COSA Casualties of Sexual Allegations Newsletter September / October 1997 Volume 4 No 8
Contents of this page:
Editorial: Sexual abuse of boys & men
On 5 and 6 September about 300 people attended a DSAC conference entitled "Sexual
abuse of males: New Zealand’s untold story". A cynic might think that the
conference was really about "Sexual abuse of males: New Zealand’s untapped
market".
Courts: False claim by 11 year old girl
Man charged and
convicted of assaulting girl-friend despite her refusal to testify against him.
Police finally
admit Dougherty innocent
Hung jury for
surgeon Tony Guy
Judge commends
mother for not inflicting counselling on her daughter
Woman compensated
$5.8 million for therapist-implanted false memories (USA).
Justice Neeley
of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals: "We now have a system in which a
female parent need only scream child abuse in a loud voice to keep the male parent from
seeing a child. Indeed, sexual abuse these days seems to arouse all the hysteria that was
associated with witchcraft in yesteryear." (USA).
Appeal Court
dismisses Holly Ramona’s case against her father (USA).
‘Dream’
testimony rejected by court (USA).
Media: Ex-policeman seeking truth Retired
police superintendent Bryan Rowe, now working as a private investigator, has been shocked
by evidence of poorly conducted police investigations which are resulting in wrongful
arrests and convictions.
Study disputes
effects of sex abuse The Otago Medical School study of 500 Dunedin women, half of whom
reported past sexual abuse, found that about 75% who gave a sexual abuse history suffered
no measurable mental health problems in later life.
Mental Health
Training Service closed
Workers to be
checked for "sexual abuse risk" (Australia).
More therapist
implanted false memories (Australia).
Counselling
is not effective (UK).
Teenagers
branded ’sex offender’ for life (UK).
British boy
granted Canadian refugee status on basis of unsubstantiated abuse claims
Jury backs
pseudo-science (USA).
$26 million
compensation for wrongful sexual harassment dismissal (USA).
Violet Amirault
has died of cancer (USA).
Professor
fired for saying paedophilia not inevitably harmful (UK).
Literature: How suggestible are pre-school
children? Cognitive and social factors.
Do therapist
experience, diagnosis and functional level predict outcome in short term psychotherapy?
Unusual
flashbacks in a Vietnam veteran
Flashback
phenomena in survivors of childhood sexual abuse: a four-stage treatment model.
Admissibility
and per se exclusion of hypnotically elicited recall in American courts of law
The Silence of
the Screams: violence by women in intimate relationships. (Australia).
Creating false memories
- Elizabeth Loftus.
Feminists and false
memories: a case of postmodern amnesia
The creation of Satanic
ritual abuse
Rape & Sexual Abuse in New
Zealand 1992 -1996 clients National Collective of Rape Crisis & Related
Groups of Aotearoa Inc.
Delayed traumatic recall in
adults: A synthesis with legal, clinical, and forensic recommendations.
Memory, repression and child
sexual abuse: forensic implications for the mental health professional.
Psychoanalytic
Dialogues This issue is devoted to a symposium on the false memory
controversy, with opinions ranging from those of Jody Davies, who asks whether there is
any proof that "a false memory of parental sexual abuse even exists" to
Frederick Crews, who expresses scepticism about the reliability of recovered memories.
Issues In
Child Abuse Accusations This issue includes an article by Judith Adams on
‘Interviewing methods and hearsay testimony in suspected child abuse cases: questions
of accuracy’, which summarises interviewing techniques which may compromise the
reliability of children’s testimony.
Multiple
personality disorder: fact or artefact?
Collective delusions: a
skeptic’s guide
Breaking the
cycle: an interagency guide to child abuse This is a review of the 1997 edition of the
CYPS manual, written for health and education professionals and community workers to
explain to them what they should do if they have concerns that a child might be being
abused or neglected.
Gordon
Waugh’s award-winning Letter to the Editor, North & South magazine, October
1997. "Let’s not kid ourselves. Allegations of sexual abuse are used as weapons, and
as levers to gain advantage."
Recent events: Two
one-day workshops by Dr Michael Yakpo; ‘Integrating hypnosis with brief therapy’ &
‘Hypnosis and the treatment of depression".
Coming events: Constance
Dalenberg, clinical psychologist 4 one-day seminars on ‘Transference &
counter-transference in trauma focused therapy’, sponsored by DSAC.
Editorial
Double issue
Owing to winter ailments and afflictions in COSA executive households,
we were unable to put out a COSA newsletter last month. To compensate, here is a bumper
issue covering the news and information accumulated over the past two months.
Sexual abuse of boys & men
On 5 and 6 September about 300 people attended a DSAC conference
entitled "Sexual abuse of males: New Zealand’s untold story". A cynic might
think that the conference was really about "Sexual abuse of males: New Zealand’s
untapped market". While in no way wishing to deny that men and boys can and are
sexually assaulted, and that this can at times have a devastating effect on them, in my
opinion this conference presented a grossly exaggerated distorted view of the problem.
The overall message was that about one in 7 males are sexually abused,
but most goes unreported. Boys and men tend to deny and minimise the abuse. It was
emphasised that workers in all sorts of agencies, from psychiatric in-patients to
probation officers, should routinely ask their clients whether they have been sexually
abused. The assumption was made that if they answered yes, they should all be offered
counselling to deal with it, most of which would be covered by ACC.
The seminar began with 2 men telling their stories about having been
sexually abused. One of them, "Sam" [not his real name], told how he had spent
20 years in the armed forces; got into trouble and eventually ended up living on the
streets abusing alcohol. He then attended a therapist who helped him to access his early
memories, and in fact took him right back to the womb. He discovered that underneath
apparently false memories of a happy childhood were real memories of terrible sexual abuse
and rape by his step-father, which had continued for several years.
Throughout the conference, the two men who had told their stories
received accolades for their bravery in sharing their trauma with us.
Auckland University psychology lecturer John Read presented
epidemiological figures suggesting an incidence of male sexual abuse up to 15%, although
he did not define the term "sexual abuse" at any point. From the studies he
quoted, it appears that he is using a very broad definition (including visual exposure to
sexual acts, sexual harassment, unwanted genital touching through to anal and oral sexual
assault).
He felt that the recent NZ cohort study published by Fergusson (which
gave a figure of 4.3% unwanted sexual experiences including non-contact) was probably an
under-estimate, and stated that the figure was likely to be at least twice that. He
credited COSA and FMSF for much of the cause of the overwhelming under-reporting, because
our media propaganda about an epidemic of false allegations meant that boys and men feared
that they would not be believed.
He emphasised that sexual abuse should be routinely asked about -
he had repressed memories of his own abuse for 10 years, and he could have been spared
much pain had someone asked.
Read believes that sexual abuse is a major cause of psychosis, and is
concerned that these people are being treated with drugs instead of counselling.
In a panel discussion about statistics, the agencies involved
(including ACC; police; CYPS) claimed that most male abuse goes unreported. Sensitive
claims manager Eric Metcalf stated that ACC was only seeing "the tip of the
iceberg" - of the 8500 claims made in the past year (Jul 96 to Jul 97) 18%
(1530) were male, and he was worried that not everyone was getting the help to which they
are entitled. Police representative Wendy Miller-Burgering was concerned that the police
figures were even lower, meaning that many who made ACC claims were not reporting these
crimes to the police.
Visiting American psychologists John Briere and his wife Cheryl
Lanktree emphasised the negative sequelae of abuse (suicide, alcohol abuse, anxiety and
depression, adult violence, difficulties with sexual identity). The need for early
identification and treatment was seen as paramount - it was assumed that therapy can
prevent these effects, and Lanktree expressed concern that if sexually abused boys do not
disclose, they may repress their memories as adults. It should be noted that to my
knowledge, no studies yet have been conducted which indicate that psychotherapy
interventions make any positive difference at all in this situation.
Some boys and men are sexually assaulted by women (sadly an adolescent
boy might deny or "romanticise" the harmful effects of sex with an older woman),
and some offenders are homosexual. However Briere claimed that the vast majority of
offenders are heterosexual males who rape weaker males as punishment or to exert social
dominance.
Briere expressed the view that all men are innate sexual aggressors.
The good news though is that with the correct parenting, and sometimes with
"sensitisation" to the pain of others from having survived own’s sexual
trauma, men can learn to control their violent selves and acquire more feminine qualities,
which Briere believes are good things in a man. I personally have grave concerns about an
ideology which views men as inherently bad and women as inherently good.
False allegations were not addressed at this conference. On the odd
occasion it was mentioned, it was to emphasis that this is a very rare phenomenon. The
conference recommended that men and boys presenting to health and law-enforcement agencies
should be asked about sexual abuse, and when disclosed, it should be assumed to be true.
No-one even mentioned the possibility of over-reporting which might result from such a
strategy.
A long list of areas requiring vastly increased resourcing,
particularly counselling, policing, and education, was drawn up. Everyone agreed that this
new problem everyone had identified was going to create a lot more work, and government
lobbying was required to fund it.
Felicity Goodyear-Smith
Courts
New Zealand
False claim by 11 year old girl
A police investigation into an alleged attack on an 11 year old girl
was called off after it was discovered that the complaint was false. The girl had claimed
that a man jumped out at her from the bushes. The police constable involved said she made
the claim to get attention.
(North Shore Times Advertiser (12 Aug 1997) ‘False
claim’)
Man charged and convicted of assaulting
girl-friend despite her refusal to testify against him
Last year the police took out a protection order for a 20 year old
woman without her knowledge. Her partner, Stephen Worth, had been accused of domestic
violence against her in the past, and the police subsequently removed him from their home
without her agreement. She refused to testify against him in court but he was found guilty
and sentenced to 15 months prison.
In the High Court in August he appealed his conviction, but lost. His
lawyer told the court: "There was a complete absence of complainant evidence, a
complete absence of any eyewitness to the assault and complete absence of any admissions
whatsoever by the appellant".
(NZ Herald, ‘Partner assault appeal rejected’.)
Police finally admit Dougherty innocent
In April this year David Dougherty was acquitted at his second trial
after serving more than 3 years in prison for a crime he did not commit (see COSA
newsletters May & Sep 1996; May, Jun, Jul & Aug 1997).
Despite identifying that semen found on the underpants of the 11 year
old victim was not Dougherty’s but came from some other man, they still chose to
believe that he was the offender because he had been identified by the victim.
A review just completed by South Auckland CIB Chief Kel McMinn found
that the police investigation was deficient, and has finally admitted that the stain on
the girl’s clothing could not have come from Dougherty. This is a major shift by the
police, and means that finally they will start to look for the real offender, whose DNA
profile they know. This is 5 years after the abduction and rape occurred.
A former detective who worked on the case, Eric Tannion, claims that
any errors in police investigation was due to their "limited resources" not
incompetence.
(Sunday Star-Times (14 Sep 1997). ‘Police admit inquiry
defective’ by Donna Chisholm; New Zealand Herald (15 Sep 1997).
‘resources get blame’)
Hung jury for surgeon Tony Guy
ENT surgeon Tony Guy has been accused of indecently touching 5 girls or
young women when he treated them between 1987 and 1991. None of them made any complaint
until years later, when they heard suggestions via the media that Guy had indecently
assaulted patients.
Guy has always maintained that he touched their groins and under their
arms as part of a medical examination, checking their glands for enlargement. Such an
examination is recommended practice in checking for conditions such as glandular fever,
which might also cause ear and throat problems. He has adamantly denied any touching for
his own sexual gratification. Another of his patients testified on his behalf that he had
done these sort of examinations on her, but had never acted with impropriety.
After over 13 hours of deliberation, a Christchurch District Court jury
was unable to reach a verdict last August. Guy was remanded on bail pending a retrial.
(Christchurch Press, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 26, 30 Jul; 1, 6, Aug
1997; NZ Herald 7 Aug 97)
Judge commends mother for not inflicting
counselling on her daughter
Jeremy Kilpatrick, a 20 year-old farm worker, admitted to performing an
indecent act on a six-year-old girl this month and was sentenced to 8 months periodic
detention and 12 months supervision, plus completion of a sexual-offenders programme.
The Christchurch District Court judge, Stephen Erber, praised the
girl’s mother for not "inflicting" counselling on her daughter after the abuse.
Judge Erber said the abuse was a one-off incident and involved nothing worse than
touching. "The mother seems to have been extremely sensible and the girl hasn’t had
counselling inflicted on her so as to bring matters back her recollection," the judge
said. There seemed a good chance there would be no adverse effects.
Not surprisingly, his comments drew an angry response from at least one
counsellor, who wrote to the editor of a newspaper who reported it that "Judge
Erber’s comments encourage minimisation and denial of the effects on children of indecent
acts."
The Press, Christchurch (10 Sep 1997). ‘Parent Praised In
Abuse Case’;
The Press, Christchurch (11 Sep 1997). ‘Letters To The
Editor: Counselling’, Judy Donaldson Campbell Centre Presbyterian Support.
Australia
Guilty until proven innocent?
Woody Allen has always claimed that he is innocent of allegations that
he sexually abused his daughter, Dylan, when she was seven. The allegations had arisen in
the context of a custody dispute with his ex-wife, Mia Farrow.
In 1993 prosecutor Frank Maco told reporters that he had evidence Allen
had sexually abused his daughter but was choosing not to prosecute for the girl’s sake.
Allen lodged a complaint, saying that there was no way to clear his name against these
unfounded allegations.
In July this year the Statewide Grievance Committee voted to dismiss
the case against the prosecutor, although members were divided on whether to accept a
subcommittee’s report criticising Maco for his "lack of sensitivity … to the
concept of the presumption of innocence."
(Associated Press, AFP, 31 July 1997)
Woman compensated $5.8 million for
therapist-implanted false memories
In 1991 Lynn Carl attended Spring Shadows Glen for treatment of
depression. She was to remain in therapy until 1993. During that time, she became
convinced she had developed more than 500 personalities because of repressed memories of
involvement with a satanic cult. She said that therapists never warned her the memories
she recovered through hypnosis and other forms of psychotherapy might be unreliable. She
was told that unless she continued recovering memories about the abuse, she would remain
in denial and her children "wouldn’t get well". Her children (Kristi, then 13,
and B.J., 14) entered the hospital a year after Carl began her stay there. B.J. came to
believe he was programmed to die by age 16, and Kristi believed she was a
"breeder" for the cult, according to testimony. They also believed they had
committed incest.
Carl said these false memories led to divorce from her husband and a
court order preventing her from seeing her children. After her release from Spring Shadows
Glen, Carl underwent treatment in Florida and Maryland before reuniting with her husband,
Joe, and their children. In April 1996, the couple remarried.
Carl filed a suit against her therapists, accusing them of implanting
false memories of satanic ritual abuse which tore her family apart. During the trial, her
primary therapist, Dr. Gloria Keraga, 44, testified that she didn’t know if the specific
memories Carl recovered in therapy were true, but said she believed the "gist"
of them. She said that the Carl situation represented a "classic paedophile"
case in which the perpetrators and victims later deny the sexual abuse, and that Carl
demonstrated symptoms of abuse and that evidence was "overwhelming" that the
Carl family had practiced incest. Referring to Carl’s journals and medical records
describing bizarre sexual abuse, murder and torture, Keraga’s lawyer said such
memories could not be falsely implanted.
The jury reached a general consensus in favour of Carl during the first
few minutes of their deliberations. They found Keraga bore 12% of liability in the case,
with a number of others identified as sharing the blame for negligence. All the other
defendants previously settled with Carl or were dropped. Carl was awarded nearly $5.8
million.
Carl is one of more than a dozen patients who filed lawsuits against
therapists at the former Spring Shadows Glen Hospital in Houston. The patients allege that
therapists planted false memories of abuse after the patients were diagnosed with multiple
personality disorder. In 1993, Spring Shadows Glen closed the dissociative disorders unit,
where such patients were treated, after state authorities cited the hospital for excessive
use of physical restraints on patients, censorship of patient mail and phone calls and, in
one case, making a patient’s discharge contingent upon safety from a "satanic
cult." The hospital now is under different ownership and has been renamed Memorial
Spring Shadows Glen.
(Houston Chronicle (8 Aug 1997). ‘Jury awards $5.8 million
in satanic memories case’, Mark Smith)
Justice Neeley of the West Virginia
Supreme Court of Appeals.
Mary D. v.Circuit Court, 438 S.E.2d 521, 529 (W.Va. 1992, Neeley, J.,
dissent).
"We now have a system in which a female parent need only scream
child abuse in a loud voice to keep the male parent from seeing a child. Indeed, sexual
abuse these days seems to arouse all the hysteria that was associated with witchcraft in
yesteryear. In fact, it has spawned a witch-huntingesque cottage industry, to wit badly
trained, ideological rape trauma experts, rape counselors, bachelor level
pseudo-psychologists, social activists, and other assorted species of jacklegs. I am a
firm believer that the best interest of the child are paramount, but that does not mean
never allowing a father to see his children when evidence preponderates on his behalf even
though, like an accused witch, he cannot clear himself beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Continuous yelling and screaming of an accusation does not make that accusation any more
true."
Appeal Court dismisses Holly
Ramona’s case against her father
On 19 Aug 1997, the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles
dismissed Holly Ramona’s case against her father, Gary Ramona. In 1994 in the first
case of its kind, Gary had sued Holly’s therapists for planting false memories of
sexual abuse in his daughter’s mind. The jury gave a verdict of malpractice and awarded
$500,000 to Gary Ramona. Holly had appealed this decision. The California Court of Appeal
dismissed her appeal on the grounds that because Holly’s testimony of incestuous memories
was acquired under, and after, the use of the hypnotic drug sodium amytal, her testimony
failed to meet the criteria of consensus acceptance by the scientific community.
(The San Francisco Chronicle (22 Sep 1997). ‘Opinion:
Open Forum’, by Moira Johnston,A20)
‘Dream‘ testimony rejected by
court
In Aug 1991 a 15 year old New Hampshire girl became pregnant. She told
her mother in December. Some time before she gave birth, she had three
"nightmares," during which she had "flashbacks" which consisted of
glimpses of her step-father abusing her when she was 9 or 10 years old (Aug 1984 to Nov
1995). Before having these nightmares, she apparently had no memory of being assaulted by
him. Her step-father was charged with the offences.
He moved to exclude the complainant’s testimony from being admitted at
his trial, arguing that she should not be allowed to testify regarding her alleged memory
of events that she previously had not remembered. The court decided that "because the
objective truth of memory cannot be scientifically determined, lay testimony of allegedly
recovered memories cannot be barred on the basis that there has been no preliminary
showing of its reliability." The court ruled that expert testimony would be allowed
to explain the phenomena of traumatic amnesia and memory repression, and to opine on the
reliability of ordinary memory and recovered memory, but not to opine on the truth of a
particular recovered memory.
An appeal followed. The appeal court commented that the complainant
recovered her memory by piecing together fragments that came to her as
"flashbacks" during several dreams, rather than spontaneously or during a
therapy session. However they felt that issues regarding the suggestibility of memory
relating to therapy, expressed in the Hungerford, were equally applicable in the context
of dreams.
The appeal decision was released 6 Aug 1997. They reversed the
decision, barring the girl’s testimony. In explanation they discussed the potential
unreliability of memory: "Studies indicate that memory is not a mechanism that merely
reproduces one’s perceptions of events; rather, memory, like perception, is an active,
constructive process that often introduces inaccuracies by adding details not present in
the initial representation or in the event itself. The mind combines all the information
acquired about a particular event into a single storage "bin," making it
difficult to distinguish what the witness saw originally from what she learned
later."
(The Supreme Court of New Hampshire Hillsborough-Southern Judicial
District No. 96-058. The State Of New Hampshire V David Walters, 6 Aug 1997)
Media
New Zealand
Ex-policeman seeking truth
Retired police superintendent Bryan Rowe, now working as a private
investigator, is speaking out about his views ‘from the other side’. He has been
shocked by evidence of poorly conducted police investigations which are resulting in
wrongful arrests and convictions. He said that when he was a policeman he thought ‘a
wrongful conviction was most unlikely, and if it did happen it was extremely rare’ but in
the past 16 months, since working as a private eye, he has had to rearrange his thinking,
and now realises that it can and does happen all too often.
(NZ Herald (28 Aug 1997). ‘private eye sees law from the
other side’, A15).
Study disputes effects of sex abuse
The Otago Medical School study of 500 Dunedin women, half of whom
reported past sexual abuse, found that about 75% who gave a sexual abuse history suffered
no measurable mental health problems in later life. The publication of these results has
been very unpopular amongst sexual abuse workers. Tauranga CYPS psychologist said that
"to say sexual abuse does not affect people was simplistic", and a woman
reporter, the daughter of a victim, claimed that measuring mental health problems was a
"pitiful" way of gauging the long-term effects and that even if a woman appears
‘resilient’, her life is shattered by the abuse.
(NZ Herald (26 Jun 97). ‘Study into effects of sex abuse
disputed’, HZ Herald (2 Aug 97). ‘psychological blight legacy of sex
abuse’, Lesley Lundy)
Mental Health Training Service closed
After COSA lobbying and complaints, the sexual abuse counselling course
run by the Mental Health Training Service was completely overhauled and became a
well-balanced scientifically-based training. Sadly the MHTS has now been closed, mainly
because the CHE felt that for the expenditure required to keep it running, there were
better ways to provide health professionals with training programmes.
(North Harbour News (29 Aug 1997). ‘Close of service
"bad dream"’, p3)
Australia
Workers to be checked for "sexual abuse risk"
The Royal Commission is urging that NSW State Government set up an
independent super agency called the Children’s Commission. This body would check any
adults working with children (for example, teachers, foster parents, scoutmasters, sports
coaches) to see if they posed an ‘unacceptable risk’ of sexual abuse. If they
decided there was a risk, even if that person had never been convicted of any crime, they
would issue a certificate of ‘unacceptable risk’ and ban that person from any
job involving children.
The Commission would not make a finding of guilt or innocence in any
specific allegation, but could make its decision based on a variety of potential
information, including records from employers, police and government departments. The
Commission would be immune from any legal action regarding its decisions.
Such an agency could potentially ban people from their work on the
basis of unsubstantiated false allegations, and it appears that those affected would have
no legal redress. This is a terrifying situation.
It is also being suggested that NZ police look into setting up a
similar register here.
(Sydney Morning Herald (27 Aug 1997). ‘from teachers to
scoutmasters, everyone will be put to the test’, by Adele Horin; NZ Herald (28
Aug 97). ‘Sex abuse list considered.)
More therapist implanted false memories
A Canberra woman, called "Susan", came to believe that she
was Jane Beaumont, while she was being treated for repressed memories of childhood sexual
abuse. In 1966 Jane Beaumont, aged 8, along with her sister Arnna, 7, and her brother
Grant, 4, had disappeared from a beach in Adelaide. They have never been found and for 31
years their parents, now in their 70s, have hoped that their children were still alive.
In January 1996 "Susan" told the police that she was Jane,
and that all 3 children had been handed over to a satanic cult. She has since come to
disbelieve this and has lodged a complaint with the Canberra Commissioner of Health,
alleging that her therapist had first suggested that she was Jane (the therapist denies
this).
This same therapist was apparently involved in a case in 1988 when
another of her patients wrongfully came to believe that she had been involved in the
murder of a teenage girl.
The police had to inform the Beaumont parents that their hopes had been
wrongfully raised that their daughter had been found.
(Sydney Morning Herald (8 Aug 1997). ‘Canberra woman not
missing Beaumont girl: police’, by Richard Guilliatt & Philip Cornford.)
Britain
Counselling is not effective
The NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York
was set up with British government money to provide independent advice on different
treatments. It does so by reviewing the literature, not by conducting its own research. It
recently reviewed all the available studies of the effectiveness of various forms of
counselling in helping people with mental health problems. Its conclusions will be
unwelcome news to the growing army of counsellors, now believed to run into tens of
thousands.
Counselling, a technique which involves sharing worries by talking them
through, is now routinely offered after disasters of all sorts. The bereaved, the
unemployed, the divorced and children from disadvantaged backgrounds are all considered to
be at high risk of suffering long-term damage unless it can be averted by counselling. But
the study by the York centre concludes that "counselling by itself has not been shown
to produce sustained benefit in a variety of groups at risk".
Among women who have had a miscarriage, none of the 3 trials into the
effectiveness of counselling showed a sustained effect. The same was true of bereavement
counselling. The report says it showed no effect on "quality of life, satisfaction or
frustration levels in people close to deceased cancer patients", and no difference in
depression among spouses of people who had committed suicide. "There has been a rapid
growth in the employment of counsellors, particularly within primary care," the
report concludes. "However, there is little evidence that generic counselling,
provided by itself, is particularly effective. More attention needs to be given to the
content and effectiveness of specific forms of counselling and the skills of counsellors
before this approach is extended too widely."
They did however find that certain sorts of psychotherapy, especially
cognitive behavioural therapy, can have good results.
Not surprisingly, the spokesman for the British Association for
Counselling spoke out against the report. The Association’s directory of counsellors in
private practice lists 2,500 names, up from 800 in 1988. About 60% of GP surgeries now
employ counsellors, with 66% of their salaries paid by the NHS. Nobody knows how many
counsellors there are, but membership of the association is more than 15,000.
(London Times (19 Aug1997). ‘Some problems cannot be
resolved by just ‘getting it all out of your system”, Nigel Hawkes)
Teenagers branded ’sex
offender’ for life
Britain has a scheme called ’schedule one’ offender,
previously use as a label to identify those who pose a serious and ongoing threat to
children. Now however prison governors have been instructed to give all offenders with an
underage victim this lifelong label. A schedule one offender can be banned from any future
contact with children. This means that teenagers involved in sexual or violent offences
against other teenagers (for example those involved in teenage brawls) might receive this
label.
When Janice Williams was 16 she ripped a chain from the neck of a 13
year old boy. This resulted in her being branded schedule one. Now Janice is aged 19 and
has her own child. Because she is schedule one, however, she is barred from any contact
with her niece, which prevents her setting up home with her sister and child as they
planned. She is devastated by the ban, and cannot understand why she is considered no
threat to her own child, but a danger to others.
(Christchurch Press (21 Aug 1997) ‘Abuse net too fine’)
British boy granted Canadian refugee
status on basis of unsubstantiated abuse claims
An American woman claimed that her ex-husband (a British intelligence
officer) had sexually abused their son from the age of 2 months. The woman had approached
various social services in Britain but clearly there was no evidence to support the
allegations. The mother claims that her ex-husband’s family threatened to have her
committed to a mental institution if she continued to make the allegations.
She remarried and went to live in the USA but her new partner was
deported 2 years later and she entered Canada, where she lodged a refugee claim in Nov
1994. She claimed that her son (now aged 12) needed to be granted refugee status on the
grounds that if he returned to Britain, the authorities could not be relied upon to
protect him from sexual abuse by his natural father. She produced as evidence a record of
her attempts to seek help from UK authorities, claiming that they had failed to assist
her.
The Canadian Immigration & Refugee Board granted the boy refugee
status on this basis.
(Guardian Weekly (27 Apr 1997). ‘Canada takes sexual abuse
boy Britain ‘did not protect’, Owen Bowcot, 12)
Australia
Jury backs pseudo-science
In a worrying development in the USA courts, a jury awarded in favour
of the plaintiffs against Dow Chemical. The women complainants all claim that they have
developed a plethora of health problems from migraines, memory loss, to joint and nerve
pain, which they believe have been caused by their silicone breast implants. Respected
international scientists testified to the court that there is no scientific evidence of
any link between silicone implants and systemic disease. However thousands of women have
now come to believe that these implants are the cause of their current problems, whatever
they are.
The jury chose to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence and based
its decision on the emotional testimony of the claimants.
(Time (1 Sep 97). ‘Sleights of silicone’, 57)
$26 million compensation for wrongful
sexual harassment dismissal
In 1993 Jerold McKenzie, the manager of a brewing company in Milwaukee
asked a co-worker, Patricia Best, if she had seen the previous night’s Seinfeld
programme, in which Jerry Seinfeld forgets the name of a woman he is dating but knows it
rhymes with a female body part; finally he remembers that it is Dolores. When Best did not
‘get it’, he showed her a dictionary definition of clitoris. Best complained to
her boss. McKenzie was fired for sexual harassment.
In July 1997 a jury awarded McKenzie $26.6 million compensation. None
of the jury, which included 10 women, were offended by the Seinfeld story.
(Time (28 Jul 1997). ‘It was a joke!’, 58)
Violet Amirault has died of cancer
Sadly, we have heard news that Violet Amirault has died of stomach
cancer, aged 74. Violet was accused of sexually abusing children at her Fells Acre Day
Care, and who spent many years in prison with her daughter before winning an appeal and
her release last year pending a retrial (see COSA newsletters Oct 1995; May & June
1997). Her son still languishes in prison, despite the overwhelming evidence that the
allegations against the family were the result of terrible injustice and fuelled by the
sex abuse hysteria of the 1980s. The family have always maintained their innocence, and a
large body of supporters have been fighting for justice on their behalf.
(Boston Globe Associated Press (12 Sep 97) ‘Violet Amirault,
dies at 74′)
Professor fired for saying
paedophilia not inevitably harmful
Christopher Brand, a 27-year tenured psychology professor at Edinburgh
University, became a source of discomfort to his university last year when he made public
comments that racial differences in IQ are partly genetic (Science, 3 May 1996,
p. 644). His book "The g Factor", on the scientific research on general
intelligence, was withdrawn from publication by Wiley.
In October 1996 he spoke out in defense of Nobel price winner Carlton
Gajdusek, convicted last year of paedophilia. Brand wrote in a personal online newsletter
that paedophilia is not always harmful to young males. He said that research suggested
that consensual adult-adolescent contacts, where the younger partner was aged 12 or over,
did not necessarily lead to negative outcomes. However, he did not defend paedophilia per
se, and in fact stated that a behaviour could be "harmless" yet still be morally
wrong in some sense. That statement prompted the university to suspend him, and now a
3-person tribunal has recommended his dismissal for "gross misconduct" on the
grounds that his statement appeared to condone paedophilia. Brand is appealing the
decision on the grounds of academic freedom, which appears to be in short supply.
(’Controversial Academic Gets the Axe’, Science (22 Aug
1997), Volume 277, Number 5329)
Literature
How suggestible are pre-school
children? Cognitive and social factors
Ceci S & Huffman M (Jul 1997). Journal of American Child &
Adolescent Psychiatry, 36 (7): 948-958.
This paper describes a series of studies which investigate how
susceptible pre-school children are to suggestion. It was found that very young children
(aged 3 and 4) were significantly more vulnerable to suggestion than those aged 5 and 6.
While some types of events (eg negative, genital, salient) were more difficult to implant
in children’s statements than others, all the events tested were able to be
incorporated by some children into false memories.
Further, a significant number of the children appeared to internalise
these false suggestions and resisted debriefing, no matter how hard the researchers and
the children’s parents tried to get the children to accept that the fictitious events
never occurred.
The children’s false statements were convincing to professionals.
Alarmingly, the several 1000 psychiatrists, social workers, lawyers and judges who watched
the videotapes of the children being interviewed were unable to distinguish between true
and false accounts by the children.
Do therapist experience, diagnosis
and functional level predict outcome in short term psychotherapy?
Propst A, Paris J, Roseberger Z (Apr 1994). Canadian Journal of
Psychiatry, 39: 168-176.
This study showed that patients improved with short-term methods of
therapy irrespective of what sort of therapist treated them or how experienced they were
(psychiatrist, psychiatric resident, family practice resident or medical student). This
further supports the evidence that a large percentage of benefit from psychotherapy rests
with the placebo effect, and relates more to the positive attention given than the
specific techniques used.
Unusual flashbacks in a Vietnam
veteran
Mayer P & Pope Harrison G (May 1997). American Journal of
Psychiatry, 154 (5): 713.
This is a case story of a Vietnam war marine who has regular flashbacks
to wartime scenes, including being shot in the leg on the battlefield, an incident that
never happened.
This indicates that no matter how compelling and consistent a
flashbacks is of a traumatic event, it should not be assumed to represent fact. Even when
the patient does suffer from bona fide PTSD, "flashbacks of non-existent events can
also occur and intermingle with flashbacks of real experiences".
Flashback phenomena in survivors of
childhood sexual abuse: a four-stage treatment model
Muscar L & Josefowitz N (1996). Journal of Contemporary
Psychotherapy, 26 (2): 177-191.
This article assumes that flashbacks are accurate memories of real
events, an assumption not grounded in science.
Admissibility and per se
exclusion of hypnotically elicited recall in American courts of law
Perry C (Jul 1997). International Journal of Clinical &
Experimental Hypnosis, XLV (3): 266-279.
‘Data indicate that hypnosis increases productivity [ie amount of
recall], but most of it is error. In addition, it increases confidence for both correct
and incorrect material". This paper discusses the attempts to rescind the exclusion
of hypnotically elicited testimony from US courts, and discusses the Daubert criteria in
this regard.
The Silence of the Screams: violence by women in
intimate relationships
researched by Y Joakimidis.
Child Support Action Group (CSAG Inc), South Australia (1996).
This paper documents evidence that domestic violence is not just
something that men do to women, and in fact it seems that women also inflict a high rate
of violence on their male partners. Women also beat their lesbian partners and their
children. The evidence suggests that "battery seems to be a pathology of intimacy, as
frequent among homosexual as heterosexual couples".
Mothers are at least as likely as fathers to be responsible for the
death of their child.
With respect to custody issues, the authors noted that children in
intact 2-parent homes had significantly less problems than children in single or blended
families, even if the marriage was not going well.
There is an increased risk of all forms of child abuse when a mother
has sole custody of a child, and following divorce, evidence suggests that the safest
place for children is with their biological fathers.
The authors conclude that the law should "serve the vast majority
of the fit and loving parents who simply want to be with their children" and
advocates joint custody when possible.
Creating false memories
Loftus, Elizabeth F. (1997) Scientific American, 277, 70-75
In this paper Loftus documents a number of high-profile cases (Cool,
Rutherford, Hammane, Carlson) where patients developed false memories as a result of
questionable therapy. She discusses her own research into memory distortion which goes
back to the early l970s when she began studies of the "misinformation effect."
This research demonstrates that when people who witness an event are later exposed to new
and misleading information about it, their recollections often become distorted.
She also describes a study conducted by herself and colleague
Jacqueline Pickrell in which they implanted in their subjects a false memory of a mildly
traumatic event that never happened. The event they chose was being lost in a shopping
mall as a child, and the memories were implanted by the use of suggestion. 29% of the
participants remembered either partially or fully the false event constructed for them,
and in the 2 follow-up interviews 25% continued to claim that they could remember the
fictitious event.
While being lost in a shopping mall is not the same as being abused as
a child, suggestion could also play a part in the construction of false childhood abuse
memories. Sometimes people are asked to imagine events during police questioning or
therapy. Loftus writes: ‘When trying to obtain a confession law officers may ask a
suspect to imagine having participated in a criminal act… Some mental health
professionals encourage patients to imagine childhood events as a way of recovering
supposedly hidden memories.’ She conducted research to test whether imagining a
childhood event increases confidence that it occurred. In all cases studied, subjects
invited to imagine certain events showed an increased likelihood of reporting that it had
really taken place. This "imagination inflation" effect has also been
demonstrated in work done by Lyn Goff and Henry Roediger III of Washington University, who
found that the more times participants imagined an unperformed action, the more likely
they were to remember having performed it.
Some research indicates the construction of ‘impossible
memories’. For example, a procedure for planting "impossible" memories
about experiences that occur shortly after birth was developed by the late Nicholas Spanos
et al at Carleton University. Saul Kassin and colleagues at Williams College investigated
the reactions of individuals falsely accused of damaging a computer by pressing the wrong
key. They were able to get people to accept guilt for a crime they did not commit, and
even to develop memories to support their guilty feelings.
Loftus concludes: ‘Mental health professionals and others must be
aware of how much they can influence the recall of events and of the great need for
maintaining restraint in situations in which imagination is used as an aid in recovering
presumably lost memories.’
Feminists and false memories" a
case of postmodern amnesia
Scott S (1997). Feminism & Psychology, 7 (1): 33-38.
This author clearly believes that ‘False Memory Syndrome’
does not exist, but that it is an explanation being used to deny the sexual abuse of
children in Western society. She says that "FMS is a dangerous idea to be on the
loose".
The creation of Satanic ritual abuse
Bottoms B & Davis S (1997). Journal of Social & Clinical
Psychology, 16 (2): 112-132.
A comprehensive review of satanic ritual abuse allegations in the 1980s
and 1990s indicates that these were largely unfounded. This paper explores the factors
which may be responsible for the creation of ritual abuse allegations, including therapy
(some forms of therapy and some therapists); socio-cultural factors (such as media
portrayal of satanic cults, pop psychology books and social scape-goating) and individual
factors such as religious beliefs, suggestibility and vulnerability.
The authors call for more responsible media coverage of issues relating
to child abuse, more research to identify what factors contribute to false allegations,
and better training of mental health professionals.
Rape & Sexual Abuse in New Zealand 1992 - 1996
clients
National Collective of Rape Crisis & Related Groups of Aotearoa Inc (April 1997). ,
Holdt & Associates Evaluation & Research Services.
This document is a summary of Rape Crisis statistics for the past 5
years. Rape Crisis has logged the telephone, face-to-face and mail contacts that have been
made where an allegation of sexual abuse or rape was made. They report ‘10,901 rape
or sexual abuse-related contacts logged’ between 1992 and 1996. All these cases are
presented as sexual abuse or rape survivors. There is no consideration at any point that
any of these complainants might not be victims of a sexual assault. There is no definition
given as to what Rape Crisis define as rape or sexual abuse.
Delayed traumatic recall in adults: A synthesis with
legal, clinical, and forensic recommendations
Beahrs J, Cannell J, Gutheil T (1996). Bulletin of the American
Academy of Psychiatry & the Law, 24 (1) 45-55.
This paper discusses complexities in the psychotherapeutic, legal,
clinical, and forensic use of delayed traumatic recall. Guidelines are proposed to clarify
the use of the term in each field, and to balance conflicting professional duties and
priorities, balance protection of children with defending legitimate social structures
such as the family, and better use of an empirical understanding of human memory.
Memory, repression and child sexual
abuse: forensic implications for the mental health professional
Corelli T, Hoag M, Howell R (1997). Journal of American Psychiatry
& Law, 25 (1): 31-47.
Offers cautions to therapists assuming the validity of client’s
memories, and discusses some legal precedents in the US.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues 1996 Vol 6(2)
This issue is devoted to a symposium on the False memory controversy,
with opinions ranging from those of Jody Davies, who asks whether there is any proof that
"a false memory of parental sexual abuse even exists" to Frederick Crews, who
expresses scepticism about the reliability of recovered memories.
- Brenneis C. ‘Cause for skepticism about recovered memory: Commentary on papers by
Davies and Harris’ 219-230 - Crews F. ‘Forward to 1896? Commentary on papers by Harris and Davies’, 231-250
- Stern D. ‘Dissociation and constructivism: Commentary on papers by Davies and
Harris’, 251-266. - Harris A. ‘Reply to Brenneis, Crews, and Stern’, 267-279.
- Davies J. ‘Maintaining the complexities: A reply to Crews, Brenneis, and
Stern’, 281-294.
Issues In Child Abuse Accusations 9 (12) Winter / Spring 1997
This issue includes an article by Judith Adams on ‘Interviewing
methods and hearsay testimony in suspected child abuse cases: questions of accuracy’,
which summarises interviewing techniques which may compromise the reliability of
children’s testimony, and suggests methods of increasing accuracy of interviews. Also
in this issue is a paper by Jack Annon entitled ‘Guidelines for psychologists who
receive a subpoena for their records’, which addresses the potential conflict between
legal requirements and issues of patient confidentiality.
Selected articles from Issues In Child Abuse Accusations are
available on the Institute for Psychological Therapies website (link).
Multiple personality disorder: fact or artefact?
Sarbin T (1997). Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 10: 136-140.
Sarbin has conducted a review of the literature which ranges from the
credulous (usually therapists who explore with their patients the thoughts, feelings and
actions of a number of discrete personalities residing in one person) who believe MPD
results from repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse; to the sceptics, who believe
that MPD is a created artefact resulting from over-zealous therapy or exposure to literary
or media models.
The current literature favours the conclusion that MPD is artefactual.
Collective delusions: a skeptic’s guide
Bartholomew R (May / Jun 1997). Skeptical Inquirer, 29-33.
Bartholomew documents historical episodes of collective delusions
(rapidly spread false but plausible, exaggerated beliefs that gain credibility within a
particular social and cultural context) such as mass flight panic in response to
prophecies of destruction, witch hunts and communist invasion scares. He identifies a
number of contemporary examples, from Asian ‘koro’ epidemics (men convinced they
are victims of contagion that causes their penises to shrink) to delusional beliefs that a
community has been gassed (such as the 400 dock workers in Auckland in 1973 who wrongly
believed that they had been exposed to a toxic chemical and came down with a variety of
psychosomatic complaints.
He notes that "contemporary child-molestation and satanic-cult
fears reassemble the persecution of various deviants and ethnic groups during the infamous
medieval European witch-hunts."
Breaking the cycle: an interagency
guide to child abuse
This is a review of the 1997 edition of the CYPS manual ‘Breaking
the cycle: an interagency guide to child abuse’. This manual is written for health
and education professionals and community workers to explain to them what they should do
if they have concerns that a child might be being abused or neglected.
It explains the structure and function of CYPS, and then follows a
section on the recognition of child abuse and neglect.
Sexual abuse is defined as "any act or acts that result in the
sexual exploitation of a child or young person, whether consensual or not. It may include,
but is not restricted to:
- Non-contact abuse
- Exhibitionism
- Voyeurism
- Suggestive behaviours or comments
- Exposure to pornographic material
- Contact abuse
- Touching breasts
- Genital/anal fondling
- Masturbation
- Oral sex
- Object or finger penetration of anus or vagina
- Penile penetration of anus or vagina
- Encouraging child or young person to perform such acts on perpetrator
- Involvement of child or young person in activities for purposes of pornography or
prostitution."
It can be seen that this is an extremely broad way of defining sexual
abuse.
A large number of indicators of possible abuse are listed, although the
warning is given that "most signs are non-specific to abuse". Self-mutilation is
said to be an especially strong indicator of sexual abuse.
The manual also discusses the concept of corrupting of children in
families, where the corrupting influence might be exposure to sexually explicit material
or witnessing sexual acts. Corruption can also occur through involving the child or young
person in other criminal activities.
Lists of instructions are given about dealing with suspected abuse and
reporting it. Professionals are told that they must listen to the child and reassure them
that they have done the right thing by telling. The possibility that the suspicion might
be wrong, or that a child might make a false claim, appears not to be considered.
In the section headed "What if I am not right?" we are told
that that fear of being wrong is the most common reason why people decide not to act.
People might have this fear because they are:
- "afraid of repercussions
- afraid of being thought insensitive
- afraid of breaking confidence
- afraid of being disloyal".
Readers are assured that "if we feel confident about recognising
the signs of abuse and their significance we won’t be so afraid that we’ve got
it wrong". The possibility that on occasions we might really have got it wrong is not
listed. In other words, we are lead to believe that any fears we have that we might not be
right about a child being abused are unfounded.
No-where in this section, or in any other part of this manual for that
matter, does it address the possible damage that wrongful suspicions and allegations of
abuse can have on all concerned, especially the child involved.
The document explains that although it might be desirable for social
workers to have parents’ permission to interview their children, this is not
obligatory and not always appropriate (for example, when the parents are the alleged
abusers). Social workers can ask permission from school staff to interview children, and
if this is refused, they can apply for a warrant.
Counselling is viewed as an essential intervention for all children who
have been victims of abuse and their families. Readers are instructed to use ACC-
accredited counsellors with costs to be met by ACC.
The manual warns workers to watch out for denial that abuse has been
occurring by other agencies and professionals. It is claimed that professionals often do
not want to believe that abuse is occurring because of the strong feelings it engenders in
themselves:
"The most common defences [by professionals] are denial and
projection. Denial is when, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, one or more
professionals is unable to see that abuse is occurring. Projection occurs when a
professional or agency brings to blame another agency as though they were the cause of the
abuse. The agency which originally refers the case often becomes the recipient of such
hostile projection. Denial and projection are powerful defences, and they are also the
defences used by abusing families. When participants at case conferences begin to use such
defences, they are in some way mirroring the dynamics of the family whom they are
considering."
While this might be true on occasions, the manual does not appear to
recognise that in some cases, a professional or professionals and the families concerned
might be denying that the alleged abuse ever occurred because in fact it did never occur
(in the sexual abuse field, denial tends to be seen as confirmation of abuse).
The manual is accompanied by a number of protocols for interagency
child abuse management. First there is a guideline to help voluntary agencies develop
their own protocols about reporting suspected abuse. The guideline includes the statement:
"Believing the child. When a child tells you about abusive
behaviour beyond the normal experience for their age perpetrated on them by a trusted
person it is most unlikely they are lying."
This is the only statement addressing the possibility of false
allegations, and effectively it is minimising the possibility that this could happen. It
does not address those many cases documented by COSA where children are not lying, but
have systematically come to believe that bad things have happened to them through
suggestive questioning and other interventions.
A number of specific protocols from voluntary agencies follow. Most of
these rely heavily on the CYPS guideline, and include the sentence above. The agency
guidelines presented are:
- Open Home Foundation
- Youth for Christ
- Barnado’s
- Children’s Health Camp Board
Of these, only Barnado’s protocol addresses the possibility of
false allegation. It states that when a Barnado’s caregiver, foster parent or staff
member is suspected of abuse:
- "it is important to minimise the impact of allegations and to allow a fair
investigation - if a person has a history of suspected child abuse or an allegation has been made
against them or their household, Barnado’s would consider the individual’s case
and base decisions on both the protection of the child and the person involved".
They also state that "justice and the rule of natural fairness
should be observed for caregivers and foster parents".
Other protocols included are those for Crown Health Enterprises; the
Ministry of Education and NZ School trustees; and the DSAC guidelines for child sexual
abuse management in General Practice.
The DSAC guidelines include the following statements:
- "NZ studies show that child sexual abuse is very common in our society.
- Only a small percentage of cases are reported to the statutory authorities.
- Children rarely lie about allegations of sexual assault. However, false accusations can
occur, for example, where there is adult collusion or when a child has experienced abuse
in the past. - False denials and recanting of history are not unusual.
- Sexually abused children experience feelings of guilt, self-blame, and worthlessness
that have serious long-term consequences into adulthood. - Forms of abuse that seem minor to an adult can have serious consequences for a child.
- Child sexual abuse is usually planned with the perpetrator selecting, grooming, and
maintaining the child in a vulnerable situation. It does not often involve acts which
result in physical injury to the child. In contrast emotional damage is inevitable and
pervasive."
No references are given for these dogmatic statements. While they may
be true on occasion, research evidence indicates that only a minority of people develop
adult mental health problems from sexual abuse. That of course in no way condones such
offenses. However, COSA has concerns about DSAC’s over-emphasis on the frequency that
child sexual abuse occurs and the damage it causes, as this appears to be one of the
contributing factors to the iatrogenic damage we see.
In summary, much of the information and advice contained in the CYPS
manual ‘Breaking the cycle: an interagency guide to child abuse’. may be
accurate and useful where there has really been child abuse. However it fails to
acknowledge the social problem of false allegations, and the devastating effect these have
on families. We are disturbed that anyone using this manual may get a distorted view
regarding the detection of child abuse and its management.
Correspondence
Gordon Waugh’s award-winning Letter
to the Editor, North & South magazine, October 1997
" Let’s not kid ourselves. Allegations of sexual abuse are used as
weapons, and as levers to gain advantage. They are commonly made by women exposed to
counselling, in child custody cases, for extortion, by children after suggestive
interviewing, for vindictive or mistaken reasons, and to obtain ACC compensation. In the
very brief period from 1992-96, ACC handled almost 60,000 claims for alleged sexual abuse,
and according to Rape Crisis, over 750,000 rapes were committed.
Illogically, sexual crimes are treated differently from others. Police
believe complainants. The age-old requirement for corroboration was removed from the
Evidence Act. A complainant’s previous sexual history is inadmissible. She cannot be
cross-examined at depositions. Complainants are "victims" and accused are
"perpetrators" even before a trial. And that very essence of justice, a
presumption of innocence, went out with the bathwater.
DI Doyle and others confuse opinion with fact. Opinion: "The
criminal justice system has a series of filters designed to ensure innocent men are not
prosecuted…." Fact: The 1,570 or so rape prosecutions in the years 1992-96 resulted
in about 750 convictions, an unacceptable failure rate of 52%. Some filters are absent.
By saying "Our philosophy is that we set out to prove a complaint
is true", DI Doyle declares a clear presumption of guilt. An investigator’s task is
to find and balance evidence for and against allegations, from a neutral stance.
Too many trials hinge on witness credibility instead of credible
evidence. Too many lives have been devastated by false allegations of sexual abuse. It is
time now to correct obvious systemic flaws. Police must do thorough investigations.
Politicians must amend the law to reintroduce corroboration, allow trial without jury,
establish a 5-year statute of limitation, automatically compensate those falsely accused,
and penalise false accusers. And judges should more often exercise their prerogative to
terminate trials where prosecution evidence is unreasonable, bizarre or impossible."
Newsletters received by COSA
FMS Foundation Newsletter Jul/Aug 1997, 6 (7)
Legal decisions, media coverage, articles about FMS issues.
FMS Foundation Newsletter Sep 1997, 6 (8)
This issue includes a long section about the NZ perspective and the
development of COSA.
COSA offers a service to members of sending copies of FMSF newsletter
at a cost of $30 per year (including postage).
Canadian FMS Support Groups newsletters Jun/Jul
1997, 4(7/8) & Aug 1997, 5 (9).
FMS news and views from Canada and around the world.
Australian False Memory Association Newsletter (Jul 1997), 4
(2)
Includes a detailed report on the FMSF conference in Baltimore, USA,
March 1997 on "Memory & reality".
Recent events
‘Integrating hypnosis with brief therapy’ & ‘Hypnosis and
the treatment of depression".
Two one-day workshops by Dr Michael Yakpo, 20 & 21 Sep 1997, Victoria
University, Wellington.
Hosted by the New Zealand Society of Hypnosis, these workshops were
attended by about 40 health professionals, mostly doctors and psychologists.
Michael Yakpo is a strong advocate of using psychotherapies
demonstrated to be effective and safe, and ones which can achieve the maximum gain in the
minimum number of sessions. Treatment should be active, time-limited, focused on current
problems, and aimed at symptom resolution. Therapies that work best are ones which do not
explore the past but which facilitate people to make changes to help them achieve their
goals. The short-term therapies shown to be most effective are cognitive, behavioural or
interpersonal. These therapies focus on helping people change the way they think about
things, the way they act or the way they relate to others, in a direction designed to help
them achieve their goals. Most people know what they want - what they need when they are
stuck are strategies on how to achieve this. An emphasis on people’s history in explaining
their problems is an inefficient and interminable form of treatment. Delving into the past
to come up with reasons as to why they have not achieved their goals will be singularly
unhelpful. Dynamic psychotherapy which explores people’s childhoods, encourages them to
experience their feelings (such as catharsis) and makes symbolic interpretations are
likely to lead to the worst possible outcome.
Treatment should offer clients direction - the concept of non-directive
therapy is illusionary, and all therapists will inevitably influence their patients. Yakpo
says that while therapists share a commonality of good intentions (they do not set out to
cause any harm), many deal with highly ambiguous material and mistake their theories for
facts. In the last couple of decades there have been therapists advocating "trust
your feelings" without understanding that feelings can be self-deceptive. The
strategy to learn is to know when you should trust your feelings and when you should
ignore them. There are times when it is important to be fully in the present (for example,
at times of intimacy with someone you love), but there are also many occasions when
critical thinking and future planning are what is necessary. Every part of a person is
valuable at some point, some time - what is most important is the context. When people
feel stuck, when things are not working for them, when they have problems, often what is
missing is their accessing or developing the resources needed to deal effectively in that
context.
Yakpo does not focus on people’s weaknesses but their strengths. He
explores what makes people healthy - what are the attributes and strategies of someone who
manages to cope with a difficult situation. This parallels my own belief with regard to
sexual abuse victims - while some people do suffer devastating effects from childhood
molestation, the majority of people appear to be able to live fulfilling lives without
major psychological problems. We should be focusing on what people do who are resilient,
who bounce back from adversity. Yakpo looks for attributes that are missing or
under-utilised, what is needed to help people get to where they want to go, what he terms
their experiential deficits. His therapy is solution-orientated. He assesses which part of
a person’s experience needs to be amplified, and which needs to be de-amplified. He
teaches strategies on how people can make decisions for themselves, on how to open up new
ways of feeling, thinking and behaving, new possibilities to which the person did not have
previous access.
For example, he presented the case of a psychiatrist who was about to
sit his Child Psychiatry board examinations for the 8th time. He had failed 7 times, but
only the oral part of the examination (he had passed the written part on the first
attempt). This man was intelligent, he had passed earlier medical examinations with
straight "A"s. To prepare for his Boards, he spent more and more time studying,
learning material, a strategy which had always seen him pass exams (which had been written
ones) in the past. What this man did not realise was that passing an oral exam requires
completely different skills to passing a written one. He was trying to pass by trying
harder to do the same things which had lead to his failure in the past - a strategy not
likely to be successful. What he had not seen was that he needed to do something
different. Oral examinations require certain social skills. The candidate is interacting
with two examiners who will ask questions but whose job it is to remain completely neutral
- not to give any feedback as to how well or badly the examinee is performing. Our man was
taking this response personally, interpreting it as failure on his part, and then
reflecting his belief that he was failing in the way he responded to their questions, not
only with what he said but how he said it. What he needed was training in how to handle
this form of social interaction effectively and with confidence.
The content - the issues and details of a person’s past are not
important; what is important are the processes, the patterns, they have been using. The
task of the therapist is to identify how the client is generating the symptomatic
experience which is troubling them, and what they need to do to change this. There are
always more possibilities and choices than people may realise or access. Different
responses will have different consequences. Every choice precludes other choices - we
cannot have it all, but we can learn to make the most effective choices to achieve our
goals.
Yakpo’s therapy is action-based. He teaches people to think
strategically. The structure of his therapy is:
- Identify specify concrete goals and place them in their appropriate order of priority
- Create a linear (step-by-step) sequence which will achieve these.
- Identify the specific life resources (abilities) needed, and which of these the client
has that are no being accessed, and which need to be acquired through training. - Make the learned response context-based ie specific to the particular task or goal to be
attained.
Hypnosis is a useful tool to help people understand what they need to
change and to gain the skills required. Hypnosis has been called the "induction of
conviction" and hence it can help "fast-track" people to reframe their
experiences and make effective changes in how they think, feel and do about things in the
future.
As well as hypnosis, Yakpo gives clients homework exercises to help
them learn new skills. For example, a patient who is very unobservant and is missing
valuable social cues in his personal interactions, might be told to go around his
neighbourhood to note down 25 things he had never noticed before. Instructions move from
the general to the more specific, focusing down to the context or goal to hand. So, the
next home-work task for our unobservant individual might involve observing people in a
shopping centre, and so on.
The second day of the workshop Yakpo focused on depression, which can
be treated using a combination of drugs and brief psychotherapy. Depressed people feel
helpless and hopeless. They usually blame themselves for the state they are in, believe
that there is no way out, that things are not going to change and that it affects
everything they do. They ruminate about their lives - they keep dwelling about the bad
things and feeling hurt. Therapy can help them move from this rigid stand to one of
flexibility, to learn that the past does not predict the future, that things do change,
and that there are ways of taking control and making choices which will lead to different
outcomes.
Over the past couple of decades NZ health professionals have been
exposed to a preponderance of lecturers and ‘gurus’ teaching long-term therapy which
encourages people to recall and relive the bad things in their lives, to blame their pasts
for their current woes, and to get in touch with their feelings of anger and hurt. The
latest seminar of sexual abuse of males, covered in this month’s editorial, illustrates
this clearly. Yakpo’s workshop presented a refreshing alternative paradigm. Therapy should
be aimed at helping people change their perspectives, to reframe the way they view the
world, the way they feel, the way they behave, to reduce or eliminate the symptoms
troubling them and lead more fulfilling lives.
Coming events
Constance Dalenberg, clinical
psychologist
4 one-day seminars on ‘Transference & counter-transference in
trauma focused therapy’, sponsored by DSAC (Doctors for
Sexual Abuse Care).
- Auckland 31 Mar 1998
- Wellington 2 Apr 1998
- Christchurch 6 Apr 1998
- Dunedin 8 Apr 1998
Another supporter of ‘recovered memories’, Dalenberg has
published a study she conducted of 17 women patients who had recovered memories of
physical or sexual abuse by their fathers while in therapy. She claims that the claims
were ‘corroborated’ by a sibling or by the father in a number of cases. This is
one of the studies cited to support the validity of recovered memories.
(Dalenberg C (1996). ‘Accuracy, timing and circumstances of
disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse’, Journal of
Psychiatry & Law, 24 (2): 229-275.)
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