Bad -- but not unexpected -- ruling in the Shanley case

Dear Friend of Justice,

I learned today that Judge Neel turned down the new-trial motion in the Paul Shanley case. While this decision saddens and angers me, it was what I was expecting. I attended the trial and the hearing on the new-trial motion. Neel made it obvious that he didn't understand the issues involved, including the difference between repression and forgetting.

I have not read the decision and I am not in a hurry to do so. I don't want to lose my appetite completely on the day before Thanksgiving. If you have a strong stomach, let me know and I will send the document to you.

Robert Shaw, Shanley's appellate attorney, is intelligent, dedicated, and hard-working. I know that he will do a stellar job before the Appeals Court. My hope is that he will draw three fair, intelligent, and courageous judges.

-Bob Chatelle

Beware of Sybill

I received this press release from Pam Freyd:

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TV MOVIE REVIEWER
JUNE 5, 2008
SYBIL: AN MPD HOAX

On Saturday June 7, 2008 CBS will air its remake of the movie SYBIL,
(based on the 1973 book with the same name) about an early, alleged
case of "multiple-personality disorder" (MPD).

SYBIL was the first major book/movie to tie "MPD" to child abuse.
Before SYBIL was published, there were fewer than 50 reported cases of
MPD worldwide. By 1994, over 40,000 cases had been reported.

SYBIL, however, is well known to be a hoax. See, for example, _The New
York Review of Books, 44(7)_, April 24, 1997, "Sybil-The Making of a
Disease: An Interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel," by Mikkel
Borch-Jacobsen.1

Dr. Spiegel (Faculty, Columbia Medical School) reported that
statements from the real "Sybil" convinced him that her "memories"
were the result of suggestion by Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur. He reports
that Wilbur engaged author Flora Rheta Schreiber to write "Sybil's"
case for a popular audience only after professional journals refused
to publish it. He refused to lend his name and credentials to
co-author the work when asked to do so by Wilbur and Schreiber.

The 2006 book _The Bifurcation of the Self: The History and Theory of
Dissociation and Its Disorder_ (Springer) by Professor Robert Rieber
(Fordham University) documents how the hoax was perpetrated. Rieber
had access to the original Schreiber/Wilbur interview tapes made when
Sybil was being written. We learn that the "memories were a result of
prolonged hypnosis and, to quote Dr. Wilbur: "Uh, the first time we
got any memories back was when I gave her Pentothal ..." (Rieber,
page 217)2

Wilbur's treatment of Sybil required eleven years and a total of 2,254
sessions.

In a letter to Dr. Wilbur, (reprinted in Rieber page 91) Schreiber
reports that she had visited "Sybil's" hometown but was unable to find
anyone to corroborate the awful things that supposedly happened to
"Sybil" there. Schreiber was also unable to find the "woods" where
many incidents allegedly occurred.

Will the CBS remake of SYBIL include the information documenting
Sybil's MPD as a hoax? Does it matter? Yes! Bitter experience shows
that when the media give credence to psychological anomalies, they
spread wildly.

Media coverage played a pivotal role in the dissemination of McMartin
preschool copycat cases in the mid 1980's, the spread of the "Satanic
Panic" and alien abduction sightings in the 1990's, and in widely held
beliefs about "repressed" memories of childhood abuse.

SYBIL played a substantial role in a cultural and psychiatric tsunami,
later known as the "false" or "recovered" memory debate. In spite of
professional skepticism about MPD and multi-million dollar malpractice
suits by former MPD patients, there is danger of unleashing another
tsunami unless the truth is told.

Does anyone care? Yes! As Oprah Winfrey's recent experience over the
fraudulent James Frey memoir A Million Little Pieces shows, the public
really does care to know whether the material served them by the media
is fact or fiction.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.fmsfonline.org/sybil.html

CONTACTS:
Pamela Freyd, Ph.D., Executive Director
False Memory Syndrome Foundation
215-940-1041
pamfreyd@earthlink.net

August Piper, Jr., M.D.
206-623-5757
Dr. Piper is the author of Hoax and Reality: The Bizarre World of
Multiple Personality Disorder_. He is a member of the FMSF
Scientific and Professional Advisory Board.

Robert W. Rieber, Ph.D. Fordham University
Graduate School of Social Services
212-535-4010
207-963-7232
He is the author of _The Bifurcation of the Self_ and
he is not affiliated with the FMS Foundation.

[1] Available from the FMS Foundation.
See also http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=1199
[2] This book contains more than 75 pages of transcripts of
conversations between Wilbur and Schreiber.
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Forgetting and "Repression"

Dear Friend of Justice,

The theory of “repressed memory” – or, alternatively, “dissociative amnesia” – posits something radically different from ordinary forgetting. Indeed, were this not so, there would be no need to invent special terms.

Almost all of the confusion in the repressed-memory debate arises from people confusing the two phenomena.

We are all prone to forgetting – and forgetting about – things that have happened to us. We even forget about traumatic events, sometimes for years.

Consider this excerpt of an email from a colleague, a distinguished professor of psychology:

Is it possible to forget major traumatic events and later remember them? I am convinced it happens quite frequently. It happened to me.

As a teenager I was violently mugged and injured by a gang in Central Park and ten years later when I entered grad school I told my colleagues I had never been a victim of violent crime while actively searching my memory for anything that would count. The next day the entire mugging memory came back in full detail even though I had apparently not thought of the event several years. This is not scientific but I believe it is strongly analogous to sexual abuse cases. I don't believe I repressed the memory, I believe that moving to Hawaii in my early 20s made the memory irrelevant and thus I forgot it through normal cognitive mechanisms.

This is an ordinary case or forgetting and remembering. The memory was delayed by a few hours after the recall attempt was made, but that is not unusual. I suspect that similar things have happened to all of us.

It is also common for people to forget – or forget about – childhood sexual abuse. But in this instance, memory scientists and those believing in dissociative amnesia make very different predictions.

Dissociative amnesia is supposed to protect the individual from traumatic memories. Thus the more traumatic event, the more likely it is to be repressed. Many even believe that traumatic events can be repressed immediately after they occur. For example, many believe that a father can violently rape a daughter during the night and that the daughter can sit down to breakfast with him in the morning as if nothing untoward had happened.

My colleague instead has this to say:

Most importantly one needs to know if force was alleged. If no force was used and if the child believed at the time that the behavior was acceptable then I believe it is possible to forget even repeated sexual contacts and in adulthood regain access to the memories. Furthermore I do not believe this to be repression. If the child is able to fit the behavior into some type of schema for acceptable behavior then the child will be more likely to simply forget it as he or she moves on through life.

According to popular culture, adults who have sex with children are violent rapists who obtain the child’s silence through violent threats. If these sex offenders exist, they are quite rare. The fact that an adult wants to behave sexually with a child doesn’t mean that he or she is stupid. The last thing they want is to get caught.

The usual pattern instead is not to frighten the child but to befriend the child. Children and adults have different moral senses. What is obviously wrong to an adult may not necessarily seem wrong to a child.

When I posted my account of the recent Shanley hearing, I made the following observation:

When Shaw expressed the opinion that the theory of repressed memory was “junk science,” Judge Neel asked if it wasn’t the case that Dr. Elizabeth Loftus believes that it does exist but is very rare. Shaw disputed this. I am sure that he was right. As a scientist, Dr. Loftus would never state that the nonexistence of repressed memory has been proven. She may have said something like, “If it exists, it is very rare.”

It turns out that what Loftus actually said in her affidavit was that traumatic events “rarely slip from awareness.” Now “slipping from awareness” is radically different from “repression.”

Judge Neel doesn’t know the difference between “repression” and ordinary forgetting. And the reason he doesn’t know the difference is that Shanley’s trial lawyer, Frank Mondano, didn’t do his job.

My guess is that Mondano himself never grasped the difference. Thus it is not surprising that he was unable to educate the judge and jury. And as a result Paul Shanley was undeniably deprived of his right to a fair trial.

-Bob Chatelle