Separated at Birth: Twins and Triplets Reunite after Cruel Experiment | ENDEVR Documentary

do they at this point do they know that they're twins some do some don't so that's another that's another issue of course I don't know how to handle it myself how you know how many twins are there and how many are are aware that they're twins and how many are not I mean what's the scope of the problem in that sense I want to talk about [Music] that happy birday happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday happy birth [Applause] [Music] to my name is Howard buck born in New York City I guess I found out later on when I was smart enough to know any better that uh I was adopted two loving parents that were my mom and dad for sure I mean there could be no other shock again yes I grew up in Westbury Long Island New York and then we moved up to brookly Massachusetts and my parents always used to tell me that I was more special because they chose me as opposed to just had me seemed like something special to be adopted I don't [Music] know it's a little bit more involved than just he you know our mother gave us up for for adoption cuz she couldn't handle us and and you know they ended up separating us I'm sure that happens but um this was by [Music] Design [Music] some scientists in 1960s were deciding to study nature versus nurture evidently they found a way through the adoption agency to place twins with different families my father and mother were never told that there was a twin brother Howard and I were put in strangely similar family backgrounds our fathers were both business Executives mothers were Housewives we both had sisters 3 years older sent the paperwork I got a call from someone from the Louise wise agency and she proceeded to tell me that I have a an iCal twin brother which uh pretty much out of the blue floored me I mean what do you say to that that was tough cuz I every day I just had that on my mind every day who is this guy where does he live how do I find [Music] him she said I had a twin brother who' been looking for me for a couple years and said I almost drove off the road when uh when I heard that cuz that was the last thing I was ever expecting to [Music] hear looking out in our pool where we like to spend a lot of our time when the weather is real nice it's not being very good to us today these are pictures of the children when they were quite small Debbie's and Doug's children well we were married a couple of years and we figed try and make have a baby and nothing happened and we said let's try adoption and that's how we got to Louise wise they gave us stlas and said we we'll let you have this child but we're going to monitor it so it was a question of if I say no they won't give me the child I think there was a certain amount of coercion to our permitting them to conduct the study they made it sound like uh this was to everybody's benefit to see how smart this kid is cuz I don't know him here we're adopting a child we don't know him we don't know his background but in never dawnn on me why they coming back so many times [Music] Oh I thought you had it I want I want Sali and [Music] and the kids had a playroom downstairs the tomb would play but all of a sudden I don't want to play anymore and you just slam everything away from him and Debbie would come upstairs she says he's playing realiz she doesn't want to play with me I went down I said what's wrong Douglas nothing something was missing in this kid's life as happy as we thought he was he was not happy he'd fight with kids in school he'd have uh uh he'd interrupt his playing and suddenly erupt in Anger there's very little question in my mind thg's original anger revolved around the fact that he knew there was something missing in his life but he didn't know what it [Music] was so the Louise wise agency was an adoption agency placed children from unwed mothers but it also advised mothers primarily Jewish ones who were pregnant how they could manage their infants who they were relinquishing for adoption I guess they sought outside assistance to do this in the best way possible and one of their contacts was Dr Bola Bernard a psychiatrist from Columbia [Music] University Twins were purposefully being separated because of a misguided unproven notion on the part of Viola Bernard that twins are better off being in separate families there is nothing no basis to ever support [Music] [Music] that [Music] Albert the effeminate boy arrives late the therapist welcomes him Albert is cautious though seemingly not too frightened note how Albert delicately Pats his hair and adjusts his color his movements are not characteristic of a real boy jbg Jewish board Guardians had a number of floors and some of them were clinical operations uh it was all for young children Albert's feminine characteristics are even more in evidence when he addresses another boy so there were some clinics going on there were other research projects that were happening there the Child Development Center was run by newbower who was a a very prominent child psychoanalyst so he was my ultimate boss but I didn't see him very much he didn't come in that often and I was only part-time so when when I was hired on in 1968 as a research assistant I was mainly supposed to help with the organization and Analysis of the data we wanted to see if we could tease out some of the subtleties of these uh child rearing processes and family Dynamics and how that might affect the development of these two individuals who were genetically identical but are being raised in in totally different families [Music] it was amazing how disorganized the project was when I realized that see I went into this with the idea that I was going to get a dissertation out of it and that I would carve out some piece that would be my dissertation and then I discovered that it was just chaos come on that's not even funny flying out there and I I remember being more nervous about that one event than anything I was out of my mind on that whole plane ridee my God you man wow a little bigger good eating good living I mean same luck same lucking in the mirror oh man it's definitely Eerie feeling I have champagne at home take theed right off the bat we we pretty much hit it off and um I felt like I knew this person my whole life it's like I knew my whole life I think we lived a parallel life we lived similar parallel lives We Got Married the same year we got married the same year we had kids the same year just get right in the middle watch where he's going middle [Applause] ready they both keep their wallets in their front pocket they both don't use any condiments at all it's not just ketchup and mustard it's condiments in general it was the first question Diane asked does Doug use condiments and I'm like he has no use for them if Doug had a salad there'd be no dressing on it you really don't meet a lot of people that would never even have salad dressing or try ketchup and Howard's the same way I mean that that's not usual I mean that's that's really very very different I know that I've said this on numerous occasion when I was growing up and I don't think I really understood it but I really felt like I was missing something in my life I didn't know what it was I couldn't touch it I couldn't feel it it's amazing that I had a twin brother and maybe that was [Music] why we have love relationshipss we have sibling relationships we have kinship relationships but of all of those relationships the most unusual and rare is the identical twin relationship it's a clone it's it's a replicant of you it's it's precious in a way uh people who are twins talk about how there's nothing else like it well if it's true that the twin relationship is perhaps the closest relationship in nature that you are closer emotionally to your twin than anyone else you will ever meet then that has been taken away from you you have lost that relationship and it's incalculable [Music] there's nothing I can think of in science that is more political than twin studies these Studies have been used to justify racism classism and Nazism you know many of the worst features of our [Music] society uh and so they're potent and explosive politically and yet they're also really useful and very helpful if you look at them soberly because what the studies don't say is that our genes are responsible for everything no they don't say that what they say is that we're inclined to be one person or another Sir Francis gon in England is considered the father of the twin method he wrote about this in the 1870s he didn't know about the biological differences between identicals and fraternal no what he did but he correctly surmised that lookalike twins shared 100% of their genes and non lookalike twins shared some portion of their genes and by comparing the two then you could get some information about nature and nurture the new Bower study was unique in a number of ways first it was because Twins were purposely being separated secondly you never study people without their full knowledge families in the New York area had no knowledge of a twin study they were told they were misinformed that it was a child development study and that is hiding basic facts when these children grew up some of them met and that's really how this got [Music] exposed now one of the most remarkable stories I've seen in some time a story about triplets they were born 19 years ago and then given up at Birth for adoption each one growing up in a different family totally unaware that he even had a brother let alone too two weeks ago this man Robert chaffron checked into a college in Upstate New York I got up there and everybody seemed to know me Eddie how are you what's going on I didn't know you were coming back this was Bobby yes this was Bobby I was being questioned and Bobby said my name isn't Eddie it's Bubby girls were kissing me on the mouth and guys were slapping me on the back and people were greeting me like I was just an old friend and I just didn't know what was going on and this is really Eddie Eddie Gallen he went to the same College last year coincidentally friends discovered the connection and Eddie and Robert were reunited it was like a choreograph thing although it was unrehearsed we both went oh my god oh my God oh my God holy crap and it was it truly was a mirror image somehow through the grap Vine news day got involved The Daily News the New York Post AP or UPI it was everywhere they thought they were twins but then David kelman saw their picture in the paper they looked just like him friend of mine came up to me with a newspaper that had a picture of two of me it didn't have birthdays it didn't have any Hospital information but it was painfully obvious at least and but again it was so surreal that I almost didn't believe it I saw him coming to the door and I opened it and I looked at him and then I closed it and then I opened it and I looked at him and I closed it again and he's doing what I would be doing he's opening up the door looking saying holy closing the door and then he opens the door again he goes oh my God he closes the door and by the time I got to the door he had he was opening the door I said and then he says to me you haven't seen me in night 18 years and you slam the door on my face and I walked in and we kissed and we hugged they really were almost identical their hairstyle they had giant afro but if anybody had an afro they had a bigger one you all smoke the same brand of cigarettes yes you were all wrestlers at one time yes you all feel like you've known each other for 19 years even though you've definitely yeah totally how feeling we feel it we all the same as soon as we started discussing our personalties the same we always talk at the same time we can't we start I'll start a sentence and he'll finish it it was not an energy it was a Synergy and Synergy is when a combination of particles creates something much better than each individual could possibly help for that's what Synergy means and that's what it [Music] was they went to Louise wise to confront them about the fact that there were not only two which they had acknowledged after only being forced to acknowledge but actually three which they had not even mentioned and obviously set up the study and then started to test them to see the effect of nurture and nature and Louise y Stonewall them said that no none of that was true and mor they said if it was a study where was it published I'd like to read the study and they was never published [Music] all right um all right here are my notes here are interviews and one of my very last interviews was Dr Viola Bernard okay I've got it on now so say again the emphasis of the twin whoever occasionally there were some identical twins uh if it was good for them to be placed separately and the existing literature at the time and this I have to emphasize the CH child's C the literature at the time that we were talking about was uh of the opinion that the placement of TS who were identical in separate homes had advantages for the children I couldn't find such literature uh I wanted to cite such studies but I never in my research came across anything really substantial that made the case that Dr Bernard was making to me Viola Bernard has talked about literature that says that twins are better off being raised apart I know of No Such studies I I've never seen anything nothing in the literature and I've read pretty widely I've never seen anything that argues for the separation of twins as being better for them here's another interview with Dr newow another Peter newow here here tell me a little bit about the scope of the study and how many people were involved in it the the for special reasons which if if I were to go into it you would understand the study was only based on on a small number of identical twins separated the bir yeah I'm sure there aren't that many that one could work with in that yeah on the many many reasons of which go into this I don't want to talk about that now true it was a true Pro prospective study one of the only ones really unusual yeah yeah I don't think he ever really acknowledged the damage that they might have done uh to the twins themselves and um and the trauma that they were preparing these children to have when they grew into adulthood in one day discovered that they were Twins and that they had been deprived of that relationship their entire lives by scientists who wanted to study them has have there been ethical questions raised about this study yeah there have been questions raised by a number of people when we looked for these kind of twins I spoke once to the New York founding home and uh she said you want us to for adoption to give one baby this and one another baby to another uh mother how can we separate what God has United and put together how can we do that and I said to her but you are in the field of adoption you separate mother and child all time [Music] huh I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant so I was in about my fourth month I was 19 and I told my mother and she was not happy about it you were the worst when you were pregnant and unwed then I went to Louise why services and they sent me to their home in Staten Island for unwed mothers I was there and I'd say from about my fifth or sixth month until I after I delivered they were beautiful a friend of mine picked me up at the home and took me to my father's house and I know I would stay in the bathroom crying for hours on end cuz it broke my heart to give them up but then I thought it would be better for them I felt incredibly incredibly loved incredibly loved my parents were the most nurturing people ever my mother would say things like if I took a lie detective test I would pass a lie detective test saying that I gave birth to you like she really was just so thrilled to have both of us I would say that I had a great childhood I would say that I also had a lot of sadness I have thousand pictures of me pouting I would pout and my mother would take a picture and how cute I am pouting I think I ran away like 20 times I threw more tempet Tantrums it's it's only now as a parent thinking back about my children that I can see that maybe raising me was not the easiest thing in the world I was able to hire a private investigator and she said I found your sister but um unfortunately she's deceased well the only thing I can say is professionally the less public I am the more appropriate it is in my field I don't want to be seen now I got a phone call from a woman who asked who said to me is margerie here and this was 11 years after she died and I thought GE somebody must be going through some old records and she said who are you I said well I'm her mother what's it about and she said well her twin sister is looking for her and I I fell to the floor and I was so angry because when we were with the first child at the agency and the second child at the agency my husband said we love twins if you have a pair of twins will take them this is the day we brought her home and here she is meeting her brother for the first time her brother meeting her um yeah March 1961 meeting Marge she was very glum didn't smile a lot I just thought okay our son was a happy kid she was a glum kid there are serious people and cheerful people and everything in between so she didn't have many friends she was much of a loner we always had animals she had a bird Albert she had her music her first suicide attempt was when she was 17 even when she was on medication she was still depressed she also had a guns from time to time and would go target practice and that's how she finally killed herself I called the police in the neighborhood and I told them that I think something happened I think my daughter might have shot herself you never get over the guilt you never get over it that's why this is painful and here they go and separate them of all the Terrible Things terrible terrible thing you know because I often think what would it have been like if they'd been raised together might it have been better you see was the Gloom caused because of the way they were separated and Marge was alone a month well by herself after never being alone for that little brief lifetime I went to the cemetery um because now I knew where she was and I I can't tell you the feeling to look at a stone and see your birth date on a stone I had this overwhelming um desire to lie down on this spot but I immediately went home and um called my sister's mother and asked if I could plant a UB Bush on there because I needed something on there so that's me on there how did this study come about I tell you I would rather not want to speak about it oh really why until we have published it oh uh-huh when do you plan to publish it I think we probably want to come out with the data in about a year or year and a half from [Music] now even if the study had provided some serious um intelligence about behavior and so forth even then it would be bad but here nothing came of it there's no study no anything bunch of locked files it's ridiculous I mean there there's absolutely no justification for keeping this data uh out of the hands of of these twins this belongs to them Robert hey it's Barry oh listen please don't give it a second thought I'm good I just wanted to give you a call just to touch base about some of the issues we were discussing earlier in the day about the twin study no not on speaker just me we're seeing to what extent we can get them access to documents that were generated documents and pictures and various other things that relate directly to them but that apparently they've never seen Viola Bernard Foundation hereby gives any interest which it may have in the papers to Colombia so per this document she kind of transferred any interest that they did have to Colombia however she did so in such a way that no one else should would seem to have the ability to get access to their own materials until 2021 well I think you're Ed of the term their own materials is key you know I mean really who owns this material I mean you know how is it that you know her estate or um or any educational institution should be able to Trump the individual's own interests in documents documenting them the conduct that we're talking about here had the most dramatic effect on their lives it's one thing if something like that is consensual and everybody's well informed and agrees and so on it's another thing if somebody who's a health professional just sort of makes decisions unilaterally according to the information we have there are documents that were generated as a result of the study that are currently in the possession of Columbia University and Yale [Music] University [Music] the study is long over these people are a lot of them are deceased they're not practicing any longer um and I think um it's incumbent on all of us to take a good hard honest look at what happened and to the extent possible try to make it right I'm aggravated that people are continuing to deny and Stonewall and and and not uh accept the responsibility for what they did I'm not looking for anything I'm just looking for someone to say yeah that wasn't right here's your stuff sorry about that you know we're going to let those other twins know that's important hi hi how you doing Howard P hi Larry Pearlman you nice to meet you too dou okay [Music] okay it's been a while huh uh yeah 44 years exactly yeah uh is that we were six when when you uh yes yes I I actually pulled out the testing I did on you guys uh when you were exactly six the way the study was set up is uh the during the first year of life I think that they had visits four times a year and then it went down to twice a year and then once a year so they had all this material that they didn't really know how to analyze it it wasn't a sophisticated research operation by any means uh in fact they didn't really know what they were doing from a research standpoint but they had this terrific source of data because they had these twins who were being separated and so so I note that the there were 10 twins at that time 10 sets or 10 10 Al together five sets you guys researching it is a job but for the people that were in it that's it it's you know it's people making decisions about your life where you have no control where they some of them actively just lied to you outright lied to my parents anyway so all this information that they gathered and what is locked up in these archives but what what do you think is in there that they're trying to keep from no there's going there's going to be a lot of stuff there there would have been home visits and films and there'll be psychological testing I appreciate you acknowledging that we were part of this study because people said we weren't so oh that's see that's just stupid well that's what it annoys you no you see that's that I just don't understand that I mean why would they why Li it got me thinking about the damage that was done to the families to the parents um who were kept in the dark about the fact that they had adopted Twins and that was a piece that I had never really thought through very much you know that that made me sad it really made me think how much of an injustice has been done to to all of these twins who were subjects of this experiment nice out I always thought there was something missing always and when I met my brothers I felt that there was a piece of me that had been completed and I can't say that what I thought I was missing my whole life was my brothers cuz how do you come up with something like that that's so far-fetched but I can tell you that I felt complete we were babies we were babies and they had these psychologists they were going from house to house looking at a baby knowing that this Baby's being deprived of his [Music] brother Eddie was the the um the most gregarious the three of us uh probably the best looking when if all our weight was the same he was the best looking I just remember his hand he had this large hand they all they all have these large hands you know and had this soft large hand and he put his hand out and he shook my hand and I just knew in that moment it was just there was something very very special about him and we had a wedding at um the the swan club we did very traditional and I got pregnant literally I think right away and we had Jamie and um you know she was just the apple of his eye I I I loved him very deeply it was a very rich relationship we had so much to live for and I think that as much as he loved his brothers he had a hard time letting go of those uh stolen 18 years of their lives I think he was devastated by it I think that he was traumatized and I don't think that he was ever at peace with it I I lost him through suicide um tragic suicide he shot himself um I found it hard to believe that he did it I had to run a party the morning after my brother [Music] died I had staff walking around crying their eyes out I had a commitment that was the toughest thing I ever did losing Eddie was uh if not the greatest loss of my life one of them but probably the greatest loss of my life what these people did were were not just to those children it they it was to those children most importantly it was to those children but it was to every single human being involved in that child's life all right just keep here all right let's see what happens break the disc before I even do anything there we go it says film sequence me date of visit 11068 most of this film sequence is a power being tested there Mrs David the most prominent feature of projective material was a pervasive sense of sadness fears of deprivation and loss in his immediate environment his sense of the instability of his environment unmodulated angry outbursts which began toward the end of the first year with headbanging and pounding on the floor and continue in various forms throughout the stady years and expressed sense of loneliness my strongest friend is me it kind of bothers me that they did this and nothing ever came of it or they never used the data or did all this effort and did all this stuff to people and you know what did it do to help anyone's lives [Music] nothing oh no trucker is the puppy that's Sandy right yes yes yes [Music] okay so here's where we told the world that uh you have [Music] arrived there there must be a reason that I'm finding this out now like why didn't I find out 20 years ago you know does she need my help or do I need her help you know is there a reason for this cuz it kind of seems odd that within 6 months you know of having diagnosed with cancer that here you have a twin like it's just something seems like I don't even how to put it something seems like we need each other Anya where baby girl what are you doing You' bring the spatula no so we went to Louise wise because it was when you got a Jewish baby if you want to do it the right way go through Louise wise and we did and they lied we went in and they said all right now she's in a study if you don't want to to be in the study let us know well at that point if they had said if you could learn to fly you can have a baby yeah uh we when we uh brought you home she were very small very tiny and very clingy and for the for the longest time you were extremely clingy you would let go of Mom at all I about that one guys never liked being alone and never will like being alone so I I I think it'll be very interesting to find out if your sister was had the same personality the same cling type I'm really very anxious for her sister to know exactly what's going on because she may have have the same breast cancer and not know it if you're going to do a study at least show people what the study proved you know nature versus nurture okay so what happened that's what I wrote Of course is this true do I have a twin an identical twin oh my God I don't even remember writing this too much to process felt shocked my I had a stomach ache my head was spinning it was surreal so it's so strange it's real this was the day I knew it was real that I have an identical twin seeing that book I held that book and I couldn't let go of that book again I needed to find her that is my mission in life is to find [Music] her [Music] [Music] right I love that movie roller ball that's a great movie he asking me about movies I must have just seen it I love that movie 8277 63 so we were still together at the end of a this is probably two weeks before I was adopted placement dates there you go when were you 924 there it is they were a little bit after me no I got answered one question right that's pretty disturbing said after adoption both boys show Decline and something and then they start rocking whatever that means I was um graduated college in 85 this is stuff they reviewed and revised in ' 86 so they're still messing around with the stuff people sitting around dissecting your life we felt that interaction between the Twins was taking place by at least four to 4 and 1/2 months there was some interplay when they were together increased personal interaction between the Twins during the past month we see the twins pending adoption into separate homes as additional potential comp applications for separation individuation you know go back to how twins are bonded and whatever you know I would assume it somehow if you tear them apart it has to have some effect it's just it's just wrong what they did was really really wrong um and the more you know stuff I read the more wrong it kind of seems and the more uh more upsetting it gets for Douglas and Howard who were shifted from hospital to one foster home then to another then back to the first foster home in the first half year prior to their separate adoption the cwen may have been the most stable human object in their environment usually Howard initiated contact with his twin with Douglas then responding this would involve them both in the twinning interaction It's upsetting to know that these people were able to um affect our lives in a way that I didn't even understand and uh I don't know I don't know why I'm get emotional about it but it's just it's not really my nature but it's just uh um it's just hard to I'm not really introspective and when you start looking you start going wow maybe if that didn't happen you know maybe some of the the hard spots wouldn't have been hard I don't know [Music] so [Music] [Music] if this was early enough in the very early uh birth right after birth then it was advantageous for them to have their own family uhhuh if however what was known as the twinning reaction an attachment between the two twins the two children uhhuh had had time to develop in the early months then we were opposed to it because then we would be traumatically separating those who had a opportunity to be attached to each other oh my God oh my God like my reaction to that is that's a bunch of that was like so upset by that now I understand we're talking about an eminent psychologist um but we also may be talking about a liar I thought it was a Nazi experiment that they had done I thought it was Dreadful the most awful thing I had ever heard they didn't give a damn for anybody only what they were doing their work these are unconscionable people they separated us after 3 months so if they really truly believe this then why Place us together in one Crib in foster care I think it was uh not only a crime but a sin who do you think you are that you could play God like that if they're twins they're meant to be together they knew the effect had happen they knew we' been together for for long enough for it to happen and they didn't know about anyway it's to me I'm Ill by that I'm made ill by that she's it's to me it's fraud he stole uh a childhood on some levels not that uh I wouldn't trade my life for anything but he can't uh give back you can't get that [Music] back [Music]

Channel: ENDEVR

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Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, three identical strangers, separated at birth, twins separated at birth, identical twins, twin study, identical triplets, twins documentary, triplets documentary

Id: gmK6MyrqMgc

Length: 52min 51sec (3171 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023