Stories on repressed memory in the media since 2009, 2010

I have been doing research in the past three days on current stories of repressed memory, the court system and the media. I found two stories on the Priest Paul Shanley. In 2005 he was convicted of raping a 6 year old boy when he was a Priest in Boston. He petitioned to have his conviction overturned on the basis that the boy he raped had recovered his memory when he was 32 years old. His attorney argued what the FMSwordF's agenda that there is no such thing as repressed memory. That there is no way a child can "forget" a traumatic memory. The attorney had a lot of evidence. IMO that came from proponents of the FMSwordF.

Thankfully in 2010 the judge ruled that in 2005 allowing repressed memory into the trial was correct. I have highlighted what the judge said in red below. I think this is a victory for survivors of child sexual abuse, and other severe traumas. It sickens me that there are people who support a pedophile and will go to court and testify for him. Not to mention an attorney who will represent a pedophile. I honestly don't know how they sleep at night. I am sure Paul Shanley's victims sleep a lot better knowing he will never be out of jail alive. I think it is completely disgusting of Paul Shanley to think he should get away with his life as a pedophile with the support of FMSwordF proponents. How arrogant to think he would get a new trial on this evidence.

I appreciate the judge's willingness to do his research and follow the law. I don't think the judge had an agenda which is something that I suspect proponents of FMSwordF's agenda have claimed. You can read comments by the attorney of Paul Shanley in the articles below.  In all of my research which will be posted to the blog in the next couple of days I have found several stories that support that repressed memory is real and that the FMSwordF has an agenda that they continue to push. They continue to push their agenda even though they know there is evidence to the contrary. It is one thing to do your research and talk about the truth there is another thing to "ignore" evidence because it doesn't fit your agenda.

I have found several academic articles that support the fact that for some children who survive/experience severe trauma dissociate because they can not take in the level of trauma they are experiencing.  I honestly don't understand why this is so hard to believe. I would like to think that if I hadn't survived the level of trauma I did as a child, that I would still be open to believing that children dissociate. I just happen to have unfortunately survived some of the most horrendous child abuse and have first hand experience as to how a child responds to this level of trauma.

One of the things that Pamala Freyd has written in her last issues of the FMSwordF newsletter is that FMSwordsF's work has done what it set out to do and she thinks it is time for her to fade into the back ground. I say bulls##%. FMSwordF has done a lot of damage to survivors of childhood sexual, ritual, emotional and physical abuse. I think they should be held accountable for promoting their agenda at the expense of survivors. I do not understand why there hasn't been a class action suit filed by survivors against FMSwordF for liable. I for one would love to be a part of a class action suit. It sickens me that they have been allowed for the past 20 years to ruin people's lives. They have affected survivors and professionals who work with survivors. I will be talking about in later blog posts the number of pedophiles they have supported throughout the years. I have yet to find any evidence that they have done anything to help stop child abuse. They claim to say it is a very real problem and they are against it but there is no evidence to support that they have done anything in 20 years and I repeat 20 years to stop child abuse. Pamela can you send me some evidence of your agency helping stop child abuse? Waiting to hear, Rosie

Catholic priest’s bid for new trial rejected

Use of recovered memories upheld

 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/16/former_catholic_priests_bid_for_new_trial_rejected/


Paul Shanley was convicted on sexual assault charges in 2005 and sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff/File 2008)

The state’s high court yesterday upheld the sexual assault convictions of former Roman Catholic priest Paul M. Shanley, who claimed he was wrongly accused by a man who fabricated memories of being abused as a child.

Shanley was a key figure in the clergy abuse scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese beginning in 2002, and his appeal drew national attention by experts who view “recovered memories’’ as a valid psychiatric condition and those who see it as “junk science.’’

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court said a Superior Court judge made the right decision when he allowed repressed memory evidence to be used against Shanley during his 2005 trial.

“In sum, the judge’s finding that the lack of scientific testing did not make unreliable the theory that an individual may experience dissociative amnesia was supported in the record, not only by expert testimony but by a wide collection of clinical observations and a survey of academic literature,’’ Justice Robert Cordy wrote for the SJC.

Shanley, now in his late 70s, was originally prosecuted by Martha Coakley, who is now attorney general and a Democratic candidate for US Senate. Her successor, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr., whose prosecutors defended the conviction before the SJC, applauded the ruling.

“As the SJC recognized, repressed memories of abuse is a legitimate phenomenon and provided a valid basis for the jury to find that the victim, a child at the time of the assaults, repressed memories of the years of abuse he suffered at the hands of Paul Shanley, someone who was in a significant position of authority and trust,’’ Leone said.

But Shanley’s appellate attorney, Robert F. Shaw Jr. of Cambridge, said the SJC had made a grievous mistake. Shaw, who argued in court papers that recovered memory was “junk science,’’ said Shanley deserved a new trial.

“We believe that it’s the wrong decision and that a great injustice was done in this case,’’ said Shaw, who added he respects the SJC but disagrees with its thinking. Shanley’s conviction “rested on a foundation that is invalid.’’

With a key issue being the scientific acceptance of recovered memories, the SJC received friend of the court briefs from supporters and critics, including R. Christopher Barden, a Minnesota-based psychologist and attorney.

In a statement, Barden ridiculed the SJC for not tossing out Shanley’s convictions, saying the court “has now broadly damaged the credibility of the Massachusetts legal system.’’

He added: “future reviewers will cringe at this science-illiterate opinion. In its reliance upon debunked, irrational, junk science, the Shanley case revisits the infamous Salem witch trials.’’

But Wendy Murphy, who wrote a brief on behalf of victims’ rights, applauded the court. She said the ruling means “that the inability of a child to remember will never be used as a reason to deny a victim access to justice.’’Continued...

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Shanley’s convictions on two counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery were obtained by Middlesex prosecutors in 2005. The victim first made his accusations against Shanley in 2002, some 20 years after the abuse took place at St. Jean’s Church in Newton when the boy was between the ages of 6 and 11.

The victim collected a $500,000 settlement from the archdiocese, according to the court.

Shanley was known in the 1960s and 1970s as a “street priest’’ who reached out to troubled youth, roamed Boston’s streets in blue jeans, and was an outspoken backer of gay rights.

He was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. According to the state Department of Correction website, Shanley is being held at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, a medium security prison.

In a statement, the national president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, thanked the court for keeping Shanley in prison.

“We hope this news will bring some comfort to the dozens he has victimized, many of whom are no doubt still struggling with the devastating, lifelong effects of sexual abuse,’’ Barbara Blaine said in the statement. “Let’s hope this ruling will encourage others who were hurt by sex offenders to come forward, get help, expose predators, protect others and start healing.’’

During the trial, prosecutors had argued that the victim should be believed because the emotional trauma he suffered created a “dissociative amnesia,’’ which is recognized by the mental health profession as a legitimate psychiatric disorder.

The SJC yesterday also rejected Shanley’s claim that his trial lawyer, Frank Mondano, was ineffective.

“Essentially, the defendant alleges that had counsel done better work . . . the outcome would have been different,’’ Cordy wrote. “In support of his motion for a new trial, the defendant submitted three affidavits from experts, and more than fifty scholarly articles, surveys, and studies, some of which were peer reviewed, questioning the existence of repressed memory.’’ But the court concluded that Mondano “pursued a dynamic, multifaceted trial strategy’’ where he attacked the credibility of the victim before the jury.

The court also said that it may decide in the future to throw out a conviction where the only evidence is based on recovered memories.

“We do not consider whether there could be circumstances where testimony based on the repressed or recovered memory of a victim, standing alone, would not be sufficient as a matter of law to support a conviction,’’ Cordy wrote in a footnote.

John Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ex-Priest Challenges Abuse Conviction on Repressed Memories http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/us/11priest.html?ref=paul_r_shanley

By KATIE ZEZIMA and BENEDICT CAREY

Published: September 10, 2009

BOSTON — Paul R. Shanley was convicted in 2005 of raping and assaulting a 6-year-old boy while serving as a priest in suburban Boston, in a case that hinged on memories of abuse the accuser said he had repressed and recovered decades later.

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Charles Krupa/Associated Press

Paul R. Shanley, after his sentencing on rape charges in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, Mass., in February 2005.

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Times Topics: Roman Catholic Church | Roman Catholic Church Sex Abuse Cases

Now Mr. Shanley, 78, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest at the center of the clergy abuse crisis here, is challenging his conviction, the accuser’s recollections and the science of repressed memory.
“You have prominent scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists saying this is not generally accepted. So why allow it in a court of law in a criminal proceeding?” Mr. Shanley’s lawyer, Robert F. Shaw Jr., asked the state’s highest court Thursday.
The debate over repressed memory — the idea that some memories, particularly traumatic ones, can be inaccessible for years — has simmered since the 1980s, when some patients in therapy described long-past scenes of sexual abuse. Some of those experiences turned into high-profile legal cases. The scientific controversy boiled over in the 1990s — as experts raised questions about many claims — and then died down.

Recently, scientists have begun to spar again over the theory. New studies suggest, and many scientists argue, that what people call repression may just be ordinary forgetting; memory is not “blocked.” Others say the process is more complex and may involve a desire to forget.

“My impression is there continues to be a few scientists who honestly believe that it is actually possible for someone to be involved in a traumatic event and not be able to remember it at all,” said Dr. Harrison G. Pope Jr., a professor of psychiatry at Harvard. “But you cannot possibly argue that it’s generally accepted, which is the criteria for it to be admissible from a legal standpoint.”
Mr. Shanley’s case has become a rallying point. Dr. Pope is one of about 100 scientists, researchers, psychologists and psychiatrists who signed a friend-of-the court brief denouncing the theory of repressed memory.
Mr. Shanley, a controversial street priest who worked with runaways, troubled youth and denounced the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality, was accused of abuse by about 24 people. But only the case of the accuser, now a 32-year-old suburban Boston firefighter, made it to trial.
The man, who accused Mr. Shanley of abusing him during Sunday Catholic doctrine classes, said he had no memory of the abuse until 2002, at age 25, when his girlfriend told him about a newspaper article on clergy sexual abuse and Mr. Shanley. That phone call set off the memories, the accuser said, which led to breakdowns, hospitalizations and a discharge from the Air Force.
“I felt like my world was coming to an end,” the accuser said in the trial. He received $500,000 the year before the trial as part of an $85 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Boston.
The accuser tearfully testified that from age 6 to 12 he was raped and groped on the church altar and in the bathrooms, pews, rectory and confessional of the church in Newton, Mass.
Mr. Shanley’s former lawyer, Frank Mondano, questioned whether the accuser’s memories were true or whether they were “false memories” suggested by lawyers, friends and therapists. Mr. Mondano called only one witness, who challenged the theory of repressed memory but said on cross-examination that people could forget and subsequently remember traumatic events. Mr. Shaw now claims that Mr. Mondano was ineffective counsel, and that Mr. Shanley should receive a new trial. Mr. Shanley was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison.
Timothy D. Lytton, a professor at Albany Law School and the author of “Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse” (Harvard University Press, 2008), said most memories of clergy sexual abuse “do not involve recovered memories — this is a small percentage of cases we’re talking about,” he said.
The vast majority of clergy sexual abuse suits, Professor Lytton said, were backed up with substantial evidence.
The most high-profile repressed memory case involving clergy sexual abuse came in 1993, when a former seminarian accused Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and another priest of sexually abusing him in the 1970s. The man later recanted, saying the memories were false and drawn out during therapy.
Last year, a federal judge in Nebraska voided a $1.75 million judgment in a case involving clergy sexual abuse and repressed memory. Patrick Lynch, the Rhode Island attorney general, dismissed a case based on repressed memory in 2007, saying, “the high burden for admissibility, at trial, of testimony based on repressed memory” would create “a legal impediment that the state is unlikely to overcome.”
Mr. Shanley appealed to the Superior Court last year and was denied. The highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court opted to hear it and will rule in 180 days.

Katie Zezima reported from Boston, and Benedict Carey from New York. John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 16, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about a defrocked Roman Catholic priest who is challenging his conviction of rape and assault of a child misstated, in some editions, the ages at which the child was raped. It was from age 6 to 12 — not age 6 to 9.