Adalana's confession to the rapes

Adalana's confession to the rapes is the May 1 videotaped therapy session in which she identified herself as the person responsible for the October assaults attributed to Ragen Vadascovinich. Her disclosure resolved one question within Billy Milligan’s inner group, while opening another: the account Adalana offered of the women’s responses did not match the account accepted by the people treating the case. The scene makes confession both a revelation of responsibility and a partial, contested explanation of what occurred.

A session designed to bring Adalana forward

The confession took place during the first videotaped session, after Dr. George Harding had proposed recording the personalities’ speech and behavior so that they could communicate with one another and with Billy Milligan. Dorothy Turner attended because Billy felt comfortable with her and because Dr. Harding wanted to try to bring out Adalana. Although he had initially resisted introducing additional personalities, he concluded that understanding this female aspect of Milligan’s personality mattered to the treatment.

Dr. Harding asked several times for Adalana to appear. After a series of switches among the personalities, Billy Milligan’s expression changed, and Adalana began to speak. The recording therefore served more than as a record of a conversation: it gave the treatment team a means of observing a personality whose significance they had not yet understood. Dr. Harding had expected the switch, but its actual occurrence still surprised him.

The session followed Milligan’s transfer to Harding Hospital and took place within an intensive treatment setting. He had been assigned to a special-care room in Wakefield Cottage, where heavy oak doors with peepholes allowed continuous observation. The clinical circumstances matter to the disclosure: Adalana was being asked to speak before a small group of clinicians and staff, with Turner present as a familiar person, rather than recounting the events in court. Her account emerged in the course of an effort to understand the personalities and their communication, even as the crimes and trial remained pressing concerns.

What Adalana disclosed

Adalana described the subject as painful to discuss and said that she had got the men into trouble. She connected her conduct to a desire for love, care, warmth, and physical closeness, and said she had been lonely. These explanations were hers; the session records them as her account of her actions, not as an independent finding about why the assaults occurred. Her admission was accompanied by guilt and by fear that further discussion would harm the other personalities.

She described having taken time from Ragen and said that Arthur had not placed her on the spot. In her telling, she had wanted Ragen removed from that position. When Dr. Harding asked whether she had known what was being planned during the October incidents, she said that she had known, including things Arthur did not know, but had been unable to stop what was happening. She also referred to the effects of pills and alcohol. The distinction she drew was stark: awareness, in her account, did not amount to control over events.

Adalana’s disclosure gave the inner group a specific explanation for why Ragen had been blamed for rapes he denied committing. It also exposed the limits of that explanation. Her statements about loneliness, the substances, and her inability to prevent the incidents came from the personality describing her own experience; they did not independently establish every circumstance of the offenses. The videotape preserves the difference between a confession to responsibility and a complete, externally verified account.

Arthur tells Ragen

The next morning, Arthur decided to share what he had learned from the recording. He paced in the special-care room and told Ragen that the mystery of the rapes had been solved. Speaking in Ragen’s voice, Arthur then explained that a female personality called Adalana existed, although Ragen had never met her. He described her as gentle and associated her with cooking, cleaning, and flower arrangements, details that contrasted with the accusation he was about to disclose.

Arthur told Ragen that Adalana had raped the women during the incidents for which Ragen had been blamed. He explained that when a male personality occupied the spot, some of them had the physical ability to perform sex, and that Adalana had used Ragen’s body. Arthur also invoked the group’s rule of celibacy, making the disclosure an account not only of the crimes but of a breach of their internal order. Ragen responded with anger and threatened Adalana, while Arthur urged him to be reasonable and asked him to speak with her.

The exchange transformed the confession into an internal crisis. Ragen had understood the rape allegations as a charge against himself; now Arthur presented them as acts by another personality using his body. That explanation separated responsibility among the personalities in the group’s own account, but it did not undo the harm to the women or settle the external case. Arthur’s effort to redirect Ragen toward a conversation with Adalana was also curtailed by his decision about access to the spot.

A disputed account and a lasting exclusion

When trial strategy was discussed, Arthur relied on Adalana’s story to claim that the three women had cooperated, had not been injured, and had been given back part of the money. Judy Stevenson challenged that account, and neither she nor Gary Schweickart accepted the claim that the victims had cooperated. They understood, however, that Arthur was describing Adalana’s perception of what had happened. The distinction is essential: the group’s account of who acted and the victims’ accounts of the encounters were not interchangeable, and Adalana’s confession did not make Arthur’s additional claims established fact.

Arthur refused to let the clinicians speak with Adalana about those disputed events. He said she had been banished from the spot forever for what she had done and that there would be no further exceptions. The sentence turned disclosure into a rule with a consequence: Adalana’s emergence helped explain the October crimes to the inner group, but Arthur’s response permanently barred her from taking control. Her confession thus brought a hidden actor into view while deepening the group’s internal conflict over blame, authority, and the reliability of its competing accounts.