Sundance film festival debuts dark tale of Jewish triplets split at birth

From Times of Israel:

The triplets, it turned out, were among a number of identical siblings split up as part of a dark 1960s “nature versus nurture” social experiment led by psychoanalyst Peter Neubauer of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in Manhattan.

Visits by researchers throughout their childhoods were explained away as a “child development study” when in reality Neubauer was scrutinizing the brothers’ personalities and relationships with their very diverse adoptive families.

“We really didn’t understand just how egregiously these people behaved,” said Kellman, who told AFP all six adoptive parents were angered that they too had been kept in the dark.

“As we got older, got married, became parents ourselves, we realized how impactful it was.”

…No one has ever apologized to Shafran or Kellman, and the Jewish Board declined to take part in the documentary.

A spokeswoman told AFP it was “committed to providing identified Neubauer study participants access to their records in a timely and transparent manner.”

It is not the kind of language that sits easily with the brothers, however.

“They refer to us as participants,” says Kellman. “We weren’t participants, we were victims.”