CHILDREN RITUAL ABUSE TESTIMONY AND IMPLANTED MEMORIES

A key ingredient in all MVMO panics that we have studied is the method used to interview the children. Social workers and child psychologists typically used direct and repeated questioning in order to manipulate the child to disclose abuse. It is apparent that many of the events that they describe did not actually happen. Believing the children, the juries vote to convict. (1)

Are the Children Telling the Truth?

Many child psychiatrists, social workers and police who have been involved in the many MVMO abuse cases appear to accept the following belief system:

children very rarely lie about abuse, but they are often reluctant to disclose what has happened to them. Their memories are accurate, because memory works something like a VCR. The child accesses the correct "tape", "fast forwards" to the event in question, and is able to review the full details of the abuse. Sometimes the image is a bit snowy; sometimes the fine details are blurred, but the recollection is generally quite accurate. But because young people do not want to tell, they must be repeatedly questioned before the truth comes out. The interview will often involve suggestive questioning, prompting and manipulation by the therapist, based upon her past experience and reading. The child may be rewarded for "correct" answers and ridiculed for "incorrect" ones. Implanting of false memories is either impossible or very unlikely. Audio or video recordings of interviews are not needed. The therapist or investigator need only write down a description of the child's final disclosure, not the questioning process.

children very rarely lie when they spontaneously disclose abuse on their own. But if they are exposed to some investigation techniques, they often disclose stories of events that never happened. If the interviewer or parent asks the same question repeatedly, some children will conclude that they are not giving the "right" answer and will create a new story to satisfy the adult. Sometimes they can be induced to do so through a system of praise and rewards for correct answers and ridicule or penalty for wrong answers. Often, it is simply enough to ask direct questions. Once made, such disclosures can become implanted as memories in children's minds. Memory is quite inexact, and is easily overlaid with false recollections. The more the past is revisited, the more definite those overlaid memories become. The longer the investigation, and the more suggestive and direct techniques used, and the younger the child is, the more likely it is that children will describe events that never happened and that "false" memories will be implanted. These memories feel quite real to the child, who accepts them as valid recollections of real events in their past. Audio and video recordings of the interview(s) are of great importance, in order to assess whether memory implantation possibly happened.

MVMO trials are often war zones where expert witnesses representing both belief systems battle each other in front of the jury.

How Easy is it to Implant False Memories in Children?

North American Research:

• preschool children are more suggestible than older children
• suggestive and repetitive questions can lead the children to describe events that never happened to them
• non-abused children can create memories of being molested, using source materials supplied by other children
• children who are asked to visualize how an event might have happened to them can emerge from counselling with false memories that they were abused.
• there is no way to later separate accurate from false memories of children who were interviewed using defective techniques
• all interviews of children should be recorded; interviewer's notes have been shown to be inadequate
• the use of "anatomically correct dolls" with very young children is not recommended
• "expert" witnesses often reach conflicting conclusions as to the reality of abuse after reviewing interview records.

• Saywitz et al. (4) used anatomically correct dolls to interview 5 and 7 year old children who had previously had an examination by a doctor for scoliosis (curvature of the spine). No genital or anal touching was involved. But 3% of the children "falsely affirmed vaginal touch" and 6% "falsely affirmed anal touch when the experimenter pointed to the genital or anal region of the doll and asked, 'Did the doctor touch you here?'".
• Bruck et al. (5) interviewed 3 year old children who had just visited the doctor. No genital or anal touching was involved. Immediately after the exam, the children were interviewed, using anatomically correct dolls. They were asked "Did the doctor touch you here?". 50% of the children incorrectly answered yes!
• Bruck & Ceci (6) describe a girl aged 3 years, 6 months who was examined by a pediatrician. Immediately after the exam, she was interviewed and correctly stated that the doctor had not touched her genitals or buttocks. She was shown a doll and given a direct request: to show how the doctor had touched her genitals and buttocks. She again correctly denied that it happened. 3 days later, she was re-interviewed, given the doll and asked to demonstrate everything that happened during the exam. She inserted a stick into the vagina of the doll and said that the doctor had done that to her; upon further questioning, she recanted, saying that the doctor had not done that. 3 days later, she was again re-interviewed and asked to show her father what the doctor had done. "...she hammered a stick into the doll's vagina and inserted a toy earscope into the doll's anus." Asked again whether it had really happened, she said "Yes it did." The father and interviewer tried to convince her that the doctor would not do these things, but she tenaciously stuck to her story.

New Zealand Research

Dr. Rawls was amazed and "unhappily surprised" at the results:

• 7 of the 30 children (23%) said that they had been inappropriately touched:
  • 3 disclosed genital touching
  • 2 reported touching under their upper clothes
  • 2 said that he had touched "their bottoms" or vice versa
  • 2 reported mutual touching under their clothing
• children's "errors appeared to evolve" during subsequent interviews
• the children created many new errors when a diagram of body parts was introduced during the second interview
• closed, suggestive questions (e.g. "Did he touch you on the...") generated the most errors
• open questions (e.g. "What happened then?") produced an accuracy of 32% during the first interview; closed questions were 9% accurate; mixed questions were 20% accurate.
• None of the children told the "secret" without prompting; 23% did not disclose the secret when prompted; 20% consistently provided accurate description of the secret when prompted.

Influence of Talk Shows

Indications that False Memories have been Implanted

"Of particular interest is the information the Jury received about the Little Rascals pre-school case in North Carolina. Eighty-five percent of the percent of the children received therapy with three therapists in the town; all of these children eventually reported satanic abuse. Fifteen percent of the children were treated by different therapists in a neighboring city; none of the children reported abuse of any kind after the same period of time in therapy."
(emphasis added).

It would appear that in this case, the memories of Satanic abuse were implanted by sincere therapists who believed in the reality of Satanic abuse. The out-of-town therapists, who had no such belief, found no such reports.

In other cases, children's memories can be shown to be probably false by studying their content. For example:

• children said that they were taken during the daytime into a back room of a grocery store and abused. The investigator found an open archway between the store and the back room; any staff and customers in the store would have seen the abuse in progress
• children reported being sodomized with a penis or knife, yet no indication of rectal damage was found
• children reported being taken in space ships into outer space and abused there
• children reported being taken on a boat and abused; some trained sharks danced around the boat
• children reported a staff member dressing up as a clown and robbing the town's jewelry store; no such crime ever happened
• a child reported being abused with a vibrator which had a yellow body and blue ends. No such vibrator was ever found. But a search of suspected perpetrators' home had turned up a vibrator which had been shown on television. Due to the TV lighting, the uniformly flesh coloured vibrator appeared to have a yellow body and blue ends.
• children reported being taken through long underground tunnels (8) from the basement of the McMartin day care centre (9) to a nearby building or underground room where they were abused. Police conducted ground conductivity measurements and proved that the tunnels never existed

Indications that Large Scale Abuse Does Not Occur

• Taking the kids on long car and plane rides, as reported by many children, in order to molest them in other cities would very difficult. Parents often come to the facility at random times during the day to pick up their children for doctor or dentist appointments. They often phone the center to speak to their children. If the children were in another state, they could not be produced, and all hell would break loose at the center.
• Recruitment of additional child molesters to maintain staffing levels would be very difficult. Most staff are women, and female child molesters are extremely rare.
• Somehow, the most extreme physical and sexual abuse would have to be conducted without leaving traces on the children's bodies that would be noticeable by parents.
• The most extreme psychological abuse would have to be engaged in frequently and over a long period of time without triggering parents' suspicion.

Conclusions

There are probably over 100 persons who have been imprisoned in North America for MVMO child sexual abuse crimes that they never committed. In fact, many of the crimes might have never happened! Some are having their convictions overturned and are being released from prison. But others continue to be convicted and sent to prison.

Further Descriptions of MVMO Cases

REFERENCES CITED

1. 1991-92 San Diego County Grand Jury, Report #8 "CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, ASSAULT, AND MOLEST ISSUES" (San Diego County, CA). See: http://www.vix.com/pub/men/falsereport/satanic/sandiego.html
2. Stephen J Ceci, "Cognitive and Social Factors in Children's Testimony, Master Lecture, American Psychological Assoc., Toronto, 1993-AUG-20
3. SJ Ceci & M. Bruck, Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, American Psychological Association (1995)
4. Ibid., P. 170-171
5. Ibid., P. 172-173
6. Ibid., P. 178
7. Alan Samson, "Five-year-olds and the Truth", The Dominion, Wellington, New Zealand, 1996-MAY-28, P. 9.
8. John Earl, "The Dark Truth About the 'Dark Tunnels of McMartin'", Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, Vol. 7, #2, 1995 Spring, P. Institute for Psychological Therapies, 13200 Cannon City Blvd., Northfield, MN 55057. An expose on the McMartin day care centre underground tunnel myth. $15 USF; $20 USF (foreign).
9. Paul & Shirley Eberle, "The Abuse of Innocence : The McMartin Preschool Trial", Prometheus Books (1993). ISBN: 0879758090. The authors attended the court sessions lasting over many years, and concluded that there was no case against the accused.
10. Hans Sebald, "Witch-Children, Prometheus Books, Amherst NY, (1995) ISBN 0-87975-965-8. The book compares the role of childrens' testimony during the Witchhunts of the Renaissance with their role in child abuse cases today.

INTERNET REFERENCES

• See: http://liquid2-sun.mit.edu/witchhunt.html for information on a series of mass MVMO prosecutions which appear to have thrown innocent adults in jail, left hundreds of children with false memories of child abuse, and left many communities panic stricken. Information on the Witchhnt mailing list is also available at that site.
• A list of WWW sites dealing with Satanic Ritual Abuse and Childhood Sexual Abuse can be found at: http://user.aol.com/doughskept/witchhunt_links.html
• Two useful articles which describe non-leading methods of interviewing children are:
  • Kathleen Faller, "Types of Questions for Children Alleged to Have Been Sexually Abused", The Advisor, Newsletter of APSAC, (1990) 6(3)
  • Dennis Reed, "Enhancing children's resistance to misleading questions during forensic interviews", The Advisor, Newsletter of APSAC, (1993) 6(2)

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