Three Identical Strangers

Dir: Tim Wardle

2018

****

Just a couple of weeks before watching Tim Wardle’s fascinating documentary, I was thinking about odd occurrences in 1980s movies. One such occurrence that I couldn’t explain was the scene where Madonna walks past three grinning triplets in 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan. The case of Edward Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran wasn’t big news in the UK as it was in America, so it seemed like one of those ‘only in the 80s’ oddities. So I was already thrilled that a little mystery had been solved but the rest of the story blew my mind. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought this to be an experimental mockumentary collaboration written by Chris Carter (X-Files) and Stephen King. Edward Galland, David Kellman and Robert Shafran lived separate lives after all three were adopted at birth. One lived with an affluent family, one was middle class and the other was very much working class. Two of them met by chance when a mutual acquaintance mistook them for each other and after a local newspaper wrote about the event, the third brother came forward. There was a lot of celebration and the three brothers became a media sensation overnight, appearing on talks shows, on the radio and even in film. The three brothers ended up going into business with each other opening up a nightclub that became famous for their enthusiastic hands-on hosting style. They became regulars at Studio 54 and mixed with the bold and the beautiful during the early 80s. They had the time of their lives. It was only later that they decided to seek the truth as to why they were separated and who their biological parents were. The media were also intrigued with the story. This led them to the Jewish Board of Guardians who oversaw the adoption. An early family meeting seemed to go well, the board apologised for the mix up but didn’t accept liability, not that anyone was after compensation, the boys and their adopted families just wanted answers. When one of the parents went back to fetch an umbrella they had left behind, they overheard the board members celebrating the fact that they ‘just dodged a bullet’. Something wasn’t right. Over the years the truth slowly leaked out and it was more shocking than anyone could have imagined. The boys actually had a fourth brother and they weren’t the only ones. In the late 1950s, Doctor Viola Bernard of Louise Wise Services, a prominent New York City Jewish adoption agency in the 1960s, created a policy to separate identical twins for adoption, with the intent that early mothering would be less burdened and divided and the child’s developing individuality would be facilitated. In 1961, psychiatrist Peter B. Neubauer, then director of the Jewish Board of Guardians's Child Development Center, began a multi-year nature versus nurture twin study to observe how the separated siblings would fare in different environments. This involved at least five sets of identical twins and one set of triplets deliberately separated and placed into adoptive families by Louise Wise Services under Doctor Viola Bernard's policies. As a condition of the adoption, the parents agreed to in-person visits of up to four times a year by the study's research team, where the children would be observed, questioned, tested and/or filmed, without knowing the true nature of the study. The parents of the adopted children were also not informed by Louise Wise Services that they were part of a twin or triplet set, and one biological mother to a set of twins separated by Bernard and studied by Neubauer reported that Louise Wise Services did not inform her that her children would be separated. At least three of the separated siblings apparently committed suicide, with families and commentators drawing ethical comparisons today with the notorious twin experiments by the same Nazi regime that Neubauer himself had escaped. Dr. Neubauer's study was never completed, and in 1978, the Jewish Board of Guardians merged with Jewish Family Services to form the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services. The study records are currently in the custody of Yale University under seal until October 25, 2065, and cannot be released to the public without authorization from The Jewish Board, while Louse Wise Services' adoption records are held by Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. In 2011, two identical twins who reunited as adults, Doug Rausch and Howard Burack, sent a letter to The Jewish Board requesting to see their records. The Jewish Board initially denied that Rausch and Burack had been part of the study, until the brothers were able to produce archived notes from one of Dr. Neubauer's former research assistants proving that they were indeed part of the study. The Jewish Board says Dr. Neubauer's study records are sealed to the public until 2065 to protect the privacy of those studied, and to this date all study subjects who have requested their personal records have received them. It’s shocking how they have still got away with it and many twins have come forward since. In 1995 Edward took his own life and the other two brothers have struggled with what they’ve learned about themselves. Several people involved with the study were interviewed, they hide somewhat behind their minor roles but when speaking about the study they become enthusiastic and seem oblivious to the unethical nature of what they’ve been part of. It’s a fascinating and shocking documentary that is hard to believe is real. Apart from sharing the story though, this film is vital in exposing such an atrocity and will hopefully put pressure on the authorities to hold a formal investigation and release the study to the families involved.