November 12 1994
146(2848):16-24
Accused!
by Noel O'Hare
Abstract: Talks to victims of false memory syndrome, those
who have been falsely accused of sexual abuse by their children. Looks at the
devastating effect on families and queries the authenticity of repressed or
recovered memories.
In an interview just before her death, Mary told the Listener how her last
years had been turned into a nightmare when two of her sons accused her of
sexual abuse. The accusation was all the
more devastating for having come at the end of a pleasant family holiday. The clan had rented a large beach house for
the weekend. They were about to load
their cars and depart, when one of Mary’s sons, Alan, got up to speak. `I’d like to talk to you all before you
leave. I want to say something to the
whole family. I want everybody to know
that Mum sexually abused me when I was little.'
Mary could not believe what she was hearing. 'I didn’t know what he was talking
about. It just came out of the blue. I was just appalled. I couldn’t let it go
by and not say something, so I said it was ridiculous. It just wasn’t true.'
Looking back, Mary was able to see that Alan’s announcement had not come out of
the blue. A few months before, he had been suffering from depression and had
gone to a counsellor. Gradually his behaviour changed and he became more and
more distant from her. 'We always got on awfully well, but he moved to a flat
and I hardly saw him. He had the
impression that his depression was related to his being at the house."
Mary was distressed by her son’s coolness, but it was only when he joined the
family at the beachhouse that she realised the extent
of his antagonism. "He was annoyed
with me the whole weekend. I remember I sensed this terrible backing off and he
was very tense."
Alan’s public allegations, however, were a hurt beyond anything she could
imagine. "I could hear the voice endlessly coming at me, saying those
terrible things. I was an absolute wreck." Mary had never heard of false
memory syndrome - the validation of unreliable and uncorroborated memories
recovered in therapy - and the destruction caused when the person assiduously
avoids confrontation with any evidence to the contrary. A talk with her GP and
a psychiatrist friend helped. "When I understood it was happening to other
people, I was greatly comforted."
Mary was alert to the warning signs when another son Rod started to go to the
same counsellor. "He would say, ‘I’ve got this image of something awfully
unpleasant happening, but I don’t know who the person is.
I’ll wait until I have a sleep tonight and I’ll probably dream about it.’ Rod
became convinced that both his parents had sexually abused him. Some months later, he settled overseas and
joined an incest survivors’ group. One
day Mary received a 15-page letter from him.
`It went on endlessly and he went into horrendous detail of abuse dating
back to when he was four. I tried to answer it, but it was impossible. To him,
it was just denial.”
It took a long time for Mary to get over the hurt. "I went away on a trip
to
At the time of the interview Mary had learnt to live with the fact that her
sons believed she was a child molester.
"I’ve drawn back from it all. I gather you do that with something
really horrible." She was even hopeful that Alan would change his mind.
"I do think he is coming round to a different point of view." She set
off to
"Those who trust in Him will understand the truth," read Alan at his
mother’s funeral. Rod did not attend. When I contacted Alan afterwards, he had
no comment to make about the sexual abuse allegations.
There is little scientific support for the theory that memories of traumatic events,
such as sexual abuse, can be repressed and recovered in graphic detail several
decades later. Though details of
traumatic events may be blocked out, the fact that they actually took place is
rarely forgotten (see box). If Mary was
the victim of her sons’ inept and destructive counselling, then in some ways
she was lucky. She did not face criminal
prosecution, most of her family refused to believe the allegations and she was
able to keep in contact with her sons.
In
Len Wade is a 58 year-old former engineer who has spent most of his working
life in the military. After retiring with a senior rank, he accepted a civilian
managerial position with his old employer. "My friends say that in a
negotiating sense the softest part of me is my teeth, and I guess they say that
with some reason," says Wade with some pride. He also prides himself on
being able to compartmentalise his life.
The military boss is not the same man who enjoys a joke at the golf club
or who fulfils the role of husband and father after 5.00pm. Inevitably, though,
there is some crossover. You sense that no matter what role he is in, he is not
a man to suffer fools gladly, a man who will remain cool under fire, no matter
what the situation.
Certainly he remained cool that evening as his daughter made her accusations. He
told her that she was talking utter nonsense and ordered her to leave the
house. He sought advice from the police, then briefed
his lawyer in case criminal charges were brought against him. "My method of defending myself was to
attack them and I made no bones about it. I went so far as to issue them with a
trespass notice. People say, ‘How on earth did you do that to your
children?" Len felt he had no option. Contact with his daughters would
leave him open to further allegations and he could think of no other way to
defend himself Two months later, Sandra made a written formal complaint to the
police. It comprised six typed pages that alleged a range of indecent assaults
committed on her by her father since she was four.
The Wades live in a comfortable house that they had built themselves in a
quiet, semirural area not far from the military base
where Len used to be stationed. The
framed photographs on the bookcase and walls tell the family history. The
attractive woman in military uniform is Julie of 36 years ago. Alongside, a young Len in
uniform, too. Pictures of Julie’s father and mother also take pride of
place next to those of Len and Julie’s grandchildren. Four generations of
family.
Len and Julie married in 1958. It was in many ways a typical services marriage:
the family shifted from base to base as Len moved up the ranks. In fairly quick succession they had two
daughters - Sandra and Maureen - and then, after three years, another daughter,
Elsie. The album that Sandra compiled for her parents’ 30th wedding anniversary
in 1988 might be a photographic history of any family: the first family car,
smiling children on the beach squinting at the camera, well-scrubbed faces in
school uniform, family weddings. The
Wade family was no different from any other of the time, Len was head of the
house and he drew the line at changing nappies and other domestic chores. He
admits he was a fairly strict father: the children got spanked when they 'deserved
it'.
As with many families, the trouble started when the children became teenagers. It
was the early 70s and rebellion was in the air. One evening, after a school
dance, Sandra declared that she had lost her virginity. "She came in and made this grand
announcement. Quite frankly it floored the lot of us. She would have been 14
and a half at that stage," recalls Len.
Despite excelling at school - her marks were often in the 90s - Sandra
decided to leave at 15, against her parents’ wishes. A year later she moved in with a
boyfriend. "What they call a trial
marriage," says Len disdainfully. "She was physically beaten,
introduced to drugs. She got pregnant and had a miscarriage." Both Len and
Julie believe many of Sandra’s problems stem from that traumatic period.
A year later, Sandra got pregnant. The
Wades had a family conference and Len, in his logical fashion, laid out the
options.
Sandra decided to marry the father. The
marriage failed after two years and she moved back home with her daughter Beth.
Another marriage some years later lasted 18 months. "She has been living at home for most of
the years before, between and after her marriages. She has been in and out of jobs and on and
off the DPB. Beth is now 18 and has
lived with us for most of her life," says Len.
Four years after her second marriage, Sandra decided to strike out on her own
and get a flat, while Beth divided her time between her mother and her
grandparents. In March 1992, Sandra began seeing the counsellor. Three months later,
she made her complaint to the police. They took statements from Maureen, who
supported the allegations, and from Elsie, who did not. Julie was not formally
interviewed, but Len was required to do a video-taped interview at the police
station. The police decided not to prosecute for lack of evidence.
Len believes that it was only his training that saved him from a prison
sentence. "I was in deep thinking
mode. When you are under pressure of
that nature, unless you can think clearly, you can fall into a trap. And I was absolutely determined that I was
not going to prison for something I did not do. All my training and experience
came into play."
Len was able to point out that the initial allegations made to the family in
May bore no relation to the statement that Sandra made to police. There was,
for instance, no mention of the claim that he had set up and condoned his
daughter’s rape by a family friend. Some
time later, Sandra, in conversation with a TV documentary maker, alleged that
her father had repeatedly raped her since she was 12 and that she had been a
virgin at the time. This contradicted her statements that she was a virgin when
she was allegedly raped by a family friend and her
contradicted her announcement to the family that she had lost her virginity
after a school dance. Comments Len: "She was the only woman I came across
who claimed to have lost her virginity to three different men!"
Julie cannot understand why, if sexual abuse was a recurring pattern as Sandra
alleged, no one was aware of it.
"We lived so close to each other.
There were only three bedrooms in many of the houses we stayed in and
the girls had to share." In addition, they had Julie’s mother living with
them for most of that time, and later two grandchildren.
Elsie is adamant that the allegations are false. A few days before Sandra
confronted her parents, she rang Elsie to tell her of the abuse and find out
where she stood. "Her counsellor
said she must surround herself only with people who support her," but
Elsie was unable to lend that support.
"I can’t believe my father did it. I have no proof, but he has
never touched me and he had ample opportunity. He never touched Beth."
Later, when the police interviewed her, she was unable to reconcile what Sandra
had said in her statement with what she had told her two months earlier. One
alleged incident suggested to Elsie that the charges against her father were
fantasies. "According to Sandra,
Dad had invited a group of men to the house and made her undress in front of
them. Well, you don’t do that sort of thing if you live on a military
base. It’s a very tightknit
community. It doesn’t stay within four
walls. It just wouldn’t happen."
But why would her sister make such charges against her father if they weren’t
true? "You have to have lived with Dad and Sandra to understand. Sandra is
pure emotion and Dad’s pure logic. It’s like trying to mix oil and water."
Her sister, she says, has always been a difficult person who demanded and got
most of the attention from her parents.
"She’s very emotional, very suggestible, very melodramatic and very
jealous."
The Wades are at a loss to understand why two of their daughters have turned
against them. "The fact of the matter," says Len,
"is that we shared everything we could possibly share." When Sandra
wanted to be a potter, Len built a kiln in the back garden. When she switched to photography, they
arranged tuition. When her first
marriage failed, they raised her daughter.
When she remarried and wanted a fancy dress wedding reception at home,
the Wades footed the bill. They paid the
fares back and forth to
"What was the crucial factor in flipping them from a normal stable
existence to what they’ve got now?" asks Len. "It was nothing we did. What went wrong
is they went to see a counsellor."
The Wades wanted to put their side of the story to the counsellor, but they
never got the opportunity. "We
phoned. We wrote. We left messages. We did everything we could reasonably do,
short of laying a complaint with the police ourselves about false
allegations." Most of all they wanted to show the counsellor the album
that Sandra had given them for their 30th anniversary inscribed "from the
tribe with love". To Len, the album
of happy family snaps said it all.
"Either the allegations are true or the 30-plus years
of collective data is true. They
can’t both be true."
For Sandra and Maureen, family history has had to be rewritten to fit with this
view of their parents as child molesters.
In the feminist psychological approach favoured by Sandra’s counsellor,
abusers are often family tyrants who sexually abuse their children to control
and dominate them. The dynamics of the
family echo the dynamics of the patriarchal society, where men economically and
sexually oppress all women, keeping them powerless and compliant. Viewed from this vantage point, acts of
parental generosity take on new meaning: they are attempts to control and
manipulate.
The Wades have lost two daughters as well as the two granddaughters they had
partly raised. "They’re not allowed
to see us and I daren’t see them," says Len. "It affects them directly. When they get married and have children, it’s
also going to affect their children.
It’s an insidious process."
Elsie has also suffered. "It has
affected my relationship with my son. I
was very scared to touch him, because I didn’t want him to come back and accuse
me of sexually abusing him. I don’t
think that is really fair and I’m trying to put it aside." Her sisters
have cut all communication with her because she doesn’t go along with the
allegations "I’ve lost two thirds of my family as well." Her family
now exists only in photographic keepsakes and she dreads the day when her son
asks why he never sees his aunties.
"I’m going to have to tell him and I don’t know what it’s going to
do to him. He adores his granddad and
it’s going to ruin that relationship."
The Wades have resigned themselves to the fact that they may always be
non-persons to the two elder daughters and their children. "Because of the traumatic situation we
find ourselves in, we have written it all down and we have left it with our
lawyers in case the grandchildren ever want to read our story," says
Julie. "It’s the only way, at the
moment, that we can have our say. And
hopefully one day someone will be curious enough to know why a grandfather and grandmother
disappeared."
How would they react if one day their daughters recanted?
"I wouldn’t reject them," says Julie, "because, after all, we’re
not bad people. How long would it take
to get back to where we were and how many years have we got ahead of us?"
"Trust has been absolutely destroyed," says Len. "I can never trust either of my
daughters again. If they did recant, how
do you rebuild trust of that special nature after such a horrendous set of
events? I would say, with the utmost difficulty."
If the telephone conversation I had with Sandra is any guide, the chances of
her recanting are slim. Though her
parents claim that she told them she had recovered the memories in therapy,
Sandra now denies it.
"I have not forgotten anything. I went to a counsellor because I needed to
know how to deal with what was happening to me.
She didn’t tell me I was being sexually abused. I told her.
I’ve been dealing with it my whole life.
I spoke to my mother about it when I was 12 - 22 years before I went to
see a counsellor."
If your parents are child molesters, why did you leave your daughter to live
there?
"I didn’t leave my daughter to live there, I lived there myself."
Your parents said you went to
"I went to
What do you say he did do?
"None of your goddamn business, is it? It’s my life. I’ve had to live with this my whole
life. I’m trying to make an effort to
make my life healthy for me. If they don’t
want to be part of that, well, stuff them."
The difficulty for me as a journalist is that you remained living at home all
those years.
"I don’t care if it’s a difficulty for you. You weren’t brought up in my family. You have no idea what it was like to live
with those people. They are control
freaks. I did absolutely everything they
told me to. If they said go to
SEXUAL ABUSE allegations always leave damaging doubt. Len and Julie Wade will never be free of
that. As Elsie says:
"The real story is that nobody’s ever going to know. It’s only between Dad and Sandra. Nobody knows what goes on behind closed
doors."
In another case, that of Margaret, a middle-aged woman, the
facts of the case are somewhat more verifiable. In February 1993, Margaret’s daughter Sarah
became depressed and went to see a counsellor at the Presbyterian Support
Services counselling centre. The first
hint that something was wrong was when Margaret received a garbled phone call
from her daughter. "She said that
we’d kept things from her when she was young: ‘You must think I’m a fool if you
think you can keep that sort of thing from me.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and
she slammed the phone down."
The accusation became clear a few days later.
Margaret’s ex-husband Andrew received a letter accusing him of
supervising a group rape on Margaret at a party when Sarah was a child. As a result of witnessing the rape, she had
been traumatised and had become a failure.
Margaret and her family quickly found that there was no point in trying to
convince Sarah that it had never happened.
"She told us that her counsellor said we had forgotten and her
father was too drunk to remember. We
were all in denial and we needed counselling ourselves. My daughter said that she wouldn’t see her
father unless he was prepared to confess it was true."
"I just thought the world had gone mad," says Margaret. Afraid that her daughter might try to commit
suicide, she tried to get her admitted to the psychiatric unit at
Even when her daughter disappeared, Margaret could get no help. Eventually she traced her to a private
hotel. "She received me very
lovingly, but she was trembling and terrified her father was going to
appear."
The "memory" has had a
devastating effect on the family. When
Sarah first accused her parents, she also contacted her brother. He at first believed her - he’d been away at
school at the time - and had bitter rows with both parents. Andrew has been so traumatised by his
daughter’s accusation that he is on medication for high blood pressure. It has ruined both parents’ relationship with
their daughter. When she first cut off
all contact with them, they sent her gifts.
They were returned with the note that Margaret still has: "I will
not accept this from liars. I think you
are trying to buy me back. I am a big
girl now and I can survive without gifts anyway.
Though she now sees her mother occasionally and has been in telephone contact
with her father, any attempt to dissuade her that the rape never happened is
met with hostility. On one occasion when
the subject was raised, Margaret tried to show her information that she had
collected on false memory syndrome.
"`If only you would look at this, If you’d let me speak,’ I
said. And she lashed out with her hand
and struck me."
Margaret is a sensible, middle-class woman and hardly the type to have
consorted With motorcycle gangs or other groups who
condone or practise gang rape. Though
she remembers they did have parties in Sarah’s youth, they were mostly attended
by fellow members of the local amateur operatic society. The wildest thing Margaret can ever remember
happening is someone eating lettuce while standing on his head.
"I was not gang raped. He did not
stand over me and laugh while he supervised the gang rape. He is completely incapable of that. I’ve never been raped or abused," she
says emphatically.
Margaret is bewildered by it all.
"I always thought that the worst thing that could affect us, apart
from death, is that if they went on drugs.
But, you know, if my daughter was on drugs I could understand her
behaviour, why she’s bizarre.
How can they do this to people’s minds?" Margaret cannot understand why
the counsellor accepted her daughter’s story without corroboration and allowed
her to confront the family with her damaging accusation.
"It’s just been a nightmare and it’s an ongoing one," she says.
"If there’s one thing that I have wanted all the way through this, it’s to
see the counsellor. I think we have the
right, don’t you?"
Presbyterian Support Services refuses to name the counsellor, claiming
confidentiality under the Privacy, Act, but did agree to meet Margaret. Since she was invited to bring a friend for
support, I went too, not disclosing that I was a journalist.
The meeting with human resources manager Lorraine Ward and counselling
supervisor Rod Sandal lasted two hours.
Margaret was again refused the name of her daughter’s counsellor. Nor was it possible for PSS to contact the
counsellor and ask if she would be willing to meet Margaret. The counsellor had since left and they could
see no point in contacting her.
"But I hear what you’re saying. You
are saying you’ve been hurt by all this," says Sandal reassuringly. Though her daughter’s counsellor did, nothing
unethical, Sandal admits that there may have been problem with
"containment’- in other words, whatever fantasies of abuse the client
entertains are okay as long as they are confined to the therapy sessions. (The
implications of this only strike me later - is it ethical and moral for a
counsellor to allow a client to build his or her recovery on the serious
calumny of someone else?)
"We work with what the client brings up, says Ward". So, if a client said they had been raped by
Jim Bolger and the entire cabinet, you wouldn’t say, ‘Hold
on a minute’?" I ask incredulously.
"No, because it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility," says
Ward. So you accept no responsibility
for what happened to Margaret and her family? "No, says Sandal. Neither is prepared to acknowledge that the
gang rape never happened. "We just
can’t do that" says Ward.
In real cases of sexual abuse it is a central tenet that experience must be
validated by others so that the abused person can heal. The reverse may also be true. Those, like Margaret, who
are falsely labelled as victims yearn to hear people say: "Yes, we believe
it never happened to you." Ever since her daughter made the
accusation, Margaret has longed for the opportunity to ask the counsellor if
she believed her daughter’s story. It is
a question that keeps nagging her.
A FEW DAYS after the unsatisfactory meeting with Presbyterian Support Services,
she obtains the name of the counsellor from an unofficial source. After 18 months of being fobbed off, it feels
like a major breakthrough. "I do
appreciate that under the Privacy Act there may be certain things you can’t
talk about" she says, when she finally makes contact by phone. "But I do have a vested interest. After all, I am supposed to be the victim. After the way my daughter reacted, I do feel
I have the right to know how she came by that belief and whether you believe
it."
"I’m sorry," says the confident voice. "You’ll have to contact Presbyterian
Support Services."
"I’ve already spoken to them. It’s
from you that I want to know."
"I was a trainee counsellor in that period of my life. I’m not involved in counselling anymore. I’m very sorry for you, but I can’t discuss
it." "I just want to know, did you believe?"
"I’m sorry, I’m going to put the phone down
now..."
[Mary and Margaret did not want to be identified in the story. Len, Julie and
Elsie Wade were happy to have their real names used because they said they had
nothing to hide, but the names of all the Wade family and some details were
changed on legal advice.]
Documented cases of recovered memory follow a predictable pattern. A woman in her
30s, who is suffering perhaps from depression or bulimia, goes to a counsellor.
She may be asked whether she has ever been physically or sexually abused. Sometimes
she will be requested to record her dreams, keep a journal or establish contact
with the "inner child". Techniques such as guided fantasy work, body
work or hypnotism may be used. After weeks or months of therapy, shadowy images
of abuse begin to form in her mind. As these "memories" are discussed
and clarified, they become more vivid and concrete. The face of the "offender"
may swim into focus. She may be recommended The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass
and Laura Davis. This self help book has become the incest survivor’s bible and
will confirm any suspicion of sexual abuse. "If you don’t remember your abuse,
you are not alone. Many women don’t have memories and some never get memories.
This doesn’t mean they weren’t abused ... If you think you were abused and your
life shows the symptoms, then you were, the authors
confidently assert.
Confronting the `abuser' is a central rite of passage for incest
survivors. It is not only therapeutic
but heroic. "You are challenging
the secrecy that is the foundation of abusive family structures. You are taking revolutionary steps towards
self-respect and respect for all children.
You are exercising your power. The inevitable result of confrontation is
acrimony, split families, wrecked lives and even prison sentences. If the literature is any guide, clients are
never given the common-sense warning about confrontation: you better be damned
sure you re right.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the authenticity of repressed or recovered memories
is deeply suspect. As Elizabeth Loftus, Professor of Psychology at the
If the memories are not real, where do they come from?
Contrary to popular belief, memory is not like a video-tape or a computer hard
disk. We reconstruct the past in our
brains, taking the facts and weaving them into coherent and plausible stories
that are recreated with each telling.
Emotion and imagination influence the memories. In experiments, Lotus and others have
demonstrated just how easy it is to create memories by suggestion. Though therapists will not admit that they
implant ideas about sexual abuse, Lotus remains unconvinced. Even if clinicians
are not the first to bring up sexual abuse, they will often reinforce what
begins as a mere suspicion."
In the jargon of recovered memory therapy, the therapists
may be 'in denial'. Lotus notes that a 1991 study, by psychiatric researcher
Sherrill Mulhern, documents `alarming discrepancies
that often exist between therapists’ accounts of what they have done in therapy
and what is revealed in video or audio tapes ‘of the same sessions'.
Despite the documented unreliability of recovered memories, people have been
imprisoned and families torn apart by accusations made without
corroboration. In the
But the tide appears to be turning. New books such as The Myth of Repressed Memory. by Elizabeth Loftus,
are adding to a groundswell of dissent by US academics. In June, the American Medical Association’s
Council of Scientific Affairs issued a report that concluded `The AMA considers
recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse to be of uncertain authenticity,
which should be subject to external verification. The use of recovered memories is fraught with
problems of misapplication ... Most controversial are those ‘memories’ that
surface only in therapy and those from either infancy or late childhood
(including adolescence).'
Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith, executive director of Cosa, believes the tide may
be turning here. ‘The problem is that
the training of therapists here has been, and still is, full of
misinformation. Research papers and
reputable data often don’t reach them because it’s considered to be part of the
backlash.'
Goodyear-Smith, one of the pioneers in the sexual abuse field, is considered
part of the backlash association with Centrepoint -
she is married to Bert Potter’s son John, who was imprisoned for indecent
assault - has led some to dismiss her arguments without examining their
validity.
Goodyear-Smith believes the problem lies not with the fantasies, but with the
counsellor’s acceptance of them. “The
counsellor should validate the feelings, but not the content. ‘I can’t know whether what you tell me
happened or not. But I can certainly
hear you’re suffering.”’ Yet, most therapists, impressed by their client’s
pain, tend to believe what they hear even when it touches on the bizarre. In two large-scale studies of therapists
dealing with satanic ritual abuse an "overall 93 percent of clinicians
believed that the alleged harm was actually done and that ritualistic aspects
were actually experienced by the client", says Loftus.
Goodyear-Smith believes that we’ve come a long way since the early 80s in
recognising that sexual abuse is tragically commonplace. But finding sexual abuse where it doesn’t
exist only undermines public credibility and redirects resources from real
sexual abuse victims. "To create
sexual abuse where there was none is potentially just as damaging and harmful
as actually being sexually abused", she adds. "Any therapist who’s doing it is causing
as much abuse as any abuser."