The Debate is still going on: A comment on “British False Memory Society: Caseload and Details by Year (1993 Onwards)” by Lawrence Patihis and Kevin Felstead

Unfortunately, the picture drawn by Patihis and Felsead regarding the unconditional belief in repressed memories on the part of clinicians, academics and legal authorities in the U.S. and in Europe looks familiar, as it resembles the one in Israel. In the first trial in Israel that involved alleged recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse a clinician expert testified on behalf of the prosecution, arguing that the plaintiff's memories, which have allegedly been repressed for many years and finally recovered, constituted a valid description of the sexual abuses that she had undergone during childhood. Once this testimony was accepted by the court, it has been considered precedence in all subsequent cases, despite the fact that the judges have been aware of the fact that the “recovered memory hypothesis” lacks scientific validation. Presumably, that is because lay people, as well as professional judges (in Israel there is no jury system), tend to believe the plaintiff's emotion-laden narratives of sexual abuses, rather than the defendant's straightforward denial of the criminal accusations (cf. Nachson et al., 2007).

It is important to point out, as Patihis and Felstead do, that outright acceptance of allegations of childhood sexual abuse on the basis of recovered memories – which the authors convincingly demonstrate its continuing prevalence in the U.K. – might lead to miscarriages of justice by wrongfully convicting innocent defendants. This likelihood transforms the issue at hand from an academic debate into a social and legal problem.

An interesting case in point is the legislation regarding corroboration in cases of rape, which was mandatory in the U.K. until its removal in 1994. The purpose of the removal sounds good, as it was supposed to help the victims of sexual abuse. However, in cases of alleged recovery of memories of sexual abuse, the removal might be harmful, because it might facilitate uncorroborated acceptance of an invalid theory and practice. According to the authors, the theory is invalid because in principle it does not exclude any behavioral responses (thus violating an imperative condition for scientific theory), and the practice is invalid because the false memories are often constructed during therapy (thus raising the suspicion that they are implanted by the therapist).

I share with the Patihis and Felstead (Nachson, 2025), the distinction between the legal and the factual truths. As they point out, the former, which is based on legally admissible evidence, might not correspond with the latter. Some or many of the convicted defendants might therefore be actually innocent.

The debate regarding recovered memory has been called “a war”, yet the authors consider it as “just a metaphor of a fierce debate”, since “unlike a real war, in this case the probable harm is being done in psychotherapies that tell clients that they may have hidden trauma, and then engage in digging for memories”. Yet, digging for repressed memories is a lesser harm than the likelihood that an innocent person (in many cases, the plaintiff's father) is imprisoned. From this perspective, the debate may indeed be considered a war, albeit verbal.

The authors rightfully point to the dangers involved in the search for a “common ground” between the two opposing sides of the debate, since the very admission that the “recovered memory hypothesis” may be partially or occasionally true supports continuous malpractice. They do recommend, however, a search for a middle ground in terms of agreement on data collection and on "adversarial collaboration" where each side is sensitive to the arguments made by the other side. Inasmuch as the proposed sensitization to the others' views has already been unsuccessfully tried (Alpert et al., 1994), I doubt if a retrial will ever succeed.

Admitting that the issue of false memories of childhood sexual abuse is still open in the U.K., Patihis and Felstead recommend that information about the controversies surrounding recovered memories be disseminated among all who deal with this issue. Regardless of one's stand on the issue at hand, this recommendation is, of course, welcome.