False Memory Syndrome

Adult Victims

A common scenario that began to arise in the late 1980s and early 1990s consisted of an adult, most often female, entering therapy for assistance with a personal problem and suddenly or gradually recalling memories from her childhood of being sexually abused by one or more perpetrators. Sometimes the molester was a parent, sometimes both parents, and sometimes another family member. Some women even began to have memories of being victims of satanic rituals involving numerous people. They recalled being raped by these people or being made to witness babies killed and sacrificed or being forced to drink blood or urine. The women insisted that they'd had no recollection of these events until the memories began to surface as adults, despite their claims of now remembering being abused from toddler through teenage years. These victims would then sue or press criminal charges against the alleged molester, who often was the parent. This person may have been found guilty or culpable based only on testimony of recovered memories. One example involved a woman in her late 20s who suddenly remembered that her father had molested and then murdered her best friend in the fourth grade. After 20 years with no memory of this, she'd had a flashback and recalled witnessing the entire incident and being warned by her father not to tell anyone. The father was arrested and charged with the murder based on this recovered memory.

Children and Day Care

Another phenomenon that began to emerge during this decade was that of a day care facility being [Page 162]accused of ritualistic and cultic sexual abuse. It began in 1983 with the McMartin day care case in Manhattan Beach, California. A mother of a 2-year-old boy (who later was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia) became worried that her son had been sexually abused. She informed the police, who repeatedly questioned her son about whether such incidents had taken place. Finally, they were convinced that a teacher at the day care center had molested him. The police warned the other parents of the school, and these parents became worried and questioned their children, who were mostly 3 to 4 years old. The children at first denied any abuse, but after continuous questioning and pressure, they began to describe stories of satanic rituals by the day care staff, eventually convincing parents and authorities that they had been molested—despite a lack of any physical evidence and the bizarre nature of their stories.

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