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NZ
Herald
August 12, 2003
Ellis Case
Letter to the Editor
by Dr John Read, psychology department, University
of Auckland
Three days after
reading that Otago University awarded Lynley Hood an honorary doctorate, Jeffrey
Masson and Emma Davies publish the first balanced analysis of the many biases
in Hood's book.
How could Otago
University's examiners
have missed all the misrepresentations and omissions identified by Drs Masson
and Davies? Fortunately it was a doctorate for literature not science. A good
story does not need to fit the facts.
Those of us who research the incidence and effects of child abuse, or work
with those subjected to abuse, have watched nervously while this blatantly
one-sided book generated a mass hysteria sucking in all sorts of usually
sensible people.
Our major anxiety has been that the publicity given to the Colman-Hood
campaign to discredit children's testimony will make it harder for abused
children to tell anyone what happened to them and to be believed.
Now we learn that, for Barry Colman at least, this is a goal of the campaign.
It was reported that he sincerely hopes children will be put off. Signatories
to the understandable but misguided Colman-Hood petition may want to make
their personal positions clear. Do they, too, want children to suffer in
silence?
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