Abuse by priests and recovered memory.

Great Debates
1

I heard a story on Morning Edition about the trial of Paul Shanley. 3 of 4 of his accusers have dropped out of the case. The remaining accuser will be testifying. The defense is attempting to cast doubt on the alleged victim’s testimony by questioning his memory (and his motives.)

It’s said that the accusation is being made on the basis of recovered memories, which the defense lawyer calls a “psychiatric, medical quagmire.” An AP story says that the alleged vicitim claims that he suddenly recalled his abuse when news covereage of the sex abuse scandal broke.

So I take it that we’re not talking about satanic-sex-abuse-type recovered memories, which were generally brought out by hypnotherapy, but memories that were supposedly repressed and then came flooding back spontaneously or triggered by the news reports–or is it even that? Were the memeories “repressed” in a more colloquial sense, in that he made a conscious decision not to think about them? It’s hard to tell from the various wordings used in different news stories.

The defense lawyer questions not only the veracity of recovered memories, but also the honesty of the accuser; he raises the possiblity that the allegations were manufactured to get a big civil settlement.

Can anyone tell me if any other alleged victims of abuse by Catholic priests have reported that their memories were repressed, and if any of them (including the witness in this case) recovered their memories through hypnotherapy? Also, are recovered memories considered suspicious in mainstream psychology even if there was no hypnotherapy involved?

Both these topics (abuse by priests and recovered memories) are hot buttons for some people, so I’m putting this in GD, but really I’m just looking for information.

2

CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigations of Claims of the Paranormal) often investigate repressed memory cases when using child testimonials. There’s a major problem in trying to verify the integrity of the claims of the children and the rather dubious use of hypnotherapy to recover repressed memories.

The problem stems from the fact that children are very creative and can often invent things that they honestly believe are true but simply are not. A classic example from CSICOP demontrates how an interviewer asked a child of 7 (IIRC) about something as innocuous as “did you go down to the basement?” At first the child said no (which was true), but on later questioning the child not only said that she did go, but she began embellishing on the things that she supposedly did with even further probing, including toys she said she played with - toys that weren’t even in the basement.

The point is that memories can be “planted,” or invented, and the subject can be led to honestly believe that they are real.

I’m not sure how much more complicated (or simple) the issue gets when we’re talknig about adults and their repressed memories.

3

I believe the notion of “recovered memories” as a valid phenomenon capable of standing up in court as evidence, have been so scientifically discredited at this point, that you’d better off claiming that a witch told you you were abused.

4

Exactly. Maybe the memories are real, maybe they aren’t, but it just doesn’t meet the “proof beyond a resonable doubt” standard.