- RECOVERED memory syndrome, where people
"remember" childhood sexual abuse during psychiatric treatment,
has been exposed as largely a myth.
-
- A damning report, commissioned by the
Royal College of Psychiatrists but suppressed for almost two years, accuses
its own members of destroying innocent families by using dubious techniques
to delve back into childhood events.
-
- The report is to be published this week
after being withheld during a savage internal row in the college, the governing
body of the psychiatric profession, over the existence of "false memory
syndrome".
-
- Nearly 1,000 families say they have been
falsely accused of sexual abuse after their adult children "recovered"
memories of the attacks during psychotherapy.
-
- Accused parents have lost their jobs
after psychiatrists have breached patient confidentiality over unsubstantiated
claims of sex abuse and bewildered grandparents have suddenly been denied
access to their grandchildren following allegations by their adult children.
Some alleged victims have been so traumatised by their new "memories"
that they have committed suicide.
-
- The report of a college working party
led by Sydney Brandon, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Leicester University,
warns that "recovered memory" is in danger of bringing psychiatry
into disrepute. It concludes: "When memories are 'recovered' after
long periods of amnesia . . . there is a high probability that the memories
are false."
-
- Brandon's four-member team found that
people with psychiatric symptoms were being told that their problems were
due to forgotten sexual abuse which they were then actively encouraged
to remember. "Inability to recall abuse is taken as a sign that abuse
has occurred but is being denied," the report says.
-
- A number of the disputed allegations
have involved recovered memories of abuse during babyhood, some of them
involving satanic ritual, group sex and bestiality. The report points to
research evidence that few people remember much of their lives before the
age of three, and memory before five or six is limited.
-
- Brandon's study dismisses theories supporting
recovered memory which assert that memories of abuse are laid down in a
way which does not apply to other forms of trauma, or that memories may
somehow be recorded in cellular DNA, allowing the body to remember even
if the mind forgets. It also condemns the use of mind-altering drugs, hypnosis
and prolonged interrogation to elicit a sex abuse "memory".
-
- Some patients later deny such recovered
memories - which therapists take as an indication that they cannot face
the truth. "An equally plausible explanation is that the patient is
battling against powerful forces of suggestion in an effort to preserve
sanity," the report says.
-
- Brandon's report is not being published
by the college but will appear in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Some
senior psychiatrists, however, refuse to accept the findings.
-
- Peter Whewell, a psychotherapist in Newcastle
and former fifth member of the Brandon group, has written a separate 107-page
report arguing that 1 in 10 women and 1 in 20 men have been abused as children,
and that up to one in four will have continuous amnesia.
-
- Whewell favours hypnosis and other memory
enhancement techniques to bring back the alleged abuse: "False memory
syndrome has never had any scientific credibility. The fact that someone
retracts a memory does not mean sexual abuse has not occurred."
-
- Bob Kendall, the college president, said
the Brandon report had not been published for fear of reopening the bitter
debate which has seen senior psychiatrists trading allegations and insults.
-
- Roger Scotford, director of the British
False Memory Society, which campaigns for falsely accused parents, said:
"The NHS is paying for therapy that is neither safe nor effective
and which this report singles out for criticism. Therapists using these
techniques will be sitting on a litigation time bomb."
|