Child sex abuse hysteria and the Ellis case


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New Zealand Listener
November 12 1994
Vol 146 No 2848):16-24

Accused!
by Noel O'Hare


Note peterellis.org.nz:
Gordon and Colleen Waugh have given permission to be identified as the real names for "Len" and "Julie Wade” referred to in this article



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 Europe and when I got back I got a little note from Rod with photographs of the children.  The letter was just as if nothing had happened.  It was a very sweet note, but I just couldn’t answer it.  I really didn’t want anything to do with him."

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 Australia to visit Rod and his family; a trip that filled her with some trepidation.  She had not seen her son since his accusations. How would he react if she mentioned it? She was on the visit to her son when she died suddenly a week later.

"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 Auckland last month, a 59 year-old man was acquitted on charges of sexually abusing three of his four daughters.  The charges were based on memories recovered in therapy.  The allegations destroyed the family and cost him $117,000 in legal fees.  For every allegation that gets to court, there are many others that do not, but they still wreak quiet havoc in a family.  The Wades are just such a family.  The evening of May 6, 1992 is engraved on Len Wade’s memory.  "My daughter came home, sat me down and told me this absolutely horrific tale, of abuse that I had allegedly perpetrated on her." Among the charges levelled at him and his wife Julie was that he had arranged for a family friend to rape her when she was 1 and that Julie knew and condoned it.  He had also indecently assaulted her on many occasions.  "She told me that ‘I had touched her inappropriately by fondling her breasts and had therefore committed incest with her’." Two months earlier Sandra had become depressed and had gone to a counsellor.  Her sister Maureen had also gone with her to lend support.  According to Len and Julie, the sexual abuse incidents had been recovered in therapy.  "Sandra told me her counsellor had advised her to confront me with these ‘secrets’ so that she, Sandra, would be free of them and I would have to deal with them as best I could.  If I went to the counsellor and confessed my ‘sins’, then I too could be helped."

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 Australia for her and her daughter.  "We have always given our daughters whatever they wanted," says Julie.  "If we are to be blamed for some crime, the crime is loving those kids and giving them whatever they asked for financially, physically, emotionally. They had only to say, ‘Mum, can I have something?’ and I’d say, ‘Yep.’ Because, fortunately, we could afford it."

"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 Australia, for instance.

"I went to Australia on their advice . I’m fed up with this nonsense.  They can’t get over it.  They can’t do anything constructive to help themselves or their families.  Look, I spoke to my mother when I was 12 years old.  And I’ve spoken to her many times since.  Her constant answer was, ‘Oh he didn’t mean it like that.’ Tell me what did he mean it like? What did he do that he didn’t mean?"

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 Australia, I bloody went to Australia.  When they said come home, I came home.  If they said jump, I’d say how high? I might have protested about it, but they were still controlling me.  I had no life of my own.  I did what they told me.  You didn’t live in it, you weren’t subjected to all the bloody threats and the beatings and the whole bloody works that goes with it.  Of course you wouldn’t understand.  The last two and half years I have had my life to myself and it’s been the best years of my life.  And if anybody, but anybody, goes to ruin it, I’ll fight to the death."


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 Wellington Hospital.  After making inquiries, the hospital told her that they were happy to leave her in the care of the counsellor, who was a middle-aged woman with a high success rate.  Inquiries to the Presbyterian Support Services led nowhere.  "Nobody wanted to talk to us.  Everywhere we went a door slammed in our face.  Believe me, we were treated like the enemy."

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 University of Washington and an acknowledged expert in memory, has pointed out, there are few studies that actually support the theory of repressed memory. Moreover, each of these oft-quoted studies is flawed. Most research suggests that, far from repressing traumatic memories, people have difficulty forgetting them. Says Harvard psychiatrist Dr Harrison Pope: "In a study of 16 children who witnessed a parent murdered, all 16 remembered the murder vividly. In studies of children kidnapped on a school bus, children involved in a sniper attack, and in survivors of marine disasters, concentration camps and war atrocities, all of the individuals remembered the events, often in painful detail.  Rather than having amnesia, they seem to have hypernesia for the events."

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 US, about 14,000 families have contacted the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, set up to aid victims of false allegations.  In New Zealand, Cosa (Casualties of Sexual Allegations) knows of at least 50 families affected, and suspects there are many more.

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."