Friday, November 22, 2019

Children and Credibility

     One of the most heinous crimes that evokes instant emotional outrage in today's society is the abuse of a child.  No child should ever have to suffer harm or horrid abuse as a victim to predators, perpetrators or serial abusers with no conscience.  When such an event happens it only makes sense to exact the highest degree of restraint and punitive actions available.
      Children are mentally undeveloped, physiologically vulnerable, innocent, naive and easily manipulated.  Scientist are aware that children are highly vulnerable to suggestion, deception and manipulation.  While we wish we could always believe them the adults in the room should treat them with respect but always seek verification.
      There is a very dangerous flip side to the desire to protect children cited above.  The emotional switch to protect children can be used to quickly garner attention, gain leverage, accuse, convict and then imprison innocent people.  This switch is used for a variety of reasons by parents in a custody battle, by prosecutors looking for an easy cheap conviction (especially it the falsely accused is unable to afford expert defense) or by investigators looking to enhance professional standing.  The media often piles on eager to garner attention, increase readership by eliciting strong emotions with lurid and horrid depictions.  Truth and fairness is hardly important among those clamoring to protect children. The motivation for using children and accusations for profit or professional gian is often rewarded.  The false conviction rates due to what the National Center for Reason and Justice  calls "the child-protection panic" are extremely high. 
       Placing the descriptor "credible" prior to the noun "accusation" lends a weight or credence to any accusation, true or not, of any heinous, lurid or horrid crime no matter how bizarre.  A successful investigator has been described as a person who "will always get the man responsible".  Below are a sample of typical "credible accusations" by children that have resulted in agreed upon injustices.  Many innocents still languish in prison but it is refreshing when authorities are able to recognize truth and foster justice.
Children are Always Truthful and Credible
      A four year old child was an eye witness able to identify the perpetrator of the rape and murder of his mother.  Most assume that a child is truthful, has no reason to lie and may even have a better memory than adults who are often confused by the myriad details of life .  A child assisted by state experts, skilled police interrogators and seasoned prosecutors generated a "credible accusation" of Phillip Bivens 18 months after the crime.  While in custody Mr. Bivens found himself under incredible pressure and was threatened with the death penalty if he continued to insist on his innocence and went to trial.  Mr. Bivens pondered the image of a tearful child fingering him in front of a jury for the brutal crime against his mother.  Fearful for his life Mr. Bivens offered a confession.  He served three decades in Mississippi prisons before his case was selected by the "Innocence Project" for Review.  Luckily the material evidence (clothing) collected from the crime scene was not destroyed and was then analyzed for the presence of  DNA.   Mr. Bivens DNA was on none of the items found on or in the vicinity of the victim.  DNA on the clothing did identify the actual perpetrator, a serial rapist convicted in other cases.  Thanks to the Innocence Project the true perpetrator subsequently confessed and was convicted for that crime.  Mr. Bivens had served 30 years in prison prior to his exoneration.  The "credible accusation" could have killed him but Mr. Bivens decision to create a confession to a crime he never committed likely saved his life.

Father Imprisoned Using False Accusations
     It it true that a dedicated father can spend decades in prison for false allegations without any physical evidence?   Unfortunately the answer is a resounding YES.  The video above is just one story.  Many similar cases are never resolved truthfully.
     In this story accusations against the father arose in the midst of dispute during a divorce (very common).  Three children were coaxed into accusing the father using known suggestive techniques.  Eventually the children, after they became adults, understood that the accusations they were coaxed into by police and child protection services were false.  They also came to understand that this was the reason for their "missing father" which had left them confused. 
      The children had no idea what happened to the father over a twenty year period.  The father  and was NOT allowed to communicate with them in any form. The truth came out when the "child accusers" (now adults) learned that the stories the police helped them "form" with dolls never really happened. The video of the doll playing was going to be used against the father.  The father was freed after the adult children found out he was in prison due to this videoed game playing.  His adult offspring told the courts that the stories made up were not true.  The father had, by then, spent over 20 years in prison for something he never did.
      This case is not an exception to the competent work of child protective services, dedicated and informed detectives and prosecutors interested in justice.  This story demonstrates how the "hero" complex can drive counselors, police and investigators to use and manipulate children unknowingly.  Prosecutors who are measured by convictions, guilty pleas and average prison length are very willing to use process crimes, pressure witnesses. manipulate children and imprison the innocent if it helps build their resume and career.  




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Further Reading:

American Psychological Association. 2001. Understanding Child Sexual Abuse

Baker, Robert A. Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions From Within (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1992.).

Crews, Frederick. (1997). Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute. New York Review of Books Reprint Edition.

Dawes,Robyn M. Everyday Irrationality : How Pseudo Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (Westview Press, 2001).

Erwin, Edward. (1995). A Final Accounting: Philosophical and Empirical Issues in Freudian Psychology. MIT Press.

Gardner, Martin. (2006). "The Memory Wars."Skeptical Inquirer. Part 1 is in vol. 30 no. 1, parts 2 and 3 are in vol. 30 no. 2.

Goldstein. Eleanor C. (1992). Confabulations: Creating False Memories, Destroying Families. Sirs.

de Rivera, Joseph. "'Trauma searches' plant the seed of imagined misery," The Sacramento Bee, May 18, 1993.

Hallinan, Joseph T. "Money for repressed memories repressed," Sacramento Bee, Jan. 12, 1997, Forum.

Johnson, M.K. et al. "Source Monitoring,"Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28.

Johnston, Moira. Spectral Evidence: The Ramona Case: Incest, Memory, and Truth on Trial in Napa Valley (Westview Press, 1999).

Loftus, Elizabeth and Katherine Ketcham. The Myth of Repressed Memory (New York: St. Martin's, 1994).

Mullen Paul E. and Jillian Fleming. 1998. "Long-term Effects of Child Sexual Abuse"

Ofshe, Richard and Ethan Watters. Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Scribner's, 1994).

Pendergrast, Mark. Victims of Memory : Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives 2nd ed. (Upper Access Book Publishers, 1996).

Schacter, Daniel L., editor, Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past(Harvard University Press, 1997).

Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory - the brain, the mind, and the past (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

Singer, Margaret Thaler and Janja Lalich. Crazy Therapies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1996). Review of "Crazy" Therapies

Tavris, Carol. "Hysteria and the incest-survivor machine," Sacramento Bee, Forum section, January 17, 1993.

Wakefield, Hollida and Ralph Underwager. Return of the Furies - An Investigation into Recovered Memory Therapy (Peru, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1994).

"Debunking Myths About Trauma and Memory," (2005). Richard J. McNally, Ph.D. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 50, No 13, November.

My review of Crazy Therapies by Singer & Lalich

StopBadTherapy.com

Twelve Myths about False Memories

Mass Media Funk: Study shows the longer one is in RMT, the more disabled one becomes

Statements by Professional Organizations on recovered memory therapy

"Truth or invention: exploring the repressed memory syndrome" excerpt from The Myth of Repressed Memory by ElizabethLoftus and Katherine Ketcham

"Remembering Dangerously" by Elizabeth Loftus

False Memory Syndrome Foundation WWW Page

Recovered Memories or Modern Witch Hunt? by Douglas E. Hill

Recovered Memory Therapy and False Memory Syndrome by John Hochman, M.D.

"First of All, Do No Harm" A Recovered Memory Therapist Recants An Interview With Robin Newsome By Mark Pendergrast

Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance: repressed memory therapy page

"Recovered Memories of Abuse: Assessment, Therapy, Forensics," By Kenneth S. Pope, Ph.D., ABPP and Laura S. Brown, Ph.D., ABPP

"Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse: Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources" By Jim Hopper, Ph.D.

Lisa Nasseff claims therapist Mark Schwartz brainwashed her A woman is suing a St. Louis therapist, claiming he hypnotized her into falsely believing she had been a part of a satanic cult, had multiple personalities, and had taken part in satanic rituals.

Back to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory" by Alexander Cockburn

Exonerating the Friedmans by Chris Mooney

    

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