Ugh. The "Repressed Memory" flamewar is making me ill.

[Odin2005]

Seriously, it is. These people have been traumatized by having fake memories put into their heads but criticizing it just traumatizes the victims of this snake oil even more. Given that I have been one of the most outspoken supporters of rape victims on this forum every since my friend with Cerebral Palsy was raped this crap is getting me very upset. :(

[Orrex]

1. Maybe that whole stupid thread is just a false memory that someone planted in your brain.

Whoa.

[Nevernose]

2. More than even the antivax crowd

The issue of "repressed memories" exemplifies how the Internet makes two things look equal. Google searching would leave you with the impression that there is some kind serious scientific debate on the subject. To think that someone could "suppress" a memory like that for decades shows a serious lack of understanding of how memory even works.

[Nevernose]

3. 20 years ago, George W. Bush killed my dog.

I don't have any proof, per se, and I didn't actually remember it until 15 minutes ago, but I swear it happened.

And if you don't automatically believe me -- without thought, without questions, without evidence, and without anything but outpourings of sympathy -- then you're automatically a puppy-killer, too.

Even a whiff of incredulity, in fact, just lends credence to the possibility of you being part of a corporate/academic conspiracy by the multinational Big Psychology corporations who don't want us to know about repressed memories so that...well, I'm not really sure why the serious academic world is so opposed to admitting that repressed memories are real even though there's a lot of evidence that says they're not and no evidence that says repressed memories are real. Maybe they just don't like puppies, or are puppy-killers themselves.

[realisticphish]

4. we've been sucked back to the late 80's!

repressed memory has been rejected by mainstream psychology for decades


Sorry, it must be a plot by Big Psych

[SemiCharmedQuark]

5. You would think people would know this. I've seen it on Law and Order like 10 times!

And everyone knows those shows are ripped from the headlines.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Wait a minute...

Because some people got suckered by this fake memory shit, we shouldn't make fun of this fake memory shit because the suckers will feel bad?

By that logic, we shouldn't make fun of any form of woo woo, because it will make people feel bad.

[Odin2005]

9. And the rape apologist shows up.

Yes, I know you are empathy challenged :eyes:

criticizing people that honestly think they were sexually assaulted, even if it is a false memory, just traumatizes the person more, you nimrod.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. So what about people who think they were abducted by aliens?

You know, anally probed and whatnot.

[Warpy]

7. People generally remember being raped

If they were raped as children, all that stuff comes to the surface like marsh gas when they have children of their own.

Having false memories installed under hypnosis is a major scam and such practitioners need to be jailed for assault and sued into cardboard boxes under an Interstate. They might not have been raped IRL, but they were certainly raped by the "therapist."

[Odin2005]

8. That's why I posted in that thread that those therapists should be charged with rape.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. lol,wut?

They should be charged with rape because they tricked a person into thinking they had been raped? Even though they didn't actually rape anybody?

I can see a civil suit over malpractice, but actual rape charges?

:crazy:

[Odin2005]

12. I wasn't being totally serious.

:eyes:

[onager]

13. Oh great. The Return of the Hysteria Puppeteers...

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again.

Maybe that is why it is easier for most of us to forget, rather than to try and explain, the Satanic-abuse scare that gripped this country in the early 80's — the myth that Devil-worshipers had set up shop in our day-care centers, where their clever adepts were raping and sodomizing children, practicing ritual sacrifice, shedding their clothes, drinking blood and eating feces, all unnoticed by parents, neighbors and the authorities. - Mary Talbot, NY TIMES, "The Devil in the Nursery"

Hello?!! Anybody out there remember the McMartin case? Apparently not. It was only the longest and most expensive legal case in American history, which ultimately resulted in NO convictions.

I lived in Los Angeles at the time (and still do), so I vividly remember the daily hysteria over that one. Especially in the Los Angeles TIMES...where...guess what? The L.A. TIMES reporter covering McMartin was canoodling with Lael Rubin, the lead prosecutor in the case.

Just one, out of many examples of the complete corruption surrounding that horrible case. All of which can be excused, of course, because they were only trying to PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!! Insert your own saracasm smiley...

For those who weren't around at the time, here's a great (long) article on McMartin:

The McMartin Nightmare and the Hysteria Puppeteers

Recovered memories became the latest vogue in psychiatry. Many thought recovered memories were reliable...

One of these people was Kee MacFarlane at CII, who was a member of the Preschool-Age Molested Children's Professional Group...

Note: McFarlane really wasn't much of a "professional" anything. She advertised herself as a psychotherapist, but had no certification or licenses in that field.

Her best professional move was sleeping with a local L.A. TV reporter who also had a law degree, Wayne Satz.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/mcmartin_daycare/1.html

Sort of like Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the aggressive self-promoters and the torch-and-pitchfork crowd in McMartin finally over-reached themselves. They directly attacked the Los Angeles Police Department as a nest of secret child molesters. But by then, a lot of innocent people were already in jail and would stay there a long time.

HBO did a great movie on the McMartin case, "Indictment" with James Woods playing the McMartins' lawyer.

[charlie]

14. Oh Gawd

I remember McMartin. What made the travesty worse was how prosecutions for Ritual Satanic Abuse became voguish in its wake. Trials were suddenly going off like bomblets all over the country, with ordinary schleps convicted of outlandish grotesqueries.

Even my town of El Paso tossed 2 women into prison for using the YMCA as a bloody coven, forcing kids to take drugs, eat human flesh, endure orifice insertions, yadda, yadda. Of course, there wasn't one shred of material evidence and they were eventually released. Sadly, if I remember right, one of them wasn't even afforded the decency of exoneration -- her conviction was voided on a technicality and the prosecution demurred on a 3rd trial to "spare the victims".

The local paper enjoyed a happily lurid season, inserting SATANIC into headlines as often as it could get away with. Which was wretchedly ironic, because a reporter they employed was the first skeptic to pen national articles poking holes in the McMartin hysteria.

McMartin was the reason I didn't think much of Janet Reno. She accelerated her ascent to national prominence by http://www.ags.uci.edu/~dehill/witchhunt/cases/country_walk/reno_ph.htm">engineering her own preschool witchhunt.

[woo me with science]

15. The recovered memory industry is still very, very active.

The charlatans have just changed their terminology and talk less about repression now than dissociation. But their "research" is still a disingenuous methodological trainwreck, and the process of "memory" creation is exactly the same process of insidious suggestion it ever was. You always see people posting links to the exact same garbage "studies" from the 1980's and 1990's that were debunked and methodologically savaged over a decade ago. They don't care, because they are operating from belief rather than science.

The swarm of defensive Believers descending on every single thread about this should alert everyone to the fact that none of this really disappeared after the 80's and 90's and the famous lawsuits. Like most forms of woo, it just went underground for a little while until it figured out how to seem respectable again.

[Odin2005]

16. The fact that many of these false memories involve rape and abuse just makes thinks worse...

...because of how often real rape and sexual assault victims are ignored or called liars. It is impossible to attack the nonsense without getting "YOU CODDLE PEDOS AND RAPISTS" accusations thrown at you.

[Codeine]

17. self-delete

[onager]

18. On TV this weekend...

Dateline NBC - Real Life Mysteries: Innocence Lost

I saw it yesterday. Excellent investigative piece on the 1994 sexual-abuse hysteria in Wenatchee, WA.

The whole thing was ginned up by a local cop, Bob Perez. He was routinely assigned the rotating task of child abuse investigator with the local police department.

Before Perez' appointment, Wenatchee for decades had almost no child abuse cases.

Then suddenly, 43 people were arrested on 29,726 counts of sex abuse against 60 children.

The show interviews many of Perez' victims, who were mostly poor and mentally challenged. e.g., Carol Green was an illiterate mother of four. Perez goaded her into signing a confession she couldn't even read. She was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Perez also went after anyone who questioned him, including a local Pentecostal preacher (he went to jail) and a professional child care worker (he fled to Canada with his family, when it became clear that Perez meant to take away his children and jail him).

One of the bravest people interviewed is an 11-year-old girl. Even with Perez insisting she had been abused, she kept saying "No, I wasn't."

As usual in these cases, there was no physical evidence. Just a lot of Salem-witch-trial hearsay. Much of the hearsay came from Perez' own foster daughter, who later recanted everything.

An amazing story and horrifying story, well worth the hour to watch.

[realisticphish]

19. Frontline did a piece by the same name

on the Little Rascals incident in NC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rascals_day_care_sexual_abuse_trial

It started out as a one-shot piece, but they ended up doing 4 parts, following the case all the way to the eventual overturning of the case.

Children ARE NOT reliable eyewitnesses, especially very young children. Some children said the defendants had stabbed them, microwaved them, and taken them to the moon. But still prosecutors insisted the testimony was reliable. One child actually reversed his testimony several times under oath (he was 4-5 years old).

One woman was sentenced to life in prison. A man was sentenced similarly. The rest took plea deals, but those two eventually got their cases overturned unanimously by the appeals court

[LeftishBrit]

20. I posted on the thread and it stopped - don't know if I'm the posting equivalent of weedkiller!

More seriously, here is the website of a foundation that might be of interest:

http://fmsfonline.org/