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The link between memory and the legal system
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Document about the legal system and memory including research and case studies.
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Legal System and MemoryKey Studies:
Expert evidence in trials of sexual offences (chapter 7): the law should remain
flexible to admit any kind of expert evidence that is reliable, probative and helpful to
the jury.
Mark Pendergrast - Memory Warp (2017) (chapter 1): sex historian points out the
industrial revolution brought a dramatic increase in sexual abuse of prepubescent
children. Kinsey report (1953) revealed 24% of respondents had been approached as
a prepubescent by adult men who were making sexual advances. Many psychologists
expressed the opinion that incest between adults and children was acceptable =
unsurprising there was a vocal outrage by the 1970s, led to a surge in books of incest
accounts and stories including traumatised children = incest was of great interest in
the public by 1983 (not yet mention of repression of memories, apart from Freud’s
theory), a lot of the women coming forward has no problems remembering what
happened, few stories started coming out of women remembering abuse while they
were still in their crib.
Therapists concluded many women had repressed memories of abuse due to the
extent of real abuse and the reluctance of women to disclose it. Early 1980s, therapy
used hypnotic age regression, dream analysis and induced flashbacks to recover
repressed memories. 1984 – TV shows began coming out of
children/teenagers/adults telling their stories = growing interest. Incest groups
formed, in England incest was redefined to mean sexual abuse of a child by any
adult. A lot of survivor literature. Then incest began very broad (father coming into
room without knocking, hugging too long) called emotional incest.
It was recognised men could be victims too. Sometimes concerns that patients had
of making up memories or not believing them were completely ignored by the
therapist, sometimes suggested memory truth of fantasy wasn’t relevant in memory
work. It was suggested that Auschwitz survivors still remembered because they lived
there and their experiences were impossible to forget but a child abused by their
father would often wake up the next day and he would make breakfast, take them to
school and so the huge disparity made the abuse become repressed.
Many method and techniques were used in therapy to encourage remembering and
recovering old memories and feeling all of the emotions especially discouraged
forgiveness and embracing rage.
Next came the DID and multiple personalities, books written, TV shows. Insurance
companies only paid for mental illness care from the DSM = multiple personality
disorder became lucrative, around the 1980s. often MPD was seen as common after
satanic ritual abuse.
by the early 1990s repressed memories had become huge “urban legend”, police,
nursing departments were writing about how to spot them. Self-help books. So many
issues of individuals not being believed that they think the memories are made up,
therapists trying to encourage more memory retrieval = extremely damaging and
many people left feeling robbed and their childhood ruined.
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