The Memory Illusion

by Dr Julia Shaw

  That evening, Sunday 2 September, Murray’s mother calls a Department of Social Services hotline and reports that Amirault had taken her son to a secret room and molested him. The Department of Social Services and the Malden police begin to question Murray. They ask him about the event, but the little boy is unable to explain where the abuse happened or what else happened besides Amirault pulling down his pants and touching his penis.

  Gerald Amirault is arrested the following day and charged with rape. Over the next week the police go to the day-care centre and request a list of all the children registered there. Is it possible that Amirault molested other children as well? They interview a number of other children, most of whom, according to the court files, claimed that nothing had ever happened.

  At this point, the story hits the media, and parental concern spreads. On 12 September the police call a meeting with the parents of the children enrolled at the centre. Over a hundred parents attend. The parents are informed about the situation. Panic ensues. Social workers are on hand, and distribute a list of behavioural symptoms that indicate sexual abuse. Parents are told to report if their child is experiencing them so that they can be interviewed by a professional in a safe environment. This list of symptoms includes things such as bed-wetting, nightmares, poor appetite and crying on the way to school.

  Some of the children meet the criteria. The police give more instructions. The parents are told to ask their children repeatedly and persistently about the abuse. They are told that if the children deny that abuse happened, they should not necessarily believe them. According to some of those who were there, the police explicitly say ‘God forbid any of you should show support for the accused. Your children may never forgive you.’

  Forty more children are soon identified as victims. Nineteen of them are then interviewed by Susan Kelley, a paediatric nurse who is brought into the investigation because she has published extensively about the horrors of child sexual and satanic abuse. Many of the children initially refute the allegations, but Kelley claims that these children are simply not yet at a point where they are ready to disclose. To create a safe space she uses Bert and Ernie puppets, along with anatomically correct dolls, to talk to and repeatedly encourage the children to disclose the horrors they have suffered.

  According to the court files, the children then come to describe in vivid detail the unimaginable ways they were violated. They claim to have had nude swimming parties, and that they were taken to a ‘magic room’ by a bad clown. According to their statements this ‘bad clown’ would ‘throw fire around the room’ while abusing them, and would molest them with his magic wand. They also describe that there was a ‘robot like R2D2’ from Star Wars who would bite them on the arm if they did not go along with sexual requests. They claim to have been molested by lobsters. They claim to have watched animal sacrifices. One of them, a little four-year-old girl, claims that she had a 12-inch butcher’s knife inserted into her vagina.

  This is only part of the Fells Acres Day Care Center case. There were further accusations. Others were implicated. Many of the children gave testimony and Gerald Amirault was convicted of abuse and sentenced to decades in prison. His mother and sister, Violet and Cheryl, who also worked at the centre, were convicted of similar crimes. All three defendants had denied any wrongdoing. The kind of abuse outlined in the case, if true, is utterly horrific and of course the idea of a victim going unheard after such suffering is appalling. However, cases like this have drawn considerable concern from experts on account of the manner in which the testimony was obtained from the children involved, especially where there is a lack of corroborating evidence.

  In 1998 Judge Isaac Borenstein voiced a number of concerns about the Fells Acres case, concerns which led him to overturn Violet and Cheryl’s convictions. In his ruling in Commonwealth v. LeFave (1998) Borenstein stated outright: ‘Overzealous and inadequately trained investigators, perhaps unaware of the grave dangers of using improper interviewing and investigative techniques, questioned these children and parents in a climate of panic, if not hysteria, creating a highly prejudicial and irreparable set of mistakes. These grave errors led to the testimony of the children being forever tainted.’2 Gerald Amirault’s conviction was not overturned but he was eventually released on parole from the Bay State Correctional Center in 2004. His mother and sister faced further legal wrangling over their convictions even after their release. Gerald and Cheryl Amirault have maintained their innocence throughout. Violet Amirault died in 1997.

  I can’t tell you what really happened in this case but I do consider it to be such a confluence of problematic memory-related techniques that I want to pick it apart for you, and hopefully shed some light on how we can avoid such a mess in the future. Let’s examine a few critical pieces that build on what we have learned already about the malleability of memory. Consider the pieces of the memory puzzle that are known to allow false memories of traumatic events, such as sexual abuse, to happen. These include a lack of scepticism, assumptions about ‘symptoms’ of sexual abuse, presumptions of guilt, scientific illiteracy and even, bizarre as it sounds, the presumption of the existence of underground satanic abuse rings.

  Sceptics

  Let’s look at those issues one at a time, beginning with scepticism. Being a sceptic means seeking evidence to support claims, rather than just assuming them to be true. Being a sceptic is different from being a critic, as critics are actively trying to find fault in an argument, while sceptics are looking for evidence both for and against a claim. What we can be sure of in the Fells Acre case is that at the time of the allegations most of those conducting the investigation were not sceptics.

  One of the teachers who used to work at the centre, and was interviewed by journalist Charles Sennott, claimed ‘They scared the hell out of me … The whole thing was geared toward convicting them, no one was asking, “Do you think this really happened?” No one wanted to hear anything that was common sense.’ Rather than scepticism about the fantastical stories of clowns, robots and lobsters molesting the children, the interviewers assumed that these were reasonable descriptions by young children who did not understand their experiences. A burden of proof was dismissed in favour of an explanation that fit the desire to catch predators that were assumed to exist.

  In this case, there really was a shocking lack of evidence. Some of the allegations, including the horrific account involving the butcher’s knife, should have left wounds or scars. Yet there were no scars or suspicious injuries on any of the children. It would have also been reasonable to assume that if such heinous atrocities were repeatedly occurring, some of the other teachers might have noticed something amiss. But no confirmatory accounts were provided by any other teachers. The supposed ‘magic room’ the children described was never identified. When the videos of the interviews by the police and the therapist were reviewed later, investigators could see that the children almost always denied the abuse initially, but were encouraged with toys and led by suggestive interviewing until they gave the answer that seemed to suggest abuse.

  According to psychologist Maggie Bruck from Johns Hopkins University, who has conducted extensive research on interview tactics that can lead to children fabricating stories, ‘It is beyond me to tell you whether these children in the Amirault case were telling the truth or not. But I can tell you the questioning was a highly suggestive interrogation process and in that context, our research shows, children fabricate stories.’ If we apply what we learned in previous chapters, we can see how the investigative techniques used here were leading and suggestive, and were combined with the kinds of imagination exercises that are known to create false memories.

  These issues were ignored, probably because the accounts given by the children were detailed and emotional. Of course when a case involves allegations of such appalling abuse it is important to give credence to potential victims, but to have blind faith in memory accounts is ill-advised. Even vocal critics of the case who believe that the abuse never hap
pened do not say that the children were lying, just that they had their memories misled. As we know from the literature on false memories that has been discussed throughout this book, false memories often look and feel real, and since they are not a form of lying, are unlikely to look deceptive.

  So, problematic interview techniques were used which call the accusations into question. This is easy to judge through the lens of hindsight, when errors of non-sceptical thinking may be easy to see. However, if our children, friends, or family came to us with allegations of gross indecency, would we not react in the same way? Allegations would probably lead to assumptions; assumptions would lead to visceral responses. ‘Catch the monster!’ we would likely cry. We would not want to rest until the culprit was found and put away. We would likely pay little credence to the possibility that our loved one could unintentionally generate a rich false memory of such a traumatic event. Never mind a memory so incredibly detailed.

  Built into this case, and many others, is the assumption that we can tell, based on someone’s behaviour or emotions, that they have been sexually abused. But can we?

  Sexual abuse accommodation syndrome

  In the Fells Acres case, the little boy Murray was judged to be showing signs of having been sexually abused. These signs included bad behaviour, sexualised play, and bed-wetting. The assumption of behavioural symptoms of abuse was further endorsed when the other parents at the day-care centre were given a list of symptoms regarding what to watch out for in their children. According to one of the parents ‘They had a list in the newspaper, what you look for when a child has been sexually abused … The sleepless nights, the nightmares, the bedwetting.’

  All this is not surprising, given that in 1983 there were some important changes in legislation regarding the reporting of child sexual abuse in the US, and in the same year the ‘sexual abuse accommodation syndrome’ was proposed.

  Sexual abuse accommodation syndrome was a concept first published by medical doctor Roland Summit.3 Summit wanted to create a model for use in light of the increased awareness and concerns regarding sexual abuse at the time. He had a number of ideas, including some directly related to the disclosure of sexual abuse by children in interviews. He claimed that because of the traumatic effects of sexual abuse, children would suffer a number of psychological consequences, including shame, embarassment, allegiance to the perpetrator, and a sense of responsibility for the event. Because of these psychological responses, Summit claimed that children would often delay the disclosure of abuse, deny the abuse, and recant their allegations. According to psychological scientist Kamala London from the University of Toledo and her colleagues in a study published in 2008,4 ‘Summit’s 1983 paper has exerted a tremendous influence on forensic interview practices’.

  The paper was particularly influential for therapists like those involved in the Fells Acres case. This meant that the initial denial of sexual abuse by almost all the children in the case was seen as a psychological defence mechanism that was to be ignored, and the assumption of abuse was sustained despite a lack of allegations. Renee Brandt, the lead therapist who assisted the children’s interviews, said in court during the trial against Gerald Amirault that it was normal for a child not to admit abuse right away, and that ‘a child begins to disclose the sexual abuse and there is less repression of this material in their mind. So that it is very often the case that symptoms will either appear for the first time or, even if they were present, become quite exaggerated’.5

  So, what is the evidence for this model, which supports the idea of this abuse denial? Kamala London and her colleagues reviewed how children disclose sexual abuse to others. They summarised the evidence across dozens of studies and found that ‘among valid abuse cases undergoing forensic evaluation, denial and recantation are not common’. They claim that the scientific literature does not support the model proposed by Summit, because they found a ‘dearth of empirical support’. In other words, the idea that children often deny abuse when confronted about it is largely a myth.

  Further, London and her team claim that the kinds of symptoms that are often assumed to be indicative of child sexual abuse are not useful because ‘psychological and medical profiles do not reliably differentiate abused and non-abused children’. They specifically say that the kinds of behaviours that may be related to abuse, such as anxiety, bed-wetting, and sexualised play, ‘are also present in many non-abused children’.

  Yet, the assumption that there are reliable symptoms of abuse continues to be persuasive. For example, the 2016 website of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the UK has a list of symptoms supposedly indicative of abuse. The list includes things such as ‘Acts out excessive violence with other children’, ‘Poor school attendance and punctuality’, and ‘Wets or soils the bed’.6 It is of course true that these symptoms may be associated with abuse but it is important to emphasise that it is also perfectly possible that they are not.

  A 1993 study by psychological scientist Kathleen Kendall-Tackett7 and her colleagues from the University of New Hampshire synthesised the research on individual types of risk factors, and provided clear evidence that after experiencing sexual abuse, children do indeed display certain symptoms. For example, on average 33 per cent of those who had experienced sexual abuse displayed some sort of fear, 53 per cent showed general symptoms of PTSD, and 28 per cent showed inappropriate sexual behaviour.

  However, critically, approximately a third of the children across the various studies they examined showed no symptoms at all. This means that while many children may display symptoms often associated with abuse, there are no symptoms that are universal, and many children don’t meet this framework at all. According to the authors, once again, ‘The findings suggest the absence of any specific “sexually-abused-child syndrome” and no single traumatizing process.’ In other words, we should not ever make an assumption that a child was abused simply because of their behaviour, there are simply too many other reasons that have nothing to do with sexual abuse that can explain why a particular child may be disruptive, violent, play truant from school, or wet the bed. Assuming that these are reliable symptoms can heavily influence the way interviews are conducted, potentially leading to the police using – albeit perhaps unintentionally – suggestive and leading questioning techniques, in an attempt to make the child disclose the abuse.

  Another idea that fed into the Fells Acres case, as well as many others, is that of a hidden world of satanic ritual abuse. This theory was incredibly prevalent at the time, and continues to be relevant in some parts of the world today. Let us explore this next.

  Satanic panic

  More than once have problematic lines of legal inquiry led to very specific accusations of satanic sexual abuse perpetrated by childminders against young children. A whole slew of accusations related to paedophilic sex rings took shape particularly during what became known as the ‘satanic panic’– the day-care sex abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s that ended up affecting parents and police all over the world. Few things have contributed so much to the satanic abuse hype as the bestselling book Michelle Remembers by Michelle Smith and Dr Lawrence Pazder.8

  The book was a smash hit when it came out in 1980. It chronicles the real-life therapy sessions which took place between Pazder, a psychiatrist, and Smith, his patient. Smith apparently had begun to see Pazder in 1973 in his private practice in Victoria, Canada. During the course of her regular visits – Smith was being treated for post-miscarriage depression – she told Pazder that she felt she had something important to disclose but was unable to remember it. This strange forgotten event seemed important to the good doctor, so much so that over the next 14 months Pazder allegedly dedicated over 600 hours to trying to help Michelle remember her forgotten past using hypnosis.

  And remember she did. In one of her therapy sessions she apparently screamed for 25 minutes and started to speak in the voice of a five-year-old. She began to recall abuse, satanic ritual abuse, perpetr
ated by her late mother and others who she claimed were part of a satanic cult in Victoria. She remembered that as a five-year-old she was tortured, sexually assaulted, locked in cages and forced to partake in horrendous rites, and witnessed ritualistic murders. She even remembered being covered in blood and being rubbed with the dismembered body parts of babies and adults who had been sacrificed.

  When the book came out it caused a sensation and started a public discussion about the notion of accessing long-forgotten memories in therapy – particularly of ritualistic sexual abuse. It also started a conversation about the alleged increasing problem of satanism and this particular kind of abuse. Following its release there was a surge in alleged victims of satanic ritual abuse coming forward, and lawyers who were preparing their cases against the alleged satanists in such cases used the book as an informative resource. It was even used as training material for social workers. Pazder went on to become a key figure in psychology, an expert in the field of this growing issue. The book was widely considered important, timely and accurate.

  Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, given the lurid claims it makes – it seems that the whole story was bogus. The book has since been repeatedly discredited by journalists and investigators, who found no corroborating evidence for the allegations it contains. Surviving family members refuted those allegations. Many of the events that supposedly occurred are incredibly unlikely or even impossible, and inconsistencies abound. The account which set an entire generation of allegations into motion seems likely to have been based on a writer’s imagination.

  One of the leading researchers on false memory, Elizabeth Loftus, wrote a number of review articles in response to this bout of sexual abuse hysteria. In one classic article, entitled ‘Who abused Jane Doe?’,9 along with her colleague Melvin Guyer, Loftus argues that there is no science to support the therapeutic techniques, including hypnosis and regression, used in these kinds of cases. She claims that the evidence that these therapists, and proponents of recovered memory therapy, rely on is highly questionable, because there is no evidence that repressed memories exist in the first place. This is something we will explore shortly.