My thanks to our friend Ray for the link and the suggestion.

4.  If the experiment is assumed for heuristic reasons to demonstrate that an older family member can extensively rewrite a younger relative’s memory in regard to a trauma at which the older relative was present, why have FMS proponents presented this research as applying to the dynamics of therapy…but not to the dynamics of families, particularly those in which parents or other relatives may be exerting pressure on an adult to retract reports of delayed recall?–Dr. Kenneth Pope and Dr. Laura Brown, Recovered Memories of Abuse.

The Lost in a Shopping Mall study based the validity of perceived experience on the recollections of family members. The researchers obviously realized that family members can have just as much or far more influence over our thoughts and actions than therapists. Our families often shape our political and spiritual beliefs. Even if we disregard them later, we do so only after compelling cognitive dissonance leads us to think something else.

Then too, as children, and later as adults, our families offer us various forms of support, from financial to emotional. Getting cut off from one’s family would be, in and of itself, traumatic for most of us. Even if the separation is temporary and not due to malice (e.g., moving to another city for career reasons), it still serves as a stressor.

If, as the Lost in a Shopping Mall study contends, family members can induce false memories, then it would stand to reason that the accused could still overwrite the accuser's belief--a prospect that FMS proponents do not appear to address. Drs. Pope and Brown consequently consider this a possible explanation for some former claimants to recant their chargers.

Most people who have experienced delayed recall of childhood sexual abuse will tell you that the experience can have a devastating effect on family life. Both accused parents and claimants frequently complain about the separation from their loved ones, the divisions between factions, the mistrust, the animosity and so forth. In a Salon.com essay dated 10 September 2010, recanter Meredith Maran characterized the ordeal as "The Lie that Tore My Family Apart." In her 2010 autobiography, My Lie: A Story of True False Memory, she related how the accusation estranged her from her father for eight years. She talked about her desire for "redemption" (her word) from her father when he came down with Alzheimer’s.

In deference to family peace, or in effort to repair relations torn asunder, one would have to see the pressures weighing on incest claimants to recant their stories. One would also have to consider this pressure a possible factor in the accused coming forward to corroborate stories of abuse, especially if the statute of limitations makes prosecution impossible, and the accuser agreed beforehand to not seek civil damages. That’s not to say that either the recanter or confessor are lying or relaying inaccurate information. The problem is that we don’t have strong evidence that memory itself played a role in these actions, as opposed to the need for reconciliation.

In Maran’s case, that reconciliation came about at the onset of her father’s illness. Although she repeatedly referred to false memories in her interviews and in My Lie, she gives us conflicting information as to whether her original accusations stemmed from memory, or from a tenuous belief originating in the troubling aspects of the relationship to her father, her ideological leanings, her research and work, or a combination of all of the above.

In a Salon interview posted 20 September 2010, Maran explained the genesis of her initial accusations. A journalist, she had covered a number of stories, during the late-1980s, of unquestionable childhood sexual abuse. She described her relationship to her father as "contentious" for many years. This led her to believe that she, like the subjects of her articles, had to have been molested as well:

In the years leading up to that mass panic, I was working as a feminist journalist, writing exposés of child sexual abuse, trying to convince the world that incest was more than a one-in-a-million occurrence. In the process, I convinced myself that my father had molested me. After five years of incest nightmares and incest workshops and incest therapy, I accused my father, estranging myself and my sons from him for the next eight years....

It really was a gradual thing. I don’t think there ever was a time when I would have bet a hot fudge sundae on it. I remember telling my brother, 'I think, maybe, this happened.' And, of course, the statement of accusation is all it takes to put the wheels in motion. Either legally or in your family. One thing I’ve learned is the relevance of the phrase 'the perfect storm.' Not only for me, but for a lot of women I know who made these false accusations, it was very much a social phenomenon. Metaphorically, everything we were saying was true. But there was a confusion between a metaphor and a fact. And it was a highly relevant difference.

Some proponents of FMS have characterized statements made by comedienne-turned-farmer Roseanne, during a February 2011 broadcast of The Oprah Winfrey Show, as a recantation. In 1991, her then-husband, fellow comedian Tom Arnold, candidly told her of his own childhood sexual abuse, an experience he never dissociated. This triggered memories of her own sexual abuse. Inspired by the recent disclosure of incest made by former beauty queen Marilyn van Derber, she decided to go public with her allegations in an interview with People magazine.

Initially, Roseanne’s specific comments seem to imply that she experienced an actual memory that was false:

I think it's the worst thing I've ever done," she says. "It's the biggest mistake that I've ever made....

I think what happened was that--well, I know what happened was that I was in a very unhappy relationship...I was prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs. Incredible mixtures of psychiatric drugs to deal with the fact that I had, and still in some ways, have and always will have some mental illness. And the drugs and the combination of drugs that I was given, which were some strong, strong drugs, I totally lost touch with reality in a big, big way.

The public disclosure of the memory not only estranged Roseanne from her parents, but also from her siblings, including her then-business manager Geraldine Barr (in the audience during the show’s taping), all of whom sought therapy to deal with the situation. She regretted publicizing the allegation before completing her own therapy, and for characterizing it as incest not only because of the stigma attached to her father, but because of what seems to be genuine remorse for spreading that stigma to her entire family.  As she stated, "What I learned was that hurt people hurt people and that you have to heal your own hurt so you stop hurting other people."

During the interview, she also talked about the opportunity to speak to her father shortly before his death in 2001. As she tells the story, one senses how important it was for her, on a personal level, to reconnect with her father, ruing, "Had my father lived a little bit longer and had he had the right therapist and people around him, I think we would have had resolution."

Roseanne obviously backed down on the allegation. But unlike Maran, she’s quite clear that what she experienced was an actual memory of events that had an empirical basis, not a belief or a metaphor. More to the point, even during this interview she maintained that the memories are quite clear, and she has no reason to distrust them:

I want to say that nobody accuses their parents of abusing them without justification to do that....I didn't just make it up. A lot of things were true and abusive and horrible things that happened to me that my father did....I say in the book [Roseannearchy: Dispatches from the Nut Farm] I was mistaken to use the word incest, But I really can’t think of another word, and when I do, I’ll use it.

Drs Pope and Brown’s fourth question about False Memory Research posits that the use of recanted allegations as scientific evidence supporting the claim is highly problematic. In the case of both Roseanne and Maran, we can see the familial pressures on both women, the hardships they endured in the aftermath of the allegation, their true love and affection for the accused parent, and their need to connect with same parent, especially when he is close to death. In this context, we cannot confidently assess (1) whether the initial allegation stemmed from memory as opposed to belief; (2) whether new memories or beliefs merely surfaced to replace the old ones; and (3) whether the recantation stemmed from a realization of false memory, or from other motivations designed to protect and maintain the family--not to mention the accuser’s place within it.

To read earlier posts in this series, click here.