Childhood Sexual Abuse
It is important to stress from the outset childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is widespread, and common to all cultures. According to the NSPCC, a child contacts the NSPCC helpline every 45 seconds. In 2014, for example, one in 10 children were neglected, and over 3, 000 children identified as victims of sexual abuse; one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused.
Outside of the UK, “a recent study by UNICEF and Save the Children estimated that one in five Filipino children were at risk of sexual exploitation, putting the grim figure close to two million (Laura Bicker, BBC news, Manila, 29 November 2022.”
One in three of those abused never disclose the abused never disclose the abuse to anyone. There are many reasons for not disclosing abuse – not least that that victim and perpetrator may live in the same household; a perpetrator may commit abuse while in a position of authority; a victim may be embarrassed or afraid to disclose. For all these reasons, delayed reporting of childhood sexual abuse is common.
What is false memory?
False memory is the phenomenon in which a person is convinced a memory is true when it is not.
It was first postulated and diagnosed more than a hundred years ago. It is creating severe problems in the field of alleged historic child sexual abuse.
This blog acknowledges and abhors the fact that there are many genuine cases of child abuse that may require the application of the criminal law.
Sadly, over the last 30 years thousands of people have ‘recovered memories’ of alleged childhood abuse following counselling, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy or psychiatric illness. Not surprisingly, such ‘memories,’ if false, have severe consequences both for the person concerned and for his or her family and for the wrongfully accused.
It is not uncommon for a whole network of family relationships to be destroyed as a result. False memories may lead to wrongful accusations, miscarriages of justice and wrongful imprisonment. The accused have no voice and no process to prove their innocence.
False-memory-type allegations pose a threat to society. If serious delusions, particularly of sexual abuse, are not recognised, a phenomenon is created which is like a runaway train.
Delusions will be confirmed by further therapy whether or not the therapist believes in the abuse. There are no brakes on the train, and this can only result in an ultimate crash with the patient, and other individuals, very seriously harmed.
The myth of traumatic repression
The myth that trauma often causes the brain to block out memory for the event is, sadly, a generally accepted one.
In psychological medicine a treatment can appear most impressive and convincing to the naive consumer and yet be completely wrong and deeply destructive.
Some therapists believe that many problems which present in adult life are a result of repressed memories of trauma, usually in the form of sexual abuse.
Based on highly controversial principles and diagnoses, this treatment incorporates a range of techniques which can broadly be described as ‘recovered memory therapy’ which is renowned for implanting false memories.
Denial of the capability of false memories being created within therapy is widespread:
Therapists claim that they do not practice recovered memory therapy, whilst at the same time some of them have been known to use therapeutic practices which have the capability of producing false/recovered memories.
Case study: The creation of a serial killer – Thomas Quick
An extreme example of how the criminal justice system can malfunction when allegations are based on false memories is illustrated by the extraordinary case of Thomas Quick (real name Sture Bergwall). Quick was Sweden’s most notorious serial killer. He confessed to 39 murders and was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for eight murders. In his book, The Strange Case of Thomas Quick: the Swedish Serial Killer and the Psychoanalyst Who Created Him (Portobello Books, 2015), Dan Josephsson describes how, during the summer of 1992, Quick together with his psychotherapist, psychiatric nurses, a memory expert, the police, and his solicitor were searching in the Orji Forest for the bones of one of his murder victims. Thomas Quick was not in fact a serial killer, but he is Sweden’s most notorious miscarriage of justice. In 2013, the Swedish government instigated a public inquiry which resulted in major reform to their criminal justice system.
The blurb to journalist Josephsson’s book, provides a useful summary of Quick’s fantastical allegations:
In 1991 Sture Bergwall, a petty criminal and drug addict, botched an armed robbery so badly that he was deemed to be more in need of therapy than punishment. He was committed to Sater, Sweden’s equivalent of Broadmoor, and began a course of psychotherapy and psychoactive drugs. During the therapy, he began to recover memories so vicious and traumatic that he had repressed them: sickening scenes of childhood abuse, incest, and torture, which led to a series of brutal murders in his adult years. He eventually confessed to raping, killing, and even eating more than thirty victims. Embracing the process of self-discovery, he took on a new name: Thomas Quick. He was brought to trial and convicted of eight murders.
In 2008, his confessions were proved to be entirely fabricated and every single conviction was overturned. In this gripping book, Dan Josefsson uncovers the tangled web of deceptions and delusions that emerged within the Quick team. He reveals how a sick prisoner and mental patient, addled with prescription drugs and desperate for validation, allowed himself to become a case study for a sect-like group of therapists who practised the controversial method of ‘recovered memory therapy.’ The group’s leader, psychoanalyst Margit Norwell, hoped that her study of Thomas Quick would make history.
This is a riveting story about how pseudoscientific therapy and the irrational belief system of a secretive group of otherwise intelligent people caused the most spectacular miscarriage of justice in modern Swedish history. It is told by one of Sweden’s foremost investigative journalists.
In a revealing interview with journalist, Elizabeth Day (the Guardian newspaper 20 October 2012), Quick revealed how his false memories were created:
I’d go to the Royal Library in Stockholm on day release and read upon old cases on the newspaper microfiches. A lot happened inside of me. I’d get high, I’d get a kick and then I’d have lots of fantasies. My imagination would run wild. In one sense, they gave me a lot of creativity. It was like a vicious circle. The more I told, the more attention I got from the therapists and the police and the memory experts, and that meant I also got more drugs.
Which just about sums up this sorry saga.
Wired – False Memories and False Confessions Wired
