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F M S F O U N D A T I O N N E W S L E T T E R (e-mail edition)
SPRING 2008 Vol. 17 No. 2
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ISSN #1069-0484. Copyright (c) 2008 by the FMS Foundation
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The FMSF Newsletter is published 4 times a year by the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation and delivered electronically. It is also available
at on the FMSF website: www.FMSFonline.org. Those without access to
the Internet should contact the Foundation.
1955 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103-5766
Phone 215-940-1040, Fax 215-940-1042
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The next e-mail newsletter will be sent in July
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In this issue...
Glendale Montessori case
Hershel Walker
Legal Corner
From Our Readers
Bulletin Board
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Dear Friends,
A reporter called the Foundation in March asking for a response to
recent research showing that young children are less prone to false
memories than are adults. She seemed concerned that the research in
some way "undid" many notions that have appeared in the newsletter
about the reliability of children's testimony. That is not the case.
Reyna and Brainerd [1] first observed that false memories increase
with children's development, and since then about 30 papers have
followed by other researchers -- part of the flood of scholarly
information about false memories and memory development. Research has
shown that meaning-based memories are primarily responsible for false
memories in adults. Children develop the ability to extract meaning
from experience very slowly and thus are less likely to develop false
memories.
Young children can be accurate reporters of events, even traumatic
events -- if they are properly interviewed. The young children whose
testimony has been written about in this newsletter, however, were
subjected to aggressive and suggestive interviews by therapists or
police officers, especially during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
during the wave of day-care cases following in the wake of McMartin.
Between 1984 and 1995, there were approximately 185 adults who were
charged with ritual sexual abuse. Over one hundred of those were
convicted, mainly on the testimony of young children. Most, but not
all, have now been released.
We received a reminder of this dreadful period when a young adult
contacted the Foundation to tell us about the Glendale Montessori
School case in Stuart, Florida. (See below.) She told us about being a
student in the school and about the experience of a therapist using
hypnosis to try to find "memories" of her abuse by James Toward, the
headmaster of the school. That is quite aggressive interviewing! The
caller said that she was concerned that the world had forgotten about
the Glendale case and that Toward, in her opinion, had been wrongly
imprisoned for nineteen years.
Thanks to Goggle we were able to find enough information about this
case to question Toward's conviction. When we learned that the
therapist who interviewed the first child to bring charges against
Toward was Alan Tesson, M.D., we became convinced that the case should
be completely reexamined. Readers of this newsletter may recall that
in 1996 Dr. Tesson settled a case for $650,000 with former patient Sue
Tinker who sued him for malpractice including the induction of false
memories of abuse and satanic rituals.[2] In this issue, we provide a
few excerpts from an interview Dr. Tesson had with the first Glendale
child. Dr. Tesson was trying to help the child remember being abused.
We think that, in effect, the child was abused during the interview.
Several readers contacted the Foundation after the last newsletter to
express their distress at the Nebraska jury award of $1.75 million to
the daughter of Gordon Vella for the sexual abuse she claimed she had
suffered as a child. A critical witness for that trial was Daniel
Brown, Ph.D. who testified about dissociative amnesia. On December 14,
2007, Judge Richard G. Knopf of the United States District Court for
Nebraska vacated that judgment in response to a motion brought by the
daughter's own attorney. (See below.)
After the trial, Gordon Vella appealed the judgment. The appeal
accused Brown of misrepresentation. It stated: "newly discovered
evidence establishes that Dr. Daniel Brown, either intentionally or
through reckless indifference to the truth, misrepresented the
existence of an error rate relating to the hypothesis of dissociative
amnesia, misrepresented the findings of numerous published articles as
being supportive of dissociative amnesia theory, misrepresented the
level of acceptance among the relevant scientific community for the
dissociative amnesia hypothesis, and even allowed misrepresentations
concerning his qualifications to testify as an expert witness."
Declarations written by R. Christopher Barden, Ph.D., J.D., Richard J.
McNally, Ph.D., and Harrison Pope, Jr., M.D., M.P.H. were submitted
with the Motion.
Although Brown wrote an affidavit defending his testimony, it was the
plaintiff's attorney who then asked to have the judgment vacated.
Brown's name is likely familiar to newsletter readers because he has
testified in so many FMS-related cases. Readers may recall that NH
Superior Court Judge Tina Nadeau wrote devastating comments about
Brown's testimony in the Bourgelais case.[3] Daniel Brown is a
prolific purveyor of misinformation about memory and repression and
false memories -- dragging the memory wars on and on.
The media also continue to help keep the memory wars alive by
influencing the cultural climate in ways to make recovered memories
and multiple personalities acceptable. New books promoting recovered
memories and multiple personalities keep on coming. The most recent is
a memoir from famed football star Herschel Walker called Breaking
Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder. (See below.) Jerry
Mungadze, Ph.D., founder of the Mungadze Trauma Programs wrote the
Foreword to the book. Mungadze's name may seem familiar to some
readers for his connection to memories of satanic ritual abuse and
aggressive memory excavation. According to newspaper reports,[4]
Herschel Walker and his book will be featured on "60 Minutes" on April
13, 2008.
It may be that Herschel Walker has a slightly different take on MPD
from what is usually found. He has explained his approach: "People
have to shift themselves and their personalities in so many different
areas to be successful. You don't want Herschel Walker the football
player, babysitting your kids. Those are two different people." Those
are his alters. About his childhood trauma he said: "When I was a kid
I had a speech impediment and I used to get teased all the time. I
didn't love myself and I didn't know how to love myself." [4]
We suspect that publishers Simon & Schuster and Mungadze did no more
fact checking about multiple personality disorder and its
controversial diagnosis than other publishers have done. Numerous
recent memoirs have been exposed as untrue. For example, Margaret
Jones' memoir claiming that she had been brought up as half Native
American in a foster home, when, in reality, she had a privileged
upbringing was withdrawn in March. Or Misha Defonseca's memoir about
being a Holocaust Jewish orphan at 4 who wandered alone through the
forests which has also recently been exposed as false. Or Binjamin
Wilkomirski's memoir about recovering memories of being a child
Holocaust survivor when, in fact, he spent the war safe in
Switzerland. Or so many other books that have been exposed as frauds
in some way or another. Why don't publishers do a better routing job
of fact checking to verify an author's incredible accounts? Does it
matter? Yes, it does, especially when the book is about a medical
diagnosis such as multiple personality disorder that has caused such
unnecessary pain and havoc in the lives of so many people. For
editors, it must be fascinating to work with a famous football hero or
Holocaust survivor. Editors must surely be swayed by dreams of press
tours, 60 Minutes and big sales.
As we have for so many years now, 16 to be exact, we thank you for
your support and urge you to pick up pen and paper if something in the
media needs correction.
PAMELA
[1] Brainerd, C.J. & Reyna, V.R. (2005). The Science of False
Memory. Oxford University Press.
[2] See Tinker v. Tesson, in the Circuit Court of the 19th Judicial
Circuit, in and for Martin County, Florida, Case No. 95-444-CA.
FMSF Newsletter, 6(2)
[3] See NH v. Bourgelais, No. 02-S-2834, Rockingham, NH Sup. Ct. April
4, 2005, FMSF Newsletter, 14(3).
[4] Strickland, C. (2008, March 15). Herschel Walker reveals he
suffers from multiple personality disorder. Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. Retrieved on March 26, 2008 from
http://www.startribune.com/templates
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| "The problem with the brain is that it is not a very |
| discriminating processor. It has no spam folder for imaginary or |
| coerced memories. Movie plots, unsubstantiated rumors and images |
| from dreams are stored in our brain alongside memories of our |
| 10th-birthday party, first kiss and high school graduation." |
| (p. 48) Lambert, K. & Lilienfeld, S.O. |
| (2007, October/November) |
| BrainStains. Scientific American Mind, 18(5), 46-53 |
\____________________________________________________________________/
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IN MEMORIAM
Donald P. Spence, Ph.D., a long time member of the FMSF Scientific and
Professional Advisory Board, died on September 25, 2007 after a short
illness at the age of 81. A graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Spence
received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Columbia University in
1955. He served in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946 in Europe. From
1954 to 1974, he conducted research and taught at the Research Center
for Mental Health of New York University. In 1974, he became professor
of psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Dr. Spence's work ranged from studies of subliminal effects to dream
interpretation and the role language plays in psychotherapy. He was
the author of more than 100 articles and received many honors and
awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Theoretical
and Philosophical Division of the American Psychological Association
in 2004.
To FMSF readers, Don is probably best known for his 1982 landmark book
Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in
Psychoanalysis, Don brought fresh insights into the pitfalls of
psychotherapy. "If narrative truth is confused with historical truth,
then the very coherence of an account may lead us to believe that we
are making contact with an actual happening."
He wrote: "The model of the patient as unbiased reporter and the
analyst as unbiased listener suggests a kind of naive realism that is
hard to imagine, harder to practice, and runs counter to everything we
have learned about the way we come to understand the world."
Dr. Spence is greatly missed.
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| Amnesia: Fiction vs. Real Life |
| |
| "Like the future, amnesia has become a crowded literary terrain. |
| Rare in life, amnesia abounds in contemporary literature and in |
| the most stylish contemporary movies." |
| |
| "Unlike amnesiacs in life, whose fugues of pathological |
| forgetfulness are likely to be caused by strokes, brain tumors, |
| alcoholism, malnutrition, severe trauma to the head, and |
| degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, literary and cinematic |
| amnesiacs have usually suffered psychological traumas, to be |
| revealed in flashbacks;" |
| Oates, J.C. (2007, July 19) |
| Lest we forget |
| The New York Review of Books, 54(12), 47-50 |
\____________________________________________________________________/
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GLENDALE MONTESSORI SCHOOL CASE RESURFACES
State of Florida vs. James H. Toward.
Case No.: 88-926 CF. Circuit Court of 19th Judicial Circuit
in and for Martin County, Florida
"Headmaster's evil lives on in 20-year-old abuse case," blazed the
page 1 headline of the Palm Beach Post [1] on March 1, 2008. The
article was about the satanic ritual abuse at the Glendale Montessori
School in Stuart, Florida that began in 1987. The article did not call
what happened a panic, however. No mention of the bizarre accusations,
such as crucifixes inserted into children's anuses, appeared in the
article. Rather the reporter vilified James Toward, the former
headmaster of the school who has been in prison for the past 19 years
with no end in sight. The reporter also described both the suffering
and accomplishments of the former students at the school who were ages
3 to 5 at the time of the alleged abuse. Indeed, the article was very
similar to the many articles that helped flame public opinion at the
time of the trial.
If readers' only source of news about this tragic case were the Palm
Beach Post, they would have no idea that the Glendale case was just
one of the approximately hundred day care cases that followed in the
wake of McMartin and its vast publicity. Readers would have no idea
that virtually every step in the process of "discovering" the alleged
abuse of the Glendale children has been completely discredited in the
past two decades. Readers would have no reason to doubt the guilt of
Mr. Toward, who is one of the last dozen or so people still
incarcerated as a result of the day care hysteria that swept the
country between 1984 and 1995 in which 185 adults were charged with
ritual abuse.[2]
In 1989, James Toward and his office Manager Brenda Williams were
arrested for abusing children at the school. Williams received a
10-year sentence and after serving her time was released. Toward
agreed to an Alford plea [3] and received a 27-year sentence. Toward
was supposed to be released in 1999, but in 1998 Florida passed the
Jimmy Ryce Involuntary Civil Commitment for Sexually Violent
Predators' Treatment and Care Act. Effective on January 1, 1999, the
law allows the state to confine prisoners for as long as they are
deemed a danger to society. The law was applied retroactively to James
Toward.
Contrary to the impression given in the article in the Palm Beach
Post, there are a number of reasons for serious doubt about the guilt
of Mr. Toward who is now 77-years-old.
______________________
1. Retracting Student:
In February 2008, a former student at the Glendale Montessori School
contacted the Foundation. She explained that when she was 9-years-old,
she had been sent to a therapist who used hypnosis to try to uncover
her "memories" of being abused at Glendale when she was two, three and
four. The caller remembered a discussion of satanic ritual abuse
between her therapist and his partner. She told us that because her
family did not file charges and did not want her to testify, the
psychologist felt they were negligent and tried to get her mother to
sign release papers. Because her mother was suspicious, she refused to
sign anything, and she took our caller to another therapist who was
outside the Glendale community. This therapist said that the family
should lead a normal life. If anything had happened, it would be
revealed naturally.
The former Glendale student said that after a lot of investigation,
she is now certain that Toward had been wrongly convicted. She feels
that the groups concerned with the wrongly accused have overlooked the
Glendale case, and she wants to find a way to free James Toward.[4]
Evidence of the beliefs that were circulating in the community (and
thus the reason for using hypnosis on the former student), can be seen
in the following quote that appeared in a 1992 article of the Palm
Beach Post.
"Therapists say many victims [of Glendale Montessori] have blocked
any memory of what happened to them at Glendale, possibly because
they were told terrible things would happen if they remembered." [5]
_____________________________
2. Hearsay evidence was used:
At a pretrial hearing, Judge Dwight Geiger made the decision to allow
hearsay evidence. That meant that the jury in the trial would hear
parents and therapists tell what the children had said to them as
opposed to the children themselves telling their stories. Richard
Lubin, the attorney for James Toward, stated that the children told
different stories when he interviewed them than what parents and
therapists reported they said.
Allowing hearsay evidence is not uncommon in cases involving children,
but it always raises reliability issues. The person reporting could
have a faulty memory and forget key material. There is the very
serious danger that the meaning intended by the child was
misinterpreted by the person reporting. There is the serious danger
that the person reporting misjudged or misunderstood what he or she
heard or saw. And there is always the serious danger that a person
reporting will lie. In cases in which a community is inflamed by
belief in abuse, as was the case in Stuart, Florida, the very serious
danger is that adults who are reporting the children's statements will
inadvertently interpret what the child said to fit with their own
preconceived beliefs in and fears about satanic ritual abuse.
_________________________________________________________________
3. Anatomically correct dolls were used in eliciting accusations:
Anatomically correct dolls were used to diagnose abuse. Therapist
Jeanne Ralicki testified on March 8, 1988, that by the child's use of
lifelike dolls to show what happened, one 4-year-old boy told her that
Mr. Toward had intercourse and oral sex with him. One of the many
problems with the use of anatomical dolls is that their use has not
been standardized in any form as valid evidence of past abuse. In
1989, there was no normative data with which to compare the use of the
dolls with abused and non abused children. Research in subsequent
years has shown that nonabused and abused children can play with the
dolls in the same way.
It is always possible that therapists used the dolls in suggestive
ways. In the absence of a video of a child using the dolls with the
therapist, any diagnosis made with their use is not valid. Respected
researchers Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck,[6] noting the massive
evidence for potential misuse of dolls, concluded:
"[T]here is no available scientific evidence that supports the
clinical or forensic diagnosis of abuse made primarily on the basis
of a very young child's interaction with anatomical dolls." (184)
__________________________
4. Intensive interviewing:
Jeanne Ralicki, a social worker, was a member of the state-funded
Child Protection Team that interviewed the children. She later went
into private practice and continued to treat children from Glendale
Montessori, one even a decade later in 1999. On Tuesday March 8, 1988
Ralicki testified that one of the children, a 4-year-old boy, told her
that the acting director of the school had intercourse and oral sex
with him. She also said that he told her this after more than 20
therapy sessions.[7] What happened during the 20 sessions? Was the
child repeatedly asked about abuse? A tremendous amount has been
learned about suggestive interviewing since the Glendale trial.
When Ralicki was challenged about the reliability of what the child
had said, she testified that the child's story was much too detailed
to be fabricated. Ralicki is not correct. Research has shown that
children may elaborate. The only way to know the truth or falsity is
with external corroboration.
Another child who reported in the spring of 1989 that Mr. Toward kept
containers of blood at his home and that he splattered the blood over
the children, had been in therapy with Dr. Allen Tesson since August
1987.[8] What happened in the therapy sessions between 1987 and 1989?
Was the child repeatedly questioned?
Dr. Alan Tesson testified that a 6-year-old boy told him that children
had been forced to dance naked, were locked in an attic, threatened
with snakes, spat upon by Toward and abused after swimming. Tesson
showed 50 drawings that the child had made in therapy during 1987 and
1988.[7] What happened in all of those therapy sessions? Being asked
the same questions over and over until the answer the adult wants is
given is highly suggestive interviewing.
__________________________________________
5. Child Sex Abuse Accommodation Syndrome:
Roland Summit [9] testified that he supported the conclusions of the
therapists who examined one of the children who was filing suit.
Roland Summit is the author of "The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation
Syndrome" which asserts that there are five reactions children whohave
been sexually abused can exhibit: (1) secrecy, (2) helplessness, (3)
entrapment and accommodation, (4) delayed, unconvincing disclosure,
and (5) retraction. Science fails to support Summit'sclaims. We now
know that children with documented abuse do not exhibitdenials,
tentative disclosures or retractions. Summit's support of the
therapists' diagnoses was unwarranted.[10]
______________________________________________________________
6. Bizarre beliefs of therapists who interviewed the children:
The former student who contacted the Foundation explained that she
learned about the FMSF as she was doing research about the Glendale
case. The doctor who interviewed the first Glendale child to make an
accusation was psychiatrist Alan Tesson, M.D. (He was not the former
student's therapist.) In a Foundation newsletter the former student
found an article about Tesson's settling a lawsuit with Sue Tinker for
$650,000.[11] Tinker claimed, among other things, that Tesson
implanted false memories of satanic ritual abuse. During the course of
the Tinker v Tesson trial, Tinker's attorney Don Russo showed that Dr.
Tesson frequently consulted with self-proclaimed experts in satanic
ritual abuse (e.g., Cory Hammond and Catherine Gould) on the subject
of SRA mind control.[12] Indeed Russo portrayed Tesson as having been
obsessed with satanic ritual abuse ever since his work with the
Glendale students. To those familiar with the history of ritual abuse
accusations, these names raise immediate skepticism about any case
with which they -- or people who have worked with them -- are
connected.
Jeanne Ralicki, another of the therapists who interviewed the children
also holds extreme views. She lists as her specialties treatment for
Dissociative Disorders, Trauma and PTSD, and Past Life Regression. She
notes that the first two have been specialties since 1974.[13]
Believing that a therapist can actually "regress" a patient and find a
past life must be considered bizarre in the face of the scientific
evidence showing that the process of "regression" is really the
process of imagination.
________________________________________________
7. The highly charged climate of the interviews,
community a and trial contaminated the evidence:
Richard Lubin, the attorney for James Toward filed a motion in 1989
requesting that Chief Circuit Judge Dwight Geiger be replaced because
he appeared to be prejudiced against the defendant. Lubin charged that
the judge allowed himself to be influenced by a letter-writing
campaign that the prosecutor had orchestrated. The judge refused to
excuse himself.
Parents who believed their children had been abused formed a group and
it is highly likely that accusations were shared. The first child to
bring charges was a boy we call "Tom" who had been a patient of Dr.
Tesson. Tom's mother was Dr. Tesson's secretary. There is evidence of
close friendships between families of accusers and some therapists.
Some of the children's therapy sessions overlapped. Therapist Jeanne
Ralicki testified that on one occasion one child in her waiting room
asked another "Do you remember going to Mr. T.'s house?" Ralicki said
that she changed the subject, but what else may have been exchanged
among the children?
Although the trial was eventually moved to another community because
of all the publicity, newspaper reports from the time indicate that it
was highly likely that there was a a great deal of communication
between the families claiming their children had been abused and even
between the children themselves.
_____________________________
8. Lack of physical evidence:
The questions not asked about the accusations are many. For example,
if a 4-year-old had been raped, why did the parents not notice the
effects and complain immediately? If children had crucifixes inserted
in their anuses, why didn't the parents notice the tearing that would
have necessarily occurred? If children had been taken to Mexico,
without permission, why didn't the parents report that their children
were missing to the police?
There was a lack of any physical evidence for the children's claims.
The children said videos were made, but none were found. There was no
attic in the house in which a child said that he had been kept.
In the frenzy of the time, no one seemed to notice the complete lack
of physical evidence.
_____________________________________
9. Evidence of suggestive interviews:
Following are some excerpts from and comments about an interview of
"Tom" by Dr. Alan Tesson recorded on August 28, 1987. The interview
took place in the child's home with the mother present. The child is 4
years 10 months old. The alleged abuse was supposed to have started in
December 1986, so the child was being asked to remember incidents from
the previous 7 months. ("Mr. T." refers to Mr. Toward. That was the
children's name for him.)
The interview is a textbook example of suggestive interviewing. It
presents problems of credibility from beginning to end. Some of the
problems are as follows:
a) This was not the first interview between Dr. Tesson and Tom.
(page 4 line 9 & 10)
Q. Okay. What I want to do today, Tom, is I want to talk a little
bit like remember we talked before in here about some things?
How many times have they met? What did they talk about? All interviews
should be recorded. Unless that is done, it is impossible to know what
a child might remember and what might have been suggested.
b) Tom did not want to be interviewed. He wanted to have something to
eat and to play games. Dr. Tesson prodded him on throughout the
interview. One problem with this approach is that Tom might say
anything to get out of what he saw as an unpleasant situation.
(page 14 line 9 start)
Q. You're doing real well, okay. We'll try to -- I know it's hard
for you.
A. The next time.
Q. Well, I think we really need to do it today.
A. Why?
Q. Well, it's important. What --
A. I told you one time.
Q. I know, but you need to tell me again, okay.
A. Today can it be the last time?
Q. If you tell me everything, then it can be the last time.
A. This is everything. That was everything.
(page 16 line10 start)
Q. I need you to sit there, okay, just for a little while. Tell me
before -- you told me -
A. Then we're going to play a game, right? Then we're going to
leave and eat my fruit rollup.
(page 17 line 21 start)
Q. Okay. Let me - you told me on one of the visits that you got
sent to the office and something happened.
A. Yeah, I told you - I told you - I told you three days.
Q. Well, I know you told me before, but it's important that you
tell me again, okay
A. Why?
Q. Just one more time.
A. Okay.
Q And you don't have -
A. I can't tell you anymore.
Q. Just tell me once and tell me what happened again, okay.
A. That is what happened. That's everything that happened.
Q. Well, I know you told me. You went to the office, and what
happened at the office?
A. Nothing.
Q. That's not what you told me before.
A. But really nothing happened.
Q. Well, what -
A. What -
Q. Let's do this, and then we go - then we'll have some juice,
okay.
A. Then we'll play our game, please.
Q. No, we need to do this now before the game, okay.
A. Maybe after I eat my fruit rollup, then we'll play our game.
Q. No, we need to talk now, okay, and finish.
A. Then I will eat my fruit rollup?
c) Dr. Tesson exerted pressure on Tom. For example, he suggested that
Tom might be afraid of the things they were going to talk about.
(page 4 line 15 start)
Q. Are there a lot of things to talk about? Are you worried? Are
you afraid? You're not afraid?
A. Because I'm strong.
Q. Because you're strong, okay. Well maybe -
A. Whoever's strong is not afraid right?
Q. It's okay to be afraid. Sometimes things are scary. It's okay
to be afraid, but you have got people to protect you. You've got
your mommy and daddy, and I'm here too. I'm here to help you and
protect you, okay. I want you to sit up by your mommy though,
okay.
(page 9 line 12 start)
Q. Let me ask you again about - so you were at Mr. T's house, and
then what did he say to you? What did he-
A. I don't know. I don't know.
Q. Well it's okay. Looks like you're really afraid. Is it scary to
talk? Okay. And I know -
In the above example, Dr. Tesson indicates that he thinks that if Tom
says he doesn't know, then he is afraid. We already saw above that Tom
wants to be strong. The message is that a strong person will give an
answer.
d) Dr. Tesson will not accept Tom's responses that he does not know or
does not remember.
(page 16 line 22 start)
Q. Tell me what happened. You told me something happened - you
told me before something happened in his office, right?
A. I can't tell you that because I can't remember.
Q. Well, it's really important, and you need to tell me. Okay.
A. If it was every day, I would tell you every day.
Q. Okay. But tell me what happened again. Can you tell me.
A. If you can every day.
Q. Okay. Tell me again what happened in his office, okay.
A. He sent me to it and he -
Q. Just like what happened, just tell me just what happened, no
more and no less.
A. (unintelligible.)
Q. Sit, sit.
A. Happened
Q. Okay. Tell me what happened. You told me you got sent to the
office Okay. And what happened then?
A. I don't know.
e) Tom likely knows he has to answer something if he is ever to get
his fruit roll and time to play. Many of his answers are absurd. That
so many people could have overlooked the absurdity of the stories is
an indication of the "panic" of the community.
(page 7 line 15 start) When asked how he got to Mr. T's house:
Q. Did he just say - what did he say to get you in the car? Where
did he tell where you were going?
A. Just throw me in the back.
(page 8 line 9 start)
Q. ... Okay. Well, tell me a little bit about what happened at his
house. Tell me -
A. I don't know any.
Q. Well, his - I'd really like you to try to remember as much as
you can, okay.
A. I really can't remember.
Q. Tell me some more then. What happened once you got to his house?
A. He throw me in his house.
Q. He what?
A. He throw me in his house.
Q. He threw you in his house?
A. In the window
Q. In the window.
A. He opened the window and came outside and throwed me in.
Q. What room? What was in the room that you went into?
A. Guns and everything.
(page 15 line 23 start)
Q... Did he ever try to give you any presents or candy?
A. Presents and candy, but I didn't take it. I throwed them out
the window, and somebody else caught it, and now it's theirs.
f) Dr. Tesson asks Tom about guns. It's apparently something they had
spoken about in previous sessions. Not only does Tom's story change
within this session, we will compare it with changes from an excerpt
of Tom's deposition two years later.
(page 6 line 19 start)
Q. At Montessori, okay. And tell me what - tell me what happened
with Mr. T.
A. He showed me his guns, and if I ever told, he told me he would
kill me with them.
Q. He would kill you? Tell me a little bit about this. Where did
[he] have these guns?
A. In his closet at home.
(page 9 line 1 start)
Q. Guns and everything. Was it like - which room of the house was
it?
A. What's my dad - my dad has.
Q. Your dad has guns?
A. To kill rattle snakes, cobra snakes, and the other bad
snake. What was the other bad snake again?
(page 10 line 13 start)
Q. Okay. What do you remember about the guns? Was there one gun or
many guns?
A. Just three guns.
Q. Three?
A. That's what my dad has.
Q. What did they look like?
A. All pistols.
Q. Pistols.
A. My dad has.
Q. Okay. Do you remember like the color?
A. - he thought he was going to go inside and get his pistol ready
to kill that snake.
Tom appears to be telling Tesson about an incident with his father's
guns. Tesson ignores the reference to Tom's dad. Dr. Tesson is only
interested in Mr. T's guns. Tom continues and the story becomes
absurd.
Q. I see. Were you afraid when you saw the guns? No.
A. I'm strong.
Q. What did he say? Why did he --
A. -- and I went to the policeman and I gave it to the policemen.
Q. I see.
A. Every single one of them.
Q. What did he do with the guns? Did he -
A. I don't know. I don't know.
Was there ever a police report from Tom as he states? Dr. Tesson
ignores the reference to the police. A little while later Tom tells
Dr. Tesson that the guns are some place else in Mr. T's house
(page 22 line 6 start)
Q. Same day. And then you saw the gun at the house? Was that the
same day?
A. Hanging up right there on the doorway.
Q. You got what?
A. Hanging up - the guns were hanging up right on the doorway.
Q. I didn't hear you. I'm sorry.
A. Guns were hanging up right on the doorway.
In the August 1987 interview, the guns were not shot. In fact, no guns
were even found in the home of James Toward, but that did not stop
interviewers from pursuing the outlandish claims.
Tom was interviewed in October 1987 by two police officers. This
interview also indicates that there had been previous interviews with
the officers. How many? What happened? This interview is even more
preposterous than the August interview with Tesson. The transcript of
the interview could be used as a "how not to interview children"
model. The police used leading questions, coercion, peer pressure,
guilt-evocation, bribing, pleading, entrapment, threatening and making
Tom feel that he might be the only one in the whole school who does
not have the guts to disclose the sex abuse. Ironically, one of the
officers later received a commendation for her "good" work in this
case.
By January 26, 1989, over a year later, when Tom was deposed, all the
stories had grown more absurd. The story about the guns had grown
also:
"He had a gun at the door and then - then, then, when he walked out
he had the gun and then he shooted it at the house and then the
house caught on fire and then he ran away."
By 1989, Tom was saying that the guns were shot and set the house on
fire and it burned down. No bullets were found in the door. No guns
were found. The house did not burn down.
The story about the guns just grew and grew-as did so many other
incidents, including bizarre claims of abuse. The stories were the
consequence of interviewers asking the same questions over and over
until they got the answers they expected-aggressive and suggestive
interviews.
According to sociologist Mary de Young who has been studying ritual
abuse cases for more than a decade, "the [Glendale] case grew from an
allegation of a single child to complaints of ritual abuse and
descriptions of filmed orgies, the forced consumption of blood and
feces, and rapes with crucifixes and knives." [14] De Young notes that
press coverage at the time reflected the panic. If the March 1, 2008
article in the Palm Beach Post can be taken as an indicator, then
press attitudes in Martin County Florida appear unchanged, despite 20
years of research advances in children's memories and the problems of
interviewing children in an unbiased way.
James Toward remains in prison.
[1] Taylor, J. (2008, March 1). Headmaster's evil lives on in
20-year-old abuse case. Palm Beach Post. Retrieved on March 3,
2008 from
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/content/tcoast/epaper/
2008/03/01/c1a_mctoward_0301.html.
[2] See http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/othercases.htm, web
site of reporter Lorna Manning. See also deYoung, M. (1997).
Satanic ritual abuse in day care: An analysis of 12 American
cases." Child Abuse Review , 6(2), 84-93.
[3] In an Alford Plea the defendant does not admit guilt but does
agree that there is sufficient evidence with which the
prosecution might convince a judge or jury of his guilt.
[4] See http://www.freetoward.org/?page_id=6 (Help Free James
Toward!).
[5] Taylor, J. (1992), May 24). More abuse victims found. Palm Beach
Post 1A.
[6] Ceci, S.J. & Bruck, M. (1995). Jeopardy in the Courtroom. page
184. See also: DeLoache, J. S. (2006). Mindful of symbols
NewResearchAdds to the Evidence for Caution in Use of Anatomical
Dolls with Young Children Scientific American Mind, 17(1), 71-75.
"The victims of abuse are often very young children, who are
quite difficult to interview. Consequently, many professionals
-- including police officers, social workers and mental health
professionals -- employ anatomically detailed dolls, assuming
that a young child will have an easier time describing what
happened using a doll. Notice that this assumption entails the
further assumption that a young child will be able to think of
this object as both a doll and a representation of himself or
herself."
"In several independent studies,... investigators have asked
preschool children to report what they remember about a checkup
with their pediatrician, which either had or had not included a
genital check. Anatomically detailed dolls were sometimes used
to question the children, sometimes not. In general, the
children's reports were more accurate when they were questioned
without a doll, and they were more likely to falsely report
genital touching when a doll was used."
"Based on my research, I suspected that very young children
might not be able to relate their own body to a doll. In a
series of studies in my lab...[a researcher] placed a sticker
somewhere on a child -- on a shoulder or foot, for example --
and asked the child to place a smaller version of the sticker in
the same place on a doll. Children between three and three and a
half usually placed the sticker correctly, but those younger
than three were correct less than half the time. The fact that
these very young children cannot relate their own body to the
doll's in this extremely simple situation that does not have
memory demands or emotional involvement supports the general
case against the use of anatomically detailed dolls in forensic
situations with young children. (Because of many demonstrations
akin to this one, the use of dolls with children younger than
five is viewed less favorably than in the past and has been
outlawed in some states.)"
[7] Hughes, S. (1988, March 9). Therapist recounts boy's story of
sexual abuse. Miami Herald, 1B.
[8] Orr, R. (1989, June 13). Parents describe changes in kids at abuse
hearing. Miami Herald, 1B.
[9] Summit, R.C. (1983). The child sexual abuse accommodation
syndrome. Child Abuse & Neglect, 7, 177-193.
[10] London, K, Bruck, M., Ceci, S.J. & Shuman, D.W. (2005).
Disclosure of child sexual abuse: What does the research tell us
about the ways that children tell? Psychology, Public Policy, and
Law, 11(1), 194-226.
[11] Staff (1997, February 1). Psychiatrist settles with former
patient for $650,000, Tinker v. Tesson, in the Circuit Court of
the 19th Judicial Circuit, in and for Martin County, Florida, Case
No. 95-444-CA. FMSF Newsletter, 6(2).
[12] Cory Hammond, Ph.D. is famous for his "Greenbaum" speech given at
a seminar for therapists. In the speech Hammond told the group
that a satanic cult had been introduced to the United States by
Nazi scientists who devised a mind-control system to induce cult
members to commit murder, ritual sacrifices and child abuse. The
Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple
Personality, Thursday June 25, 1992, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel,
Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia. Sponsored by the Center for
Abuse Recovery & Empowerment, The Psychiatric Institute of
Washington, D.C. See FMSF Newsletters 13(5), Sept/Oct 1995 and 14
(5), Sept/Oct 1996 for a detailed description of the speech by Dr.
Hammond.
[13] See: http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/healthology/
prof_detail.php?profid=43452&zipcode=34997&zipdist=20&
br=healthology&fo=mentalhealth.
[14] De Young, M. (2004) The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. (page 95).
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| Between 1984 and 1995, there were approximately 185 adults, about |
| half of them women, who were charged with ritual sexual abuse. 113 |
| of those were convicted, mainly on words of young children. [*] |
| |
| Below is a list of some of the better known of the scores of day |
| care cases. |
| 1982 Kern county child abuse case |
| 1983 McMartin preschool trial in California |
| 1984 Fells Acres Day Care Center |
| 1985 Wee Care Nursery School in New Jersey in April |
| 1987 Cleveland child abuse scandal in England |
| 1989 Glendale Montessori sexual abuse case in Stuart, Florida |
| 1989 Little Rascals Day Care Center scandal in Edenton, North |
| Carolina |
| 1990 All charges dropped in McMartin preschool trial |
| 1991 Christchurch Civic Creche |
| 1992 Martensville Scandal, Martensville, Saskatchewan, Canada |
| 1994 start of Wenatchee Sex Rings case |
| |
| [*] Nathan, D. (1995). Satan's Silence. New York: Basic Books. |
| See http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/othercases.htm, web |
| site of reporter Lorna Manning. |
\____________________________________________________________________/
**********************************************************************
HERSCHEL WALKER'S MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES:
Where Did He Get Them?
Football legend Herschel Walker claims that he has spent his life
battling the effects of multiple personality disorder. The Heisman
Trophy winner and Dallas Cowboys running back has written a book
titled Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder that
is scheduled for release on April 14, 2008, according to Amazon.com,
or August, 2008, according to a press release from publisher Simon &
Schuster. Jerry Mungadze, Ph.D., founder of the Mungadze Trauma
Programs in Bedford, Texas, wrote the Foreword to Walker's book.
Walker's family and friends were surprised about the multiple
personality news according to several articles.[1]
Walker's father, Willis Walker Sr., stated: "I know him better than
anybody 'cause I raised him. This is my first knowing about that. I
don't know nothing about that disorder business."
Herschel's half brother Kirk Dent noted: "I don't know anything about
that. Herschel doesn't really talk to me about personal things."
Vince Dooley, Walker's former Georgia coach said: "That's all news to
me. All I know is whatever personality he had when he had the football
was the one I liked."
One of Walker's Georgia teammates Frank Ros told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution: "I'm probably one of his closest friends and
that's news to me. I knew he was working on a book but I just thought
it was about football. He does 100 things at once and always has
projects going on, but that blows me away."
"I'm in total shock. He's a good friend of mine, and I never
anticipated something like this," said Jim Jeffcoar, former Cowboys
defensive end.
Kevis Butler, another former teammate replied: "This is all news to
me. . . I never saw him do anything I thought bordered on being weird
or strange. He was to himself a lot. I hope he's healthy, and if he
needs some help, I hope he gets it. I just saw him recently, and he
seemed to be doing great."
Former teammate Tim Crowe told reporters: "I heard his book was going
to be about his journey from high school to Georgia to the pros to his
life now. I never heard anything about multiple personalities. He's
always been the same person to me."
Until the book is published, one can only hypothesize about how
Herschel Walker came to realize that he has been struggling with
multiple personalities his whole life. Since the Foreword of the book
is written by Jerry Mungadze, Ph.D., however, it seems likely that
Walker participated in the Mungadze Trauma Program.
Mungadze's name has appeared in the FMSF Newsletter several times over
the years. Jerry Mungadze, Ph.D., a native of Zimbabwe, offers
Christian treatment for victims of trauma. He received his Ph.D. in
Counselor Education at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas in
1990. His Trauma 1 classes at Dallas Baptist University are reputedly
very popular. Influenced by Bennett Braun, M.D. and the International
Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation,
Mungadze appears to believe in excavating memories and satanic ritual
abuse.
Evidence for this appeared in a 1996 article by Evan Harrington who
attended the 1995 meeting of the Society for the Investigation,
Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse.[2] Harrington wrote
that the program title was "Cult and Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and
Dissociation: A Multidisciplinary Dialogue," but, he noted, the title
was misleading "because there were no skeptics or critics among the
speakers and,. . . any dissension from the audience was strongly
discouraged -- it was essentially a monologue."
Harrington described Mungadze's participation in the meeting as follows:
"Catherine Gould gave an advanced workshop in which she described
the mechanics of cult mind-control, extensively utilizing the
mind-as-computer model. At one point she puzzled over the idea of
cult members catching AIDS. She said that no one can figure out why
the offenders are not 'dropping like flies, because we know they
don't practice safe cult sex.' With all the blood, cannibalism, and
unprotected sex, they ought to be catching a lot of sexually
transmitted diseases. Therapist Jerry Mungadze offered a unique
explanation. He suggested that mind-control programming boosts the
immune system, making the victim resistant to the HIV virus, and
that is why children in day care satanic-ritual abuse cases do not
have elevated levels of sexually transmitted diseases."
Additional evidence for Mungadze's beliefs can be found in "Safety
Tips for Ritual Abuse Survivors" on the web site of Ellen Lacter, a
well-known proponent of satanic ritual abuse beliefs.[3] Lacter
writes:
"Some hospitals, such as Millwood Hospital, in Arlington Texas
(817-261-3121) understand ritual abuse (The Mungadze Association
recently transferred it's [sic] hospital program to Millwood
Hospital from Cedars Hospital, where they were previously housed)
(accepts Medicare and Medicaid). Survivors can get short-term
in-patient treatment, for up to one or two months. If it is unsafe
to return to their original community, the survivor may choose to
remain in Texas near the hospital and to attend out-patient therapy
with therapists trained at the hospital."
Mungadze's own website explains some of his beliefs about Christian
Treatment of Trauma Recovery: [4]
"We believe that traumatic memories are stored in the sensory motor
part of the brain in the temporal lobe, where the limbic system is
located. The limbic system houses the parts that process information
such as the Amygdala, Hippocampus, Thalamus, Hypothalamus, and all
related structures."
"The problems that trauma patients have with memory, flashbacks,
sensory overload (commonly referred to as body memories), are all
anchored in the temporal lobe. It is the belief in Neurotherapy
that these parts of the brain are to be targeted for treatment in
order to help alleviate the traumatic responses that make most
trauma patients miserable."
"Dr Mungadze uses picture collages as a tool to help clients express
things they could not express otherwise. As outlined in B Vander
[sic] Kolk's work (1995), the facts we know About the limbic system
and all the research on PTSD, all serves to confirm what Dr Mungadze
has been disclosing and using since the early 1990's."
[1] Towers, C. (2008, January 18). Football legend claims multiple
personalities. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, A1.
Towers, C. (2008, January 19). No one saw this coming: Family,
teammates never knew Walker to behave strangely. Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, D4.
Staff (2008, January 19). Disorder's credibility a controversial
matter. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, D4.
[2] Harrington, E. (1996, September). Conspiracy Theories and
Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference'. CSIOP, Skeptical
Inquirer, September 1996
(http://www.csiop.org/si/9609/conspiracy.html).
[3] Survivors, by Ellen P. Lacter, Ph.D. Updated 7-19-2005. Safety
Tips for Ritual Abuse
http://truthbeknown2000.tripod.com/Truthbeknown2000/id10.html
[4] Mungadze Trauma Programs can be found at http://www.mungadze.net/
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| "Why do some memoir authors play fast and loose with the truth? |
| It's no big mystery. The genre is booming. It thrives on first- |
| person accounts of abuse, addiction and other adversity. Fiction |
| may not be stranger than truth, but it can be more interesting." |
| Editorial (2008, March 6) |
| The fabulists. USA Today. p. 10A |
\____________________________________________________________________/
**********************************************************************
DANGER OF INDUCING FALSE MEMORIES
Rubin, D.C. & Berntsen, D. (2007).
People believe it is plausible to have forgotten memories of
childhood sexual abuse. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14 (4), 776-778
In 2006, Kathy Pezdek and colleagues [1] demonstrated that the
"perception of the plausibility of events increases the likelihood of
imagination inducing false memories of those events." They stated,
however, "childhood sexual abuse is a relatively implausible event for
most children," thus implying that it is not likely that a person
would develop false memories of childhood sexual abuse if a therapist
asked them to imagine suspected abuse.
In a follow up of the Pezdek work, Rubin and Berntsen used a Gallup
survey of a representative sample of 495 Danes and asked them how
plausible it would be for a person with longstanding emotional
problems and a need for psychotherapy to be a victim of childhood
sexual abuse -- even though the person could not remember the
abuse. The results showed that 18 percent considered it implausible or very
implausible, but that 67 percent considered it plausible or very plausible.
Rubin and Berntsen note: "Thus it is not the plausibility of childhood
sexual abuse that is striking, but the belief that many people have
that it can be completely forgotten and at the same time cause severe
emotional problems."
Rubin and Berntsen reach a conclusion that is substantially different
from that of Pezdek. They conclude: "there is substantial danger of
inducing false memories of childhood sexual abuse through imagination
in psychotherapy."
[1] Pezdek, K., Blandon-Gitlin, I., & Gabbay, P. (2006). Imagination
and memory: Does imagining events lead to false autobiographical
memories? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 764-769.
+------------------------------------------------+
| "Creditors have better memories than debtors." |
| Benjamin Franklin |
+------------------------------------------------+
**********************************************************************
POSING AS MEMORIES
Schlosser, A.E. (2006)
Learning through virtual product experience: The role of imagery on
true versus false memories. Journal of Consumer Research, 33, 377-383.
Increasingly, students and the general public have opportunities to
learn through the use of "virtual reality," a computer-simulated
environment that can be either real or imagined. Past research has
shown that imagery-evoking tools can enhance learning.
Researcher Ann Schlosser let half of 179 undergraduate students learn
to use a digital camera by using a computer site that featured simple
text and static pictures, a traditional way to learn. She let the
other half of the students learn through a computer simulation site.
In the interactive site, subjects could roll a cursor over the camera
and click on its image to make changes and get more information
When Schlosser later tested the students, she found that the virtual
experiences did indeed improve the students' memories of the camera's
functions. But what that learning experience also did was increase
false positives, that is, more people who learned in the virtual
experience way believed that the camera could do things that it could
not do. She wrote: "Although object interactivity may improve memory
of associations compared to static pictures and text, it may lead to
the creation of vivid internally-generated recollections that pose as
memories."
Schlosser also learned that even though students in virtual experience
remembered more, they were no better than the other group when they
had to recognize the actual items in real life. Schlosser notes: "The
benefits of learning via virtual experience may come with costs: the
ease of generating mental images may create later confusion regarding
whether a retrieved mental image was perceived or imagined."
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| RYAN FERGUSON CASE UPDATE |
| State vs. Ferguson No 165368-01, Boone County, MO Circuit Court |
| On March 3, 2008 attorneys for Ryan Ferguson filed an |
| Amended Rule 29.15 Motion to Vacate Judgment and Sentence. |
| |
| Ryan Ferguson was 19 when he was convicted of murder of a reporter |
| for the Columbia Daily Tribune. The 2006 conviction was based |
| solely on the evidence of his friend Charles (Chuck) Erickson's |
| memory based on a dream. There was no physical evidence presented |
| to connect Ryan to the crime. Indeed, videos now available on the |
| web show that Chuck recovered his "memories" in the context of |
| highly suggestive police interrogations.[1] |
| |
| The March appeal states that Ryan was denied his rights to a fair |
| trial because the State did not disclose information and evidence |
| in its possession for the defense. Specifically, the State failed |
| to disclose law enforcement interviews with a person who claimed |
| to have additional information about the murder. Ryan was |
| effectively barred by the state from investigating a plausible |
| suspect for his defense. |
| |
| The appeal also claims that the State failed to disclose to the |
| defense that witness Shawna Ornt saw pictures of Ryan Ferguson and |
| Charles Erickson in the Columbia Daily Tribune and she told the |
| prosecutor, Kevin Crane, that it was not Ryan Ferguson and Charles |
| Erickson that she saw in the parking lot of the Columbia Tribune |
| where the murder occurred on Nov 1, 2001. The non-disclosed |
| evidence was in the possession or control of the state, tended to |
| negate Ryan's guilt, and was material to the case. |
| |
| [1] See "Have you ever had a cop in your face?" at: youtube.com. |
| See also FMSF Newsletter 15(4), July/August 2006. |
\____________________________________________________________________/
**********************************************************************
L E G A L C O R N E R
__________________________________________________
Daniel Brown, Ph.D., Accused of Misrepresentation:
Nebraska Jury Award of $1.75 Million Vacated in Vella Case
Doe v Vella, U.S. Dist. Ct. D. Neb., No. 8:04-cv-00269
On December 14, 2007, Judge Richard G. Knopf of the United States
District Court for Nebraska vacated the May 2007 eight-person jury
award of $1.75 million in damages to 33-year-old Jane Doe for the
sexual abuse she claimed she had suffered as a child from her father
Gordon Vella.[1] The decision was in response to a Motion to Vacate
Judgment and Verdict and to Dismiss with Prejudice brought by the
plaintiff. Court papers suggest that the lawsuit was vacated because
of questions raised about the credibility of a key witness.
The time line is as follows: During the trial, psychologist Daniel
Brown, Ph.D. served as an expert witness for the plaintiff and his
testimony about the medical phenomenon of repressed and recovered
memories was, apparently, critical in the jury finding Vella guilty.
On September 26, 2007, Vella's new attorneys Allen Tate and Krista
Kester filed a Motion for Relief from Judgment pursuant to the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure 60(b)(3) and 60(b)(6). The motion claimed
that "newly discovered evidence establishes that Dr. Daniel Brown,
either intentionally or through reckless indifference to the truth,
misrepresented the existence of an error rate relating to the
hypothesis of dissociative amnesia, misrepresented the findings of
numerous published articles as being supportive of dissociative
amnesia theory, misrepresented the level of acceptance among the
relevant scientific community for the dissociative amnesia hypothesis,
and even allowed misrepresentations concerning his qualifications to
testify as an expert witness." [2] Declarations written by R.
Christopher Barden, Ph.D., J.D., Richard J. McNally, Ph.D., and
Harrison Pope, Jr., M.D., M.P.H. were submitted with the Motion.
On October 29, 2007, the plaintiff filed a Brief in Opposition to the
Motion for Relief. An affidavit by Daniel Brown defending his
testimony was filed on the same date. Vella's attorneys began the
process of preparing a reply. Before the filing deadline, however, the
Plaintiff filed its own Motion to Vacate Judgment and Verdict and to
Dismiss with Prejudice on November 30, 2007. On December 3, 2007,
after considering the implication of Plaintiff's filing, Vella filed a
withdrawal of his Rule 60(b)(3) and 60(b)(6) motion on the condition
that the Court grant the Plaintiff's motion to vacate the judgment and
verdict. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the District Court
on December 14, 2007, and on that same date, the District Court
entered its order to grant the vacating of the judgment and dismissing
the cause of action with prejudice.
Attorney for the plaintiff was Herb Friedman of Lincoln, Nebraska.
Attorneys for Gordon Vella were Allen Tate and Krista Kester of
Lincoln, Nebraska.
Comments about the Vella case:
"Expert witness testimony might have torpedoed $1.7M award."
January 17, 2008.
"Psychologist says he didn't cause $1.75 million reversal."
February 16, 2008.
Which headline from the Lincoln, Nebraska Journal Star is correct?
Although Daniel Brown denied that the reversal in the Vella case was a
consequence of the Barden, McNally and Pope critiques of his
testimony, the timing and the fact that the order to vacate came at
the request of the plaintiff's attorney, who was the one who hired
Brown, indicate otherwise.
Brown was understandably taken aback at the critiques. In his
affidavit he commented:
"It is my personal belief that these three individuals [Barden,
McNally, Pope] represent a brand of 'scientific fundamentalism,'
systematically and relentlessly attempting to shape the
representation of evidence and to discredit anyone who dares to
oppose their version of 'science.'" (p. 1)
If by "scientific fundamentalism" Brown means strong adherence to the
set of beliefs of science as it is commonly understood within the
relevant scientific community of academic researchers, he is correct
about Barden, McNally, and Pope. Indeed, they are relentless in their
efforts to ensure that the recovered memory debate be grounded in
science and not pseudoscience. Brown is wrong, however, if he views
their work as an effort to discredit any particular persons. Rather,
they attempt to show that almost all of the research that has been
presented by proponents of the belief in repressed and recovered
memories fails to meet scientific criteria to show that the phenomenon
even exists.
This is not the first time that Brown's testimony or writings have
come under criticism. Indeed, the FMSF Newsletter has many times
discussed his arguments for the existence of repression (or
"dissociative amnesia"), and the reasons why those arguments fail to
fulfill the criteria to show that it exists. For example, in the early
90s, Pope and colleagues set out the criteria necessary to show that
repression exists: There must be evidence that the abuse actually
happened; there must be evidence that the person actually had
continuous dissociative amnesia/repressed memory and that the
forgetting was not an example of ordinary forgetting, malingering, or
for secondary gain; and there must be evidence that there was not a
medical or biological factor to explain the forgetting. Early
retrospective studies offered by proponents as evidence of the
existence of repression and recovery of memories failed to demonstrate
that any abuse had actually taken place. A new generation of
prospective studies documented the abuse but failed to show that
subjects had continuous amnesia for the event. To date, the phenomenon
of repression and memory recovery has not yet been scientifically
demonstrated to exist.
That does not deny that many people have had the subjective experience
of recovering memories. It is not surprising because people interpret
their experiences within the framework of the culture in which they
live, and the notion of "repressed memories" is ubiquitous in our
culture -- in books, movies and television. Ordinary memory processes,
however, can easily explain most people's subjective experiences. A
recent study shows how unreliable such subjective experiences can
be. In 2006, Simona Ghetti and colleagues [3] studied self-reported
amnesia in a population of people known through the legal system to
have been abused. The researchers found that if child sexual abuse was
forgotten in childhood, the memory was also likely to be recovered in
childhood, rather than later on in adulthood. And they found no
evidence of adult recovery of [child sexual abuse] memories. They
concluded: "The differences between subjective and objective memory
underscore the risks of using subjective measures to assess lost
memory of abuse." (p. 1011)
Arguments about the scientific status of recovered memories are
particularly important in legal cases because the results determine
whether testimony on the subject will be allowed in court. Since
Daubert v. Merrill-Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,[4] there are three
legal criteria that scientific evidence is generally expected to meet
if it is to be admitted in court:
The falsifiability, or refutability, or testability of the theory;
Whether the theory has been subjected to peer review and
publication; and The general acceptance of the theory.
In his testimony, Brown created the impression that only a "vocal
minority" of people in the relevant scientific community questioned
the validity of repressed and recovered memory.(p. 63) In his
affidavit, however, he wrote: "I also noted that the debate over
memory had become highly charged and politicized and that each side
attempted to put its own spin on research findings." The ongoing
bitter controversy about repressed and recovered memories is
sufficient evidence to show that there is not a general acceptance of
the theory of repression within the relevant scientific community.
Some comments in Brown's affidavit reveal the crux of the problem with
his perspective on science and the admissibility of scientific
evidence in courts He wrote:
"The problem with Pope's 'scientifically sound test' is that it sets
up an unreasonable standard of science. A fundamental difference
between Pope's view of dissociative amnesia and my own is that each
of us adheres to a different standard of science. Pope's standard of
'science' may best be characterized as the definitive study
standard. Pope believes that it is possible to design a single
definitive study that could address all four of the previously-
mentioned criteria. In my opinion, this is an impossible standard of
science that doesn't exist for any diagnosis in the DSM." (p. 40)
"The alternate standard of science is the accumulation of knowledge,
or multimethod, standard. According to the accumulation of knowledge
standard, scientific knowledge for a given diagnosis is more likely
to attain incremental validity when multiple methods of testing are
used to test multiple perspectives on the same phenomenon, with
varying samples of subjects across different testing sites, by a
variety of researchers (who do not all share the same bias)."
(p. 40)
Brown does not seem to appreciate that his method allows for no
possible way to refute error -- any claim will eventually pass a test
if you look at enough tests. Perhaps an analogy can help. Many people
believe that there are extra-terrestrials. They claim that there is
visual evidence in photos, that there is audio evidence, that there
are traces left by terrestrials in people's bodies, and that there are
examples of people who have recovered memories of extra-terrestrials.
Proceeding in this manner, however, provides no way to show that
extra-terrestrials do not exist. Perhaps 10 percent of cases are
invalid. Perhaps 100 percent of cases are invalid. Are there extra-
terrestrials? We cannot say until we have one in evidence.
Do people repress and recover memories as a response to child sexual
abuse? Diagnosing "repression" in a patient is not a standardized
process. It depends on the report of a patient and the evaluation of
the therapist. Both of those can be influenced by the beliefs of the
individuals involved, adding to the uncertainty. There is no way to
know how many false positive diagnoses there might be under the
circumstances (i.e. that there is a diagnosis of "repression" when, in
fact, there is no repression). There is no way to show that
"repression" does not exist. Are 10 percent of reports invalid? Are 100%
invalid? We do not know. Therefore, it is necessary to show
scientifically that repression and memory recovery in response to
trauma does exist if it is to be allowed as evidence in Court. People
have been looking for scientific evidence of repression for the past
70 years, but without success. There is, on the other hand, bountiful
solid scientific evidence of human suggestibility and its effect on
memory reports.
[1] See FMSF Newsletter 17 (1).
[2] Tate, A.M. (1997, September 26). Motion for Relief from Judgment,
Doe v. Vella,
[3] Ghetti, S., Edelstein, R.S., Goodman, G.S., Cordon, I.M., Quas,
J.A., Alexander, K.W., Redlich, A.D. & Jones, D.P.J. (2006). What
can subjective forgetting tell us about memory for childhood
trauma? Memory & Cognition 34(5), 10 11-1025.
[4] Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
Mabin, C. (2008, February 16). Psychologist says he didn't cause
$1.75 million reversal. Lincoln Journal Star. Retrieved on
2/18/08. Sipple, S. (2008, January 17). Expert witness testimony
might have torpedoed $1.7 M award. Journalstar.com Retrieved on
2/20/08 from www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1955209/posts.
The declarations of Barden, McNally, Pope, and Brown are
fascinating reading. These papers are public documents and any
readers who would like to read them electronically should just
sent an email message to mail@FMSFonline.org. Be sure to put FMSF
in the header so that it does not disappear into a spam filter.
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| Learning About Psychoanalysis |
| |
| "Psychoanalysis and its ideas about the unconscious mind have |
| spread to every nook and cranny of the culture from Salinger to |
| "South Park," from Fellini to foreign policy. Yet if you want to |
| learn about psychoanalysis at the nation's top universities, one |
| of the last places to look may be the psychology department." |
| |
| "A new report by the American Psychoanalytic Association [to |
| appear June 2008] has found that while psychoanalysis -- or what |
| purports to be psychoanalysis -- is alive and well in literature, |
| film, history and just about every other subject in the |
| humanities, psychology departments and textbooks treat it as |
| 'desiccated and dead,' a historical artifact instead of 'an |
| ongoing movement and a living, evolving process.'" |
| Cohen, P. (2007, November 25) |
| Freud is widely taught at Universities, |
| except in the psychology department. |
| New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/ |
| weekinreview/25cohen.html?_r=2oref=sloginpagewanted=print |
| on December 9, 2007 |
\____________________________________________________________________/
**********************************************************************
F R O M O U R R E A D E R S
________________________________________________
The Memory Wars Revisited: Up Close and Personal
Melody Gavigan
"My Dear Melody,
I know that flowers won't fix anything, but I don't know what else
to do. I love you with all my heart. I know that you are afraid of a
broken heart and I promise that I will never break it. You are
everything to me and I can't imagine what I would do without you.
Whenever you are ready I would love to talk with you, and listen as
well. My love for you is indescribable and I never want to lose it."
"Lee" 2004
How blissfully unaware I was that I would be thrown headfirst into a
personal nightmare sequel of "The '90s Memory Wars," when, in the
winter of 2006, my husband and I retired from Reno, Nevada, to the
small rural town of Grass Valley, California. We came here for the
weather, the intense natural beauty, the golf, and so many cultural
and recreational and social opportunities for a retired couple like
us.
I sit here now, alone with my elderly cocker spaniel in my little one
bedroom cabin, across town from the large sprawling beautiful corner
home we had leased when we first moved here. I'm still in shock over
everything that has transpired in our lives over the last year. I miss
my husband. I will always love him in a certain all-forgiving way. I
had certainly planned on spending the rest of my life with this man.
We were going to renew our vows that coming August in a church, as we
had been married in a civil court-house ceremony five years prior. But
he is long gone from me now, mentally, physically, emotionally and
legally. His mental decline since he started treatment for PTSD from
the V.A. has been terrifying to me, and his subsequent physical
decline even more so.
What does my lost marriage have to do with "Repressed Memory
Therapists" and "The Memory Wars of the '90s?" Everything. Just as my
father lost touch with me and his granddaughter for three years due to
Repressed Memory Therapy, I have now lost my husband to Repressed
Memory Therapy -- in the name of PTSD therapy for his short Vietnam
service.
To understand what I'm talking about, I need to explain what happened
to me in 1989. In November of that year I entered a women's rehab
center in California for my depression and anxiety related to marital
problems. My therapist was focused on recovering "repressed" memories
from my childhood in order to explain my current angst.
My therapist recommended the book, The Courage To Heal, which said
basically that if you think you might have been abused, you probably
were. I racked my brain trying to remember abuse and ended up being
hospitalized for six weeks. My therapist told me to "write my father a
letter and tell him I would never see him again." I was heavily
medicated with Trilathon, Haldol, and Halcyon. Although the drugs made
me act and walk and feel like a robot, I was sternly warned by medical
personnel not to stop taking them. I hadn't needed any medications
before I started that "therapy," and I was more fragile when I left
the treatment center than when I entered.
Over the next few years, I sought out regressive hypnosis, which only
served to aggravate my constant state of cognitive dissonance. I knew
on some level that I was making up the "memories" under hypnosis, as
that was what was expected of me to "get well." I also started a
community group for incest survivors. For three years I didn't allow
my father to see me, or his only granddaughter who was of preschool
age.
I struggled constantly with not being sure if my "memories" of abuse
were true, so I decided to take a college class in psychology, hoping
it would shed some light. I read a book about memory, and it explained
how that we remember the really big things that happen to us. It was
like scales fell from my eyes. I realized that I had been fooled.
Duped. Conned. Bamboozled. Deceived. Misled. How utterly embarrassing!
I called my father and asked him to forgive me, which he was only too
happy to do.
I proudly made many television appearances with my father, who had
served as a medic on the front lines of the Korean War and had been
hospitalized three times for war injuries. I started The Retractor
Newsletter and wrote the Foreword to Victims of Memory by Mark
Pendergrast. I had biographical mentions and contributions about
repressed memory theory in Psychology Today, the San Francisco
Examiner, Time, Suggestions of Abuse by Michael Yapko; The Myth of
Repressed Memory by Elizabeth Loftus, and True Stories of False
Memories by Eleanor Goldstein & Kevin Farmer. I appeared in Oprah with
Professor Richard Ofshe, Fox Magazine TV, and CBS News -- all in the
early 1990's.
After I realized that I had confabulated "memories" of abuse, I spoke
with several therapists who actually thought that I really had been
raped, and they tried hard to convince me that my confabulations were
true. Unfortunately for their credibility, I now had a clear mind and
knew the difference between my imagination and my real memories.
Little did I know at the time that I was making enemies -- that there
were people who were upset with the work I was doing.
How did my husband fall into the hands of therapists who specialized
in memory excavation nearly two decades after my experience? It all
began with the purchase of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, at my
suggestion. After he got it, he became part of the Harley Davison
culture. At first, I accompanied him to "HOG" meetings, which were
"mainstream" and wholesome. When we attended a huge motorcycle event
in Reno, I pointed out that there were motorcycle riders walking
around wearing a patch for US Marines and a patch for Vietnam. He
eagerly inquired about their club, which he was quick to join in Reno.
One of the first charity activities Lee's club helped to support was
for a "Veterans' Stand-down." Stand-downs are free community fairs for
Veterans, started for homeless veterans to find badly needed resources
such as healthcare and housing. But there are not many homeless
veterans in our community, because this is an expensive, historic,
rural resort area near Lake Tahoe, populated mainly by wealthy folk
who retired here from the San Francisco Bay area. At the stand-downs
in our area, there are many classic cars, Rolls Royce's, expensive
sports cars and expensive motorcycles.
(I am fully supportive of help to veterans. That is not an issue. The
retired veterans here, however, are not poor. This area is too
expensive for current military families or young Iraq war veterans or
Afghanistan war veterans. At the same time, it can boast that it has
the best resources and primary medical care nearby for Veterans. There
is great disparity in the ages and neediness of Veterans here compared
to Veterans in large urban areas. A part of my concern is that
resources for veterans may be concentrated in an area that doesn't
need them as much as other places do.)
At one of the functions, a person in a VA booth spoke with my husband
about the benefits available through the VA. She asked him some
questions to see if he might have PTSD. I don't know what she actually
asked. I know that the VA has various screening tests that are
available on their website and these seem to be based on symptoms
listed in the DSM-IV. What I do know is that therapists in my area
with whom my husband was involved list symptoms for PTSD that go
beyond the DSM-IV. The VA contracts with these local therapists to
provide therapy. These local therapists are part of a group called
VietNow that has its own website. The checklist these local
therapists, to whom my husband gave his trust, lists the following
symptoms for PTSD:
"Anger, irritability and rage; Feeling nervous; Depression;
Difficulty trusting others; Feeling guilt over acts committed or
witnessed, the failure to prevent certain events, or merely having
survived while others did not; Hyper-alertness and startle
reactions; Feeling grief or sadness; Having thoughts and memories
that will not go away; Isolation and alienation from others; Loss of
interest in pleasurable activities; Low tolerance to stress;
Problems with authority; Problems feeling good about oneself;
Nightmares; Substance abuse; Trouble sleeping; Anxiety Paranoia."
[1]
My husband had very few symptoms from this checklist. Never did I know
him to experience nightmares, difficulty sleeping, substance abuse,
hyper-alertness or startle reactions, "flashbacks," loss of interest
in pleasurable activities, guilt feelings, low tolerance to stress,
anxiety, paranoia or nervousness. He was the mellowest, naturally
happiest guy I had ever known. His "problems with authority" consisted
of being too compliant, especially if he was dealing with a female
authority. He did fear confrontation. His anger, irritability, and
rage all came later, after he started therapy.
With the promise of monetary benefits, my husband gladly signed up
with the Veterans Administration without knowing what he was getting
himself into. I noticed a change in my husband after a just a few
private sessions. He became withdrawn, and he didn't want to go
anywhere. Then he distanced himself from me and he complained about me
to his motorcycle club buddies. I continued to support his therapy. I
loved Lee and wanted to help.
His normally sunny disposition went down hill, and he started to have
fits of rage. I began to look into the philosophy behind the therapy.
The literature noted that the programs were "family-oriented" and
supportive of spouses who were putting up with years of anger and
flashbacks. But our story had not been like that. There had been no
flashbacks or rage.
Soon my husband was in weekly men's groups, in addition to weekly
therapy sessions. One day he came home and told me that although the
therapy was family oriented in most cases, it was not in ours. I could
not figure out what was going on and wrote to the therapist. She
didn't respond. I telephoned but she never replied.
I decided to check the therapist's credentials. She is a marriage and
family therapist who has worked for many years under contract with the
Veterans Administration. I was shocked to see that she was associated
with groups that support belief in multiple personality and recovered
memories such as the Sidran Foundation and Cavalcade Production. I
remember videos about how to find satanic ritual abuse in patients
made by Cavalcade. I found on the web that my husband's therapist
describes herself as working with "trauma release" and that she
believes that unresolved events can cause symptoms. She believes that
the unremembered events can be released by using EMDR, sensory motor
work, and hypnosis.
How could I have stumbled into this therapy hornet's nest? Therapists
with similar beliefs nearly destroyed my sanity two decades ago. I
decided to notify my husband's therapist of who I was and what I knew
about recovered memories. I wrote to her. I challenged the
contradiction between the claims on the website and what had happened
to us. She didn't respond. I wrote again and again. Then one day Lee
arrived home from therapy and demanded a divorce from me. He wanted me
out, and he wanted it now. I found another place to live.
If only I had known when we moved to this idyllic community that it
harbored therapists who believe in hypnosis to find the "unremembered"
events that are causing PTSD symptoms! They call themselves PTSD
specialists and their salaries are paid by our taxes through the
Veterans Administration.
See: http://www.vietnow.com/pagesptsd/nevertoolate.htm
Although guilt, substance abuse, problems with authority, or
paranoia are not found, the rest of the symptoms in the list are
those listed in the DSM-IV's description of PTSD (pages 424-428).
Compare this to the checklist from The Courage To Heal, the "Bible" of
the incest survivor movement from the 1990s.
The Courage to Heal Checklist
How often do you suffer from the following symptoms?
* You feel that you're bad, dirty or ashamed.
* You feel powerless, like a victim.
* You feel that there's something wrong with you deep down inside;
that if people really knew you, they would leave.
* You feel unable to protect yourself in dangerous situations.
* You have no sense of your own interests, talents or goals.
* You have trouble feeling motivated.
* You feel you have to be perfect.
"This checklist, from Ellen Bass and Laura Davis's book 'The Courage
to Heal,' is supposed to identify the symptoms of incest. The trouble
is that the same list could be used to identify oneself as someone who
loves too much, someone who suffers from self-defeating personality
disorder, or a mere human being in the late 20th century. The list is
general enough to include everybody at least sometimes. Nobody doesn't
fit it."
Tavris. C. (1993, January 3)
Beware the incest survivor machine.
New York Times Book Review, p. 1, 16-17.
____________________
My Youngest Daughter
My youngest daughter told me over the phone that now she has doubts
that her Dad and youngest brother abused her because she "can't
remember." I thought "wonderful," but then she went right on and told
me about the many rapes she remembers by different people.
My daughter underwent hypnosis to bring about her accusations and now
she can hypnotize herself. I made no comment on all this except that I
told her I was glad about her dad and brother. She has a long way to
go yet. I don't want to push her unless I feel it will be safe and
productive.
It really does not matter much now what she believes. Her original
accusations destroyed the family nucleus. I feel no trust for my
daughter and that is sad.
A mom
+----------------------------------------------------+
| "Nothing fixes a things so intensely in the memory |
| as the wish to forget it." |
| Michel de Montaigne |
+----------------------------------------------------+
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| "The biggest mischief Hollywood has gotten us into has been to |
| perpetuate and even create myths about specific topics, such as |
| amnesia, multiple personality disorder, the effects of |
| psychological trauma, repressed memory, or the methods used by sex |
| offenders. The myths are not too easy to debunk. Jurors come to |
| their roles with strongly held beliefs, and the expert who would |
| contradict what jurors have seen on TV puts his credibility on the |
| line." |
| Park Dietz quoted in interview |
| Grobbins, G. (2008, March 3) |
| Science Dude: |
| Famed psychiatrist bemoans the state of his profession |
| Orange County Register. Retrieved on March 8, 2008 |
| http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2008/03/08/ |
| park-dietz-on-the-sad-state-of-forensic-psychiatry |
\____________________________________________________________________/
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| "We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our |
| childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the |
| language." |
| Thoreau |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
______________________________SIDEBAR_______________________________
/ \
| Subversive Grammar? |
| The Bizarre Idiocy of the Correctional System. |
| Robert Chatelle |
| |
| On February 25th, I posted a notice about my friend Michael |
| Waterman, a prison inmate at the Massachusetts Treatment Center in |
| Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Michael is very interested in trying |
| to better himself. A while back, I sent him a few books, |
| including a dictionary and a grammar book, from Amazon.com. (I've |
| been sending prisoners books via Amazon for years.) I couldn't |
| find the grammar book I use (it's out of print), so I took a |
| chance on one called Painless Grammar. He loved it! Amazon also |
| sent Michael one of their brochures, which listed some of the |
| other books in the Painless series. There were three that |
| especially interested him: Painless Writing, Painless Reading |
| Comprehension, and Painless Poetry. |
| |
| I got a call from Michael tonight. He told me that the prison |
| authorities had declared the books contraband. They refused to |
| give him any reason why they considered these books so dangerous |
| and subversive. The contraband slip (which I have requested) only |
| said, "Not Approved by Department of Corrections." |
| |
| Michael was given two choices: authorize them to destroy the books |
| or send them back to Amazon. But if they were sent back, he would |
| be charged $15 for the postage. Michael had to authorize them to |
| destroy the books because he couldn't afford the postage. (Do some |
| people who work for the Department of Corrections get a certain |
| pleasure out of destroying books?) |
| |
| I can't find the words to comment upon this act of stupidity and |
| vandalism. |
| http://bobchatelle.blogspot.com/2008/03/ |
| bizarre-idiocy-of-correctional-system.html |
\____________________________________________________________________/
**********************************************************************
* N O T I C E S *
**********************************************************************
* *
* WEB SITES OF INTEREST *
* *
* http://www.theisticsatanism.com/asp/ *
* Against Satanic Panics *
* *
* comp.uark.edu/~lampinen/read.html *
* The Lampinen Lab False Memory Reading Group *
* University of Arkansas *
* *
* www.exploratorium.edu/memory *
* The Exploratorium Memory Exhibit *
* *
* www.tmdArchives.org *
* The Memory Debate Archives *
* *
* www.francefms.com *
* French language website *
* *
* www.psychoheresy-aware.org/ministry.html *
* The Bobgans question Christian counseling *
* *
* www.IllinoisFMS.org *
* Illinois-Wisconsin FMS Society *
* *
* www.ltech.net/OHIOarmhp *
* Ohio Group *
* *
* www.afma.asn.au *
* Australian False Memory Association. *
* *
* www.bfms.org.uk *
* British False Memory Society *
* *
* www.geocities.com/retractor *
* This site is run by Laura Pasley (retractor) *
* *
* www.sirs.com/uptonbooks/index.htm *
* Upton Books *
* *
* www.angelfire.com/tx/recoveredmemories/ *
* Locate books about FMS *
* Recovered Memory Bookstore *
* *
* www.religioustolerance.org/sra.htm *
* Information about Satanic Ritual Abuse *
* *
* www.angryparents.net *
* Parents Against Cruel Therapy *
* *
* www.geocities.com/newcosanz *
* New Zealand FMS Group *
* *
* www.peterellis.org.nz *
* Site run by Bruce Robinson contains information *
* about Christchurch Creche and other cases. *
* *
* www.werkgroepwfh.nl *
* Netherlands FMS Group *
* *
* www.falseallegation.org *
* National Child Abuse Defense & Resource Center *
* *
* www.nasw.org/users/markp *
* Excerpts from Victims of Memory. *
* *
* www.rickross.com/groups/fsm.html *
* Ross Institute *
* *
* www.hopkinsmedicine.org/jhhpsychiatry/perspec1.htm *
* Perspectives for Psychiatry by Paul McHugh *
* *
* www.enigma.se/info/FFI.htm *
* FMS in Scandinavia -- Janet Hagbom *
* *
* www.ncrj.org *
* National Center for Reason & Justice *
* *
* www.lyingspirits.com *
* Skeptical Information on Theophostic Counseling *
* *
* www.ChildrenInTherapy.org/. *
* Information about Attachment Therapy *
* *
* www.traumaversterking.nl *
* English language web site of Dutch retractor. *
* *
* www.quackwatch.org *
* This site is run by Stephen Barrett, M.D. *
* *
* www.stopbadtherapy.org *
* Contains information about filing complaints *
* *
* www.FMSFonline.org *
* False Memory Syndrome Foundation *
* *
* LEGAL WEBSITES OF INTEREST *
* www.caseassist.com *
* www.findlaw.com *
* www.legalengine.com *
* www.accused.com *
* *
**********************************************************************
* ELIZABETH LOFTUS *
* we www.seweb.uci.edu/faculty/loftus/ *
**********************************************************************
* *
* The Rutherford Family Speaks to FMS Families *
* *
* The video made by the Rutherford family is the most popular video *
* of FMSF families. It covers the complete story from accusation, to *
* retraction and reconciliation. Family members describe the things *
* they did to cope and to help reunite. Of particular interest are *
* Beth Rutherford's comments about what her family did that helped *
* her to retract and return. *
* Available in DVD format only: *
* To order send request to *
* FMSF Video, 1955 Locust St. *
* Philadelphia, PA 19103 *
* $10.00 per DVD; Canada add $4.00; other countries add $10.00 *
* Make checks payable to FMS Foundation *
* *
**********************************************************************
* RECOMMENDED BOOKS *
* *
* REMEMBERING TRAUMA *
* by Richard McNally *
* Harvard University Press *
* *
* SCIENCE and PSEUDOSCIENCE in CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY *
* S. O. Lilienfeld, S.J. Lynn and J.M. Lohr (eds.) *
* New York: Guilford Press (2003) *
* *
* PSYCHOLOGY ASTRAY: *
* Fallacies in Studies of "Repressed Memory" and Childhood Trauma *
* by Harrison G. Pope, Jr., M.D. *
* Upton Books *
**********************************************************************
_____________________________________
F M S B U L L E T I N B O A R D
Contacts & Meetings:
_____________
UNITED STATES
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Nancy 973-729-1433
NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque -2nd Sat. (bi-MO) @1 pm
Southwest Room -- Presbyterian Hospital
Maggie 505-662-7521 (after 6:30 pm)
Sy 505-758-0726
NEW YORK
Westchester, Rockland, etc.
Barbara 914-922-1737
Upstate/Albany Area
Elaine 518-399-5749
NORTH CAROLINA
Susan 704-538-7202
OHIO
Cleveland
Bob & Carole 440-356-4544
OKLAHOMA
Oklahoma City
Dee 405-942-0531
OREGON
Portland area
Kathy 503-655-1587
PENNSYLVANIA
Harrisburg
Paul & Betty 717-691-7660
Pittsburgh
Rick & Renee 412-563-5509
Montrose
John 717-278-2040
Wayne (includes S. NJ) -- 2nd Sat. (MO)
Jim & Jo 610-783-0396
TENNESSEE
Nashville -- Wed. (MO) @1pm
Kate 615-665-1160
TEXAS
Houston
Jo or Beverly 713-464-8970
El Paso
Mary Lou 915-595-2966
UTAH
Keith 801-467-0669
VERMONT
Mark 802-872-0847
WASHINGTON
Kathy 503-557-7118
WISCONSIN
Katie & Leo 414-476-0285 or
Susanne & John 608-427-3686
WYOMING
Alan & Lorinda 307-322-4170
_____________
INTERNATIONAL
BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
Vancouver & Mainland
Lloyd 250-741-8941
Victoria & Vancouver Island
John 250-721-3219
MANITOBA
Roma 204-275-5723
ONTARIO, CANADA
London
Adriaan 519-471-6338
Ottawa
Eileen 613-836-3294
Burlington
Ken & Marina 905-637-6030
Waubaushene
Paula 705-543-0318
AUSTRALIA
Evelyn
everei@adam.com.au
BELGIUM
werkgr.fict.herinneringen@altavista.net
ISRAEL
FMS ASSOCIATION fax 972-2-625-9282
NEW ZEALAND
Colleen 09-416-7443
SWEDEN
Ake Moller FAX 48-431-217-90
UNITED KINGDOM
The British False Memory Society
Madeline 44-1225 868-682
______________________________________________
Deadline for the Summer 2008 issue is June 15.
Meeting notices MUST be in writing
And should be sent no later than TWO MONTHS PRIOR TO MEETING.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
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| if you wish to receive electronic versions of this newsletter and |
| notices of radio and television broadcasts about FMS. All the |
| message need say is "add to the FMS-News". It would be useful, but |
| not necessary, if you add your full name (all addresses and names |
| will remain strictly confidential). |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
**********************************************************************
The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a qualified 501(c)3 corpora-
tion with its principal offices in Philadelphia and governed by its
Board of Directors. While it encourages participation by its members
in its activities, it must be understood that the Foundation has no
affiliates and that no other organization or person is authorized to
speak for the Foundation without the prior written approval of the Ex-
ecutive Director. All membership dues and contributions to the Founda-
tion must be forwarded to the Foundation for its disposition.
**********************************************************************
PAMELA FREYD, Ph.D., Executive Director
FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory Board, April 1, 2008
AARON T. BECK, M.D., D.M.S., U of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA;
TERENCE W. CAMPBELL, Ph.D., Clinical and Forensic Psychology,
Sterling Heights, MI;
ROSALIND CARTWRIGHT, Ph.D., Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical
Center, Chicago, IL;
JEAN CHAPMAN, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI;
LOREN CHAPMAN, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI;
FREDERICK C. CREWS, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, CA;
ROBYN M. DAWES, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;
DAVID F. DINGES, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA;
HENRY C. ELLIS, Ph.D., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM;
FRED H. FRANKEL, MBChB, DPM, Harvard University Medical School;
GEORGE K. GANAWAY, M.D., Emory University of Medicine, Atlanta, GA;
MARTIN GARDNER, Author, Hendersonville, NC;
ROCHEL GELMAN, Ph.D., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ;
HENRY GLEITMAN, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA;
LILA GLEITMAN, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA;
RICHARD GREEN, M.D., J.D., Charing Cross Hospital, London;
DAVID A. HALPERIN, M.D., (deceased) Mount Sinai School of Medicine,
New York, NY;
ERNEST HILGARD, Ph.D., (deceased) Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA;
JOHN HOCHMAN, M.D., UCLA Medical School, Los Angeles, CA;
DAVID S. HOLMES, Ph.D., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS;
PHILIP S. HOLZMAN, Ph.D., (deceased) Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA;
ROBERT A. KARLIN, Ph.D. , Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ;
HAROLD LIEF, M.D., (deceased) University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA;
ELIZABETH LOFTUS, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, CA;
SUSAN L. McELROY, M.D., University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH;
PAUL McHUGH, M.D., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD;
HAROLD MERSKEY, D.M., University of Western Ontario, London, Canada;
SPENCER HARRIS MORFIT, Author, Westford, MA;
ULRIC NEISSER, Ph.D., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY;
RICHARD OFSHE, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, CA;
EMILY CAROTA ORNE, B.A., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA;
MARTIN ORNE, M.D., Ph.D., (deceased) U of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
LOREN PANKRATZ, Ph.D., Oregon Health Sciences Univ., Portland, OR;
CAMPBELL PERRY, Ph.D., (deceased) Concordia University,
Montreal, Canada;
MICHAEL A. PERSINGER, Ph.D., Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada;
AUGUST T. PIPER, Jr., M.D., Seattle, WA;
HARRISON POPE, Jr., M.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA;
JAMES RANDI, Author and Magician, Plantation, FL;
HENRY L. ROEDIGER, III, Ph.D. ,Washington University, St. Louis, MO;
CAROLYN SAARI, Ph.D., Loyola University, Chicago, IL;
THEODORE SARBIN, Ph.D., (deceased) University of California,
Santa Cruz, CA;
THOMAS A. SEBEOK, Ph.D., (deceased) U of Indiana, Bloomington, IN;
MICHAEL A. SIMPSON, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., M.R.C, D.O.M., Center for
Psychosocial & Traumatic Stress, Pretoria, South Africa;
MARGARET SINGER, Ph.D., {deceased) University of California,
Berkeley, CA;
RALPH SLOVENKO, J.D., Ph.D., Wayne State University Law School,
Detroit, MI;
DONALD SPENCE, Ph.D., (deceased) Robert Wood Johnson Medical Ctr,
Piscataway, NJ;
JEFFREY VICTOR, Ph.D., Jamestown Community College, Jamestown, NY;
HOLLIDA WAKEFIELD, M.A., Institute of Psychological Therapies,
Northfield, MN;
CHARLES A. WEAVER, III, Ph.D. Baylor University, Waco, TX
**********************************************************************
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