False memories of sexual abuse: the underestimated danger E-Book

Hans Delfs

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 199

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Memories change over time because they are constantly being reconstructed. This can also result in memories of experiences that never existed. The way the brain works does not differentiate between real and imagined content. Pseudo-memories arise particularly easily in psychotherapy through suggestive speculation about traumas suffered, such as sexual abuse. Those undergoing therapy are firmly convinced of the reality of these false memories. They suffer just as much as those who were really abused. They blame innocent people. Families are destroyed, livelihoods are threatened and there are only losers. It gets particularly bad when conspiracy theories of ritual abuse and victim programming are involved.

Leseprobe

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to present this book to you in English. The topic discussed here is of global significance and affects many people worldwide. However, we would like to point out that some legal and institutional references are specifically tailored to Germany.

Explanation

In Magritte's painting on the cover, the window with its view of a peaceful reality has been willfully smashed. The shards now lie in the foreground of the experience and still bear witness to what has been irretrievably lost - a symbol of what this book is about.

H. D.

Preliminary remark

The author of this little book is a scientist, not a psychologist. However, he has been dealing with the psychological issues dealt with here for over 25 years, in particular on the basis of scientific literature. He also knows the details of several hundred cases of people who have been affected by false memories of sexual abuse, either as victims of therapy or as the accused.

The first edition of this book was published by Dietmar KIotz in 2013 under the titleFalse memories of sexual abuse: A therapeutic fashion that destroys families. It was closely linked to the founding of the association False Memory Deutschland e. V. (FMD). It had become necessary to provide the people advised by this association with initial information about the phenomenon of false memories of sexual abuse.

A second, significantly expanded and supplemented edition was published in 2017 by Pabst Science Publishers under the titleFalse Memory: "Memories" of sexual abuse that never took place.

Since 2017, both the social and scientific focus of the false memory problem has shifted. The third edition presented here takes this fact into account. More case reports have been added and placed at the beginning of the book. The entire structure of the book has been redesigned.

Introduction

This book is about abuse and false memories, not pleasant topics. But they are important topics that affect the lives of millions of people in Germany alone.

Sexual abuse of children is a terrible thing and unfortunately widespread. For years, it was not recognized how common sexual abuse is. It was mainly thought of as the pedophile uncle with the candy bag on the street corner. However, the fact that sexual abuse most often occurs within the family and among friends was concealed and usually remained well disguised. It is good that the public has become more sensitive in this respect and that victims of abuse are increasingly daring to defend themselves and name the perpetrators. As the vast majority of abuse victims are female, this development is mainly thanks to the feminist movement.

According to the best study currently available in Germany on the frequency of sexual abuse1there are a staggering 5 million victims of abuse in Germany, a figure that justifies the greatest efforts in the fight against it. This fight is becoming increasingly heated, and this narrows the perspective. Some victim support organizations and self-proclaimed abuse hunters have put on ideological blinders. If someone comes forward as a victim of abuse, they are usually not asked whether the accusation is justified. Instead, it is widely accepted that the victim of abuse must be believed at their word. Not believing the victim is seen as a serious mistake and a further traumatization of the victim.

1Stadler L, Bieneck S, Pfeiffer C: Representative survey on sexual abuse 2011. Hanover: Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony 2012. www.kfn.de/versions/kfn/assets/fob118.pdf

In the public consciousness, the accused is already convicted before any charges are brought. The basic legal principle of the presumption of innocence is practically undermined, and often even courts cannot escape this dynamic. In many cases, it is assumed without examination that the accusation is based on real facts. This is by no means always the case, as a number of spectacular cases in recent years have shown. Innocent people have been convicted and courts have inflicted irreparable injustice on the accused.2

2Rückert, Sabine, Injustice in the name of the people, ISBN: 9783455500158.

There are four main causes that lead to false accusations.

A deliberate false accusation is made for personal reasons, for example for revenge, or to influence a custody dispute in the desired direction in a failed relationship.

Children's behavior and statements are misinterpreted. It is assumed that they are victims of sexual abuse. During repeated interrogations, children often simply say what is expected of them.

People with mental disorders, especially borderline personality disorder, accuse attachment figures, although it is not always clear whether this is due to false memories or deliberate accusations.

Adults develop false memories, usually in the context of psychotherapy.

The first cause is not dealt with in this booklet; the focus of our considerations is on the last case.

The termfalse memoriesis a technical term used in memory psychology. Those who do not know the exact meaning of the word may mistakenly associate the term with lies and deliberate deceptions. But it has nothing to do with that. False memories are personal memories of events that the person remembering believes to have experienced. What is false is that these experiences did not happen.

We have been aware of cases of false memories of sexual abuse since the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, the frequency increased dramatically, initially only in the USA. There was a dramatic increase in cases in which adults who had seen a psychotherapist for some kind of life problem remembered something during therapy that they did not know before therapy began: that they had allegedly been sexually abused as children. They were false memories.

This type of false memory is the subject of this book. When the termfalse memoriesis used in the rest of the book, it is usually in the sense of induced memories of sexual abuse that arose after puberty in the context of psychotherapy or other life counseling and that were not present before.

The mass emergence of such cases in the USA reached a temporary peak in the early 1990s and resulted in those wrongly accused of abuse fighting back. They had psychological research on their side. A bitter public controversy arose between the accused and those therapists who had created false memories of sexual abuse, thememory wars. One consequence was that psychological research sought to clarify all related issues with particular intensity. Two findings in particular have emerged:

Sexual abuse is rarely forgotten, especially if it was a traumatic event.

If a non-existent memory is "recovered" in adults through a targeted search, it is most likely a false memory.

Psychiatrist Paul McHugh wrote in 2006 that thememory wars had beendecided: Science had won.3Nevertheless, we see today that false memories of sexual abuse continue to arise in psychotherapy, perhaps even more than in the past. What has gone wrong?

3McHugh, Paul R., The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

In terms of scientific psychology, McHugh was right. Clear results on memory, repression or dissociative amnesia were already available before the year 2000. Since then, the number of scientific publications concerning false memories has been steadily decreasing.4The topic has been largely clarified and exhausted.

4Pope, Harrison G. et al, Current Scientific Interest in Dissociative Amnesia: A Bibliometric Analysis, Applied Cognitive Psychology 37/1 2023, pp. 42-51.

However, many clinicians and therapists take little interest in these results. For this reason, the most important psychological research results from recent years have a more sociological character. A milestone in this regard is a study by Patihis & Pendergrast5which is discussed in more detail in the section onrepresentative studies on sexual abuseand which has shown that false memories of sexual abuse are far more common than was previously generally assumed.

5Patihis, Lawrence and Pendergrast, Mark H., Reports of Recovered Memories of Abuse in Therapy in a Large Age-Representative U.S. National Sample. Clinical Psychological Science 2019, pp. 3-21.

The scientific controversy of the memory wars in the USA has given way to a no less fierce debate about the media's sovereignty of opinion on the trauma therapy of sexual abuse or the existence of ritual abuse. This debate is being fought in all media, with social networks playing a role that could not have been imagined in the last millennium.

However, since the beginning of this millennium, something else has been added or has become much stronger: There can be no doubt that for clinics and for the entirety of psychotherapists represented in certain professional organizations, trauma therapy is a multimillion-dollar business. Lobbying is correspondingly strong in favor of forms of therapy that guarantee lucrative and long-lasting treatments.

The False Memory Germany association opposes this development, but the main task of this association is to advise those affected, not lobbying or research. That is why publications by serious and carefully researched journalists play a very important role. They reach a far wider audience than academia and come to the attention of the most important institutions such as victims' associations, churches, law enforcement agencies, professional associations, training centers, etc., and not least the organs of the federal government. Approaches have been made and have led to initial consequences.

In the public debate on false memories of sexual abuse, one repeatedly encounters the claim that it is a trick used by child abusers to escape prosecution.6Nothing could be further from the truth. It is only because there is so much real child abuse that a psychotherapeutic discipline has been able to develop which sees abuse as the universal cause of psychological difficulties of all kinds. The testimonial psychologist Max Steller7describes induced memories of abuse as the "collateral damage" of the fight against child abuse. Those affected are therefore indirect victims of actual child abuse.

6for example in forums and publications of Wildwasser e. V.

7Steller, Max, Nothing but the truth, Munich 2015.

It should be emphasized at this point: This book is not about trivializing child abuse or providing a bridge to escape for the real perpetrators. But it is about distinguishing between justified accusations and false accusations.

A few words about the structure of the book: It begins with four case histories that show the reader what problems we are dealing with here. All four cases deal with the therapeutic development or creation of false memories of sexual abuse. That is the real subject of this book. It is a complex topic. In order to understand it, the most important facts about sexual abuse, about memory and memories, about the falsification of memories, about psychotherapists and psychotherapies, about suggestions, etc. must be known. Therefore, these areas of knowledge are systematically covered to the extent necessary for understanding, before the main topic of the book is tackled in the section ontrauma memory therapies.This is followed by a short section on the institutions that are important in the context of this book. A final section is devoted to science, its working methods and individual particularly important or interesting results.

A brief word about the target group of this book: The book is primarily aimed at those who want to obtain initial information about the problem of false memories of sexual abuse. Those who want to know more can follow the references cited in this book. In consideration of the target group, scientific studies are cited here without the typical caveats that are necessary and important in scientific work, but would only confuse here.

Now two clarifications that apply to the entire book:

When writing about therapists, accused persons, defendants, patients, lawyers, experts, etc., both genders are always meant equally. This simplifies the writing and the text. Occasionally, a further simplification is made: Since in the vast majority of available cases of false memories of sexual abuse, fathers are accused by their daughters, I will sometimes simply write of fathers and daughters, although any other gender combination occurs as well as accusations by grandchildren, nephews, nieces or family friends.

This book is not directed against psychotherapy as such. On the contrary: many people who are affected by false memories of sexual abuse, whether as the wrongly accused or as those undergoing therapy, are dependent on understanding therapists in order to find a balance in their lives again. The book is directed exclusively against the therapeutic approach referred to in this text as

trauma memory therapy.

First case: A family is destroyed

The Meiers, a completely normal family

Mr. Meier lives in a small town. He has been married for many years and has a grown-up daughter. He works as a freelancer and owns a successful insurance agency with several employees. He has contractual arrangements with major insurance companies. Mr. Meier is a well-known person of trust in his town.

Ms. Meier is not employed. She is actively involved in various associations. In particular, she is involved in an association that looks after people who need help.

Their daughter Sabine is their only child. She is much loved, encouraged from an early age and receives the best education her home town has to offer. Sabine is a happy child, she gets good grades at school without having to do much work. She does a lot of sport, especially team sports. During puberty, she has a bulimic phase, which she overcomes. She has her first sexual experience at 16, but it doesn't turn her world upside down. She graduates from high school with flying colors. All subjects are open to her. She enrolls in the nearby university town to study law. Parallel to her studies, Sabine coaches a youth team at the local sports club.

Initially, she studied with great commitment and diligence. After a few semesters, her enthusiasm for the dry subject matter wanes. Finally, she surprises her parents by telling them that she is going to give up studying law and switch subjects. Her work with the sports youth organization made her want to become a teacher of physical education and geography. She enjoys studying sport and is more diligent than enthusiastic about the subject. She has problems with one important lecturer. She thinks he doesn't like her. In a seminar, he described her performance as weak and she feels misjudged. Despite this, she passes a good state examination at the age of 25. She has a few friends during her time at university. But it doesn't really last, apparently the right person isn't there.

Sabine's time as a student trainee brings a drastic change for the Meier family. Sabine moves to a city that is too far away from her hometown for her to travel home all the time. The parents miss her presence, especially Mr. Meier, who has always had a very direct line to his daughter. Although Sabine regularly calls home several times a week, this is no substitute for her presence. The Meiers no longer know exactly how their daughter is doing, whether she is having difficulties or successes. Sabine, on the other hand, has the feeling that this greater distance from her parents' home is overdue and that she needs to cut the cord.

Initially, Sabine feels comfortable as a teacher, gets on well with the classes, has ideas and enjoys being with the young people. It takes a while for her to feel the strain. When she comes home to her parents now, she is tired, exhausted and in need of rest. She has chosen subjects in which the correction work remains limited. However, Sabine is firmly convinced that her principal doesn't like her. She refers to her ironic remarks in the teachers' conference. She also finds her supervising teacher's criticism of her work inappropriate and exaggerated. Sabine is really afraid of the second state examination, but it goes off without a hitch.

At work, she makes friends with an older colleague who opens up completely new areas of her life. She belongs to an esoteric-spiritual group and encourages Sabine to attend various self-awareness groups. Sabine is very enthusiastic about the new experiences and raves about them to her parents on the phone. These things are completely alien to them.

But work at school is becoming more difficult. Her parents are alarmed when Sabine tells them that she is often afraid to stand up in front of the class. Discipline is not a problem for her, even middle school classes obey her.

The Meiers are very surprised when Sabine tells them that she has enrolled on a naturopath training course, which takes place at weekends. She is not sure whether she can cope with the strain of being a teacher for the rest of her professional life. But she is sure that she has a good feeling for people and their problems.

Due to the additional workload at the weekends, Sabine comes home less and less often, but she still calls her parents regularly. When she does have time to visit her parents, the atmosphere is just like it used to be, loving and full of mutual understanding. During one of these visits, she tells them that she wants to take part in a family constellation according to Bert Hellinger, which is being carried out by a local alternative practitioner together with a well-known expert. Sabine doesn't know exactly what's in store for her, so she can't explain it to her parents.

The day after the family constellation, the parents wait anxiously for a report from their daughter on the phone. There is no call. Not for the next two days either. Now Mr. Meier decides to call on his own initiative. Sabine is on the line. He asks about her experiences in the family constellation. She can't talk about it yet, says Sabine. She hasn't even processed it yet.

No call from Sabine the next week either. When Mrs. Meier decides to call this time, only the mailbox answers. Mrs. Meier asks for a call back. But it doesn't come. There is no more call at all.

Mr. Meier decides to do something unusual: he drives to the town where Sabine works and waits for her outside her school at lunchtime. He has to meet her, he has to know what's going on. And he meets her. All he can do is ask: "Sabine, what's going on?" He doesn't get any further. He can't believe his ears when she says: "You're not wanted here! And please don't call me!" She turns around on the spot and leaves him standing there, horrified.

This is the last he sees and hears of his daughter for some time. Stunned, he sits down in the car and cries like a child.

A quarter of a year later, the Meiers' doorbell rings very early in the morning and very energetically. Mr. Meier opens the door, still in his robe. Three policemen are at the door.

He knows two of them, including the oldest, who asks him: "Does Mr. Meier live here?"

"Well, you know me, don't you?"

"I have to ask you to come with me."

"Why is that? That must be a mistake!"

"I'm afraid it's not a mistake."

And he presents him with an arrest warrant. It is only at the police station that Mr. Meier learns what he is accused of: Strong suspicion of having sexually abused his daughter, Sabine Meier, repeatedly for years. Mr. Meier is interrogated. He can do nothing but proclaim his innocence. The interrogating police officers do not believe him. They know their targets. Child molesters always deny it. After the interrogation, Mr. Meier wants to go home. No, he will remain in custody for the time being. He calls his lawyer. He appears immediately, informs him of the seriousness of his situation and gives him the necessary rules of conduct. A few days later, he is brought before the magistrate. He sees no need for further pre-trial detention and Mr. Meier can go home.

But in these few days, the world has changed completely for the Meiers. The neighbors saw Mr. Meier being taken away by the police. Their curiosity and one indiscreet police officer are all it takes, and now everyone in the small town knows that Mr. Meier is a child molester. No more customers come to the office. Mrs. Meier is told in no uncertain terms by the citizens' association that they are no longer interested in her cooperation. She is cut off in the street by old acquaintances. After a few weeks, Mr. Meier has to decide to dismiss his employee. There is no more work. The insurance companies inform Mr. Meier that the cooperation with him has ended.

Mr. Meier is lucky with his lawyer. He has obtained access to the files and requested a psychological report on Sabine's statement. This is requested by the public prosecutor. It comes to the conclusion that Sabine's statements are only credible to a limited extent because Sabine could not remember any abuse before her therapy, because the memories were only recovered through systematic and repeated efforts and because the memories include an event from her third year of life that falls into the area of childhood amnesia. In one of the cases cited by Sabine, Mr. Meier is also able to refute the reported circumstances. In any case, the event could not have happened the way Sabine remembers it.

Despite the expert opinion, the public prosecutor is not sure, he does not discontinue the proceedings but brings charges. It comes to trial. The Meiers see their daughter for the first time in a long time and are horrified at how bad she looks. They can't talk to her because her therapist carefully shields her from her parents. Although the therapist on the witness stand presents Sabine's memories as facts that have been proven beyond doubt, the court takes a different view, rejects the accusation of sexual abuse as unproven and acquits Mr. Meier.

All good again? Not at all! Public opinion in the small town has taken note of the acquittal, but the prevailing opinion is still that there must have been something to the accusations, otherwise her own daughter wouldn't sue her father.

Mr. Meier has almost no income. His reserves are only sufficient for a few months. He has to close his office. The company car is sold and replaced by a second-hand small car. The Meiers can no longer afford the rent on the beautiful house they live in. The search for a smaller apartment proves impossible. The Meiers regularly lose out on the few offers available in the small town. On one occasion, a landlord bluntly states that he does not rent to child abusers. Mr. Meier is forced to move to the district town, half an hour's drive away. He is hardly known there, first finds an office job and then a suitable small apartment. He doesn't have the courage to set up as a freelancer again. Admittedly, his income now is hardly comparable to his previous income. In order to finance his rent, living expenses, car and life insurance, his wife also has to work, taking on a mini-job in a supermarket.

Two years after breaking off contact with Sabine, the Meiers have found a reasonably stable living situation again, albeit under very modest circumstances. But this is the best they can come to terms with. But it is still bad for them to have to tolerate this injustice without being able to defend themselves. But the worst thing is the loss of their daughter. There is no direct contact with her. By chance, the Meiers hear from one of Sabine's colleagues that she has been getting worse recently. She had often been absent due to illness. Now she has been released from work to undergo inpatient therapy. That is the last thing the Meiers hear from their daughter.

The Meier case, fictional but highly realistic