Psychiatrist ‘drugged up to 180 children and falsely convinced them they had been sexually abused by their parents so he could cash in on treating them’
A psychiatrist drugged up to 180 children and falsely convinced them they had been sexually abused by their parents so he could make money from their treatment.
- Professor Suleyman Salih Zoroglu was arrested this month at his clinic in Istanbul
- Police believe he paid huge sums of money while the ‘abused’ children were patients
A psychiatrist accused of drugging dozens of children to convince them their parents had sexually abused them has been arrested by police in Turkey.
Professor Suleyman Salih Zoroglu is alleged to have administered psychoactive drugs to almost 200 young people after taking them to his clinic in Istanbul to make money from subsequent treatment.
He then manipulated them, local media reported, into believing they had multiple personalities and were victims of sexual attacks by their families.
Zoroglu and his staff were arrested on September 11 in a police raid on his clinic, including a doctor who supplied him with illegal drugs.
Police believe Zoroglu – the head of the child psychiatry department at Istanbul Çapa Medical School – paid huge sums while the “abused” children were patients at his clinic, leaving families to pay for treatment and medicine.
Professor Suleyman Salih Zoroglu (pictured) is said to have administered psychoactive drugs to almost 200 young people after they were brought to his clinic in Istanbul.
Zoroglu knew that while police investigated the false abuse claims, he could cash in on the children’s care, according to reports.
But instead of helping the young people, he used the sessions to reinforce their false memories of the abuse and make their situation worse, police believe.
Zoroglu was only exposed when the shocked parents of a 15-year-old girl brought to his clinic determined to prove he was lying.
The girl was brought to Zoroglu by her parents in October last year because they were afraid she would not succeed at school.
The greedy Zoroglu soon diagnosed her with dissociative identity disorder. He said she had 48 different personalities and blamed her father’s sexual abuse.
While she was admitted to his clinic, he doped her with the powerful horse tranquilizer Ketamine to compile a lurid catalog of rape and abuse by her family.
Ketamine is a dissociative drug, meaning it acts on various chemicals in the brain, causing visual distortion and distance from reality.
In a grim twist, he even ordered her parents to buy the medicine he prescribed and bombarded them with religious messages accusing them of sinning.
Together with the doctor, she submitted a twelve-page report to the authorities, but when the police were called in to investigate, a medical examination revealed that she was still a virgin and therefore her stories of rape could not be true.
Suspecting that she may have used drugs as a reason for the accusations, further tests were carried out which revealed traces of ketamine in her hair, leading to suspicion that she must have used this while under Zoroglu’s care .
Only after the police took her away from the psychiatrist and his baffling treatments did she retract all her accusations about her parents and the abuse.
The girl’s brother helped catch the psychiatrist by saving important text messages between his sister and the medic, which allegedly proved Zoroglu’s manipulative tactics.
His sister also provided prosecutors with a dossier detailing Zoroglu’s methods and the abuse he allegedly inflicted on seven other young patients.
Zoroglu admitted to preparing sexual abuse reports for more than 40 children, but denied allegations of manipulation and coaching.
However, prosecutors suspect that there are as many as 180 children who received a fake abuse diagnosis from Zoroglu.
The investigation continues.