Comment: Was Paul Shanley railroaded?
POKROV NOTE: Additional comments on Rod Dreher’s article, “Was Paul Shanley railroaded?” can be found on Beliefnet. However, we felt this statement from Carolyn Disco, co-founder of New Hampshire Catholics for Moral Leadership, succinctly debunks the proposition that repressed memory is always fraudulent.
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Dr. Elizabeth Loftus from the University of California-Irvine was the expert Shanley’s lawyer called to rebut repressed memory. I have read her entire testimony.
Interestingly, she is a perennial defense witness but she had her testimony demolished under withering cross-examination at the trial. It was the end of a long run of court successes for her where she was finally forced to confront her own statements that contradict and impugn her credibility.
The most telling aspect of the prosecutor’s case was that Loftus admitted that her research had never involved experiments with deep trauma because of the questionable ethics involved. Suggesting traumatic sexual abuse is far different from her traditional work of suggesting people were lost in a mall as children, or that they saw Bugs Bunny at Disney World when Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. Character, or that they got really sick as youngsters on either hard-boiled eggs or dill pickles.
Loftus had to acknowledge her own words on the stand that, “This is not to say that people cannot forget horrible things that happened to them, most certainly they can.” In addition, she said in a PBS interview that it is possible for a victim to forget being raped.
The prosecutor further drew admissions from Loftus that she is not an expert in the sexual abuse of children, indeed has never treated anyone with therapy for anything, and has no expertise in child development. She has, however, developed a cottage industry of testifying for accused abusers based on irrelevant, benign events in memory experiments. Loftus testified about research by another psychologist that failed completely to instill a false memory of just having a rectal enema, pardon the graphical example.
Many researchers have unfortunately been influenced by Loftus when it comes to repressed memory about sexual abuse. But the vast majority of the therapeutic community rejects her assertions, and the consensus on the validity of repression is reflected in the book, “Misinformation Concerning Child sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors,” edited by Whitfield, Silberg & Fink.
It is an outstanding collection of essays, heavily footnoted, debunking the false memory defense, which sadly has developed into an industry of its own. The book points out its selective use and misuse of data.
For research in Science magazine, see this link.