SOME VIEWS ON THIS CHARGE
VIEWS AND STUDIES OF THIS CHARGE
The Child Witness
When referring to the child witness, never refer to the child as the "victim." Call the child the complaining witness or the child witness. If the defense is that there was no abuse, then there is no crime and with no crime there is no victim. If others refer to the child as the victim, make an objection or move for a mistrial. Also permitting the complaining witness to be identified as the victim may subtly but powerfully condition the jury to believe there was a crime. If the mental health professional ever, in reports, depositions, or notes, refers to the child as the victim, use this as evidence that the professional had made up his mind from the beginning.
Understanding the nature of memory is necessary in evaluating child sexual abuse. The fact that memory is reconstruction is generally accepted in the scientific community (Dawes, 1988; Goodman and Hahn, 1987; Loftus and Ketcham, 1991; Wakefield and Underwager, 1994b, 1994c). People may believe that their memories are a process of uncovering what actually happened, as though a videotape had been made and stored in the brain and is being replayed, but our memories are largely determined by our current beliefs and feelings. Through this process of reconstruction, people can come to believe firmly in events that never happened.
When there is an allegation of sexual abuse, children may be repeatedly interviewed by adults who believe that the abuse is real. The adults may ask leading questions and provide information to the child about what supposedly happened. They may even tell the child that they already know about the abuse. The child may be placed in "disclosure-based" play therapy and further encouraged to elaborate on the abuse. Through this process of social influence, adults may inadvertently encourage false stories about abuse which can become part of the child's memory.
Divorce and Custody Archival Sample
Sample
The sample in this group was from 216 cases involving sexual abuse allegations during divorce and custody we had seen in our forensic practice from 1984 through 1991. The purpose of this archival research project was to examine the characteristics of these cases.
We analyzed 216 cases of sexual abuse allegations involving 325 children. We classified the cases into three groups — "abuse likely true," "no abuse probable," and "cannot determine on the basis of our judgment after reviewing the file. In the "abuse likely true" group, in addition to our judgment, either the accused admitted the abuse or the justice system determined the abuse was real.
The "no abuse likely" group was further subdivided according to the determination of the justice system. The group used for analysis here was the sample of 134 cases where we classified the group as "no abuse probable" and where the justice system resulted in either no conviction in criminal court or a determination of no abuse in family court. Although in research in this area there is always the question of purity of groups, we believed this stringent criteria would result in a relatively pure group where the allegations were most likely to be false.
This sample is not random, since it came from cases where we were asked by attorneys to evaluate and consult on the case. We are therefore unlikely to see cases where the accused admits the abuse since such cases are apt to result in a guilty plea without the retention of experts. We are also less likely to see cases where the allegation is retracted or determined to be unfounded by child protection.
"It didn't register in my mind that if you prosecute an innocent man, he will be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,"
Difficulties with Some Research Samples
Researchers often observe that, despite their efforts, a nonabused group may include subjects who were actually abused. But the reverse is also true and false allegations may contaminate samples of abused subjects. When reading research reports, the criteria used for verifying samples as abused or nonabused must be carefully noted.
We suspect that some widely cited research on child sexual abuse is contaminated by false cases. This research will therefore give a misleading picture about the characteristics of child sexual abuse, including the type of abusive behaviors. An example of this is the report by Finkelhor and his colleagues (Finkelhor, Williams, & Burns, 1988; Finkelhor, Williams, Burns, & Kalinowski, 1988) on 270 day care cases. Finkelhor et al. report that 40% of the perpetrators were intelligent, educated, highly regarded women who had no histories of known deviant behavior. These women were accused of extremely deviant behaviors such as oral-genital penetration, urolagia and coprophagia, and ritualistic mass abuse.
There are serious difficulties with the Finkelhor et al. day care study. Although the authors required the abuse to be "substantiated," their definition of substantiation was if any one of the people assigned to investigate the report believed that abuse was real, despite whoever else may have thought it was false. Their sample includes an indeterminate number of cases which ended in dismissals or acquittals, or convictions that were later reversed. For example, the McMartin case in California and the Kelly Michaels case in New Jersey are included. No conclusions whatsoever can be drawn about the abusive behaviors alleged to have occurred in this study.
Another instance in which researchers have included likely false cases of abuse in their sample is found in the 1993 book, Behind the Playground WaIls (
), by Waterman, Kelly, Oliveri, and McCord. The book describes an ambitious research project on the effects of alleged sexual abuse in two preschools compared to a control group of preschool children who had not been abused. One of the abused groups was said to have experienced ritualistic sexual abuse and these children were reported to have suffered much more distress than the nonritualistically abused children.
However, the ritualistic abuse group is comprised of subjects in preschool cases, mainly McMartin, where there were no convictions and where there is a serious question as to whether the children were actually abused. Therefore, the book is useless for describing anything other than the probable effects on children who become involved in these cases and may come to believe they were victims of ritualistic abuse (see Schultz & Wakefield, 1993, for a discussion of this book).
These studies then find their way into review articles where generalizations are made. For example, Kendall-Tackett, Williams, and Finkelhor (1993) reviewed and synthesized recent research on the impact of sexual abuse, including the characteristics of the abusive behavior, and included the above two studies in their review with no cautions or caveats. Their review was published in the Psychological Bulletin, a major APA journal. This contamination of the literature on sexual abuse with uncorroborated cases of improbable and bizarre abuse is a significant problem.
Our Study
We conducted a preliminary descriptive study to examine the kinds of behaviors alleged when the abuse allegations were most likely false. We looked at the behaviors alleged in two entirely different samples and compared the results to the types of behaviors engaged in by actual child molesters as is described above. We hypothesized that the behaviors alleged in these two samples would differ from those found in cases of actual child sexual abuse.
False Memory Syndrome Foundation Sample
Sample
This sample was taken from a questionnaire project from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). In this project, lengthy questionnaires were sent to people whose adult children have accused them of recovered memories of repressed childhood sexual abuse. Subjects are people who responded to newspaper articles or other media presentations in several cities about the FMSF, a tax-exempt research and educational institution formed in early 1992 that in two years had over 12,000 members. Questionnaires were sent to samples of callers who reported that their adult child had recently recovered a memory of repressed sexual abuse that the caller denies.
The sample of questionnaires used in the present study are 398 surveys that were mailed out at various times beginning in February, 1992 and were returned as of July, 1993. All of the families deny that the abuse happened. There has been no effort to make an independent determination of the veracity of the denial. (See Wakefield & Underwager, 1992b, 1992c and 1994 for a further description of the FMSF questionnaire project).
Procedure
The questionnaires gathered a wide range of information including family socioeconomic status, educational level of the family and adult child) psychiatric history, personality characteristics of the adult child now and as a child (as reported by the parents), current stresses or problems in the life of the adult child predating the allegations, presence or absence of civil lawsuits, nature of the abuse allegations, the number of people accused, the age of the child when the alleged abuse began, the progression of the allegations across time, the nature of the disclosure, the years the memory was repressed, whether the allegations arose in therapy, the nature of the therapy provided, the effects of the allegations on the families, etc. There have been refinements of the questionnaires between mailings but the basic information requested has remained the same.
For the present study the portions of the questionnaire that were used were whether the accusing child was male or female, the age of the accusing child during the period of the alleged abuse, and whether the allegations were against mother, father, both mother and father, siblings, grandparents, or other (if "other" the respondent was asked to explain). The respondents were asked to describe the abuse allegations that had been made. The respondents were also asked specifically if the allegations included satanic cult or ritualistic abuse.
The open-ended question asking for the specific accusations was coded according to the abusive behaviors described. Three researchers and two assistants went through the cases and discussed the definitions and criteria until this question could be coded reliably.
Results
Of the adult children making the allegations, 93% were females. Table 4 indicates the age the accusing adult child maintains the abuse began. In 84 of the questionnaires the respondent did not know or respond or gave a nonspecific response such as "very young," so the 314 cases with a specific response were used to calculate the percentages.
The abuse typically was said to have begun at a very young age. For 29% (92) of the cases, the alleged events began at under age 2. For 55% (169), the alleged events began from age 2 to 6. Only in 16% (53) did the alleged events first happen at age 6 or older. The median age for the age the accusing child claims the abuse began is between age 3 and 4.
