Jasmin Lee Cori, M.S. - Author, Mind, Body & Spirit

Periodically stories of well-known people accused of sexually abusing minors rock the news. These center around perpetrators who are doctors, coaches, legislators, movie stars, but of course that is just the tip of the iceberg. Abusers are found through all walks of life and all roles. Someone in your family may be one.

Of course, it’s simpler when the victim of abuse has always carried memories, but often that is not the case. We block memories that are too much to deal with. So in these cases, if we have memories, they are considered “recovered memories” that have broken through our defenses. Recovered memories have been attacked by some. A group of accused parents are concerned that these memories are actually “false memories” that therapists have implanted in their clients or that self-identified victims have made up. This brings up a number of questions:

• Can memories be implanted? If so, how much power can false memories have?
• Do people make up stories of being abused when they are not?
• Can a recovered memory be trustworthy?

Let’s take a look.

Can False Memories Leave Tracks?

Is it possible to implant memories? Yes. Both experiments and anecdotal evidence have shown that false memories can be implanted in people.

What is less understood is the reach of false memories. Could a memory based on nothing but the improper guidance of a therapist leave the kinds of tracks we see in real memories? Can a few seconds of an imagined experience (or worse, a fabricated story without any experience as its basis) leave you with dozens if not hundreds of unconscious triggers that you find over decades of hard work? I don’t see how they can.

Why Would You Make This Up?

Sometimes it is said that a person grabs onto a made-up story of sexual abuse to explain their emotional disturbance. They hold to the tale to let themselves off the hook of taking responsibility for their own messes. Sounds like an idea of someone who has never been there. As I wrote in Healing From Trauma:

The argument in support of the idea of creating false memories is that a person who is suffering wants an explanation, and a story that seems big enough to provide that explanation offers that support. I can see how this theoretically seems so, and yet I would say that at the level this story [of sexual abuse] is reassuring, it’s really only a story and not a felt experience. As a felt experience, it is shattering.

Early sexual abuse is not an explanation you run to for convenience, but one you fight against, especially when it involves a family member you love and depend on. Most incest survivors fight their experience for years, a combination of not wanting to believe, afraid of claiming something they have no proof for, and fear that it would destroy the family.

As a psychotherapist, I’ve sat with many clients who suddenly find themselves overcome with a traumatic memory. The experience comes of its own accord, often prompted by a sensation in the body or cue in the environment. The natural response to such a memory (especially involving betrayal) is “No, no, no! It can’t be true!”

A few facts about childhood sexual abuse:

• Sexual abuse often begins very young. The memories that are formed before we have language are most confusing and lack a coherent narrative. These memories are hidden in our bodies and their stories are told through our bodies’ reactions.
   
• Ongoing sexual abuse by a caregiver is about as damaging as anything there is in this human world. And because of the untenable position it puts the victim in, it is most likely to be shut out of mind. The psyche will resist having its world torn asunder by such memories.
   
  
• Child victims are often told to keep this a secret. I work with adults who remember repeating as their mantra “It’s a secret--don’t tell” even when they are not clear about what exactly is the secret.
   
• There is often a “grooming” of a child victim. What may later end in sexual penetration often starts with something less extreme, but uncomfortable, even if covert. [Think of Jerry Sandusky wrestling with his victims or the Olympic coach Larry Nassar, treating his gymnasts.] The more grooming, the harder it is to find the moment a perpetrator crosses the line and the harder to hold them fully responsible.

Are recovered memories reliable?

There is indeed evidence that such memories can be accurate. The Recovered Memory Project created by Professor Ross Cheit has documented more than 100 cases of validated “recovered memories” for which there was previous amnesia.

Therapists are confronted every day with unwelcome slivers of memory escaping the strongholds of motivated forgetting. Most therapists are cautious about accepting at face value every detail of a memory, since all memories are subject to distorting influences, yet it is generally believed that these uprisings from the unconscious are indeed true to something.

First Steps in Healing

Trauma of this nature disrupts your relationship with your own experience, and one of the steps in healing is to heal this fragmentation and rupturing by acknowledging and accepting these shards of experience that seep back into your awareness. Can you listen as these returning fragments attempt to come home? Rather than put yourself on the witness stand, demanding facts that are impossible to prove, can you listen for feelings, body sensations, and other clues? Can you feel when something rings true?

This is not a journey to take alone. You’ll need the support of others—whether a therapist or a therapy-related group as well as your partner or friends. Educating yourself about childhood sexual abuse can be good scaffolding, but pace yourself carefully. This is overwhelming territory.

Please share this post. Childhood sexual abuse is rampant. There may be people in your circle who are dealing with memories and suspicions they have not shared.