Why your childhood memories may not actually have happened.

[Igel]

48. There was such a case in a private daycare in the '80s.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Child+Testimony+in+Day+Care+Center+Sexual+Abuse+Cases

It's a reasonable summary. Testimony about things that were impossible. Difficulty separating fact from fantasy.


False memories can happen quickly in childhood. It makes child testimony a legal minefield.

Add to that the little problem that we revise memories when we access them--it's not like reading a book where the print is unchanged during the reading. We activate the memories in the parts of the brain where they're stored. We pick them up. Look at them. Turn them over. And there's feedback, so as we realize that the memory's skewed or incomplete we can add to them. This isn't conscious. It happens--and it makes memories open to suggestion unless there's collaborating physical evidence.

When we recall the memory again we recall the revised memory; we recall what we recalled, not necessarily the original. The best witness is a person who, on the stand, has never considered what s/he's giving testimony about. It's jumbled, but there's no chance of revision. If there are inconsistencies, there are inconsistencies--rather than a consistency manufactured days, weeks, or months after the event, informed by all sorts of other information.

This isn't my speculation. You marry a psycholinguist, you go to psychology seminars, you learn a thing or two. Does it happen every single time? Of course not. But if you're going to convict somebody--even in the court of public opinion--you have to know how memory works. Otherwise you're basically conducting a private kangaroo court.

So the best attitude when it's he-said/she-said is to be agnostic. Is it just to the accuser? Of course not. But accepting the accuser's word at face value is also unjust. Justice is very elusive in these kinds of situations.