How did I miss THIS story? I guess People Magazine does have its uses: it recently surfaced what EA would headline as a “Now THIS is an Unethical High School Principal!” piece if I had been doing my ethics story research better in 2012. People’s catalyst was a episode of the docuseries “The Curious Case Of…“, and there had been an earlier docuseries on this screwy case in 2023, True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes.

The bottom line: Dr. George Kenney was a North Port High School in Sarasota County, Florida who got interested in hypnotism, took some courses in the procedure, and decided to hypnotize over 70 people according to the Sarasota-Herald Tribune, including students, athletes and colleagues,to help them cope with problems in their lives, or something. Hypnotism is regarded as therapy, and one has to be licensed to use it on consenting adults unless you have a Vegas act that makes volunteers from the audience think they are chickens or wombats. Hypnosis can be dangerous with subjects who have mental or emotional disorders, so when three of his student subjects died in the spring of 2011, one in a suspicious car crash and two by suicide, Kenney’s hypnosis hobby came under fire. He was never indicted or sued in connection with the three teens’ deaths, but Kenney was charged with two misdemeanors for practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. He pleaded no contest and resigned as principal in 2012.

You can read the People story from earlier this year here. Meanwhile,