his head. they settled out of court in 1997 for $10.6 million.
“I started adding a few things and realized that I couldn’t be from a small town in Iowa, eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it,” Mrs. Burgus in The Chicago Tribune in 1997.
A year later, the unit of Dr. Braun in Rush was closed, and the Illinois medical licensing board opened an investigation into his practices. In 1999, he received a two-year suspension of his license — even though he admitted no wrongdoing.
Bennett George Braun was born on August 7, 1940, in Chicago, to Thelma (Gimbel) and Milton Braun, a professor of orthodontics at Loyola University. He graduated from Tulane University with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1963 and earned a master’s in the same subject in 1964. He received his medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1968.
Dr. Braun was married three times. His marriages to Renate Deutsch and Mrs. Braun both ended up in divorce. His third, to Joanne Arriola, ended in his death. He is survived by five children and five grandchildren.
After temporarily losing his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Braun in Montana, where he received a new license in that state and opened a private practice.
But in 2019, one of his patients, Ciara Rehbein, sued him for overprescribing a drug that left him with a permanent facial tic. He also filed a complaint against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for allowing him a license, despite knowing his past.
Dr. lost his license. Braun to practice medicine in Montana in 2020.
