Sources not cited here can be found in the previous post.

The terror consuming Dr. Jennifer Freyd on the night of 21 December 1990 into the wee hours of the following morning wasn’t for her, but for her children.  As her visiting jet-lagged parents slept, she felt more and more fearful for the kids’ safety.  So her husband volunteered to sleep outside of their locked bedroom door.  But this didn’t allay her fear. 

Jennifer’s mother, Dr. Pamela Freyd, awoke to some noise outside the bedroom.  When she went to check it out, she saw Jennifer carrying out her son,.  “He was sick in the night,” explained the daughter.  “I’m taking him to see the doctor.” 

Several hours later, Pamela received a call from her son-in-law.  “We lied,” he said.  “We're not at the doctor's office. We're at friends. We want you to leave the house and fly home. We've made reservations on the 3:30 airplane. The taxi will arrive in an hour and a half.  Susan now remembers that she was seriously abused as a child by Alex.”*

Pamela and Peter complied with their daughter’s request, and flew back to their home in Philadelphia on 22 December 1990.  As soon as they arrived, Pamela initiated a volley of e-mails, to which.  Over the objections of her shrink, Jennifer responded to them for the next seven months.  The first simply read, “I love you.  I hope we can keep some communication going.”  Over the subsequent days, the missives grew more intense, not to mention probing.  The next day, Pamela wrote:

I cannot deal with your memories — because I don't know what they are. We have been accused of something, but I could hardly go to a therapist, as you ask, without knowing what the details are. What is supposed to have happened?

On Christmas eve:

Susan, you have made serious charges against us. I don't have the slightest idea of what you are upset enough about to have initiated this crisis. I don't know where to begin to do what you ask and see a therapist like yours who is a young clinical psychologist, a female and a specialist in sex abuse.

In an e-mail sent 28 December 1990, Pamela hinted at feelings of betrayal:

I thought that you should know that we finally have heard some specifics of the charges. Your grandmother told me. You think you were sexually abused by Alex. Why could you tell her and not us?

After agreeing to see a therapist, and read the book The Courage to Heal:  A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Lauren Davis, Pamela asked Jennifer to open lines of communication with her father (which she did), and pressed her for more information about her therapist. It becomes quite obvious that Pamela really wanted to know the identity of this person in subsequent e-mails.  Jennifer refused to divulge this information.  Still, Pamela continued to press for who-what-when details in an effort to pin down a precise story. 

A couple of weeks later, Pamela’s e-mails demonstrated early attempts to silence Jennifer by discrediting her account of events:

My concern was first raised by being informed that (a) the therapist had raised the subject of incest rather than taking it from you and (b) that you have been using hypnosis. There is much debate about the reliability of memories recalled under those circumstances. Also, I am aware that there is a Clinical Incest Group in Anycity [Eugene, OR] whose members enter the therapeutic situation with the bias that 50% of their patients will not remember sexual abuse and incest and so the therapist has to draw it out. This is outlined in a book by Maltz and Holman who have many followers in Anycity. Don't you think that there might be some dangers in such preconceived assumptions?

Pamela and Peter consulted with Dr. Harold Lief, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.  Lief had previously helped Pamela work out some unspecified problems.  He also helped Peter overcome severe his alcoholism.  Lief suggested that Peter submit to a polygraph, which he subsequently passed. 

Still, Jennifer’s feelings didn’t change. In fact, she was now recalling far more than disembodied flashes of male genitalia--from bathtub groping at the age of three, to penetration during adolescence.  She then sought counsel from her husband and then friends.  She also sought the advice of other family, including her uncle, her grandmother and her sister, all of whom had been estranged from Peter and Pamela for years by then.  Those closest to her, both supported her and believed her memories to be accurate. 

Pamela Freyd could not believe that her husband would ever do such a thing.  She therefore blamed feminism, the “contemporary cultural and social” climate and this unknown shrink for Jennifer’s “personality change.”**  She had plenty of blame for other parties as well.

Zealots who lead crusades based on their belief of their own moral virtue and superiority have a history of bringing much repression to the world. I found an overabundance of "slop," articles and books in which the authors lack respect for the bounds between therapy and politics and in which they pander to emotions.

Pamela offered to fly Jennifer’s therapist to Philadelphia so that they could show him or her the polygraph.  One might guess that mama and papa Freyd had something a bit more confrontational in mind, however.  Pamela had busied herself since Christmas studying suggestibility in children.  She had come across a number of articles, many of which were undoubtedly inspired by McMartin and other witch hunt cases of the 1980s.  Perhaps she suspected that alone, with Dr. Lief and her parents, her therapist would have been walking into an ambush.

Pamela and Jennifer spent the spring and early summer of 1991 trying to arrange a family counseling session.  But they couldn’t reach an agreement on the terms of that discussion (where it was, who would be subject to what conditions, where the visiting party would stay, etc.). 

In July 1991, Jennifer had had enough, and in an e-mail alerted Pamela that she would finally heed her doctor’s and cut off e-mail communication for an indefinite period. 

It would seem that Dr. Pamela Freyd would not take silence for an answer.

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*Pamela Freyd wrote this account in her paper “How Could This Happen?”  Because she wrote it as a Jane Doe, everyone in the story has a pseudonym.  She used the names Susan, Steve and Alex to refer to Jennifer, her-son-in-law, and Peter respectively. 

**In the essay, Pamela characterizes herself as “conservative.”  One could guess that she might have meant here more liberal attitudes, here, but she didn’t specify. She did write, however, “To be against childhood sexual abuse is a ‘politically correct’ position, especially for activist women."  So this could be a gripe against feminism in general.