Diagnosis

"The report was the worst I have ever read. Mr. Abney was described as a complete sociopath with a cunning criminal mind and as extremely cruel and profoundly sado-masochistic .... They said he presented the worst profile they had ever seen (of over 200 cases) and said that what they had found was a man who could present as helpless and victimized and also as a cunning sociopath .... Mr. Abney presented as potentially a high level criminal leader ...."

In a follow-up letter in October, Abney said he was concerned because his wife was acting strangely. "At the meeting, attended by all doctors, therapists and family involved, my wife was like a robot; she was definitely not there, hypnotized possibly."

It was at that meeting, he wrote the board, that his wife told him about an experience she claimed the family had on an outing: "We all went to a field somewhere and took turns tying each other up to a tree and bullwhipping each other and then took turns sexually molesting each other." Abney told the board that when he asked a doctor present, "Why would I not feel the pain or have marks or scars from this action?" the doctor's reply was, "The cult knows how to do it without leaving any marks."

Abney also complained that he had been accused "of being MPD or having different parts because I have a speech defect that comes out when I am tired or excited.

"... I feel like this had started off as health care for my family and then went to greed ... $90,000 a month forever ... this is a scam, it must stop now!"

The board informed Peterson in September 1993 that it had found no probable cause to continue an investigation of Abney's complaint. Three complaints against Peterson are currently pending with the board but are not public record.

As time went on, some of the personnel at Spring Shadows had begun to grow uneasy with what was transpiring in the dissociative disorders unit, according to Sally McDonald, a former nurse manager on the children's unit. Nurses began to leave the hospital. So did two medical directors.

McDonald, in a deposition taken this year for the Abneys' suit, says nurses were quitting because they were unable to work with Peterson. In an article published in 1994 in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing, and discussed in her deposition, McDonald wrote that nurses challenged Peterson's reliance on restraints and argued that her restrictive approaches were unnecessary.

Some of the patients, the nurses believed, had not exhibited self-destructive behavior and didn't need to be under suicide watch. One young man was placed in nine-point restraints for three days, McDonald wrote, "not because he was a threat to himself (or others) but because those three days coincided with some satanic event." The young man played cards with nurses with his one unrestrained hand.

According to McDonald's article, the main cause of attrition among the nurses was their concern about an overreliance on restraints in abreactive sessions. Some nurses felt this violated nursing and hospital policy, which stated less restrictive methods should be tried first and, according to McDonald, that "mechanical devices were used only as a last resort in assisting a patient to regain control." Although patients were told the use of restraints was voluntary, they were also told by doctors and therapists that being restrained would prevent them from hurting themselves if they became too violent in their recall.

During abreactive sessions, Amy Smith, Alison Roome and other patients say, they were strapped to a specially equipped bed with brown leather ties that were wrapped around their ankles and wrists. Roome says she once was restrained at nine points, with sheets coiled across her chest, her waist and knees and her head bound in a cervical collar. The sessions lasted from 40 minutes to two hours.

Smith describes life in the dissociative disorders unit as chaotic. One problem was that the abreactive responses didn't end in the planned sessions, according to Smith and former patient Karen N., who spoke with the Press on the condition that her real name not be used. Patients began to "spontaneously abreact" everywhere, reliving supposed traumatic memories at lunch or in a hallway.

The patients fed off one another's memories. To get attention and sympathy and to please their therapists, Smith and Karen N. say they would invent and embellish memories. An hour later, they would be one-upped by another patient. Small talk could center around memories of eating babies.

"Every day was total chaos. There was screaming and crying. We never knew what to expect. Some patients would lose control. We were all supposedly MPD and in satanic cults. You could be talking to someone and suddenly they would switch personalities. I started doing it, too. It all started to seem so normal," Smith says.