Britney’s Law: The McLean Connections

Have you ever wondered why celebrities are constantly in "rehab" facilities? So did I...

In the first part of my series on Britney, we learned about her childhood and the Promises Malibu treatment center she was in. Now let’s talk about Britney’s psychiatrist, Dr. Timothy Benson. It’s not certain exactly when Dr. Benson began treating Britney, except that he was selected by her father at some point during the conservatorship. What we do know about him is what Britney said in her statement to the court via transcripts:

“When [Dr. Benson] passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God. In other words, my team is pushing it with me again, I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because of the trauma. Locking me up for four months in that place. It’s not OK for them to send me — sorry, I’m going fast — to that small room like that twice a week with another new therapist that I pay that I never even approved. I don’t like it. I don’t want to do that. And I haven’t done anything wrong to deserve this treatment.”

Dr. Benson died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 47 in August of 2019, just days before he was set to testify in the conservatorship case. Media reports said the cause of death was “thought to be an aneurysm,” but I was unable to find any reports saying an autopsy confirmed this. Dr. Benson was supposed to be questioned by Britney’s team about what medications she was on. Britney stated in her court testimony that when she tried to push back on the control over her- even in so small a matter as saying she didn’t want to perform a certain dance move on stage- that Dr. Benson suddenly took her off the medication she had previously been on and put her on lithium instead with no explanation. Britney said she hated the lithium, which made her feel drunk.

When I began to look into Dr. Benson, I found connections that really changed the investigation for me. Dr. Benson was known as a psychiatrist who “helped the best get better” in his own words. He has strong ties to institutions which were central to Project MK Ultra as well as several notorious abuse cases. He was a bit of a public figure who helped high profile athletes and others at the top of their field manage the pitfalls of success. He was a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School for over 10 years. He was also invited to speak at the Wharton School of Business.

Infamous “Unabomber” and MK Ultra victim Ted Kaczynski

Harvard is an elite institution known to be deeply involved with Project MK Ultra. Timothy Leary had a network of schools he used to distribute LSD and study it’s potential for mind control in the 1960’s, and Harvard acted as the central hub. He also experimented with psychedelics on prisoners in the Concord Prison Experiment. From 1959 - 1962, Harvard psychologists, led by Henry A. Murray, conducted a disturbing, unethical experiment on 22 undergraduates. One of them was the now infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. When I began researching #FreeBritney I had no idea I would find further connections between Harvard and MK Ultra experiments through Britney Spears’ doctor, Timothy Benson, and the hospital psych ward programs he ran.

Selena Gomez accepting her award from McLean

When Dr. Benson graduated from the University of Rochester Medical School, he began his psychiatric residency at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. He was made chief resident of addictions at McLean in his final year of residency there. McLean is also a Harvard teaching hospital and was named the #1 psych hospital in America in 2022 by U.S. News & World Report. Benson was made medical director of McLean Residence at the Brook as well as McLean Fernside, both residential treatment centers and Harvard research affiliates. McLean’s website says it “maintains the largest neuroscience and psychiatry research program of any private psychiatric hospital in the United States” and “Our Harvard Medical School-affiliated clinicians are experts in the use of state-of-the-art psychological treatments and medication evaluation.” One such great innovator to come out of McLean is Dr. Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Another troubled pop star and fellow Disney child star, Selena Gomez, has publicly spoken about being treated with DBT at McLean. Selena had been admitted to inpatient treatment facilities in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and did a PR campaign for DBT saying it “completely changed my life.” Selena even received the 2019 McLean Award for her advocacy of DBT and mental health awareness, and in her acceptance speech, she thanked filmmaker David O. Russell (who received the same award in 2012) for introducing her to the folks at McLean. The reason I add that here is because Russell has since been accused of sexually assaulting his transgender “niece” during a 2011 encounter- an allegation he does not deny. Ironic given his advocacy of mental health awareness, and another example of a theme we see woven throughout the Britney saga: famous people who are trying to eradicate some societal ill can often be found perpetrating it. More on Selena later, but for now let’s talk about Dr. Marsha Linehan.

Marsha Linehan was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943. She began exhibiting signs of mental illness as a teen and was sent to a psychiatric hospital called the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut where she was committed. While committed to the Institute of Living, Linehan was subjected to isolation, electroconvulsive therapy, and was given powerful drugs like Thorazine, Librium, and others. Linehan says that she was one of the hospital’s most disturbed patients. She repeatedly burned and cut herself, banged her head on floors and walls. She has since retroactively diagnosed herself with borderline personality disorder. Linehan says none of the treatments worked, but she was finally released after 26 months of hospitalization anyway.[i] Despite this, Linehan says she hasn’t taken any psychiatric medications since leaving the Institute of Living. This is curious, since she went from there to a Jesuit University and became a distinguished Doctor of Psychology and managed to function extremely well.

Linehan attended Loyola University in Chicago, a Jesuit research university, earning a Ph.D. in social and experimental personality psychology in 1971. During this time, she also studied Zen meditation under Jesuit priest Willigis Jager and became a Zen teacher herself. I was surprised to learn that both Loyola and the Institute for Living were deeply involved in helping cover up the abuses of Catholic Jesuit priests during the years that Dr. Linehan was at these institutions. In 2002, The Boston Globe published details of an investigation that led to the criminal prosecutions of 5 such priests and shined a national spotlight on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. The Globe's coverage encouraged other victims to come forward, resulting in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston paying out $95 million in compensation to victims and the opening of 249 criminal cases. One of the worst offenders, John Geoghan, was sent to the Institute of Living in 1989 after several other instances of known sex offenses with young boys over the previous 27 years. By this time, Fr. Geoghan had already been caught molesting children and admitted to several abuses in multiple parishes. Unbelievably, the Institute of Living released Geoghan describing him as "moderately improved". Institute officials recommended that he return to assignment, despite saying he had been diagnosed by their clinicians as having "atypical pedophilia in remission" and a "mixed personality disorder with obsessive-compulsive, histrionic and narcissistic features.”[ii] It was later revealed that Geoghan abused more than 130 boys over his 30-year career, with the knowledge of his superiors in the Catholic Church. But He’s not the only one. In fact, The Institute of Living “treated” hundreds of priests over several decades, including another notorious offender, Joseph Maskell, who was the subject of a Netflix documentary called The Keepers. The Institute maintains that it was not responsible for the coverup and bears no responsibility, despite recommending that many of these priests be returned to their duties after being diagnosed with pedophilic disorders. Dr. Linehan has returned to the Institute of Living to give presentations on DBT.

John Goeghan in court

In the wake of the Boston Globe reporting, it was also revealed that many priests with similar problems came out of Loyola, Linehan’s alma mater and place of employment from 1969-1975.[iii] In a Cook County lawsuit brought by victims alleging abuse at Loyola in 2007, one attorney stated “From 1962-2007, the Jesuits received over 30 discrete opportunities to protect children.  What these Jesuits officials did is just unconscionable. This goes beyond careless; this is so immorally self- serving that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.”[iv] It could be total coincidence that Dr. Linehan went straight from the Institute of Living, which was protecting all these Jesuit priests, to Loyola University, which was also protecting these priests, AND that she got a PhD in social and experimental psychology. It could be. But what did she do next? She went from Loyola to Stonybrook University where she did a post-Doctoral fellowship in Behavior Modification. She then returned to Loyola where she studied Zen meditation under Jesuit priest Willigis Jaeger, who was responsible for mission and development at a German Catholic Youth organization which was also embroiled in priest abuse scandals.[v] She incorporated elements of what she learned from him into her DBT program, which was then implemented throughout McLean’s facilities, among others.[vi]

So here we have only a few degrees of separation between Britney and Catholic priest scandals so big in size and scope that they are still being investigated to this day. We can only speculate about the intentions of the doctors who run McLean and its treatment programs. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m not drawing a specific conclusion YET, I am laying the groundwork and demonstrating the numerous connections that make up the Britney Spears saga. We have only scratched the surface. The next installment will cover what I have found out about what goes on inside the McLean/Harvard run facilities that “treat” all of these troubled stars when their behavior becomes erratic and bizarre. I’ll give you a hint: it goes up to the highest levels of government and reaches back decades into the depths of Project MK ULTRA. Don’t miss the next chapter of the story!

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[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Geoghan

[iii] https://newtriernews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Page7.pdf

[iv] https://www.andersonadvocates.com/news/70-never-released-documents-reveal-extent-of-cover-up-from-1960s-through-2007/

[v] https://www.dw.com/en/german-catholic-priests-abused-thousands-of-children/a-45459734

[vi] https://www.mcleanhospital.org/sites/default/files/shared/BPDWebinar-Jenkins-DBT-Overview-2018.pdf