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April 6, 2001
A Description Of The Fatal Rebirthing
Session
Depiction Of Events By 7News Reporter Julie
Hayden
 Many
people who watched the tape of the rebirthing session thought that
it was more disturbing and more bizarre than they had expected,
7News reporter Julie Hayden said.
Hayden viewed the video in court on Thursday,
and the following is a transcript of her demonstration of the fatal
rebirthing therapy session.
Candace was told to lie on the ground in a
fetal position. The therapists wrapped the flannel blanket
completely, and tightly, around her.
They told her, "We'll make sure you have plenty
of air."
Candace was cooperative and trusting as they
piled nearly 30 pounds of pillows on her. The four adults leaned
most of their weight on her and pushed hard. They told her to push
hard back, in order to be reborn.
Then Candace says, "Whoever is pushing on my
head, let go of me."
You can hear her pushing and straining, and
then you hear panic in her voice as she screams, "You're laying on
top of me!" and "I can't breathe!"
Therapist Julie Ponder responds to Candace's
condition by twisting the top of the blanket even tighter, and the
adults frequently re-position themselves to put even more weight on
Candace.
Repeatedly, Candace complains, "I can't
breathe."
Then, Candace hysterically screams, "Please,
please help me!"
"I'm dying," Candace says.
They respond, "You have to push harder or
you'll die."
Candace says, "I want to die."
They tell her, "Okay, go ahead and die."
She screams when they put more pillows and more
weight on top of her.
The last time that Candace's voice is heard is
when they tell her, "Scream for your life," and she weakly answers,
"No."
The therapists don't check on her. They make
fun of her, calling her a "quitter," and they say, "Stay in there
with the poop and the vomit."
Finally, more than an hour after they first
wrapped up Candace, the therapists unwrap the blanket. They discover
why Candace quit -- she had been unconscious and not breathing for
at least 20 minutes.
Portions of the tape were almost surreal. Dogs
walk in and out of the room. The entire time, you can hear loud
moaning and grunts from a severely handicapped person who was also
in the room. Toward the end of the tape, someone starts playing the
song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
A psychology expert who watched in the
courtroom says it's inconceivable that anyone would practice
psychotherapy like that.
"You have minutes and minutes go by without any
sound, no movement. Wouldn't anybody go by and say, 'What's going on
in there?'" psychologist Gean Mercer said.
"Any ordinary, normal person thinking and
experiencing that couldn't have interpreted her cries in any other
way, except that she needed out of there," Larry Sarner, who watched
the tape in court, said.
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