
By: David Bloomberg
Re: Phantom Witness

(File:  PHANTWIT.ZIP)

Date:   Mon Mar 20 1995  15:24:02
From:   SHEPPARD GORDON
Subj:   Loftus & false memory

THE PHANTOM WITNESS
A UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR SAYS THAT IN MANY CASES THE
SO-CALLED REPRESSED MEMORY OF ABUSE MIGHT BE AN INDUCED MEMORY PLANTED BY
CARELESS OR CONNIVING COUNSELORS
2/15/95 THE NEWS TRIBUNE - TACOMA, WA.

   The first thing they want you to know is they're sympathetic.
   They know that children are abused, that teenagers are raped, that untold
horrors unfold behind closed doors.
   No one is denying people are sexually abused by those they trust.
   But in a world of hushed secrets, threats and accusations, the trouble is
one of emphasis. Why, they wonder, does society always believe the accuser,
even if the accusation comes years after the fact in a flood of damning
details?
   A leading memory expert likens the phenomenon to the Salem witch trials,
when women accused of witchcraft were vilified by a whole community - and
ultimately murdered.
   Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, psychology professor at the University of Washington,
 believes some memories of sexual abuse are false ones coaxed into reality by
suggestive therapists. These memories pose as the answer to a lifetime's
worth of depression or frustration, but may be nothing more than unnecessary
rupture of a family.
   Loftus has reviewed video and audio tapes made surreptitiously inside
therapist's offices which indicate wildly suggestive approaches to counseling.
 Patients may be told their depression and loneliness fit the classic sexual
abuse survivor profile; patients who don't recall any such abuse may be asked
to imagine it, and see if the memories return.
   While no one is suggesting all therapists behave in a suggestive way, or
pretend that every problem could originate in sexual abuse, books and
articles and even organizations against the idea of repressed memory have
cropped up around the country. Loftus' latest book, "The Myth of Repressed
Memory" (St. Martin's Press, $22.95), details several cases she has worked on
as a leading advocate of "false memory syndrome."
   "I felt like I was going to die," said Chuck Noah, a retired construction
worker accused four years ago of abusing his daughter. "It's a pain I can't
describe; I just couldn't see a way out."
   Noah found his way out by picketing outside the office of his daughter's
therapist. He organized a rag-tag picketing group he calls the Apple Dumpling
Gang, which pickets on behalf of anyone they believe falsely accused of abuse.

   His daughter did not want to participate in this story, but said men like
her father have found immunity behind the walls of false memory syndrome.
   Repressed memories are a big - and litigious - business. Roseanne
(formerly Barr, formerly Arnold) recovered repressed memories; so did former
Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur.
   A woman named Eileen Franklin helped convict her father of the rape and
murder of her childhood friend Susan Nason by accessing memories two decades
after the event.
   People like Loftus have severely undermined the credibility of  the
repressed memory. The false memory syndrome association boasts more than 5,
000 families. Patients who now resent their therapy call themselves Resistors
and Retractors. Some have sued their former therapists, and Loftus predicts
another wave of lawsuits soon will crash.
   Loftus has long studied the fallibility of the human memory. She has taken
her science into the courtroom as an expert witness to demonstrate the
unreliability of memory.
   She believes she's also shown that memories can be implanted. Loftus asked
her graduate students to help convince their younger relatives that they'd
once been lost in a mall. When confronted with enough force and detail, 25
percent of the subjects confirmed this fictitious event.
   And just as some people made up whole, vivid scenarios about being lost in
a mall, some people have invented reams of graphic information about sexual
abuse, at the prompting of their therapists, Loftus said.
   "No one is denying you can forget some things and suddenly remember them;
anyone who's been to a 20th high school reunion can tell you that," Loftus
said. "But the idea of repressed memories that lie buried for years only to
be brought out by a suggestive therapist . . . there's no scientific evidence
for that."
   Loftus finds the abuse rampant. Up to 25 percent of therapists may be that
reckless, she said.

