SARASOTA COUNTY - The families of three North Port High School students who died after being hypnotized by former Principal George Kenney will receive $200,000 each from the Sarasota County School District under a settlement agreement unanimously approved by the School Board at its meeting Tuesday night. 
 
 The $600,000 settlement closes a bizarre, yearslong case that began after former North Port High School Principal Kenney admitted he hypnotized 16-year-old Wesley McKinley a day before the teenager committed suicide in April 2011. 
 
 A subsequent investigation found that Kenney hypnotized as many as 75 students, staff members and others from 2006 until McKinley's death. One basketball player at the school said Kenney hypnotized him 30 to 40 times to improve his concentration. 
 
 Among those who were hypnotized were 17-year-old Brittany Palumbo and 16-year-old Marcus Freeman. Palumbo committed suicide in 2011. Freeman was in a fatal car accident after apparently self-hypnotizing, a technique Kenney taught the teenager, also in 2011. 
 
 School Board Attorney Art Hardy said after the board approved the agreement on a 4-0 vote that the board was “just happy to put this behind them.” 
 
 School Board Chairman Frank Kovach was not present for the vote. 
 
 Earlier on Tuesday, Damian Mallard, an attorney representing the families of McKinley, Palumbo and Freeman, said the parents did not sue for money but to hold the school district accountable and to ensure something similar does not happen again. 
 
 “It's something they will never get over. It's 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 license,” Mallard said. “He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it.” 
 
 Mallard said the families and the district reached a settlement agreement on Oct. 1 as the case was nearing a trial. 
 
 Kenney was placed on administrative leave in May 2011; he resigned in June 2012. He was charged with two misdemeanors in 2012, including practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. He entered a plea of no contest as part of a deal that saw him serve one year of probation, during which he was not allowed to practice unlicensed hypnosis. 
 
 Kenney gave up his teaching license in 2013 under pressure from the Florida Department of Education and cannot reapply for another. Documents at the time indicated he lived in Waynesville, North Carolina. A web search revealed Kenney operates a lakeside bed-and-breakfast there and creates stained glass. 
 
 “They're not happy about” Kenney's lack of punishment, Mallard said of the students' families. “The thing that is the most disappointing to them is he never apologized, never admitted wrongdoing and is now living comfortably in retirement in North Carolina with his pension.” 
 
 The families could not sue Kenney himself because school district employees are considered an extension of the School Board under the law. The only entity families could sue was the school district. 
 
 Mallard noted that the $200,000 awarded to each family is the maximum any Florida government agency can pay without getting special approval from the Legislature and governor. 
 
 The civil case was set to go to trial on Oct. 12. Both the school district and Mallard had collected depositions in the case that shed more light on what happened. 
 
 Before McKinley, Palumbo and Freeman were ever hypnotized by Kenney, Sarasota County School District Executive Director of High Schools Steve Cantees warned Kenney at least three times not to practice hypnosis unless it was a demonstration in a psychology class and he had written parent permission from each student. 
 
 But even those demonstrations may have been illegal because Kenney did not have a license to practice hypnosis. 
 
 Freeman was the first of the three students named in the lawsuit to die. 
 
 Kenney hypnotized Freeman, a quarterback for the North Port High football team, to help him concentrate and not worry about pain during games, according to court documents. Kenney began to teach Freeman how to hypnotize himself. 
 
 After a painful dentist visit on March 15, 2011, Freeman drove home with his girlfriend. His girlfriend said that during the ride Freeman got a strange look on his face and veered off of Interstate 75 near Toledo Blade Boulevard. Freeman later died from his injuries; his girlfriend survived. 
 
 McKinley was found hanging outside his home less than a month later on April 8. His friend Thomas Lyle said in a deposition for the case that McKinley was hypnotized by Kenney at least three times, including on the day he died. McKinley wanted to do better with his guitar practice for his audition with the Julliard School of the Arts, Lyle said. When McKinley would get on the school bus after sessions, sometimes he wouldn't know his name, Lyle said. McKinley would ask who his friends were. The same day McKinley died, he asked Lyle to punch him in the face, the records stated. 
 
 “I would say that he was in a distant phase. He wasn't all there mentally, it seemed like, after the sessions,” Lyle said, according to a deposition. 
 
 Palumbo also hanged herself. Her parents found her in her closet in 2011. Her parents said she wanted to attend the University of Central Florida before Kenney informally diagnosed her with test anxiety. He said hypnosis could help her improve her SAT scores. Her scores did not improve and she became despondent before she died. 
 
 Palumbo's parents urged parents of other students hypnotized by Kenney to pay close attention to their children's behavior, especially in times of turmoil. 
 
 “We are satisfied with the overall outcome,” Michael and Patricia Palumbo said in a statement, “although this is a very hollow victory.” 

 Wesley McKinley, 16, was found dead in a vacant house, apparently of suicide, after his third hypnosis session with principal George Kenney. 
 
 NORTH PORT — In this sprawling community midway between Sarasota and Fort Myers, it would be hard to find a more popular man than George Kenney. 
 
 Students at North Port High School, where Kenney has been principal since it opened in 2001, marvel at how many kids he knows by name on a campus of 2,400. They like how he cracked down on bullies, how he was always around to talk about problems. 
 
 And they especially liked his unusual method of helping students — hypnosis. 
 
 With their parents' permission, Kenney hypnotized kids on the track team to help them run faster. He hypnotized kids in advanced classes to help them relax before tests. He even hypnotized nervous ROTC cadets the night before a statewide drill competition. 
 
 Among the many students who sought his help was 16-year-old Wesley McKinley. On April 8, the day after Kenney hypnotized Wesley in a one-on-one session, the boy was found dead, an apparent suicide. 
 
 Now Kenney is on paid leave from his $128,375-a-year job, amid investigations into Wesley's death and why Kenney continued hypnotizing students individually even after he was told two years ago to limit his activities to a psychology class. 
 
 The suspension is the talk of North Port, where the 52-year-old Kenney is credited with making the high school a source of community pride. Dozens of faculty and staff members have signed a petition urging his reinstatement before the June 6 graduation. Hundreds of students have posted comments on two Facebook pages supporting Kenney. 
 
 "He actually cares about students' well-being and success,'' says John Diasparra, a 2008 North Port graduate. "I think that's probably why he did what he did. He saw (hypnosis) as a tool, a very efficient tool to increase well-being.'' 
 
 The case has also caused a buzz among psychologists, therapists and others who use hypnotism — a loosely regulated technique often associated with stage acts in which hypnotized people quack like ducks or talk into their shoes. Despite the perception caused by such antics, people in hypnotic states cannot be made to act against their will. 
 
 For that reason, experts say, it is unlikely hypnosis had anything to do with the student's death. But school officials wonder if a deep interest in hypnosis might have affected the principal's judgment. 
 
 Hypnosis "is something that Dr. Kenney felt very strongly about and it just carried on to his work,'' says Frank Kovach, chairman of the Sarasota County School Board. "I think that was a mistake." 
 
 'Favorite class' 
 
 Hypnosis is described as a "highly relaxed state,'' "an altered state of consciousness,'' and "a pathway to the subconscious.'' Research has shown that those in a hypnotic state are fully awake, but acutely focused on an image or thought, with a corresponding decrease in awareness of their surroundings. 
 
 Hypnosis is used to treat phobias, sex addiction, alcoholism, chronic pain and more. In Florida, it is illegal to use hypnosis for therapeutic purposes unless the practitioner is a licensed health professional (psychiatrist, dentist, etc.) or is working under the supervision of one. 
 
 However, due to court rulings that have blurred the meaning of "therapeutic,'' even people like Kenney who are not licensed health professionals can use hypnosis for such things as alleviating stress and improving sports performance. 
 
 Kenney got some of his instruction from the Omni Hypnosis Training Center in Deland, which offers videos for home study as well as weeklong classroom sessions costing $1,995. 
 
 "I think he is one of the most honorable, aboveboard people that I ever met in my entire life,'' says Gerald Kein, the center's director. "He had a lot of training before he came to me. He's probably one of the most overqualified hypnotists I know.'' 
 
 Kenney, whose Defeating Test Anxiety with Hypnosis CD is available from Amazon, is known to have used hypnotic techniques on students at least since 2007. That December, the school newspaper, Bobcat Sentinel, ran a photo of a junior who had smeared lipstick on his face after being hypnotized by Kenney in a psychology class. 
 
 "It was usually everyone's favorite class,'' says Diasparra, who took it before graduating in 2008. "It was an event because Dr. Kenney was in there.'' 
 
 Diasparra said the principal told him and other volunteers "to relax your body, relax your arms at your side. He would lift your arms up and let them go.'' 
 
 Then, "he does basic stuff like 'forget the number six' — people would go '1-2-3-4-5-7,' '' Diasparra says. 
 
 Two years ago, after Kenney demonstrated hypnosis at a school-related social event, a district supervisor verbally instructed him to use it only in psychology classes and only with parents' permission. 
 
 But Kenney continued to hypnotize students outside of class. Evan Thompson, a junior, says the principal hypnotized him and other ROTC cadets in a Central Florida hotel last year before a competition. 
 
 "It made me at peace,'' Thompson says. "We finished 13th out of 26th, which was better than the previous year.'' 
 
 Another junior, Ashley Owens, says hypnosis has "really helped'' a friend on the track team improve performance. "I don't think there's any harm in it,'' Owens says. "It's not like it was a secret. Parents knew about it, teachers knew about it.'' 
 
 Spotting problems 
 
 Kenney hypnotized some students repeatedly, including Wesley McKinley. 
 
 Wesley had recently transferred from a Catholic high school in Jacksonville to the much larger North Port High. With parental permission, the principal hypnotized him three times, once in a class and twice in individual sessions with Wesley's friends present. 
 
 The day after the third session, a friend found the teenager's body in a vacant house close to his home. 
 
 Neither Kenney nor the McKinleys would comment for this story. Kenney told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that the boy was interested in psychology and wanted to be hypnotized, thinking it would help him be more focused and outgoing. 
 
 The sessions "went really well,'' Kenney told the paper. "I didn't have any reason to believe there was a problem.'' 
 
 But members of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis say Kenney's statement itself reflects a problem — the use of hypnosis by people not trained to spot mental health issues. 
 
 "If a student or person is needing something to help them relax, there is usually some underlying issue causing that anxiety and they probably should see a mental health professional,'' says Richard Spana, a Tampa psychologist. 
 
 "The issue in working with hypnosis is that there can be latent things that are triggered, like past experiences and memories, and the patient can have a bad reaction," Spana said. "Does hypnosis cause suicide in and of itself? That's not really likely. Can it trigger some sort of mental health problem that was dormant? Yes.'' 
 
 Barbara Cook, a licensed clinical social worker in Tampa who treats sex problems, says it is important to explore a person's thoughts and feelings before using hypnosis. 
 
 "What I do with my patients is knowing what their ego strengths are, what their issues are and if they are vulnerable before doing hypnosis,'' she says. "I wouldn't do it without three or four sessions first.'' 
 
 The school district suspended Kenney on May 17, after some students began blaming Wesley's death on the hypnosis and after Kenney called the boy's parents to say he wouldn't have hypnotized him had he known he was depressed. 
 
 "I have no doubt that his motivation has been positive and he's trying to help the students,'' Wesley's father, Charles McKinley, told the Herald-Tribune. 
 
 Principal a scapegoat? 
 
 Many students feel the timing of the death was coincidental. Some think the Sarasota County School District, faced with possible lawsuits, is trying to scapegoat Kenney when the district itself was remiss in not ordering him more forcefully to stop individual hypnosis sessions. 
 
 The principal's suspension comes at a tough time, capping a year in which a teacher and a student were killed in separate car accidents and another student committed suicide unrelated to the hypnosis controversy. 
 
 "There's just so much death and pain in this school this year,'' says Thompson, who organized a protest in support of Kenney. "Next year, when I graduate, I'd like to shake his hand. He's a great principal and a great guy. But I don't think he's going to come back.'' 
 
 Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.
– On Tuesday, a Florida school board approved a $600,000 payout to the families of three students who died after being hypnotized by their high school principal, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. The bizarre case has its roots in 2011, when 16-year-old North Port High School quarterback Marcus Freeman died in a March car crash on his way home from a painful dental visit; principal George Kenney had taught him to hypnotize himself to deal with pain during games. A month later, 16-year-old Wesley McKinley hanged himself after being hypnotized by Kenney three times, including on the day before his death. Friends say Wesley couldn't remember his own name after hypnosis sessions to improve his guitar playing. NBC News reports 17-year-old Brittany Palumbo hanged herself in her closet 5 months later, after Kenney hypnotized her to improve her SAT scores. An investigation launched after Wesley's death found Kenney hypnotized up to 75 students, staff members, and others starting in 2006, the Herald-Tribune reports. A school district official had warned him to stop hypnotizing students three times by the time the deaths started. A lawyer for the families says Kenney never admitted wrongdoing or apologized to the families. "He altered the underdeveloped brains of teenagers, and they all ended up dead because of it." In 2011, the Tampa Tribune spoke with a psychologist who said that while it's "not really likely" that hypnosis can cause suicide, it can "trigger some sort of mental health problem that was dormant." NBC News notes Kenney had received training at a hypnosis center in the state, but he had no license to practice therapeutic hypnosis. Kenney resigned in 2012, pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors, served one year of probation, and is currently operating a bed and breakfast in North Carolina. (Another Florida principal is out of a job because of a Facebook post.)