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De-Repressed Memories and False Accusations
From: Columbia University
| By:
Elizabeth Loftus |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
A California man spends six years in jail, convicted of a murder based solely on his daughter's de-repressed memory of the event. Another man sues his daughter's psychotherapist for planting false memories of childhood molestation. As the questionable validity of repressed memories stirs up courtroom controversy, the role of therapists in uncovering--or even planting--de-repressed memories has increasingly come under fire. Elizabeth Loftus, professor of psychology and adjunct professor of law at the University of Washington, has taken a central role since the onset of this controversy, researching the psychology behind repressed memory and serving as an expert witness in court. |
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| The Franklin case is a prime example of the influence of de-repressed memories. | |
 ou almost can't be alive today without being aware of the fact that there is a mental-health controversy over "repressed memory" swirling around us in our society. Sometimes referred to as the major mental-health scandal of the twentieth century, it has even been called by one professional "the lobotomy of the mental-health profession." |
The repressed-memory controversy involves a certain kind of patient-therapist interaction. Patients present their problems--such as depression, eating disorders or sexual dysfunctions--to their respective therapists. These therapists respond, "You know, everyone I've seen with those sorts of symptoms was sexually abused as a child. I wonder whether anything like that happened to you?" Thus, the process of digging for these supposedly buried memories of trauma begins in hopes that the awareness of them will heal or cure the patient. A two-page fact sheet called "Therapies Focused on Memories of Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse," issued in June 2000 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), alluded to some elements of this controversy. |
Unlike what some people think, I did not "drop into" this controversy in 1990 when it got really heated. I had actually been doing experiments on memory and memory distortion since the early 1970s. I was one of many psychologists who were often asked to testify in criminal cases where memory was an issue--cases that involved eyewitness testimony, such as armed robbery or murder. I also worked on numerous medical-malpractice cases where the issue is informed consent--a patient remembers one thing while a doctor remembers something else. All these cases hinge on the question "How reliable is memory for these kinds of interactions?" |
De-repressing a 20-year-old murder
It was with this long history of clinical research and legal involvement in the area of memory distortion that I got a call from a man named Doug Horngrad in 1990. An independent criminal-defense lawyer in San Francisco, Horngrad had previously served as a public defender. He said something like "I have the darnedest case. I've had a lot of experience with murder cases, but I've just never had a case like this one. My client is George Franklin. He's accused of murder. He's accused of killing a little girl 20 years ago--in 1969." The only evidence against Franklin was the allegedly repressed--and de-repressed--memory of Franklin's daughter, Eileen. |
Eileen Franklin said that when she was 8 years old she saw her father kill her best friend, Susie Nason. Eileen Franklin said that she had repressed the memory in her unconscious until 20 years later, when this memory came back to her--after some therapy, I might add. |
Eileen Franklin had a very detailed recollection. She remembered getting into the van with her father. Then little Susie got into the van. They drove up in the hills, just south of San Francisco, near the reservoir. They parked the van. The father raped Susie. Then he took Susie out, hit her over the head with a rock, crushing her skull. Eileen provided rich, vivid, convincing details; she even said, in essence, "I remember Susie held up her hand to deflect that second blow because her ring was crushed in the process." In 1990, George Franklin became virtually the first American citizen to be convicted of murder based solely on allegations of repression and de-repression by one witness. |
Horngrad asked me what I knew about this idea of repression. As a cognitive psychologist who had been immersed in research in the field of memory, of course I'd heard this hand-me-down Freudian idea that we bury streams of traumatic experiences.
Eileen Franklin was not only claiming that she had repressed her memory for that murder, however. She also claimed that for years she had repressed memories of brutalization and sexual crimes committed upon her by her father and others. All these memories were banished from conscious awareness until psychotherapy or other sources brought them back--she had six different versions of how these memories came back to her. |
Search for evidence of repression
Once I agreed to work on the case, I started to look for evidence of repressed memories. I did find anecdotes claiming that patients repressed years of brutalization and recovered memories of it. These claims generally consisted of uncorroborated reports published as case histories by mental-health professionals. The only other evidence I found was a chapter in a book edited by Jerome Singer, called Repression and Dissociation: Implications for Personality Theory, Psychopathology and Health. In it, David Holmes, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, concluded, "Sixty years of efforts to document this fundamental idea of repression have led to no good scientific support for the idea." Holmes has since updated his estimate. In 1994 he wrote in The Harvard Mental Health Letter something along the lines of, "Seventy years of efforts have not produced any credible scientific support for this basic phenomenon." |
Just because neither Holmes nor I can find credible evidence does not prove that Eileen Franklin's memories are in fact false. On the other hand, if those memories are not real and if she didn't really experience them, where could the memories have come from? That was the subject of my expert testimony in the case, which was apparently unimpressive to the jurors. They were persuaded by Eileen Franklin's testimony and convicted George Franklin. |
Freeing Franklin
Franklin spent six years in prison before a federal judge released him. The federal judge overturned Franklin's conviction on two grounds. First, the trial judge should not have instructed jurors that Franklin's silent response to his daughter's accusation constituted a confession. Secondly--and concerning the memory issue--the trial judge deprived Franklin of basic constitutional rights by refusing to allow his attorney to introduce media coverage associated with the case. |
Had the attorney been allowed to show the media coverage, the jurors would have been able to answer the question "Where did all that detail come from if she hadn't really seen the murder?" When Susie Nason's body was found three months after she had disappeared, it was of massive interest to the public. The murder was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. It was all over the television news. All those details that made up that rich fabric of Eileen Franklin's memory existed in the public domain. |
When Franklin's conviction was overturned, the prosecution decided not to re-prosecute. There was a problem with their star witness; Eileen Franklin had come up with other murder memories. These memories would have made George and Eileen Franklin the first father-daughter serial-murder team in history. However, George Franklin had ironclad alibis for some of the subsequent murders, and DNA evidence further proved his innocence. |
I thought my involvement with repression would end with the Franklin case. Surely, there cannot be too many murder cases based on allegations of de-repressed memories. Yet, it turned out that the Franklin case was just the beginning. |
Publicizing repressed memories
The Franklin conviction was a big public spectacle with a lot of associated publicity. Eileen Franklin appeared on the Today show and Oprah to talk about the case. She was accompanied by a psychiatrist who believed in and helped to popularize her story. Eileen Franklin even wrote a book about the controversy; Shelley Long played her role in the made-for-TV movie. |
At the same time, celebrities such as Roseanne, as well as not-so-celebrities, came forward to say that--until they went into therapy--they too had repressed memories of years of sexual crimes. In Roseanne's case, she claimed her mother molested her when she was 6 months old; she had detailed memories of what was done to her in the crib. As Roseanne grew into her teenage years, her father joined in committing these molestations. Roseanne then claimed she became a multiple-personality patient with 17 to 20 different personalities. |
Unlimited litigation
I think litigation fueled this controversy. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Whenever prosecutors think they have enough evidence for a murder prosecution, they can go forward--as they did in the Franklin case. But for most criminal and civil charges, you have a limited period of time in which to bring an action against a person who has hurt you. This statute of limitations exists in our society because we recognize that memories fade, evidence gets lost and witnesses die. We don't think it's fair to make people defend themselves against very stale claims. |
In 1989, the state of Washington enacted legislation that extended the statute of limitations in cases of repression. Under this law, a person has three years to file a lawsuit from the time when the repressed memories returned--no matter how long ago the crime supposedly occurred. Within two years of the enactment of that legislation, 12 other states followed with similar legislation. Today, if you live in any one of about half the states, you can sue your parents, your former neighbors, teachers, psychotherapists, your former anybody if you claim you repressed your memories and that they have now come back to you. |
I have seen thousands of lawsuits based on claims of repression in various stages of litigation--from filing all the way to trials. Jurors and others listening to these claims are forced to make a decision that scientists and clinicians in this area have argued about for decades: Is repression a concept they believe in? |
De-repression reaches civil courts
A California couple was one of the first to face a civil case based on claims of repressed, then de-repressed, memories. They were sued by their daughter for abuse shortly after the state enacted the relevant legislation. The trial took place in 1991, after Roseanne's public confession of having been sexually molested in the crib. This California daughter said that she, too, was molested when she was 6 months old, and that she had recovered memories of it. |
The couple won the case, but it took a financial toll. They spent their life savings and had to come out of retirement just to make a living. The family was devastated; various family members still do not speak to one another. Why didn't anyone in that situation stop for a minute to contemplate what things would be like if the 6-month-old was sitting on the stand making these particular claims? We have to wonder what it really means to say that they "won the case." |
Issuing a wake-up call: the Ramona case
The Ramona case really woke up the psychiatric profession. Holly Ramona went into therapy as a sophomore at the University of California at Irvine. At age 18, she discovered that she had been raped over the period of a decade (between the ages of 5 and 16) by her father--including numerous sexual interactions with the family dog, Prince. These memories were all buried in her unconscious until she went into therapy. She sued her father, Gary Ramona. This case dragged on for years in the early to mid-1990s. (It is referred to as the 1994 lawsuit brought by Gary Ramona against psychotherapists in Spectral Evidence, by Moira Johnston.) |
Before the suit, Gary Ramona held a very successful job in Napa, California, making between $300,000 and $400,000 annually as a winery executive. He also had what he thought was a wonderful family. That life, however, came crashing down because of these accusations. Fearing scandal, the corporation he worked for dismissed him. |
Interestingly, Gary Ramona then turned around and sued the therapist for planting false memories in the mind of his daughter. Not only was he able to bring that suit in a California court--his first achievement--but he also won a $500,000 verdict from a Napa jury. |
Recanting de-repressed memories
A new wave of litigation began in the mid-1990s. Brought by "recanters," or "retractors," these people have gone into therapy and developed memories of horrific abuse, only to realize at some point that their memories are false. Once they recognize their memories as false, the recanters turn around and sue their psychotherapists. Several hundred of these cases have been filed. They are straightforward medical-malpractice cases with no complications over statute of limitations or standing. |
In one of the first recanter cases to make the headlines, in the mid-1990s Diane Humenansky, a psychiatrist in the St. Paul, Minnesota, area, was accused by many of her patients of using suggestive and coercive techniques to first get patients to remember severe sexual abuse and then to accuse the people who supposedly committed this abuse. The first patient to bring a case against Humenansky, Vynette Hammane, had gone into therapy for generalized anxiety. In 10 months, Humenansky diagnosed multiple-personality disorder. |
Hammane supposedly had 100 personalities--males, females, adults and children. She even had a dog for a personality. (That was the first time I realized that these alter egos are very creative and not limited to humans. I have since met somebody who has a cat for a personality and somebody who has a duck for a personality. A friend of mine met somebody who had a lobster for a personality.) |
In addition to being diagnosed with multiple-personality disorder, Hammane also came to remember that:
- Her mother had molested her.
- Most of the males in her life had molested her.
- She had been molested at the age of 9 months old.
- She had been forced to have a baby when she was 8 years old.
- She had been forced to attend satanic rituals, where there was group sex, people wearing strange costumes, animal sacrifice, baby breeding and baby sacrifice. She had even been made to eat baby parts.
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How did this happen? Let me share the accusations brought against Humenansky in the trial:
- Failing to inform the plaintiffs--Vynette Hammane, her husband and her daughter--of the serious risks and dangers of several treatments, including the use of: hypnosis and guided imagery; sodium amytal (a hypnotic sedative drug to gain access to the unconscious); abreaction experiences (recalling a repressed event and its emotional manifestations, either individually, in a group, or by way of hypnosis); and group therapy for personality disorder.
- Ordering her patient to use hypnosis tapes daily without disclosing the well-known risks of hypnosis.
- Telling her patient there was no such thing as false memories. Making negligent, misleading and false statements to the Hammanes regarding hypnosis, memory and repression--such as telling her patient that by using relaxation and imagery she could accurately recover so-called repressed memories from the early months of life.
- Telling her patient that sodium amytal is a truth serum and patients cannot produce false memories under its influence. (Not true.)
- Contaminating the diagnosis with suggestive and abusive books and videos. (With a subsequent patient, Humenansky showed lesbian pornography as a way of bringing out the lesbian alters in the patient.)
- Engaging in bizarre and terrifying indoctrination. Telling her patient that: Baptist and Catholic ministers were in satanic cults that murdered children; the American medical system was heavily infiltrated by satanic cults; and the nurses who worked on Humenansky's unit were in a satanic cult.
- Plying the patient with false statistics that increased her paranoia about males and wrecked her relationships with males. Telling her patient that 50 percent of males were sex abusers and all presidents of the United States were either abusers or abuse victims.
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In the end, Vynette Hammane and her family were awarded $2.67 million by a St. Paul jury--at the time, a very big award. A year later, a jury awarded Elizabeth Carlson, another patient of Humenansky's, $2.5 million. The rest of the cases against Humenansky were settled. |
Since then, there have been several very large, successful medical-malpractice awards involving repressed memories. In 1998, the first criminal prosecution of mental-health professionals over memory repression took place in a federal court in Texas. The case was called United States v. Peterson et al., and it ended in mistrial. The specific criminal charges were based on the defrauding of American insurance companies through the planting of false memories. |
Using suggestive therapies
In an effort to gauge the influence of de-repressed memories of sexual abuse on the medical community, we have completed a series of surveys on the beliefs and practices of mental-health professionals. One of the first, and I think best, surveys was published in 1995 by Debra Poole and her collaborators--it was called "Psychotherapy and the Recovery of Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: U.S. and British Practitioners' Opinions, Practices, and Experiences." A sample group of well-trained clinical psychologists and their British counterparts were asked whether they used or favored the use of certain techniques for digging out memories of sexual abuse when the patient was denying the experience. |
A significant minority of those surveyed said that they use or favor the use of hypnosis, age regression, dream interpretation, guided imagery related to abuse situations, and instructions to give free rein to the imagination. Not every case involves such an extreme as diagnosing multiple-personality disorder or dissociative-identity disorder. However, we discovered that the use of these risky and potentially catastrophic techniques is more widespread than previously thought. |
Why do we care about the use of suggestive techniques with psychotherapy patients? We care because we believe that these techniques are capable of leading people to develop false memories--as in the legal cases I have mentioned. |
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