Elizabeth Loftus

 

– A Brief History of the False Memory Research of Elizabeth Loftus
– Ethics Complaints Filed Against FMSF Board Member Elizabeth Loftus
– “Lost in a Shopping Mall” A Breach of Professional Ethics
– Quotes: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
– The Alleged Ethical Violations of Elizabeth Loftus in the Case of Jane Doe

A Brief History of the False Memory Research of Elizabeth Loftus Lynn Crook, M.Ed. https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/a-brief-history-of-the-false-memory-research-of-elizabeth-loftus-2/

The lost- in- a-shopping-mall study (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995) provided initial scientific support for the claim that child sexual abuse accusations are false memories planted by therapists. However, the mall study researchers faced a problem early on—the participants could tell the difference between the true and false memories….
1993 – The first indication the study might not live up to the challenge became public in 1993. Coan reported in his honors thesis that six subjects had completed the study, and “all subjects were able to correctly identify the false memory.” (Coan, 1993, p. 16.)….

1995 – In June, evidence of possible research misconduct in an earlier study was reported in a journal of the American Psychological Association. Koss, Tromp and Tharan (1995, p. 120) demonstrated that the data in Loftus and Burns (1982, p. 320) did not support the authors’ claim that “those who saw the mentally shocking version showed poorer retention of the details of the films” (Loftus and Burns, p. 318). Instead, the data indicated poorer retention for one unimportant detail. (See:
https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/LoftusBurns_MemoryCog82.pdf?uniq=13yvu9

 

Ethics Complaints Filed Against FMSF Board Member Elizabeth Loftus
American Psychological Association Declines to Investigate
Journal article by Treating Abuse Today
http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/loftus.html

In December 1995, two women filed ethics complaints with the American Psychological Association (APA) against Elizabeth Loftus, PhD, regarding her published statements about two legal cases involving delayed memories of sexual abuse. Citing procedural considerations, however, the APA has declined to investigate the women’s ethics complaints.

Jennifer Hoult (a concert harpist living in New York) and Lynn Crook (a Washington State consultant) each filed separate complaints with the APA, alleging that Loftus mischaracterized the facts of their legal cases in published articles. Both women brought successful civil suits because of the sexual abuse that the fathers (and the mother, in Crook’s case) perpetrated against them during their childhoods. At their trials, they presented corroborative evidence that met the requirements for judicial proof of their allegations.

Loftus serves on the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc (FMSF). She also had been an active member of the APA since 1973, but she resigned in January 1996, shortly after the filing of the complaints. In a brief telephone interview with Treating Abuse Today, Loftus confirmed her resignation from the APA, but she denied any knowledge of the ethics complaints. She also cautioned that Treating Abuse Today should not state or imply that she resigned from the APA to avoid investigation of the ethics complaints…..

In her complaint, Hoult alleges that Loftus used distortion and misstatement of fact to seriously misrepresent Hoult’s legal case. In 1988 Hoult brought a civil suit against her father, alleging that he had raped and otherwise sexually abused her throughout her childhood. After several years of legal wrangling, the case finally went to trial in June 1993. On July 1, 1993, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Jennifer Hoult, awarding her $500,000 for the suffering caused by her father’s incestuous abuse. All higher courts have upheld the jury’s decision, including the first circuit appellate court. When Hoult’s father petitioned the US Supreme Court, his petition was rejected as untimely. At some point during all these proceedings, Hoult’s father joined the FMSF…..

Hoult also alleges that Loftus used mischaracterization and omission of facts to misconstrue Hoult’s legal case against her father. She pointed out many inaccuracies that support this allegation. In the article, for instance, Loftus claims that “Jennifer was a 23-year-old musician who recovered memories in therapy of her father raping her from the time she was 4” (1995, p. 26). Actually, Hoult began to remember the abuse at 24, at which time she was an artificial intelligence software engineer. Records in the case show that the bulk of her memories emerged outside of therapy. Furthermore, Hoult never stated that the rapes began when she was four, a “fact” apparently created by Loftus for the purposes of her article….

In October 1991, Lynn Crook brought a civil suit against her parents based on her delayed memories of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by her parents. Loftus testified as an expert witness for the defense. On March 4, 1994, the judge in the case ruled in Crook’s favor, awarding her $149,580 in damages against her parents, who chose not to appeal the case to any higher court.

In the January/February 1995 issue of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, Jill Neimark published an article titled “It’s Magical. It’s Malleable. It’s . . . Memory.” In her article, Neimark quotes Loftus, who gives an abridged and (according to Crook) seriously distorted account of her case against her father….

In an interview with Treating Abuse Today, Crook stated that Loftus’s 79-word direct quote describing her case contained nine misstatements. “Loftus reworded events I recalled, and incorrectly claimed that a ‘fantastical’ memory had resulted in my filing this case.” Crook pointed out, for instance, that Loftus contradicted her father’s own sworn testimony that his health was “excellent.” Crook also argues that Loftus should have pointed out that she (Crook) won the case, after presenting evidence that included testimony from two of her sisters who also remembered incestuous abuse perpetrated against them by their father….

In May, David Corwin and Erna Olafson published a case study of a videotaped, spontaneously-recovered memory of child sexual abuse (Corwin and Olafson, 1997). The videotape provided evidence to suggest that a repressed memory of childhood abuse could be recalled. (See http://data.memberclicks.com/site/apsac/jane_doe.pdf). Loftus hired Shapiro Investigations to assist in the investigation, and travelled to California to interview Doe’s family members, allegedly introducing herself as the supervisor of David Corwin whom Jane Doe knew and trusted. In 1999, Jane Doe filed an ethics complaint against Loftus with the University of Washington. In July 2001, the University completed a 20-month investigation during which Loftus was not allowed to discuss the case. The University required Loftus to complete an ethics course and to restrict her relationship with Jane Doe’s mother….

“Lost in a Shopping Mall” A Breach of Professional Ethics
ETHICS & BEHAVIOR, vol. 9, #1, pp. 39-50
http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/
Lynn S. Crook
Richland, WA
Martha C. Dean
Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT: The “lost in a shopping mall” study has been cited to support claims that psychotherapists can implant memories of false autobiographical information of childhood trauma in their patients. The mall study originated in 1991 as 5 pilot experiments involving 3 children and 2 adult participants. The University of Washington Human Subjects Committee granted approval for the mall study on August 10, 1992. The preliminary results with the 5 pilot subjects were announced 4 days later. An analysis of the mall study shows that beyond the external misrepresentations, internal scientific methodological errors cast doubt on the validity of the claims that have been attributed to the mall study within scholarly and legal arenas. The minimal involvement or, in some cases, negative impact of collegial consultation, academic supervision, and peer review throughout the evolution of the mall study are reviewed….

Quotes: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/quotes-elizabeth-loftus-phd/

It’s not unusual for killers to have amnesia about event. Saturday, February 15, 1997, Section: News, Page: A3 It is possible to commit a murder and then forget you did it, according to a leading memory researcher. A significant proportion of people who commit murders have some amnesia surrounding the event, particularly if it is a crime of passion, University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus said yesterday.

On Ted Bundy – Loftus testified as a defense expert for Bundy in 1976, Bundy was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping
Loftus, E. and Ketcham, K. (1991). Witness for the Defense. St. Martin’s Press: New York. The thought had occurred to me as I was flying to Salt Lake City earlier that day that Ted Bundy might offer to let me stay in his apartment” (p. 74).
Loftus, E. and Ketcham, K. (1991). Witness for the Defense. St. Martin’s Press: New York. In court the next morning I sat at a table in the judge’s chambers. On the other side of the table, close enough for me to reach across and touch him, sat Ted Bundy. He’s adorable, I thought, surprised at my first impression, because I’d pictured him in my mind as brooding, dark, intense disdain (p. 83).

The Alleged Ethical Violations of Elizabeth Loftus in the Case of Jane Doe
Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/the-alleged-ethical-violations-of-elizabeth-loftus-in-the-case-of-jane-doe/
In 1997, David Corwin published an article in the May 1997 Child Maltreatment Issue “Videotaped discovery of a reportedly unrecallable memory of child sexual abuse: comparison with a childhood interview videotaped 11 years before.” The woman named as Jane Doe, had agreed to this publication of the article of her case with Corwin. Loftus, then with the University of Washington and Melvin Guyer, with the University of Michigan and a private investigator ascertained the real identity of Jane Doe. They interviewed her mother, brother, stepmother and foster mother….
Loftus’ alleged violations of ethics darkened Loftus’ relationship with the University of Washington (UW).

Her colleagues there questioned the methods she had used in her challenge of Corwin’s work. University officials began a 21-month investigation of Loftus’ research on this case. David Hodge, Dean at UW’s College of Arts and Sciences stated that university rules for research on human subjects were primarily written for medical experimentation. John Slattery, director of the UW’s Office of Scholarly Integrity in 1997 stated that Loftus’ would have had to seek UW’s permission to interview people and probably would have been required to give UW’s IRB a list of questions being asked and a form explaining the risks of being interviewed. She probably would have been required to ask Corwin for permission to interview Jane and review records.

But Loftus believes she is justified in exposing Jane’s identity. She believes that the secrecy rules used to protect patients or research subjects should not be used to hide the truth. In the middle of the investigation, Loftus called Corwin. Corwin told Loftus that Jane wanted to communicate with Loftus through him. Jane told the University of Washington’s officials that she disagreed with Loftus’ finding her mother and her stepmother for interviews. Loftus also admitted befriending Jane’s biological mother. Loftus admits she was largely motivated by her desire to unite mother and daughter (Jane). Loftus was cleared of wrongdoing by the UW committee, but the committee required her to get the permission of the IRB before talking to Jane’s mother again. The committee also wanted Loftus to take an ethics’ class. After this, Loftus left UW for the University of California, Irvine….

Loftus is facing an impending lawsuit by Jane Doe (Nicole Taus) in Solano County, California. Loftus and several others are being accused of defamation, libel per se, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional invasion of privacy, distress and damages. Taus alleges that Loftus’ research disclosed her private information and revealed her identity. Taus lawsuits claims this has subjected her and her family to additional emotional distress from past events, that Loftus and Guyer didn’t conduct or plan their research with regard for her safety and welfare and that procedures were not in place for the researchers or Taus herself to watch the project and report any possible problems. Taus also states that Loftus and Guyer purposefully mischaracterized the records and information they received and reviewed….

Loftus obviously made a boundary crossing when she moved from the role of researcher to friend. Loftus’ objectivity may also have been diminished by her friendship with Jane’s mother. Also, could Loftus’ desire to unite mother and daughter make her biased to the mother’s perspective? If it is unhealthy for a psychologist to become friends with a client, then should a researcher become friends with one of their subjects?….

Recovered Memories and Dissociative Amnesia - Scientific Evidence and Accuracy Rates

Recovered Memories

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. They have also been defined as the recollections of memories that are believed to have been unavailable for a certain period of time. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

Scientific evidence

There are many studies that have proven that the recovered memories of traumatic events exist. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond found 43 studies that showed recovered memories for traumatic events. The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories. Hopper's research shows that amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is "beyond dispute." He states that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" In one study of women with previously documented histories of sexual abuse, 38% of the women did not remember the abuse that had happened 17 years before. Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques. One studied showed that five out of 19 women with histories of familial sexual abuse either forgot specific details or had "blank periods" for these memories. Another study showed that "40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse". Herman and Harvey's study showed that 16% of abuse survivors had "complete amnesia followed by delayed recall". Corwin's individual case study provides evidence of the existence of recovered memories on videotape.

Other researchers state:

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma.

There is scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.

Corroboration rates

Many studies show high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates vary from 50 - 75%, 64%, 77%, 50%, 75%, 68%,47%, and 70% . One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases". There are also additional studies showing the corroboration of recovered memories.

https://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories

Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield. (1999). Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 27, 5-156. "Brown, Scheflin and Hammond reviewed 43 studies relevant to the subject of traumatic memory and found that every study that examined the question of dissociative amnesia in traumatized populations demonstrated that a substantial minority partially or completely forget the traumatic event experienced, and later recover memories of the event. By 1999, over 68 studies had been published that document dissociative amnesia after childhood sexual abuse. In fact, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse has failed to find it."

http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/prev.html 

 

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory:  http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/ 

Research discussing corroboration and accuracy of recovered memories  https://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/suggestedrefs.html 

Recall of childhood trauma: a prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse.

One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?" A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Long periods with no memory of abuse should not be regarded as evidence that the abuse did not occur. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7860814 

 

Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia .  Others use terms such as repression , dissociative state , traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting .  Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences. http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html 

 

Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors

The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors. In addition to supporting the phenomenon in general, these articles also counter the argument that recovered memory is (a) no more than a recent cultural “fad” and (b) specific to false accusers of sexual abuse.  http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/ 

 

Dissociation & the Fragmentary Nature of Traumatic Memories: Overview & Exploratory Study 

"a systematic exploratory study of 46 subjects with PTSD which indicates that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least initially, in the form of dissociated mental imprints of sensory and affective elements of the traumatic experience: as visual, olfactory, affective, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. Over time, subjects reported the gradual emergence of a personal narrative that some believe can be properly referred to as “explicit memory”....Of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma, 15 (43%) had suffered significant, or total amnesia for their trauma at some time of their lives. Twenty seven of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma (77%) reported confirmation of their childhood trauma."http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk2.php 

 

Kluft, RP (1995). The confirmation and disconfirmation of memories of abuse in Dissociative Identity Disorder patients: A naturalistic study. Dissociation 8: 253-8. "Nineteen, or 56%, had instances of the confirmation of recalled abuses. Ten of the 19, or 53%, had always recalled the abuses that were confirmed. However, 13 of the 19, or 68%, obtained documentation of events that were recovered in the course of therapy, usually with the use of hypnosis. Three patients, or 9%, had instances in which the inaccuracy of their recollection could be demonstrated." 

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1155/Diss_8_4_9_OCR_rev.pdf 

 

Leadership Council Amicus Brief Appellant on Appeal from a Judgment of the Superior Court Brief of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court SJC No. 10382 AC No. 2007-p-0886 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Appellee V. Paul Shanley, Leadership Council as Amicus Curiae 

http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/docs/ShanleyBrief.pdf 

Ritual Abuse Evidence - Statistics, Research, Legal Cases and Studies

Child Abuse Wiki - Ritual Abuse
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
Ritual abuse exists all over the world. There have been reports, journal articles, web pages and criminal convictions of crimes against children and adults.

Proof That Ritual Abuse Exists
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/

Large List of Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse References
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/studies/satanic-ritual-abuse-evidence-with-information-on-the-mcmartin-preschool-case/
 
Child Abuse Wiki – Recovered Memories
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories
There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist. This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

The Dark Tunnels of McMartin – Dr. Roland C. Summit http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/the-dark-tunnels-of-mcmartin-dr-roland-c-summit-journal-of-psychohistory/

The McMartin Preschool Case – What Really Happened and the Cover-up
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/mcmartin-preschool-case-what-really-happened-and-the-coverup/

Denying Ritual Abuse of Children – Catherine Gould The Journal of Psychohistory 22 (3) 1995 http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/denying-ritual-abuse-of-children-catherine-gould/

Believe the children (1997). “Conviction List: Ritual Child Abuse”. http://ra-info.org/faqs/ra-convictions/

2008 Publications on Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
http://endritualabuse.org/evidence/publications-on-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-in-2008/

Lacter, E (2008-02-11). “Brief Synopsis of the Literature on the Existence of Ritualistic Abuse”. http://endritualabuse.org/evidence/brief-synopsis-of-the-literature-on-the-existence-of-ritualistic-abuse/

Bottoms, Shaver and Goodman in their 1993 study to evaluate ritual abuse claims found that in 2,292 alleged ritual abuse cases, 15% of the perpetrators in adult cases and 30% of the perpetrators in child cases confessed to the abuse. Data from Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (1998).”Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law” (W. W. Norton) ISBN 0-393-70254-5 (p.62) Bottoms, B. Shaver, P. & Goodman, G. (1993) Profile of ritual abuse and religion related abuse allegations in the United States. Updated findings provided via personal communication from B. Bottoms. Cited in K.C. Faller (1994), Ritual Abuse; A Review of the research. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children Advisor , 7, 1, 19-27

On Page 170 (first edition), of Cult and Ritual Abuse – Noblitt and Perskin (Praeger, 1995) states “One of the best sources of evaluative research on ritual abuse is the article “Ritual Abuse: A Review of Research” by Kathleen Coulborn Faller (1994)….in a survey of 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association, it was found that 30 percent of these professionals had seen cases of ritual or religion-related abuse (Bottoms, Shaver & Goodman, 1991). Of those psychologists who have seen cases of ritual abuse, 93 percent believed that the reported harm took place and 93 percent believed that the alleged ritualism occurred. This is a remarkable finding. Mental health professionals are known to be divergent in their thinking and frequently do not agree with one another regarding questions of the diagnosis and etiology of psychiatric problems…this level of concurrence in a large national sample of psychologists…would be impressive….the similar research of Nancy Perry (1992) which further supports (the previous findings)…Perry also conducted a national survey of therapists who work with clients with dissociative disorders and she found that 88 percent of the 1,185 respondents indicated”belief in ritual abuse, involving mind control and programming” (p.3).”

Craighead, W. E.; Corsini, R.J.; Nemeroff, C. B. (2002) The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science Published by John Wiley and Sons ISBN 0471270830 – Sadistic Ritual Abuse (p.1435 – 1438) http://books.google.com/books?id=JQMRmyOfpJ8C&pg=PA1436&lpg=PA1436#v=onepage&q=sadistic%20ritual&f=false

Sexual Abuse in Day Care: A National Study – Executive Summary – March 1988 – Finklehor, Williams, Burns, Kalinowski “The study identified 270 “cases” of sexual abuse in day care meaning 270 facilities where substantiated abuse had occurred involving a total of 1639 victimized children….This yielded an estimate of 500 to 550 reported and substantiated cases and 2500 victims for the three-year period. Although this is a large number, it must be put in the context of 229,000 day care facilities nationwide service seven million children….allegations of ritual abuse (“the invocation of religious, magical or supernatural symbols of activities”) occurred in 13% of the cases.” The authors divided these cases into “true cult-based ritual,” pseudo-ritualism” with a primary goal of sexual gratification and ritual being used to intimidate the children from disclosing and “psychopathological ritualism” the activities being “primarily the expression of an individuals obsessional or delusional system.”  https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/113095NCJRS.pdf



Books on Ritual Abuse

Johnson Davis, Anne  “Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom” Transcript Bulletin Publishing – ISBN 978-0-9788348-0-7 – 2008  “Anne’s parents confessed their atrocities—both in writing and verbally—to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General’s Office.  Anne’s suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather….The book’s foreword was written by Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson, who was the lead investigator with the Utah Attorney General’s Office on Anne’s case in 1995.” http://www.HellMinusOne.com

Hell Minus One – signed verified confessions of satanic ritual abuse – Anne’s parents confessed their atrocities – both in writing and verbally.
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/survivor-stories/hell-minus-one-signed-verified-confessions-of-satanic-ritual-abuse/

Epstein, O., Schwartz, J., Schwartz, R.  Ritual Abuse and Mind Control: The Manipulation of Attachment Needs 2011 Karnac Books. London ISBN 1-85575-839-3 http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=29482  Google Books Version http://books.google.com/books?id=xU6GZ28gGy4C&dq=Ritual+Abuse+and+Mind+Control:+The+Manipulation+of+Attachment+Needs&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Noblitt, J.R.; Perskin, P. S. (eds) (2008). Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-first Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social and Political Considerations. Bandor, OR: Robert Reed, 552. ISBN 1-934759-12-0.

Noblitt, JR; Perskin PS (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. New York:Praeger. ISBN 0-275-96665-8. http://books.google.ca/books?id=zJkTTpfyJ-8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0

Cult and Ritual Abuse – James Randall Noblitt – Chapter 6 – Empirical Evidence of Ritual Abuse http://books.google.com/books?id=zJkTTpfyJ-8C&printsec=frontcover#PPA55,M1

Rutz, Carol (2001). A Nation Betrayed. Grass Lake, MI: Fidelity Publishing. ISBN 0-9710102-0-X.
The Chilling True Story of Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on our Children and Other Innocent People by Carol Rutz http://www2.dmci.net/users/casey

Ryder, Daniel. (1992). Breaking the Circle of Satanic Ritual Abuse: Recognizing and Recovering - CompCare Pub.

Secret Weapons – Two Sisters’ Terrifying True Story of Sex, Spies and Sabotage by Cheryl and Lynn Hersha with Dale Griffis, Ph D. and Ted Schwartz. New Horizon Press, P O Box 669 Far Hills, NJ 07931 – ISBN0-88282-196-2 Is a well-documented, verifiable account of not one, but two childrens’ long untold stories of being CHILD subjects of Project MKUltra. Quotes from the book: “By the time Cheryl Hersha came to the facility, knowledge of multiple personality was so complete that doctors understood how the mind separated into distinct ego states,each unaware of the other. First, the person traumatized had to be both extremely intelligent and under the age of seven, two conditions not yet understood though remaining consistent as factors. The trauma was almost always of a sexual nature…” p. 52 “The government researchers,aware of the information in the professional journals, decided to reverse the process (of healing from hysteric dissociation). They decided to use selective trauma on healthy children to create personalities capable of committing acts desired for national security and defense.” p. 53 – 54 The book also contains a variety of documents on mk-ultra and different projects as well as reports to the Presidential Committee on Radiation and Mind Control, including information on the five Canadians’ lawsuit against the U.S. Government.

Sinason, V (1994). Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10543-9. http://valeriesinason.co.uk/index.html 

Recovered Memories of Child Abuse: Accuracy and Veracity, 110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory:

53 Cases from Legal Proceedings
25 Clinical Cases and other Academic/Scientific Case Studies
33 Other Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/ 


Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse  Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources

Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition.
The existence of this condition is beyond dispute.
Repression is merely one explanation
– often a confusing and misleading one –
for what causes the condition of amnesia.
Some people sexually abused in childhood
will have periods of amnesia for their abuse,
followed by experiences of delayed recall.
http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/

Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory
Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia .  Others use terms such as repression , dissociative state , traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting .  Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html 


What about Recovered Memories?
Jennifer J. Freyd, University of Oregon
http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/whatabout.html 


The Recovered Memory Project
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory 

Research discussing corroboration and accuracy of recovered memories
http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/suggestedrefs.html 


Recovered memory corroboration rates
"Between 31 and 64 percent of abuse survivors in six major studies reported that they forgot “some of the abuse.” Numbers reporting severe amnesia ranged from under 12% to 59%….Studies report 50-75% of abuse survivors corroborating the facts of their abuse through an outside source."
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-corroboration-rates/


Memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia in Holocaust survivors http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/holocaust/  
The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.  

Recovered Memory Data
https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/ 


Recovered Memories - Child Abuse Wiki

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. They have also been defined as the recollections of memories that are believed to have been unavailable for a certain period of time[1]. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.[2] This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

Scientific evidence
There are many studies that have proven that the recovered memories of traumatic events exist. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond found 43 studies that showed recovered memories for traumatic events[3]. The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories[4]. Hopper's research shows that amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is "beyond dispute." He states that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" [5] In one study of women with previously documented histories of sexual abuse, 38% of the women did not remember the abuse that had happened 17 years before.[6] Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques[7]. One studied showed that five out of 19 women with histories of familial sexual abuse either forgot specific details or had "blank periods" for these memories[8]. Another study showed that "40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse"[9]. Herman and Harvey's study showed that 16% of abuse survivors had "complete amnesia followed by delayed recall"[10]. Corwin's individual case study provides evidence of the existence of recovered memories on videotape[11].

Other researchers state:

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.[12]

A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma[13]

There is scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory in Holocaust survivors.[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36]

Corroboration rates
Many studies show high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates vary from 50 - 75%[37], 64%[13], 77%[38], 50%[39], 75%[40] 68%[41] 47%[9], and 70% [42]. One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases"[43]. There are also additional studies showing the corroboration of recovered memories[44][45][46][47].

excerpt used with permission from http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Recovered_Memories 

Man claims he witnessed Dana Bradley murder, Disturbing Study Finds Women Actually Think Sexual Violence is Normal, Describing Abusive Behavior as "Young Love"

- Man claims he witnessed Dana Bradley murder
RCMP investigate, inform him no new evidence found
- ‘The guy is the real thing’
Doctor says man’s story of Dana Bradley murder shouldn’t be written off as false memory syndrome
- ‘There’s nothing left I can do,’ says man convinced he witnessed murder
- Disturbing Study Finds Women Actually Think Sexual Violence is Normal
- Normalizing Sexual Violence - Young Women Account for
Harassment and Abuse
- Describing Abusive Behavior as "Young Love"

Man claims he witnessed Dana Bradley murder
Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen
Published on March 15, 2014

RCMP investigate, inform him no new evidence found

Dana Bradley’s body was arranged in burial fashion by her killer in an area of alder bushes and trees off an old dirt road, away from the eyes of the city on a cold and quiet December evening many years ago.

One of the killer’s last acts at the scene was to tuck her school books carefully under her arm, as in some bizarre act of kindness when, sometime earlier, the monster in him had raged and he had brutally beat her about the head and robbed her of her life....

He said he saw the savageness in the killer that evening, claims he witnessed the horrific murder and the events following it that night.

As a child, he had known the man well. Suffering from his own type of hell with him, Robert says his memories from that day and night were long repressed, along with many other terrible memories from those years.

More than two-and-a-half years ago, after he decided to part ways with booze and take his chances without it, he says his mind healed and the memories surfaced — first of being sexually abused at the hands of the man, then of the murder....

Robert says the RCMP first met with him on Dec. 14, 2011 — the 30th anniversary of Dana’s murder.

According to an RCMP document, the investigation into Robert’s tip continued for 16 months.

The RCMP subsequently informed Robert that none of the avenues related to his tip provided any new evidence to support criminal charges.

In March 2013, the RCMP asked Robert to meet with Dr. Peter Collins, an expert in the field of forensic psychiatry.

“Subsequent to that meeting, you were advised by Dr. Collins that you were not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and recovered memories, but rather that you were experiencing false memory syndrome,” the document notes.

Robert complained to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP about the way investigators handled his information. He alleged the RCMP relied on false memory syndrome to make the decision to dismiss his complaint. He also pointed out that false memory syndrome is not recognized in the medical community....

At the same time, the RCMP informed Robert the investigation into his complaint about being sexually abused by the man in the early 1980s had concluded without corroborating evidence to support charges....

Looking back, Robert said the man probably wanted him to go along as a cover, in case he was seen, so that he could say he was taking him to his mother and father.

This time, Robert noted, the man didn’t attempt to drive up the dirt road but stopped on the side of Maddox Cove Road and walked up to where the body was.

“He was looking for his jacket — he didn’t have his jacket on — and he had gotten the booster cables,” Robert said. “So while I was left in the car, there was a car that drove by. He told me that if anyone stops, (to say) he left his new chainsaw up in the woods.”

As outlined in previous media reports, a Shea Heights couple driving north on Maddox Cove Road that night — between midnight and 1 a.m. — noticed a car matching the suspect vehicle parked on the side of the road. They said a passenger side door of the car was open and the dome light was illuminated. They also saw a man standing near the woods. They reported he had no jacket, despite the cold....

They then drove back to the man’s house, where Robert held a work light while the man washed the trunk of the car using cleaning supplies.

“He cleaned out the trunk and then he got me in the backseat of the car and had another go (sexual assault) at me,” Robert said. “And then he brought me home.”....

The man Robert describes had been a close friend of his parents in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, he was convicted of sexually abusing children and served time in prison. The time period of those offences is the same time frame Robert alleges he was abused by the man and Dana’s murder occurred.... http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-03-15/article-3650234/Man-claims-he-witnessed-Dana-Bradley-murder/1 http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-03-15/article-3650234/Man-claims-he-witnessed-Dana-Bradley-murder/2
 
‘The guy is the real thing’
Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen
Published on March 17, 2014

Doctor says man’s story of Dana Bradley murder shouldn’t be written off as false memory syndrome

Part 2 in a three-part series

Good memories from childhood are often recalled fondly. Bad memories, not so much. But what if the memories are so terrible, so horrible, it’s unbearable to live with them?....

He says he saw her murderer sexually assault and kill her by hitting her in the head with a tire iron and that he was there, crying, when the killer laid her out in burial fashion among the trees off an old dirt road just outside the city.

Robert’s relates these memories in spine-tingling detail — how he screamed and begged the man, a close friend of his family, not to leave the body in the winter cold overnight, and of being forced to hold a lamp in the dark as the killer later cleaned out the car trunk.

His throat closes and his chest hurts at times when he recalls his own abuse at the hands of the same man — a man who was convicted in the 1990s of sexually abusing other children, and served time in prison.

Robert would have gone to the police long ago if he had remembered any of what he had seen and experienced.

Now a successful businessman, husband and father, Robert describes always looking back on his childhood fondly, though he admits he had always had a hole, a big blank spot, in his memory.

He drank from the time he was 13 until he was 35, when, he says, the booze caught up with him.

After quitting drinking, he was driving home one day in 2011 when he suddenly began drowning in a wave of memories, which rushed in, bubbling and swirling, to fill the hole.

“I was all alone, and the first memory of the sexual abuse came back, and it came back like a punch in the stomach,” Robert said....

The RCMP investigated Robert’s information for 16 months, then informed him none of the avenues related to his tip had turned up any new evidence. As part of their investigation, police had asked Robert to meet with Dr. Peter Collins, an expert in forensic psychiatry.

According to a police document, Collins advised Robert he was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but was experiencing false memory syndrome.

Not a recognized psychiatric disorder, false memory syndrome is used to describe a condition in which a person is affected by memories which aren’t true, but which they strongly believe. The term was developed in the United States by Peter and Pamela Freyd, who also founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in 1992....

Dr. Hugh Mirolo is the province’s only neuropsychiatrist and has been declared an expert witness in the courts in the area of neuropsychiatry. The Telegram asked him to meet with Robert, and the doctor believes he is telling the truth, especially since Robert experienced a panic attack and flashback while telling him his story.

“It would be pretty damn difficult for a guy to make that up, and for me to buy it,” said Mirolo, who had Robert’s permission to share his opinions with The Telegram.

“If he is an actor, he is a very, very good actor. He deserves an Oscar.”

Robert’s reaction was consistent with experiences Mirolo has witnessed in the past as a doctor in the United States, working with war veterans. Post-traumatic stress disorder can cause flashbacks that bring them right back to the time and place of a memory so they are reliving it instead of simply recalling it, Mirolo said....

There is a tendency for the brain to repress things that are traumatic, the doctor explained, and it’s as basic as the pleasure principle: we go towards things that are pleasurable and avoid things that aren’t.

“When you have PTSD or (have witnessed) gory events, things like that, those things can be blocked,” Mirolo explained.

“The blockage is not foolproof; things can trigger it. The same goes for regular childhood memories. When I go to my office in the summer and they’re mowing the lawn outside, I remember the house in the country where my dad used to mow the lawn. That smell brings me back in time. This is the same sort of thing.”....

Mirolo doesn’t mince words when asked if he feels Robert was dismissed unfairly by the police, when it comes to false memory syndrome.

“Yes. Unfairly and too fast,” he said. “This guy is the real thing. He has been a victim more than once.... http://www.northernpen.ca/News/Local/2014-03-17/article-3651754/%26lsquo%3BThe-guy-is-the-real-thing%26rsquo%3B/1 


‘There’s nothing left I can do,’ says man convinced he witnessed murder
Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen
Published on March 18, 2014

....Commission interim chair Ian McPhail wrote in the final report that the forensic psychiatrist’s diagnosis of false memory syndrome didn’t play a role in the attention given to the investigation, and wasn’t the basis for the investigators’ dismissal of the tip.

“I emphasize that, given its place in the investigation, the psychiatric assessment was not conducted to determine whether (Robert) was lying about his memories, which would have impacted the investigation, but rather to determine what the appropriate degree of reliance on those memories would and could be. There is no suggestion in the available material that (Robert) was deceitful.”

Robert told The Telegram Monday he is surprised by what he said is a “sudden and unexpected de-emphasizing” by the police of forensic psychiatrist Peter Collins’ diagnosis.

“Dr. Collins applied for a temporary licence to practice in Newfoundland so he could deliver his false memory syndrome message, and the RCMP could close my tip that very same day,” Robert said. “He appeared to be very important to investigators at the time.

“Things could be much further along if only they had given me the benefit of the doubt.”

When asked how he feels about the lack of evidence turned up by the police in their investigation into his memories, Robert is quick to respond.

“I don’t think they looked hard enough,” he said. “I think there were a lot of investigational techniques not used. I think they focused on trying to discredit me, rather than try to find evidence. It was a shallow investigation.”....

According to a police document Collins, an expert in forensic psychiatry, advised Robert he was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but was experiencing false memory syndrome, a term used to describe a condition in which a person is affected by memories that aren’t true, but which they strongly believe.

The Telegram asked local neuropsychiatrist Dr. Hugh Mirolo, an accredited expert in the courts in the area of neuropsychiatry, to meet with Robert and share his opinions. Mirolo believes Robert is genuine, and told The Telegram he believes the RCMP dismissed him too quickly and unfairly.... http://www.northernpen.ca/News/Regional/2014-03-18/article-3653169/%26lsquoThere%26rsquos-nothing-left-I-can-do%2C%26rsquo-says-man-convinced-he-witnessed-murder/1 


Disturbing Study Finds Women Actually Think Sexual Violence is Normal
By Viola Knowles ,  RYOT News April 15, 2014

Apparently women thinking sexual abuse is normal is the new normal.

A study to be published in Gender & Society finds that young women assume being harassed, assaulted and abused is simply something everyone experiences.

Sadly, statistics show us that they’re not exactly wrong.

Love Is Respect reports that one in three teens in the U.S. will experience some form of abuse from a dating partner, and one quarter of high school girls will be victims of sexual abuse.

One in four college girls will be the victims of rape or attempted rape.

This doesn’t include the one in three grown women who will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.

The fact that these are no longer just stats, but a way of thinking for women, shows that the time to take action is now.

Women in leadership are working hard to bring attention to these atrocities, like Angelina Jolie speaking out about sexual violence against women and children in conflict. http://www.ryot.org/women-think-sexual-violence-normal/642849

Normalizing Sexual Violence
Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse
Heather R. Hlavka
Marquette University, USA

Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized among youth.... http://gas.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/28/0891243214526468.full

Describing Abusive Behavior as "Young Love"                                             
Proponents of the witch-hunt narrative have a particular kind of blindness to real abuse. That is, they don't see sexual abuse in places where it is obvious to others. The book (The Witch-Hunt Narrative) is full of examples where real abuse is described as a false accusation or false conviction by proponents of the narrative. https://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2014/04/09/describing-abusive-behavior-as-young-love/#more

Miami Cold Case Murder Solved With Recovered Memories

Miami Cold Case Murder Solved With Recovered Memories
By Michael E. Miller Thursday, May 9 2013

....Instead, it would be more than a quarter-century before police caught a break.
"Back then we were finding so many dope murders," says retired Miami-Dade homicide detective John Parmenter. "We all thought [the bodies] had something to do with drugs."  He pauses and adds quietly, "How wrong we were."....

So when Gloria Hampton walked into McCully's office in the summer of 2010 with a story stranger than fiction, the sergeant was suspicious.

"I just need somebody to listen to me," Gloria pleaded. The short 29-year-old with wide hips, tan skin, and curly hair had been through years of psychiatric therapy, she said. From the haze of her hurtful childhood, however, she had pulled one particular memory and polished it until clear.  "I saw my father kill my mother when I was 4 years old," she said. "He put her body into an army-green bag."

McCully was still skeptical. Cops don't put much faith in recovered memories, and these were 25 years old. But after Gloria left, he cracked open musty boxes of cold-case files. He flipped through yellowing photographs and police reports for hours before pulling out a thin binder that hadn't been touched in years. It was the unsolved murder from April 4, 1985. And inside was a photo of a woman's body in an army-green bag.

DNA analysis quickly confirmed that Gloria's mother, Nilsa Padilla, was the murder victim known for decades as "Theresa Torso." Gloria's father, Jorge Walter Nuñez, instantly became the only suspect. For Miami-Dade police, it was a breakthrough in one of the department's oldest and most vexing cases. For Gloria, it was salvation.

"They thought I was crazy," she says of the cops, foster parents, and caseworkers who ridiculed her claims for years. "Now they know I'm not."....

I didn't like him at all," Soto says of Nuñez. "He was always drunk." He also brought out the worst in Padilla. She drank heavily, slipping into dark moods. One day, Padilla drunkenly hit 4-year-old Bernisa on the head with a brush, causing a gash. Soto told her: "If you ever do that again, I'm calling the cops on you."  Nuñez and Padilla left town shortly afterward in an old U-Haul truck he'd turned into a makeshift camper by cutting a window in the rear. They drove down the coast to Florida.

When Soto next saw her cousin, it was three years later, in 1984. Padilla was in worse shape than ever. She now had three kids: Bernisa, Gloria, and a baby named Alicia. But the family was on the run from the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.

When Soto asked why, Padilla pointed to Gloria's shoddily bandaged left hand. Nuñez had dropped a heavy piece of metal on the 3-year-old — by accident, he said — mangling her thumb. The two drunks had never taken the toddler to the hospital....

Nuñez, meanwhile, made no effort to hide his hatred. "I'm fed up with her," he told Soto in Spanish. "One of these days, I'm going to kill her."....

Instead of comforting her, Padilla drunkenly smacked her daughter. "She hit me so hard my face was bleeding," Bernisa says. "Maybe she finally realized that she was with the wrong man."

If so, it was too late. When Nuñez returned around 2 a.m., Padilla was waiting for him. From their bunk bed near the ceiling, the three children saw their father strike her with the butt of a beer bottle. He hit her again and again in the head, the glass breaking within its brown paper bag. She tried to climb out the back door. For a moment, moonlight flooded into the tiny camper.

"Then he shoved her back in with his foot," Bernisa remembers. "He closed the door, and then he finished her off."....

"I saw my mom beaten to death," Bernisa says. "My only protector in the world, and she couldn't protect herself." Neither sister remembers Nuñez cutting up the corpse, but Gloria distinctly recalls seeing her father stuff her mother's body into an army-green bag. "I remember helping him dispose of her," she says....

The two sisters had already seen their father kill their mother and sister. But those sickening moments were nothing compared to the rape, violence, and neglect that would follow. Without Padilla around, Nuñez would become a monster. And Bernisa and Gloria would be forced to live like animals alongside him to survive....

Nuñez never worked, likely living on Padilla's welfare checks. Whatever money he did have, he spent on Budweiser or marijuana. The campground was only a few hundred yards from Lower Matecumbe Key's strip malls, but Bernisa and Gloria lived like wolves. Their hair — Bernisa's dark, Gloria's blond — grew long and matted, and they survived on crabs or shrimp they found in shallow pools. "If we didn't catch anything, we didn't eat," Bernisa says.

The sexual abuse that had begun as a secret now spread into a sick obsession. Nuñez would emerge from the U-Haul, growl "Vámanos chicas," and then molest them. He raped one or both of them nearly every day for years. Sometimes Nuñez would let other men take the girls into the dirty U-Haul at the edge of the world.

"Some of it is blacked out, thank God," Bernisa says of the abuse. "If we remembered the whole thing, we probably would have gone crazy."....

The girls' nightmare lasted four years. Even when the police took Nuñez away, the two girls did not say what he had done to them. It would take another child to scream out....

At the police station, officers tried to get Bernisa to talk. But the 11-year-old said Nuñez never abused them. Then the cops tried Gloria. At first she also denied it all. But then the talkative 8-year-old began to tell the horrible truth. "She would have to keep the bedroom door locked at night to keep Daddy from coming in and touching them," reads  a Monroe County Sheriff's report from March 1989. They'd kept quiet out of terror, police realized. "If I tell you, will you let my daddy go?" Gloria fearfully asked an officer.

Police didn't let Nuñez go, at least not for four years. He was convicted of two counts of lewd and lascivious acts on children. By the time he was released in 1993, his daughters had changed their names and disappeared. But they could not change the past. And as they became teenagers, Gloria and Bernisa would relive the horrors of their childhood in their own ways....
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2013-05-09/news/miami-cold-case-murder-nilsa-padilla/

A House Divided

A House Divided 1994 Jun 26 By Katy Butler Los Angeles Times

On May 13, Ramona won the public war but lost his most important private battle. The jury, in a complex 10-to-2 decision, ruled that Holly's memories were probably false. Her therapists, they said, had not implanted them but had reinforced them. But they awarded Ramona only $475,000-far less than the $8 million he had sought, less than the $1 million he had spent on the trial....

But the jury verdict was ambiguous. Said jury foreman Thomas Dudum: "We all got rather disturbed when Mr. Ramona captured the headlines by claiming a victory of sorts, when we knew the case did not prove that he did not do it. I want to make it clear that we did not believe, as Gary indicates, that these therapists gave Holly a wonder drug and implanted these memories. It was an uneasy decision and there were a lot of unanswered questions." On one point, Dudum was unequivocal: "It was apparent from the beginning that Mr. Ramona was a wonderful salesman for Mondavi, and he was selling us a story," he said, referring to the improbably idyllic life Ramona had described. "A lot of it was very difficult to swallow, and we were not fooled for a minute by his convenient act of tearing up."

As for the people who Ramona said mattered most-his ex-wife and three daughters-the verdict convinced them of nothing but the injustice of the legal system. "I don't think he should have gotten a penny for raping his own daughter," said Stephanie, weeping, outside the courtroom after the verdict. "You don't know what I know. You don't know what my children know. Nobody gets it."....

AFTER THE VERDICT, GARY Ramona felt vindicated. He says he's ready to turn his attention to his new business, which imports wines from Chile and is a marketing consultant for small wineries. He says he hopes that someday his daughters will understand that he never did what he was accused of. http://www.katybutler.com/publications/latimes/index_files/latimes_clashmem_mixmessages.htm

Recovered Memories

Recovered Memories

copied with permission

Recovered memories have been defined as the phenomenon of partially or fully losing parts of memories of traumatic events, and then later recovering part or all of the memories into conscious awareness. They have also been defined as the recollections of memories that are believed to have been unavailable for a certain period of time[1]. There is very strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist.[2] This has been shown in many scientific studies. The content of recovered memories have fairly high corroboration rates.

Contents
* 1 Scientific evidence
* 2 Corroboration rates
* 3 References
* 4 Bibliography
* 5 External Links

Scientific evidence

There are many studies that have proven that the recovered memories of traumatic events exist. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond found 43 studies that showed recovered memories for traumatic events[3]. The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories[4]. Hopper's research shows that amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is "beyond dispute." He states that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" [5] In one study of women with previously documented histories of sexual abuse, 38% of the women did not remember the abuse that had happened 17 years before.[6] Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques[7]. One studied showed that five out of 19 women with histories of familial sexual abuse either forgot specific details or had "blank periods" for these memories[8]. Another study showed that "40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse"[9]. Herman and Harvey's study showed that 16% of abuse survivors had "complete amnesia followed by delayed recall"[10]. Corwin's individual case study provides evidence of the existence of recovered memories on videotape[11].

Other researchers state:

Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.[12]

A body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma[13]
Corroboration rates

Many studies show high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates vary from 50 - 75%[14], 64%[13], 77%[15], 50%[16], 75%[17] 68%[18] 47%[9], and 70% [19]. One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases"[20]. There are also additional studies showing the corroboration of recovered memories[21][22][23][24].

References

1. What about Recovered Memories? Jennifer J. Freyd, University of Oregon http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/whatabout.html
2. Research discussing corroboration and accuracy of recovered memories: An Annotated Bibliography by Lynn Crook http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/suggestedrefs.html
3. Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield. (1999). Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 27, 5-156. "Brown, Scheflin and Hammond reviewed 43 studies relevant to the subject of traumatic memory and found that every study that examined the question of dissociative amnesia in traumatized populations demonstrated that a substantial minority partially or completely forget the traumatic event experienced, and later recover memories of the event. By 1999, over 68 studies had been published that document dissociative amnesia after childhood sexual abuse. In fact, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse has failed to find it." http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/prev.html
4. The Recovered Memory Project http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Taubman_Center/Recovmem/index.html
5. Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse - Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources by Jim Hopper "Amnesia for childhood sexual abuse is a condition. The existence of this condition is beyond dispute. Repression is merely one explanation - often a confusing and misleading one - for what causes the condition of amnesia. At least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall." http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/
6. Williams LM (1994). Recall of childhood trauma: a prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse. J Consult Clin Psychol 62: 1167–76. PMID 7860814. "One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?" A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7860814
7. Andrews, B., Brewin, C., Ochera, J., Morton, J., Bekerian, D., Davies, G., and Mollon, P. (1999). Characteristics, context and consequences of memory recovery among adults in therapy. Brit J Psychiatry 175:141-146. "Of a total of 690 clients, therapists reported that 65% recalled child sexual abuse and 35% recalled other traumas, 32% started recovering memories before entering therapy. According to therapists' accounts, among the 236 detailed client cases, very few appeared improbable and corroboration was reported in 41%. Most (78%) of the clients' initial recovered memories either preceded therapy or preceded the use of memory recovery techniques used by the respondents. Techniques seemed to be used more to help the clients to elaborate the memories than to facilitate their initial recovery. Clients with whom techniques had been used before the first reported memory recovery were no less likely to have found corroborating evidence than clients with whom no techniques had been used before memory recovery."
8. Bagley, C. (1995). The prevalence and mental health sequels of child sexual abuse in community sample of women aged 18 to 27. Child sexual abuse and mental health in adolescents and adults. Aldershot: Avebury. "Study of women 18-24 years who had been removed from home 10 years previously by social services due to intrafamilial sexual abuse. Of the 19 women for whom there was evidence of serious sexual abuse, 14 remembered events corresponding to their records. Two remembered that abuse had taken place but could recall no specific details, and three had no memory. Two of the last three described long blank periods for the memory of childhood corresponding to the age when abuse had taken place.
9. Feldman-Summers, S., & Pope, K. S. (1994). The experience of forgetting childhood abuse: A national survey of psychologists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62, 636-639. "A national sample of psychologists were asked whether they had been abused as children and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse. Almost a quarter of the sample (23.9%) reported childhood abuse, and of those, approximately 40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse....Of those abused, 40% did not remember at some time. 47% had corroboration. 56% said psychotherapy aided in recall. Differences between those who first recalled abuse in therapy and those who recalled it elsewhere were not significant.
10. Herman, J. L., & Harvey, M. R. (1997). Adult memories of childhood trauma: A naturalistic clinical study. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 557-571. "Roughly half (53%) said they had never forgotten the traumatic events. Two smaller groups described a mixture of continuous and delayed recall (17%) or a period of complete amnesia followed by delayed recall (16%). Patients with and without delayed recall did not differ significantly in the proportions reporting corroboration of their memories from other sources."
11. Corwin, D.; Olafson E. (1997). Videotaped Discovery of a Reportedly Unrecallable Memory of Child Sexual Abuse:Comparison with a Childhood Interview Videotaped 11 Years Before Child Maltreatment 2 (2): 91–112. doi:10.1177/1077559597002002001 http://cmx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/2/91
12. The Leadership Council - Trauma and Memory http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html
13. "True" and "False" Child Sexual Abuse Memories and Casey's Phenomenological View of Remembering Joanne M. Hall, Lori L. Kondora - American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48, No. 10, 1339-1359 (2005) DOI: 10.1177/0002764205277012 "Research shows that 64% of adult women childhood sexual abuse survivors had some degree of amnesia regarding the trauma; but in the majority of cases, corroboration was available to verify that abuse had occurred (Herman & Schatzow, 1987). Of 129 women with recorded histories of childhood sexual abuse, 38% did not recall the abuse that had been clearly verified and documented decades earlier. This lack of recall was especially likely among those abused at younger ages and among those whose perpetrators were known by them at the time of the abuse (L.Williams, 1994). In fact, a body of empirical evidence indicates that it is common for abused children to reach adulthood without conscious awareness of the trauma (Briere, 1992; Herman, 1992; Schetky, 1990; van der Kolk et al., 1996)." http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/48/10/1339?ijkey=ciZjJlFifgYIY&keytype=ref&siteid=spabs
14. Corroboration of Child Abuse Memories "Studies vary in frequency. Between 31 and 64 percent of abuse survivors in six major studies reported that they forgot "some of the abuse." Numbers reporting severe amnesia ranged from under 12% to 59%....Studies report 50-75% of abuse survivors corroborating the facts of their abuse through an outside source." http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/abuse/a/cooroborate.htm
15. van der Kolk, BA & R Fisler (1995), "Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study", J Traumatic Stress 8: 505–25 "a systematic exploratory study of 46 subjects with PTSD which indicates that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least initially, in the form of dissociated mental imprints of sensory and affective elements of the traumatic experience: as visual, olfactory, affective, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. Over time, subjects reported the gradual emergence of a personal narrative that some believe can be properly referred to as "explicit memory"....Of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma, 15 (43%) had suffered significant, or total amnesia for their trauma at some time of their lives. Twenty seven of the 35 subjects with childhood trauma (77%) reported confirmation of their childhood trauma." http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk2.php
16. "Recovered memories of abuse among therapy patients: A national survey." Pope, Kenneth S.; Tabachnick, Barbara G. Independent practice, Norwalk, CT, US Ethics & Behavior 1995 Vol 5(3) 237-248 "about 50% of the patients who claimed to have recovered the memories had found external validation, a percentage that coincides with that obtained in the Feldman-Summers & Pope, 1994 study"
17. Herman, J L.; Schatzow E (1987). Recovery and verification of memories of childhood sexual trauma. Psychoanalytic Psychol 4. "Three out of four patients were able to validate their memories by obtaining corroborating evidence from other sources" http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ppsy.004.0001a
18. Kluft, RP (1995). The confirmation and disconfirmation of memories of abuse in Dissociative Identity Disorder patients: A naturalistic study. Dissociation 8: 253-8. "Nineteen, or 56%, had instances of the confirmation of recalled abuses. Ten of the 19, or 53%, had always recalled the abuses that were confirmed. However, 13 of the 19, or 68%, obtained documentation of events that were recovered in the course of therapy, usually with the use of hypnosis. Three patients, or 9%, had instances in which the inaccuracy of their recollection could be demonstrated." https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1155/Dis_8_4_9_ocr.pdf?sequence=1
19. Westerhof, Y., Woertman, L. Van der Hart, O., & Nijenhuis, E.R.S. (2000). Forgetting child abuse: Feldman-Summers and Pope's (1994) study replicated among Dutch psychologists. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 7, 220-229. "In a replication of Feldman-Summers and Pope's (1994) national survey of American psychologists on ‘forgetting' childhood abuse, a Dutch sample of 500 members of the Netherlands Institute of Psychologists (NIP) were asked if they had been abused as children and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse for some significant period of time. As compared to the 23.9% in the original study, 13.3% reported childhood abuse. Of that subgroup, 39% (as compared to 40% in the original study) reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse for a period of time. Both sexual and non-sexual physical abuse were subject to forgetting, which in 70% of cases was reversed while being in therapy. Almost 70% of those who reported forgetting also reported corroboration of the abuse."
20. Lewis, D., Yeager, C., Swica, Y., Pincus, J. and Lewis, M. (1997). Objective documentation of child abuse and dissociation in 12 murderers with dissociative identity disorder. Am J Psychiatry, 154(12):1703-10. "Signs and symptoms of dissociative identity disorder in childhood and adulthood were corroborated independently and from several sources in all 12 cases; objective evidence of severe abuse was obtained in 11 cases. The subjects had amnesia for most of the abuse and underreported it. Marked changes in writing style and/or signatures were documented in 10 cases. CONCLUSIONS: This study establishes, once and for all, the linkage between early severe abuse and dissociative identity disorder."
21. Martinez-Taboas, A. (1996). Repressed memories: Some clinical data contributing toward its elucidation. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 50(2), 217-30. "the author presents two well documented and corroborated cases of dissociated or delayed memories of child sexual abuse in patients with a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The patients had absolutely no conscious memory of their childhood abusive experiences and in both cases the author obtained definite and clear cut independent corroboration of the realities of the abuse. The amnesia was documented and memories were recovered in the course of treatment."
22. Viederman M. (1995). The reconstruction of a repressed sexual molestation fifty years later. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 43(4): 1169-1219. Reconstruction of a previously completely repressed memory of sexual molestation. Six years following termination of analysis, the patient wrote a letter describing a confirmation of the event, now sixty years past, from the sole other survivor of the period who had knowledge of what had happened.
23. Bull, D. (1999). A verified case of recovered memories of sexual abuse. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 53(2), 221-224. "a 40-year-old woman with no history of mental illness and ten years of exemplary professional work, recovers memories of childhood sexual abuse by her father through a call from her youth pastor in whom she had confided as an adolescent."
24. Dahlenberg, C. (1996, Summer) Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse. The Journal of Psychiatry and Law. "Seventeen patients who had recovered memories of abuse in therapy participated in a search for evidence confirming or refuting these memories. Memories of abuse were found to be equally accurate whether recovered or continuously remembered."

Bibliography

1. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (D. Corydon), 1998, "Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law" W. W. Norton (0-393-70254-5)
2. Knopp, F. H. & Benson, A. R. (1996) A primer on the complexities of traumatic memory childhood sexual abuse; a psychobiological approach. Brandon, VT : Safer Society Press
3. Leavitt, Ph.D., F. Manufactured Memory, Altered Belief and Self Report Mirage: The Alleged False Memory of Jean Piaget. Child Abuse & Neglect, 1999, 23, No. 12, pp. 1221-1224. [1]
4. van der Kolk, B. A. (1994). The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of post traumatic stress. http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk4.php
5. van der Kolk, B. A. & Fisler, R. (1995) Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study. http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk2.php
6. Whitfield M.D.,C. Memory and Abuse - Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma Health Communications, Inc 3201 SW 15th St, Deerfield Beach, FL.33442-8190.
7. Whitfield M.D.,C. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 4, 2, 1997, Brunner/Mazel.Inc. c 1997, Traumatic Amnesia: The Evolution of Our Understanding From a Clinical and Legal Perspective
8. Whitfield M.D., C. Traumatic Amnesia: The Evolution of Our Understanding From A Clinical and Legal Perspective(Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity, 4(2), 3-34, 1997)
9. Whitfield M.D., C. Trauma and Memory: Clinical & legal understanding of traumatic amnesia (Chapter 12) in Burgess, Ann W. (ed): Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nursing. Appleton & Lange, Stamford, Ct., 1998, pp 171-186.
10. Widom, C. and Shepard, R. (1996). Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood victimization: Part 1. Psychological Assessment, 8(4), 412-421. "accuracy of adult recollections of childhood physical abuse was assessed. Two hour in-person interviews were conducted in young adulthood with 1,196 of the original 1,575 participants. Two measures (including the Conflict Tactics Scale) were used to assess histories of childhood physical abuse. Results indicate good discriminant validity and predictive efficiency of the self-report measures, despite substantial underreporting by physically abused respondents."
11. Widom, C. and Shepard, R. (1997). Accuracy of adult recollections of childhood victimization. Part 2. Childhood sexual abuse. Psychological Assessment 9: 34-46. "A prospective study in which abused and neglected children (court substantiated) [N=1,114] were matched with non-abused and neglected children and followed into adulthood. There was substantial underreporting of sexual abuse, when compared to court and medical records. Victimization recall was checked by comparing crimes disclosed in victimization surveys found in police records."

External Links

1. Recovered Memory Data http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/
2. Recovered memory corroboration rates http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-corroboration-rates/

Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain, Satanists, stopping child pornography

Exclusive: Satanists recruit new members in small ads 9/20/09 Lauren Crooks - Satanists are recruiting members in Scotland through an online classifieds site. The devil worshippers, who preach from Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible, hold regular meetings involving ritualistic sacrifice. Their advert on Gumtree, which is accompanied by a picture of a goat with the devil's head, reads: "We are leaderless and nondenominational. We get together for discussion, food, drink, and ritual."....Laurie Matthew, who set up the Ritual Abuse Network Scotland, insisted police should be keeping a close eye on the group to prevent anything illegal happening. She said: "We have counselled a lot of people - many more than you'd think - who have been affected by Satanic ritual." Scotland has had problems with Satanists in the past. They were blamed for a spate of horse slayings at the time of the summer solstice last year.
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/09/20/exclusive-satanists-recruit-new-members-in-small-ads-78057-21687232/


FBI nabs 'Boy Lovers' child-porn ring 9/21/09 The FBI today announced child-pornography charges against four men from Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, accusing them of operating a ring that distributed pornographic images and videos and referred to themselves by the name "Boy Lovers."
....According to the complaints, the FBI began investigating the men in June after arresting one in their group. That man admitted to "possession, receipt, distribution and manufacture of child pornography," the complaint said. The man "also stated he had contacts with many other child pornography enthusiasts, some of whom were molesting children."
....Officials say he gave a USB drive to the witness on Aug. 29 that contained over 3,500 images and 60 videos of child pornography. http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/09/fbi-child-pornography-charges-garcia-maschke-stinefast-mcgill-west-chicago-schererville-indiana-cres.html


Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain

By Brandon Keim September 9, 2009 ...Though the memory is hidden from your conscious mind, it might not be gone. In a study of college students, brain imaging detected patterns of activation that corresponded to memories the students thought they'd lost. "Even though your brain still holds this information, you might not always have access to it," said neurobiologist Jeffrey Johnson of the University of California, Irvine. His remarks appeared in the study he co-authored, published Wednesday in Neuron. That recalling a memory triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed is a tenet of cognitive science. Less understood, however, is what becomes of those patterns at moments of incomplete recall...."It wasn't quite clear what happens to them," said Johnson of lost details. "But even when people claim that there are no details attached to their memories, we could still pick some of those details out."....

Johnson's team put eleven female and five male college students inside an fMRI machine, which measures real-time patterns of blood flow in the brain. Each student was shown a list of words, then asked to say each word backwards, think of how it could be used, and imagine how an artist would draw it. Twenty minutes later, the researchers showed them the list again, and asked the students to remember what they could of each word. Recollection triggered the original learning patterns, a process known technically as reinstatement; the stronger the memory, the stronger the signal. "What I think is cool about the study is that the degree of cortical reinstatement is related to the strength of our subjective experience of memory," said Anthony Wagner, a Stanford University memory researcher who wasn't involved in the experiment. But at the weak end of the gradient, where the students' conscious recall had faded to zero, the signal was still there. It's possible that the students lied about what they remembered. But if not, then memory may truly persist.

The question then is how long memories could last - weeks, months, even years. "We can only speculate that this is the case," said Johnson, who plans to run brain-imaging studies of memory degradation over days and weeks. As for whether those memories could be intentionally guided to the surface, Johnson says that "at this stage, we're just happy to be able to find evidence of reinstatement at a weak level. That would be something down the line."
Citation: "Recollection, Familiarity, and Cortical Reinstatement: A Multivoxel Pattern Analysis." By Jeffrey D. Johnson, Susan G.R. McDuff, Michael D. Rugg, and Kenneth A. Norman. Neuron, Vol. 63 Issue 5, September 8, 2009.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/

Recollection, Familiarity, and Cortical Reinstatement: A Multivoxel Pattern Analysis
Jeffrey D. Johnson1, 4, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Susan G.R. McDuff2, 4, Michael D. Rugg1 and Kenneth A. Norman2, 3
1Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
2Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
3Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Published: September 9, 2009.
Summary
Episodic memory retrieval is thought to involve reinstatement of the neurocognitive processes engaged when an episode was encoded. Prior fMRI studies and computational models have suggested that reinstatement is limited to instances in which specific episodic details are recollected. We used multivoxel pattern-classification analyses of fMRI data to investigate how reinstatement is associated with different memory judgments, particularly those accompanied by recollection versus a feeling of familiarity (when recollection is absent). Classifiers were trained to distinguish between brain activity patterns associated with different encoding tasks and were subsequently applied to recognition-related fMRI data to determine the degree to which patterns were reinstated. Reinstatement was evident during both recollection- and familiarity-based judgments, providing clear evidence that reinstatement is not sufficient for eliciting a recollective experience. The findings are interpreted as support for a continuous, recollection-related neural signal that has been central to recent debate over the nature of recognition memory processes.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSS-4X6GR82-H&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F10%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ec41eaf57212c754a5f6a93f4d889eba


Call for Papers: "Sociology of Memory: New and Old Conceptualizations of Memory, Personal or Commodity, Public or Private?" Papers pertaining to: collective memory; personal memory; narrative; new and old sociological theories and conceptualizations of memory; sociological, psychological, historical or legal conceptualizations pertaining to personal, trauma, repressed, body memory; socio-political issues pertaining to "commodity memory" (such as electronic dataveillance, video surveillance; seed, sperm, egg or DNA banking); drug technology to improve or repress memory; and closely related topics are invited to present their research at the 2010 Pacific Sociological Association's 81st Annual meeting, to be held at the Marriott Oakland City Center in downtown Oakland, California on April 8 - 11 (Thursday - Saturday), 2010. Past papers from this session are featured in the book, Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum (2009), forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing. For more information see: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Sociology-of-Memory--Papers-from-the-Spectrum1-4438-0199-2.htm
Please send initial inquirers, abstracts and contact information to: Noel Packard at packardn@prodigy.net Visit the Pacific Sociological Association website at http://www.pacificsoc.org for conference information and paper submission procedures. Follow links to Session Category Theory, Sociological Imagination, Knowledge, Science and Technology and within that category find the Sociology of Memory link. Deadline: November 15, 2009.