Volume 41, Number 20 · December 1, 1994
The Revenge of the Repressed: Part II
By Frederick C. Crews
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (3rd edition)
by Ellen Bass, by Laura Davis
HarperPerennial, 604 pp., $22.50 (paper)
The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse
by Elizabeth Loftus, by Katherine Ketcham
St. Martin's, 290 pp., $22.95
Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria
by Richard Ofshe, by Ethan Watters
Scribner's, 340 pp., $23.00
Victims of Memory: Incest Accusations and Shattered Lives
by Mark Pendergrast
Upper Access, 603 pp., $24.95 (paper)
Throughout the American 1980s and beyond, the interrogation of small children for their memories of recent sexual abuse played a role in many a criminal case against accused molesters who had not, in fact, done anything wrong. The social and financial costs have been enormous. To take only the most famous example, staff members of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, who were accused of every imaginable horror associated with devil worship, had to endure the longest (almost seven years) and most expensive ($15 million) trial in American history before the case collapsed from the weight of its accumulated absurdities. In other instances, draconian sentences are being served and plea bargains are still being coerced in the face of transparently clear signs that the charges are bogus. Even today, our criminal justice system is just beginning to erect safeguards against the error that makes such outrages possible: the assumption that children are still reliable witnesses after exposure to their parents' and inquisitors' not-so-subtle hints that certain kinds of revelations are expected of them.
Review, 7400 words
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