Forgotten Sins

An interesting movie that shows the severity when a law enforcement officer is accused by a family member of sexual abuse. Especially when it's a devout Christian family. The movie gets off to a slow start, as the father is playing poker with his police pals in the dining room. The men are talking about arresting someone that was into kinky sex, and they all have a laugh about it. The father excuses himself to put his young son to bed, and while upstairs catches his two teenage daughters playing rock music on a tape recorder. He sternly tells them to give him the tape, and not to listen to that type of music. You then see the family at church, and couldn't be more wholesome and devout. Yet, the one daughter gives her father curious looks. Later, back at home, a friendly mechanic returns one of the daughters car. And the father is put out that she's still half asleep and isn't tearing down to thank the mechanic. Then sometime later at a church camp for girls, the one daughter breaks down to a councillor. The next we see is back at home, and the councillor is getting both daughters to pack their things and come with her. The mother arrives confused, and the daughter briefly tells her what's going on, leaving her in shock. What proceeds is how the officer is taken into custody, totally at a loss why these charges would be brought against him. Through his deep conviction with faith, he begins to remember. And it gets pretty sordid what he recollects. Yet, as confessions and memories emerge, things don't quite add up. There's little or no proof or evidence to substantiate the accusations. Other than what the daughters accuse the parents of doing, and the father's confessing that he does remember doing those things. What the movie fails to show is motive. Was the daughter merely spoiled and put out with her stern father? What compelled her to bring all these other people into it, and these elaborate rituals? Why wasn't a more thorough psychiatric check done on all? The movie is good at showing the snowball effect that developed. But when relevant loose ends were exposed, it failed to take in the judicial system. She said he did it, he said he did it - case closed. But left me wondering why? Was there deep rooted hatred to their father from the get go, or did it develop more so with the prodding of testimony? Did the father, who found it difficult to show affection to his daughters figure this would be a way to show his love for them by admitting to all of their accusations? It has the premise for a great deep movie, but never goes beyond the shallow end.

In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck and Jim pick up two vagrant hitch hikers on their raft. Both of them are scoundrels fleeing the law and their hosts pay them little attention. Eventually one of the bums, with considerable reluctance and much coaxing from Huck and Jim, admits that he is a member of the European royalty. Wow! Royalty! Immediately he gets the royal treatment. They call him "sir", give him the choicest foods and the best place to sleep. The other vagrant meanwhile begins to brood and look sullen. After a time, he finally announces that he, too, has a hidden identity -- Not only is he also royalty, but he is the Dauphin, the lost son of the King of France! Since he now outranks the other hobo, the deference shifts to him. I hope I have the details right, I haven't read the novel in years.

Something similar happens near the beginning of "Forgotten Sins." Sheriff Bradshaw isn't really very close to his two teenage daughters. He tends to be stern and distant with them. The girls understandably feel neglected. Then, at a Christian Retreat, they are part of a group urged by a camp counselor to come forward and speak their minds. Another camp resident does so, telling her story, in which she was unjustly blamed for something and has been blaming herself ever since. The rest of the group cheer and gather round her and shower her with love, while the Bradshaw sisters frown sullenly.

As the girls board the bus to take them home, one of the Bradshaw sisters bursts into tears and tells the counselor that she is suffering too, because her father has been having sexual intercourse with her for years. They sink to the ground with their arms around one another, the young girl sobbing with relief at finally having revealed her secret.

Before you can say "corpus delicti," the girls are whisked away from their home and taken under the wing of the church, and Sheriff Bradshaw is arrested by his colleagues in arms. With a lot of encouragement from his pastor (this is a very religious family) he finally begins to recall vaguely, maybe, flashes of memory supporting his two daughters' accusations, the recollection of abuse now having spread to the second girl as well, and even tainted their mother's memory. The pastor is telling Bradshaw things like, "Don't worry about worldly punishment, think of your soul." And the guy is struggling to remember. Yes, he says, if the girls said I did it, then I must have done it because they wouldn't lie, even though I don't remember doing it.

His daughters' memories and accusations are by this time expanding along a trajectory probably familiar to anyone who knows what happened in Salem, Massachussetts, in 1693, and lots of similar contemporary cases. Dad's poker playing buddies are hauled into the fantasy too, although they prove to be not so accommodating as Dad and they angrily deny any wrongdoing. Soon enough we also get tales of Satanic rituals and all the rest of it. This family makes the Jukes look normal.

A shrink, Dr. Ofshe, is engaged by the prosecution to hypnotize the girls and the defendant and explore the situation, but instead of finding anything that supports the prosecution's case he ends up believing that the girls' stories are fantasies. It doesn't save Sheriff Bradshaw. Ofshe's frank analysis of the case is "lost" and Bradshaw gets a long -- a really long -- term in the slams and enters prison almost joyfully as a means of doing penance for some sin he can't recall ever committing. Right. It all sounds crazy.

It was real enough, though. This was an absolutely fascinating case based on two first-rate articles that appeared in the New Yorker in the early 90s, towards the end of this particular cycle of Satanic/child-abuse hysteria. For anyone interested in the details of what really happened, I strongly recommend the articles.

Thank God for a movie like this, coming when it did. Such a corrective was obviously necessary. Way too many innocent lives were being ruined by these kinds of memories, not just the accused but the nominal victims as well. You can only claim to be the heir to the throne of France for so long before you begin wondering why you can't speak French.

It's a reasonably well-done movie too, meaning it strikes me as slightly above average in most respects -- acting, photography, score, script, production values. Not much above average, but somewhat.

The sociologist and priest Andrew Greeley has pointed out that for all our overweening concern about political differences leading to bloodshed, if you examine human history you find that religion is the basis for more suffering than any other cultural trait. Even Gandhi came to realize that. Common sense and simple reasoning should get us out of the holes we dig for ourselves, but our religious identities seem to keep getting in the way. Everyone deeply involved in the church in this particular case was responsible for the uncommon degree of social loss experienced by the victim (not the girls, but Dad), his family, and the community itself.

This movie should be shown in every class taught about religious morality, social deviance, evidentiary law, criminal justice, and marriage and the family. The articles it is based on should be required reading. I think they're available in book form, "Remembering Satan,"

This is an interesting film which was made after the McMartin scandal, the many headlines of Satanic rituals, and the Fooster child abuse/daycare scandal in South Florida.

John Shea's performance is annoying (I will address that later) William Devane is excellent as the voice of reason, the psychologist who has an alternative view, that the memories Shea is retrieving may have been promoted by his pastor.

The fact that children may be induced to retrieve false memories is controversial, but if one researches the statistics, more common than the general public would like to believe. Also, religion is certainly a factor, as many people may confide in their pastor or priest. False memory syndrome has also been manifested in several MPD (multiple, or dissociative identity disorder cases). While certainly the diagnosis is valid in some cases, it is rare, and many people have used it to their advantage (see Kenneth Bianchi "Hillside Stranglers").

If you are interested in this subject you may also want to watch the "McMartin Trial" with James S. Woods, as well as the movie "Capturing the Friedmans"; a provocative documentary of what actually occurred on Long Island, NY circa 1988, when a computer science teacher was indicted for sexual abuse of his students. Both stories have many diverse viewpoints, and are quite disturbing. 9/10

When I first started watching this movie, it started out on a high note. I was immediately captivated but it didn't take long for it to lose me as it was a really strange movie. The acting by John Shea wasn't up to his usual stuff. The movie was rather slow moving and I do have to say the first part of the movie captivated me enough that I had to watch the whole movie to see how it ended. Forgotten sins was interesting because there have been several similar cases of repressed memories in the past. One movie in particular is Fatal Memories in which a woman starts to remember abuse as she watches her child play. Fatal Memories and Forgotten Sins were rather similar because of repressed memories. I really like Fatal Memories a lot whereas Forgotten Sins just didn't have the same luster as Fatal Memories. I would still say it is good enough to captivate you til the end though. I would like to know if this is a true story or not. I thought it was but couldn't find anything about it on the internet.