Five former staff members at a Houston psychiatric hospital were indicted on charges they brainwashed patients into believing they had been in a satanic cult so they could bilk the patients' insurance companies of millions of dollars.

According to federal prosecutors, the defendants, who worked at Spring Shadows Glen Psychiatric Hospital, told a number of patients from 1991 to 1993 that they had multiple personality disorder caused by their participation in a satanic cult.

They told the patients they did not remember being in the cult because they had mentally blocked it out, then brainwashed them into recalling false memories of their alleged cult activities.

Meanwhile, Patricia Burgus, 41, of Lombard, Ill., received $10.6 million in a settlement with Chicago's Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center and two psychiatrists, who she insisted brainwashed her into believing she was a satanic high priestess.

She said hypnosis and other treatments convinced her that she had participated in cannibalism, ritual murder and Satan worship, that she had been sexually abused by numerous men and that she had abused her two sons.

None of the incidents happened.