xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Ronald Plaster, 21, and Amber Plaster, 20, were arrested in Meadville, Pa., in February after an investigation of sexual assault against two teenagers; the investigation was started when Amber walked into a police station and asked, out of curiosity, whether it was legal for a 21-year-old man to have sex with a 15-year-old girl.
“Repressed memory” was a popular psychiatric diagnosis in the 1980s, with well-credentialed doctors convincing patients that the cause of their unhappiness was a history of sordid sexual episodes that they had buried deep in their subconscious. Three doctors persuaded Chicago-area resident Elizabeth Gale that she had been the victim of a satanic cult that had used her to breed children just for sex and pornography, and she acceded to now-widely discredited treatment (druggings, tie-downs, hypnosis, a tubal ligation, and 18 hospitalizations covering 2,016 days during her 12-year ordeal). In February, Gale settled a lawsuit against the doctors and two hospitals for $7.5 million. One of the doctors, Bennett Braun, lost a similar case in 1997 for $10.6 million.
An 18-year-old man drowned near Eudora, Ark., in December, when the he accidentally fell into a pit of water while attempting to drown his pit bull (which he thought was too old and docile), and the man’s father also drowned when he jumped in to save his son. (The dog survived.)
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD