When I first submitted this article to The Skeptic just before Christmas, the word “not” did not appear in the title. Read on for clarification.
A few months ago, I received a letter from Andrew Entwistle, Chair of Trustees of the British False Memory Society (BFMS), the contents of which saddened me greatly. The letter informed me that the BFMS was to be wound down by the end of last year. Like many other small charities, the BFMS has been struggling financially for some time. I have been a member of the Society’s Scientific and Professional Advisory Board since 2003 and thus I have personally witnessed the valuable work that the BFMS has carried out over a long period. The society was founded in 1993 by Roger Scotford, originally under the name Adult Children Accusing Parents (ACAP).
It was founded to offer support and advice to parents whose adult children had accused them of childhood sexual abuse having apparently recovered the memories of such abuse during psychotherapy. Prior to the therapy, the accusers had no memories of ever being thus abused, this being explained by appealing to the psychoanalytic notion of repression. This is the idea that when someone experiences an extremely traumatic event, such as sexual abuse, an automatic psychological defence mechanism kicks in and pushes the traumatic memories into a non-conscious part of the mind where they can no longer be accessed.
It is claimed that these repressed memories can still result in a range of psychological problems including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and so on. It is further claimed that psychological health can only be regained by recovering these memories and ”working through” them. The only problem is that, despite widespread levels of belief in such notions amongst both professionals and the general public (French & Ost, 2016), most memory experts are dubious regarding the very notion of repression.
It is vitally important to note that cases such as these, where an adult apparently recovers memories of abuse having previously had no such memories, constitute only a small fraction of allegations of sexual abuse. In the vast majority of cases, genuine victims of such abuse remember it only too well, sometimes suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. The main exception would be when the abuse takes place at such a young age that no memories of it are retained as a result of the well-documented phenomenon of childhood amnesia.
From the outset, the BFMS has always acknowledged that there is absolutely no reason to believe that most claims of sexual abuse are based upon false memories. Equally, there can be no doubt at all that a minority of cases are indeed based upon apparent memories for events that never actually happened at all. It is this minority of cases that is of concern to the BFMS and the BFMS can be justifiably proud of its track-record in providing support to those who find themselves facing such accusations. It was for this reason that I was so delighted to receive an email from Kevin Felstead, Director of Communications at BFMS, informing that the BFMS had unexpectedly been left £50,000 in the will of a deceased member. This minor Christmas miracle means that the BFMS will be able to continue to operate for the time being, albeit at a reduced level of service.
Members of the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the BFMS are sometimes called upon to act as expert witnesses on memory in that minority of cases where a lawyer believes that there is a possibility that historic allegations may be based upon false memories. I have myself acted in this capacity on several occasions. It is, of course, usually impossible, in the absence of any other evidence, to know for sure whether a historic allegation of abuse is true, a deliberate lie, or based upon a false memory. But there are a number of ‘red flags’ to look out for that at least raise the probability that an allegation may based upon a false memory.
The first of these is whether the memory in question is reported to be continuous (that is, to have always been available to conscious recall) as opposed to being a recovered memory. If it is claimed that the memory has been recovered, either as a result of therapy or spontaneously, after a long period of being inaccessible, this raises the probability that it may be a false memory.
Next, was the memory recovered by the use of dubious memory recovery techniques such as hypnotic regression (French, in press) or guided imagery? We know, on the basis of solid evidence from controlled experimental studies, that such techniques can lead to the formation of false memories so any reports based upon the use of such techniques must be treated with great caution.
Attention must also be paid to the question of whether any reports were the result of inappropriate interviewing techniques. This is particularly problematic when interviewing children or vulnerable adults. Such individuals may take repeated questioning as an indication that their initial denials that any abuse occurred is the ‘wrong’ answer and thus end up giving the answer that they think their interrogator wants to hear. They may then eventually become convinced that they were indeed the victims of abuse.
Any reports of abuse that is said to have occurred very early in life are also more likely to be based upon false memories. Autobiographical memories cannot be stored within the first one or two years of life, a phenomenon referred to as infantile amnesia, and very few memories are typically reported from the few years after that.
The role of the expert witness in such cases is simply to assess the available evidence as objectively as possible and to draw attention to the presence or absence of such red flags. It is not the job of the expert witness to make any sort of pronouncement regarding the guilt or innocence of the accused. That is the job of the jury. On more than one occasion, I have indicated in my reports that I could not see any evidence that increased the probability that a reported memory was indeed false.
Cases such as these are always highly emotionally charged and miscarriages of justice can easily occur. Given the fact that the abuse is alleged to have occurred many years ago, typically behind closed doors, it is highly unlikely that there will be any physical forensic evidence to inform the decision-making. This undoubtedly means that actual abusers are often not convicted simply on the basis of insufficient evidence. For genuine victims, this must be absolutely devastating. However, even in that minority of cases where the allegations are actually based upon false memories, a “not guilty” verdict is just as devastating to the complainant. Even though they may not have actually been abused, they sincerely believe that they were – but at least the wrongly accused does not end up with a prison sentence and a criminal record.
Of course, every case is unique, and the degree to which the available evidence suggests that historic allegations are likely to be based upon false memories can range from not at all to highly likely. Each and every case deserves the most careful consideration of the evidence given the effects of the verdict on those concerned. In future articles for the Skeptic, I intend to discuss further some of my experiences in working as an expert witness on memory.
References
- French, C. C. (in press). Hypnotic regression and false memories. In Ballester-Olmos, V. J., & Heiden, R. W. (eds.). The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony. UPIAR.
- French, C. C., & Ost, J. (2016). Beliefs about memory, childhood abuse, and hypnosis amongst clinicians, legal professionals and the general public. In R. Burnett (ed.). Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 143-154.
