I was a child patient of Blandino's about 20 years ago when I was 10 until I was 13. I'm 30 now and still recovering from how she enabled my sociopathic mother's abuse.
I was seeing her because I was having trouble focusing in school and my relationship with my mother was volatile because she left my father when I was 8 for a pedo who was acting inappropriately towards me. The warning signs were there and Susan Blandino ignored them. My mother's new husband pulled my shirt collar down when I was 12 in front of my mother and Blandino dismissed that incident because it wasn't technically sexual assault.
She also diagnosed me with Asperger's-something I clearly don't have because I saw a few therapists after I was 20 (one I was seeing for 6 years) and not ONE had corroborated her diagnosis. The thing is, my mother had been insisting that I was autistic since I was 3 because I was being physically and emotionally abused at home daily, which left me with zero social skills. My mother didn't want to take accountability for her part in my abuse, so she blamed me and Blandino took her side 100 percent of the time.
During my sessions with Blandino, she kept insisting that I needed to respect my mother and her pedo husband. She suggested that they punish me by taking all of my stuff away and have me earn it back, so I came back from my father's house one day to find that my bedsheets, all of my clothes except one pair that I hated, one of my toothbrushes, and my trashcan were gone on top of all my toys. I told Blandino this and she didn't empathize with how extreme that was.
One day my mother's husband got violent and physically abused me in front of her office in the parking lot which Blandino witnessed from her window. I found a copy of an email years later of a reply from CPS telling her that the incident didn't qualify as abuse, so she must have reported it, but her behavior and how much she sided with my mother didn't change after that.
Once when I was 12, my mother refused to let me go to mandatory after school tutoring because I failed a quiz. I had an appointment with Blandino and instead of calling her to say that I couldn't go to therapy that week, she acted like my session was more important than fixing a failed grade in school. I was fuming during that session and telling Blandino how ridiculous this was and how I should be in tutoring. She was all, "And how does that make you feel?" BS instead of holding my mother accountable.
Then when I was 13, my father met with her and brought up the incident involving my mother's husband pulling my shirt collar down. She was excusing it by saying that it wasn't technically sexual abuse (no it wasn't, but that doesn't make it ok) and my father asked her, "Do you have a daughter?" She said yes and my father asked, "If you saw a stranger doing that to your daughter, would you be ok with it?" Blandino went silent, and after that session she wrote my mother saying that she was dropping my case.
My father wasn't completely in the right either with using me as his personal therapist regarding the divorce, but Blandino was only seeing the wrong that my father was doing and not my mother even though what my mother was doing was much, much worse.
Blandino had also reported only good things about my brother, (a well adaptable child, or something of that nature) but it was obvious that my brother was the favorite child because my parents both had almost no complaints about him.
My brother is currently in custody awaiting trial to my knowledge. His name is Chris Kranenberg, and he was busted for a 1.1 million dollar ponzi scheme. The articles are online.
I also no longer speak to either of my parents, and my father learned to accept my boundary after he sent my brother to harass me and I ended up having to go to the police because my brother got in my husband's (then boyfriend's) face and smashed my car windshield.
My mother would not let up and stalked me for two years after that, until I mailed her a letter threatening legal action if she continued. I still have a news paper clipping from 2016 of a police sketch of a man matching my mother's husband's appearance. The man was trying to lure girls into his truck or van.
These are the people Blandino thought were worth siding with or were good people.
And before anybody goes, "Well, why are you coming out about this now?!" It's because I was THAT messed up after years of my mother's and her husband's abuse. I spent over a decade just trying to get to where I can not feel the need to act abusive to try to protect myself against abuse that is no longer there, or enter episodes of psychosis.
My mother was a master manipulator and a liar, and I'm sure she had Blandino fooled at times but she is a psychologist. Aren't you supposed to be TRAINED to recognize this stuff over time?
My only hope now is that anybody reading this thinks long and hard before bringing their kids to see Susan Blandino. read more
