1996-0903 - NZ Herald - Counsellors abuse training full of nonsense

Child sex abuse hysteria and the Ellis case

NZ Herald
September 3, 1996.

Counsellors abuse training full of nonsense
Counsellors taught much that has no basis in science

Greg Newbold (Sociologist) and Gordon Waugh (Retired military officer)

Over the past decade or so, New Zealanders have become increasingly aware of an area of crime which for many years has been obscure: that of child sexual abuse. And as we have realised the size of the matter, so have we become concerned about the devastating effect that such abuse can have on the development and life chances of children.

As our knowledge of this topic has developed, we have also sought ways of combating this endemic problem. New Zealand is woefully short of experts able correctly to diagnose and treat genuine cases of child sexual abuse, and we are equally short of qualified people to train workers in the field.

Since 1992, the Mental Health Training Service at Green Lane Hospital -in Auckland has offered a course entitled "certificate in sexual abuse counselling - approaches to practice." An average of 50 people a year complete the training. It is the only Government-funded course of its type and it has accreditation from the Qualifications Authority.

It lasts 12 days, at the rate of one day a week. The training service claims that the programme is balanced and that it is "an introductory one which basically makes people aware of the different theories and methodologies in this field." It is also claimed that "academic freedom" to explore any valid subject is an important aspect.

With Government funding and Qualifications Authority endorsement, one might expect the course to conform to accepted standards of science and scholarship.

A perusal of the curriculum, supplied reading material, recommended reference texts and student lecture notes, however, raises doubt that these standards are being met. The concerns of a number of people who have seen this material and written about it to the Minister of Health are several.

First, students in the course are taught that "13 per cent of all American sexual abuse survivors are survivors of ritual abuse by satanic cults."

They are also instructed on "key words" such as magic surgery, marriage rituals, mind control, and forced perpetration, and on the ritualistic impregnation of children, and the birth, murder
and cannibalism of babies. The alleged perpetrators of such heinous acts are, they are told, "invariably very respected members of the community, usually part of institutions such as businesses, Churches and clubs."

These claims are unsupported by any research or facts, and they will encourage graduates in practice to arrive at outrageous conclusions when faced with everyday human problems.

Secondly, the course relies on such widely discredited books as Bass and Davis' Courage to Heal and Secret Survivors, among others. These titles promote the idea that it is common for sexual abuse victims to repress memories of childhood sexual abuse which can then be recovered years or decades later by appropriate therapy.

Repressed memory is, in fact, one of the core themes of the course. One reading, titled, Treatment of Women Sexually Abused in Childhood: Guidelines for the Beginning Therapist, claims that, "between 19 per cent and 45 per cent of adult women have [a history of childhood sexual abuse]" and that "most women with severe abuse histories have repressed all or part of their experience."

Examples are given of a woman who had intense headaches, a woman who suffered from nausea, a woman who had rages against her husband. All "discovered" under therapy that their problems were caused by repressed memories of child abuse.

Another reading, Facing the Truth About False Memory, tells of a man whose sexual relationships kept failing and who "discovered," after more than six months of therapy, that he had been sexually abused by his older cousin.

One young woman took almost a year of therapy to recall that her airline pilot father and his "flying buddies" had gang-raped her at the age of six. Her mother never noticed.

This material is presented in spite of the fact that scientific evidence for a mechanism for repressed memory is totally lacking. A growing catalogue of former therapeutic clients now realise that their "memories" of abuse produced during therapy were false.

A number of American therapists have been successfully sued for implanting memories in clients about things that never happened, and courts in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand now regularly reject testimony based on so-called "repressed memories."

Aware of its unreliability, in 1994 the American Medical Association, and in 1996 the Canadian Psychiatric Association, both strongly and clearly warned against the use of "recovered memory therapy."

Thirdly, although there is no scientific evidence to suggest a causal link between sexual abuse and any specific psychiatric or psychological condition, students are taught to recognise at least 40 possible "indicators" or "symptoms" of sexual abuse. A small sample of these includes low self-esteem, bed-wetting, promiscuity, frigidity, impotence, unwanted pregnancy, prostitution, addiction, sleeping too much or too little, unspecified relationship difficulties and nightmares.

The list of "indicators" is so broad that it could be applied to almost anyone on the planet. To assume these problems commonly arise from childhood sexual abuse is nonsense.

Finally, emphasis is given in the course to the necessity of uncritically accepting the validity of a child or adult's allegations (whether elicited before or after therapy). Courage to Heal, for example, informs the reader that "Many women don't have memories [of abuse] — this doesn't mean they weren't abused . . . If you are unable to remember any specific instances . . . but still have a feeling something abusive happened to you, it probably did . . . You must believe your client was abused, even if she doubts it herself."

Students doing the "certificate" are taught that children and adults are rarely mistaken when they talk about sexual abuse. But we know that they are often mistaken.

There is now undeniable clinical proof, from New Zealand and the United States, that young children who are subjected to repeated questioning or to certain verbal and non-verbal cues can be induced to say almost anything. They can also easily be persuaded to believe that things happened which never happened at all. So can adults.

Many of the allegations made by child and adult "survivors" of satanic abuse, both here and overseas, have been ho less preposterous than those of the medieval witch crazes five centuries ago.

In her reply to several members of the public (including the authors) who expressed concerns about the Green Lane course, an Associate Minister of Health, Katherine O'Regan, suggests that its critics have misunderstood it. She declares that the course is "professionally designed, delivered, accredited and monitored," and concludes that there is no need for further investigation.

The Associate Minister's general and non-specific response to such an important issue is unsatisfactory. The public has a right to expect that any person working in the complex, sensitive and emotionally charged area of sexual abuse will have been trained on the basis of scientific, ethical and testable knowledge.

It also has the right to expect that any publicly funded training programme, particularly if it carries the Qualifications Authority credential, will withstand the tests of ordinary common sense and professional scrutiny.

The Mental Health Training Service programme presents a strange paradox. At its best it provides students with useful information about the detection, treatment and prevention of child abuse in families. At its worst it exposes them to a panorama of supposition, distortion, fantasy and fallacy.

It is this aspect of the programme which is dangerous. The damage which the application of pseudoscience can do to clients and to those whom the clients may implicate, is immeasurable.

Already, innocent New Zealand families have been torn apart by unfounded allegations of sexual abuse made on the basis of "recovered memories" by disturbed people after counselling by zealous, misguided and poorly trained therapists. Such counsellors have been unable to distinguish good sense from nonsense.

Aspects of the certificate in sexual abuse counselling course thus propagate a pernicious dogma. By funding the course in its present form, the Ministry of Health endows belief systems which we know to be false with an undeserved mantle of credibility.

For this there is no excuse. No responsible Government can allow cant and fantasy to invade an area so greatly in need of reason and sobriety. The public purse, the public good, and the credibility of the psychotherapeutic profession itself, all demand that our health system become responsive to the wisdom of contemporary science.

As it does that, it must eradicate the madness from the sexual abuse industry.

Keypoints

The country's only Government-funded centres for training sexual abuse counsellors uses material that may be unscientific.

Study texts talk of satanic practices and promote belief in "repressed memory" which can be "recovered" under therapy.

North American authorities warn against recovered memory therapy.

The course regards some very common behaviour as “indicators” of sexual abuse. It encourages allegations to be accepted uncritically.

The course has been approved by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

The public has a right to expect that anyone working in the area of sexual abuse will have received training that is scientifically sound.

* The Mental Health Training Service declined an invitation to answer this article.

* Gordon Waugh is a foundation member of Casualties of Sexual Allegations; Greg Newbold is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Canterbury.