The Miami Herald
August 29, 1982
PSYCHIATRIST ACCUSED OF BEATING, SEXUALLY ABUSING PATIENTS
By Walter Roche, Ann O’Neill, Michael Ruane

The state Board of Medical Education and Licensure has charged psychiatrist Dr. John N. Rosen with multiple counts of patient abuse, including allegations that persons in his care were beaten, shackled and forced to commit sex acts.

One of the patients allegedly abused died in 1979 from beatings administered to her by Rosen’s staff in a Broward County home the psychiatrist customarily rented from November to May.

Another patient singled out by Pennsylvania state officials was under Rosen’s care in Palm Beach County, where the controversial psychiatrist kept a winter home in Boca Raton for 30 years. While under Rosen’s care, state officials charged, the woman was subjected to physical and sexual abuse that included having her breasts fondled and beaten.

The board also charged that a male teenage patient was forced to solicit homosexual relations with a 10-year-old patient and that another was submerged in water.

The charges were contained in a 36-page citation served Friday on Rosen, 79, at his home in Gardenville, Pa., according to Walter Killian, an attorney for the state medical board.

Neither Rosen nor his attorneys could be reached for comment. Per O. Ostman, a longtime aide of Rosen, called the allegations “completely and utterly ridiculous.”

Ostman, reached by telephone at his home near Doylestown, Pa., said, “As far as I’m concerned there is absolutely no validity to those allegations, absolutely none whatsoever.”

Rosen could face suspension or revocation of his license to practice medicine in the state if the charges are upheld by a hearing examiner and the state board itself, Killian said. Rosen became licensed to practice medicine and surgery in the state in 1951.

Rosen already is the target of a lawsuit filed in July 1981 by Janet Katkow, one of the former patients listed in the citation. She accused him of forcing her to participate in “literally hundreds” of sexual encounters with Rosen and other patients and therapists.

Cited in the document released Friday were actions taken by Rosen in the treatment of 11 patients, some of whom journeyed from Pennsylvania to South Florida during the winter months. The citation charges Rosen with 67 violations of the state Medical Practices Act and 35 violations of rules and regulations of the board.

Those charges include engaging in immoral or unprofessional conduct, grossly unethical practice and engaging in acts “involving moral turpitude, dishonesty or corruption as well as misconduct in the practice of medicine and practicing medicine fraudulently.”

According to the citation, former patient Sally Zinman, the daughter of wealthy Philadelphia parents who eventually moved to a vegetable farm outside West Palm Beach, was placed under Rosen’s care by her family in 1971 when she was 34. From January 1971 to February 1973 in the course of her treatment, the citation charged, Rosen “and-or his designated agents subjected Sally Zinman to physical and sexual abuse, including but not limited to beatings, fondling of Sally Zinman’s breasts and vagina, strippings and unjustified physical restraint through the use of bonds.”
Her parents, who sent Zinman to the psychiatrist after she awoke one morning and couldn’t remember her name, said that the psychiatrist cured her daughter. Zinman, who eventually became an outpatient and stopped seeing Rosen altogether, said otherwise.

She claims Rosen beat her repeatedly, confining her at one point to a damp basement security room at Rosen’s treatment facility north of Philadelphia.

Another time, Zinman said, she was tied to a bed in Boca Raton for 24 hours. Both Zinman and a former aide told Palm Beach County authorities that Rosen then stripped Zinman to her underpants, using his fists to beat her face and breasts.

At the time, Rosen said he could not recall the Boca Raton incident and denied all of Zinman’s other accusations.

In September 1977, Zinman told her story to The Herald, which published an article based on her account.

Another case cited by the board was that of Gay Claudia Ermann, who became Rosen’s patient in late 1978 after her release from a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts. She died in December 1979 at North Broward Medical Center.

The citation said Rosen at some time in 1979 abandoned or deserted the patient, leaving her in the care of “unqualified personnel.” During the course of her treatment, the citation charged, the patient was subjected to physical abuse “including, but not limited to beatings and submergence in a pool of water by Rosen or his agents.”

“Gay Claudia Ermann died as a result of wounds inflicted upon her by beating, while she was under respondent’s care,” the citation said.

Ermann, 32, a mute from New York, died of blows to the abdomen and showed evidence of having been beaten over a period of several months, police said. At the time, Ostman said Rosen was recovering from an illness. Carmen Patete, 31, of Philadelphia, and Robin Samuels, 22, of New York, two aides at Rosen’s Lighthouse Point facility, were indicted on manslaughter charges in February 1980 by a Broward County Grand Jury. The two aides later pleaded guilty to assault charges stemming from Ermann’s death.

Also according to the citation issued Friday by Pennsylvania authorities, a boy who became a patient in 1972 at the age of 14 remained in Rosen’s care for a year. During his treatment, the citation said, Rosen or his agents provided the youth with alcohol and marijuana. Rosen ordered the youth “to solicit homosexual relations with a 10-year-old male patient,” according to the citation.
In a suit against Rosen still pending in Bucks County Court, Janet Katkow, 36, of Point Pleasant, asked the court to award her punitive damages in excess of $10,000 for each of six counts, including false imprisonment, medical malpractice and sexual assault.

Rosen denied the allegations in a response to the suit, filed in September. Specifically, he denied “each and every allegation of sexual contact” and contended that he “at all times treated the plaintiff in a proper and acceptable medical manner.”

Rosen, a former Temple University professor, treated members of some of the nation’s most prominent families, including a Rockefeller, a Lindbergh and an Annenberg at his 106-acre Tin Silos Farm in Gardenville.

Rosen is the creator of what he called the “direct analysis” method of treating severe mental illness. The method involved long hours of “direct” contact with mentally ill patients in an effort to drum into the patient the psychiatrist’s interpretations of the patient’s behavior.