Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, along with Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove and Sarah Polonsky, published a 1994 study titled “Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Remembering and Repressing.”  Loftus, Fullilove and Polonsky studied 105 women with a history of alcoholism, and found that 54% of them had suffered from childhood sexual abuse.  Out of that 54%, a “robust 19%” of these women had once “forgotten” the memory of the abuse, but later recalled it. The researchers presume that the 19% who had forgotten, accurately remembered the abuse after forgetting–an argument often tossed out by some pro-FMSF researchers who contend that even if memories are “repressed,” they're usually recalled inaccurately because they’re subject to hypnotic suggestion, therapist suggestion, autosuggestion, fantasy, delusions, and so on.  

A number of other studies indicate that delayed memory recall features the same amount of distortion and accuracy as continuously available memory.  For example, a 1996 study by Dr. Constance Dalenberg, “Accuracy, Timing and Circumstances of Disclosure in Therapy of Recovered and Continuous Memories of Abuse,” studied the recall of seventeen adult patients who experienced childhood sexual abuse.*  By comparing the patients’ memories to the police reports and hospital records of their abuse, Dalenberg found no difference in accuracy between those who had delayed recall of the events (i.e., recovered memories of abuse), and those who had continual access to those memories.**

Another point of contention made by pro-FMS researchers–from Rev. Dr. Ralph Underwager to Dr. Susan Clancy--is that sexual abuse need not be a traumatic experience at all.  If, for the sake of argument, you suppose that not all children are traumatized by sexual abuse, then that still doesn’t mean they aren’t damaged by it.  David Berg, founder of the Children of God Cult, fondly remembered childhood experiences that most would characterize as abusive.  We can see that he wasn’t traumatized by the experience.  At the same time, however, it clearly damaged him. 

On a more scientific level, a 1994 study titled “The Nature of Traumatic Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse,” by Drs. James Chu, Julia Matthews, Lisa Frey, and Barbara Ganzel, found a strong (although not necessarily causal) relationship between childhood abuse and adult psychopathology.*** Moreover rates of psychopathology seemed to be uninfluenced by whether or not the adult patient had continuous, delayed or no recall of the abuse.

In fact, we can cite study after study demonstrating (1) the existence of delayed memory recall, and (2) memories can accurately be recalled after lying dormant for years.  Yet arguably the most compelling evidence of accurate delayed memory recall of sexual abuse comes from those who have gone through it. 

After watching the 1995 Frontline episode titled “Divided Memories,” a document described by Mike Stanton in the Columbia Journalism Review as a “four-hour polemic” advocating the FMS diagnosis, Dr. Ross Cheit, a professor of political science at Brown University, had cause for concern.  The program, which gave ample time for Drs. Peter and Pamela Freyd to declare their side of the story, mentioned very little about recovered memories proven accurate.  Dr. Cheit had earlier managed to find independent corroboration of his recovered abuse memories.  He wondered how many other people had undergone this. 

A student of Dr. Cheit began an answer to his query several hours after the professor mentioned it to him.  An informal database search listed six different cases where recovered memories of child abuse confirmed through independent means. 

Dr. Cheit fired off a letter to Frontline producer Ofra Bikel, asking why she didn’t include another side to this story.  Bikel replied that she didn’t see the relevance of such cases to her documentary.

Of course, Dr. Cheit saw the relevance.  Over the years, he’s discovered numerous other cases, all of which involved delayed recall of memory corroborated by other evidence.  These days, he puts them on his website which includes news, events, and analyses. 

As he says, the site speaks for itself.

_____________________
*Published in Journal of Psychiatry and Law, vol. 24.

**Dr. Jennifer Freyd, in the previously cited “Science in the Memory Debate,” cautions that both continuous recall and delayed recall are subject to distortion.  In other words, just because someone recovers a memory doesn’t make that memory any more accurate than ones that are continuously available.  The point here is that nothing indicates that it would be less accurate.  One would have almost expectation that memory distortions that occur with explicit memory also occur with hidden memories. She sees the problem as a tendency on both sides to link memory accuracy with memory “persistence,” or in other words the contiguity of memory.

At the same time, she expresses her dissatisfaction with the term “repression” in the context of some studies.  Often, people use the term to describe a deliberate forgetting by the experiencer in order to reorganize information so that traumas and stresses are buried under more manageable memories.  Dr. Freyd saw this as an apple and oranges approach, stating that “repression,” used in this context, “...confuses the epistemological status of observable phenomena with purported motivations and mechanisms for these phenomena.”
                   
***The American Journal of Psychiatry n. 156 (May 1999).