Victorian RMT Inquiry: letter from Adriaan Mak.
24.3.06
To:
The Health Services Commissioner
State Government of Victoria, Australia
Department of Human Services.
Dear commissioner,
Re: Report on recovered memories
The report is a step forward.
We can be certain that both sides in this dispute will feel that it does not go far enough, because the tenor of the report is that both sides could be right and that:
(a) events of childhood sexual abuse may hide inaccessibly in some corner of the mind for decades on end, until triggered into consciousness;
and that:
(b) memories of such events may be false.
However, both cannot be true; science does not walk in the middle of the road.
What has already happened since about 1996, and your report will hopefully further that, is that therapists and their clients become even more aware that memories indeed can be false . They will be more careful in the absence of a clear memory of abuse suggesting to a client that their mid-life problems are the cause of childhood sexual abuse.
It is of course not possible for a government to decide that:
(a) dissociative amnesia (a.k.a. traumatic amnesia or repression) for a history of months and years of childhood sexual abuse is possible or impossible;
and that
(b) such abuse leaves no mark for decades on end but causes all manner of physical or mental illness much later in life.
Such decisions can only be made by scientists on the basis of research or the scrutiny of studies that make such claims.
The absolutely best available study of this sort would be the longitudinal one ‘Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse' by Linda Meyer Williams , one she revised several times. One should read the original version, the one she circulated prior to publication. It clearly reveals a somewhat different scene than the later versions all based on the same gathered evidence. .
She had documented evidence that people as young children were taken to a hospital to be helped for childhood sexual abuse that according to the mother had occurred. She called that the index event. Well over a decade later Williams contacted these folks and hoped, that without mentioning that she had evidence of the hospital visit, they would volunteer to disclose not the abuse, but the index event; the hospital visit.
Sixty two percent did so. Does that prove that 38% had no memory of that event? The study does not support the notion of repression. Of the 38% many nevertheless reported that had been sexually abused although they did not volunteer to mention the one particular index event. For a complete critique of that study see the attachment.
When matters are brought to trial, judges and juries, also people who lack the skill to evaluate scientific matters, have to make such scientific decisions. In the best of such circumstances, judges have allowed scientists from both sides to give expert testimony.
My records of 239 such trials in Canada indicate that in the early years, from 1990 until 1993 judges, even Supreme Court judges, relied heavily on the clinical literature that posited the notion of repression. In KM v HM and in R. v. Francois the Canadian Supreme Court the court did away with the statute of limitations and accepted the notion of repression. The result of this has been an avalanche of cases no one could foresee. Thousands of native Indians brought claims of abuse both physical, mental and some even sexual, for their forced attendance at government and church supported residential schools.
As Canadian contact for older parents accused of incest I recorded 239 actions criminal or civil, brought by their adult offspring. All the parents reported that the accuser had recovered memories after therapy. Only 40 of these cases ended in wrongful convictions and decisions and after appeals only 17 wronful decisions were left.
The wrongful convictions stopped after the Canadian case your report mentioned: R. v Norman was decided. Judges, thanks to widespread publicity, had began to note a pattern. The accused and the accusers in these latter-day cases were not the same as those that over the many years of their experience they had seen in the courts when dealing with child sexual abuse.
Dismay over this trend of acquittals, came from not only therapists and their clients, but strongly from feminist quarters, especially from one branch of the women's movement the Women's Legal Aid and Education Fund (LEAF) the organization that had helped pilot the KM v HM and the R. v. Francois decisions through the appeals and the Supreme Courts.
After 1996 very few cases made it to the trial stage and therapists stopped urging their recovered memory clients to take their alleged abusers to court. The court cases were not only devastating to the falsely accused, but contrary to what Bass and Davis in The Courage to Heal had maintained, were even more disastrous for the accusers. Accusing the parents and taking them to court had no therapeutic value. The opposite is true.
Misguided therapies continued for a while and devastated families and aging parents still reported that a troubled adult son or daughter had made a false accusation. But even that came to almost a halt. By 1999. reports had dwindled to a mere trickle, because therapists stopped urging their clients to confront family members with their recovered memories. Eventually cases of older parents reporting that adult daughters or sons in therapy had broken off contact with the family also declined to a few cases each year.
Recent court decisions in the U.S. with Bessel van der Kolk and Elizabeth Loftus squaring off as expert witnesses have gone heavily against the notion of repression and resulted in decisions that made recovered memory testimony unacceptable in the courts.
Lasting damage however has been done. Those of the accusers who committed suicide after suggestive therapy have left their devasted relatives utterly devastated. Other accusers are still in the limbo of their delusions....
Adriaan Mak
Canadian contact for victims of recovered memory malpractices.
555 Kinivie Drive
London ON Canada
Postal Code N6G 1P1
+ 519 471 6338
This letter was written in response to a Victorian state government document available for download at: http://www.health.vic.gov.au/pracreg/memory.htm
Website note:
The practice of recovered memory therapy is an issue that should be of concern to all Australians. For more information see: http://recoveredmemorytherapy.blogspot.com/
-Victorian RMT enquiry-
The Health Services Commissioner
State Government of Victoria, Australia
Department of Human Services.
Dear commissioner,
Re: Report on recovered memories
The report is a step forward.
We can be certain that both sides in this dispute will feel that it does not go far enough, because the tenor of the report is that both sides could be right and that:
(a) events of childhood sexual abuse may hide inaccessibly in some corner of the mind for decades on end, until triggered into consciousness;
and that:
(b) memories of such events may be false.
However, both cannot be true; science does not walk in the middle of the road.
What has already happened since about 1996, and your report will hopefully further that, is that therapists and their clients become even more aware that memories indeed can be false . They will be more careful in the absence of a clear memory of abuse suggesting to a client that their mid-life problems are the cause of childhood sexual abuse.
It is of course not possible for a government to decide that:
(a) dissociative amnesia (a.k.a. traumatic amnesia or repression) for a history of months and years of childhood sexual abuse is possible or impossible;
and that
(b) such abuse leaves no mark for decades on end but causes all manner of physical or mental illness much later in life.
Such decisions can only be made by scientists on the basis of research or the scrutiny of studies that make such claims.
The absolutely best available study of this sort would be the longitudinal one ‘Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse' by Linda Meyer Williams , one she revised several times. One should read the original version, the one she circulated prior to publication. It clearly reveals a somewhat different scene than the later versions all based on the same gathered evidence. .
She had documented evidence that people as young children were taken to a hospital to be helped for childhood sexual abuse that according to the mother had occurred. She called that the index event. Well over a decade later Williams contacted these folks and hoped, that without mentioning that she had evidence of the hospital visit, they would volunteer to disclose not the abuse, but the index event; the hospital visit.
Sixty two percent did so. Does that prove that 38% had no memory of that event? The study does not support the notion of repression. Of the 38% many nevertheless reported that had been sexually abused although they did not volunteer to mention the one particular index event. For a complete critique of that study see the attachment.
When matters are brought to trial, judges and juries, also people who lack the skill to evaluate scientific matters, have to make such scientific decisions. In the best of such circumstances, judges have allowed scientists from both sides to give expert testimony.
My records of 239 such trials in Canada indicate that in the early years, from 1990 until 1993 judges, even Supreme Court judges, relied heavily on the clinical literature that posited the notion of repression. In KM v HM and in R. v. Francois the Canadian Supreme Court the court did away with the statute of limitations and accepted the notion of repression. The result of this has been an avalanche of cases no one could foresee. Thousands of native Indians brought claims of abuse both physical, mental and some even sexual, for their forced attendance at government and church supported residential schools.
As Canadian contact for older parents accused of incest I recorded 239 actions criminal or civil, brought by their adult offspring. All the parents reported that the accuser had recovered memories after therapy. Only 40 of these cases ended in wrongful convictions and decisions and after appeals only 17 wronful decisions were left.
The wrongful convictions stopped after the Canadian case your report mentioned: R. v Norman was decided. Judges, thanks to widespread publicity, had began to note a pattern. The accused and the accusers in these latter-day cases were not the same as those that over the many years of their experience they had seen in the courts when dealing with child sexual abuse.
Dismay over this trend of acquittals, came from not only therapists and their clients, but strongly from feminist quarters, especially from one branch of the women's movement the Women's Legal Aid and Education Fund (LEAF) the organization that had helped pilot the KM v HM and the R. v. Francois decisions through the appeals and the Supreme Courts.
After 1996 very few cases made it to the trial stage and therapists stopped urging their recovered memory clients to take their alleged abusers to court. The court cases were not only devastating to the falsely accused, but contrary to what Bass and Davis in The Courage to Heal had maintained, were even more disastrous for the accusers. Accusing the parents and taking them to court had no therapeutic value. The opposite is true.
Misguided therapies continued for a while and devastated families and aging parents still reported that a troubled adult son or daughter had made a false accusation. But even that came to almost a halt. By 1999. reports had dwindled to a mere trickle, because therapists stopped urging their clients to confront family members with their recovered memories. Eventually cases of older parents reporting that adult daughters or sons in therapy had broken off contact with the family also declined to a few cases each year.
Recent court decisions in the U.S. with Bessel van der Kolk and Elizabeth Loftus squaring off as expert witnesses have gone heavily against the notion of repression and resulted in decisions that made recovered memory testimony unacceptable in the courts.
Lasting damage however has been done. Those of the accusers who committed suicide after suggestive therapy have left their devasted relatives utterly devastated. Other accusers are still in the limbo of their delusions....
Adriaan Mak
Canadian contact for victims of recovered memory malpractices.
555 Kinivie Drive
London ON Canada
Postal Code N6G 1P1
+ 519 471 6338
This letter was written in response to a Victorian state government document available for download at: http://www.health.vic.gov.au/pracreg/memory.htm
Website note:
The practice of recovered memory therapy is an issue that should be of concern to all Australians. For more information see: http://recoveredmemorytherapy.blogspot.com/
-Victorian RMT enquiry-
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