The Curious Case of...

We're trying to hypnotize her.

You should just lay there calm after that.

Are you going to be calm now?

You can't be hypnotized.

Everybody loved Principal Kenney.

He was very highly spoken about and very popular.

There's a rumor that

the school principal hypnotizes kids.

This isn't like the movies where it's,

"Ooh, you're now hypnotized, and you're gonna go do this."

This is something that can really help you.

But it just never seemed harmful at first.

Marcus was, like, not himself.

Like, he looked like he was, like, demonic.

You're altering their mind, and that's OK with you?

La-di-da? I mean, seriously?

And then the kids fall into his lap?

It's like Marcus passed away,

Wesley passes away, Brittany passes away.

Dr. Kenney's tied in the middle of all of this.

I mean, yeah, there's sinister people in this world.

Well that's Satan knocking at your doors.

I haven't been in this yearbook in so long.

Here's the seniors.

So there's Markeisha, there's Shanice, and there's Nikki.

There's Zach, and there's Cody.

So apparently enough people thought of me as a gossiper.

Here's where I'm the biggest gossiper.

It's not my fault everyone talks to me, tells me things.

So I-- I refuse to take blame.

It fits, though.

My name is Paul Balcomb.

I'm 32 years old, live in Punta Gorda.

Uh, varsity letters...

weightlifting, and football.

I transferred to North Port end of my sophomore year

to go ahead and play football.

North Port was a place I was looking for a quarterback,

so I transferred in.

It was kind of like sort of small-town vibes,

a lot-- almost everybody knew each other.

In most high schools, right, you have these groups.

And they would hang out with each other and not anyone else.

At North Port, it just kind of felt like more people were

friends with, really, everybody.

Going into the junior year, I was starting quarterback.

Marcus Freeman was on the team.

He was one of my best friends.

He was a couple of grades behind me.

I'd call him my little protege.

I remember sitting down with the school principal and a few

of the other administrators and stuff like that.

When you met Dr. Kenney, like, you had a principal that

you felt cared.

I've been principal of North Port High School since

a year before the school opened,

and this is our 10th year in operation.

Of all the principals, George Kenney, he very quickly

became a part of our community.

He was heavily, heavily, heavily involved in all of the students.

He was always present for anything

that happened in the school.

During the football games, he's in the stands playing

his flugelhorn with the band the whole game.

He was a fun guy. The kids liked him.

He developed an almost cult-like following.

George Kenney was a respected role model

and father-figure for so many.

A lot of parents felt like George Kenney had their back,

that their kids were in good hands.

There's a rumor that Dr. Kenney hypnotizes kids.

I had psychology class around 2009.

So when we went into section where you go into hypnotism,

Dr. Kenney would come into

the class for a presentation on hypnosis.

He showed us that this isn't like the movies where it's,

"Ooh, you're now hypnotized and you're gonna go do this."

It is just your subconscious mind at work.

And it's like, OK, so there's nothing that can, like, not--

real harm that's going to come from this.

Because I was immediately like, "Dr. Kenney, yeah,

I'm your guy. Let's go ahead and do this."

I went to the office for a private session.

There's a lot that goes into being a high school athlete.

And for me, there was a lot of anxiety.

That's what we were really working on.

And once you're under,

he's tapping the back of your head,

talking to you about whatever

it is that you're working on, right?

So, with me, just, "You're good enough.

Don't have to be so worried about football."

I would say that I was hypnotized

at least 50 times, give or take.

You just feel much better about yourself.

It's kind of like this, like the cloud that you feel

like was over you is gone.

That's where, like, I started realizing, like, man, this is

something that can really help you.

I think majority of people thought it was

helpful, beneficial.

But one of the administrators had a problem with it.

Hey, buddy. Hi, Georgie. Can you give me a kiss?

You a good bird? Are you a good bird?

Can you be an eagle? Be an eagle.

Be an eagle. Ow.

What are you biting me for? You a good bird?

I'm Mark Gilliland.

I've been an administrator in Sarasota County

for 29 years. Retired.

Found him behind my school at Booker High.

23 years, 22 years ago. Right, George?

Nobody loved you because you pluck yourself.

You're a mother plucker.

I was an assistant principal at North Port High

from 2006 to 2009.

George got to hire the whole staff for the school

when it opened.

And so the staff who he hired

and brought on board, loved him.

So when I got to North Port, I was the new kid on the block.

You know, going back to that first year I was there,

at the end of the school year, they had a lock-in

for the seniors.

Project Graduation is an all-night lock-in for seniors.

So after they've graduated, you provide them with a very

safe place to be at for, you know, six to ten hours.

So that they're not out partying.

You had various staff members there helping out,

you know, chaperoning.

You had parents there, too, chaperoning.

And I'll never forget, it was around 2 or 3 in the morning,

they told the kids, "Hey, we're all gonna go in the gym now."

And there was about 15 or 20 students on the stage,

and then Dr. Kenney came out

and started to hypnotize them on stage.

I was there throughout the night,

and the students thought it was hilarious.

He would count them down and say,

"You're going in this pageant and you have to look your best."

And 17-year-old football players

would put on lipstick and wigs and they would march around

like they were in a beauty pageant.

I would take close-up pictures of these kids

and walk up to them afterwards and I'm like,

"Hey, did you know you were doing this?"

"Absolutely not."

Had I not had the photographs,

they would have never believed it.

George Kenney was clearly putting people under

some sort of spell.

This is not hypnotherapy. It's parlor tricks.

There's a big difference between therapy

versus entertainment purposes.

If it's done for entertainment, well, it can be done by

a certified hypnotist.

But in order to do therapeutic hypnosis, you have to have

a license in a medical field.

He was certified, not licensed.

This is a guy who got into the therapeutic purposes area

once he starts hypnotizing

students in his office for anxiety.

I immediately felt this is not right.

Hypnotizing kids in the middle of the night, having them doing

silly stuff on stage.

You know, this isn't something an educator does.

I reported him the summer of 2007.

I called the director of high schools and told him,

"Did you know George was hypnotizing kids on the stage

during their lock-in?"

And he kind of was flabbergasted and said, "What?"

After I turned it over to him, I expected, well,

I did my due diligence, so it's up to the powers-that-be

to deal with it now.

Years later, when questioned,

the director of secondary schools says he spoke

to Kenney after Gilliland reported him,

and told Kenney he could only do hypnosis

in a classroom setting with parental permission.

Apparently, he kept doing it in his office in private

for three or four years after I reported it.

Now, years later, the director of high schools

calls me and says, "Hey, Mark, remember, I think

you reported it the second or third year you were there."

I said, "No, I'm pretty sure it was the first year because it

was the lock-in in 2007."

He goes, "No, I'm pretty sure it was third year."

I said, "Well, yeah, that's in my memory,

I just wanted to try to confirm with you on the timeline."

So the light bulb went on in my head.

Did they ever deal with this guy after I reported it?

I definitely believe that the school board

tried to cover their ass.

All right, catch me a big bass.

Honestly, though, if I catch a fish, I'm probably gonna scream.

My name is Carley, formerly known as Carly O'Boyle.

I am a mother now to a four-year-old.

I am married as well.

- Ready to fish, hun? - Let's go.

Just don't hook me, all right?