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An Internet Op-Ed by Moira Johnston: Why do the recovered memory wars refuse to die? The end seemed to be signaled three years ago by the historic tide-turning verdict in the 1994 trial, Ramona vs. Isabella, which gave a father the right to pursue and win a malpractice suit against the therapists he charged with planting false memories of sexual abuse in his daughter's mind. However, the legal battles are more ferocious than ever. The two most important cases of the memory wars, Ramona and Franklin, are exploding in the courts once again, part of a barrage of legal action this summer. On July 22, a pivotal hearing in Holly Ramona's rape suit against her father, Gary, before the California Court of Appeal in Los Angeles directly tested the admissibility of recovered memories into court. If its decision, expected soon, is to halt these controversial memories at the courtroom door, it will have epic influence on courts nationwide; it could, finally, close down the memory wars. Prior to this legal action, George Franklin, the man convicted of murder based on his daughter's recovered memories of the crime but released from prison last summer, filed a lawsuit against his daughter Eileen Franklin, psychiatrist Lenore Terr, and San Mateo prosecutors and police for conspiracy to violate his civil rights. Appeals and trials in these and hundreds of other cases could drag them on into the next millenium. Yet, at a recent reunion of dozens of us who had witnessed the unfolding of the Ramona family tragedy through the seven-week trial --jurors, witnesses, lawyers, journalists, abuse survivors and accused parents, we toasted Ramona's positive legacy. From a Napa Valley terrace near the courthouse, we looked out on a therapy profession forced to new accountability for the destruction of far more lives than the Salem witch trials. We saw the focus of the memory wars shifted from talk shows to the courts, and the naive embrace of recovered memories that had jailed George Franklin replaced by rigorous scientific scrutiny. Now, as scientists exposed Holly Ramona's kind of memories as unreliable, at best, courts across the land were rejecting them as evidence, and leveling multi-million dollar verdicts against therapists. On July 1, New Hampshire's Supreme Court struck a decisive blow by denying the admissibility of "repressed memory" in the closely-watched Hungerford case, a decision it repeated in the Walters case in early August. This summer, appellate and/or Supreme Courts of Texas, North Carolina and California followed suit, turning back recovered memories. And the recent resounding defeat of strident pro-recovered memory therapist Laura Brown for the presidency of the American Psychological Association was a bellwether victory of science over ideology within that powerful organization. President-elect Richard Suinn now has a mandate to restore moral leadership to a profession badly damaged by its protracted squabble over recovered memories. Over our toasting glasses, we seemed to see subsiding at last an epidemic that has struck a minimum of 20,000 American families, fifty states, four nations, and launched thousands of legal actions. But the sad faces of accused parents in perpetual mourning for the children they have lost to recovered memories reminded me that the wars are not over. The ongoing family lawsuits reveal the memory wars for the tragic folly they are. The Ramonas' overlapping lawsuits have cost an estimated 5 million dollars so far, with taxpayers subsidizing the wasteful process. The human costs are immeasurable. Gary Ramona, his life destroyed by accusations and gossip, can never fully rebuild, or erase the taint of incest. An anguished recent published letter from the youngest Ramona daughter, Shawna, affirming her permanent alienation from her father revealed the pain the Ramona women continue to feel. Battered by eight years of war, the Ramonas and Franklins are a microcosm of the thousands of families who talk only at the deposition table. Courts may be a crucible for social change, but they are a terrible place to heal. So why don't the battles stop? Because the incest survivor machine, under siege, is fighting fiercely to protect its huge investment in recovered memories. Facing a cascade of censures and malpractice verdicts, clinical psychotherapists fight for survival of their profession and of Freud's most basic tenets. A radical arm of feminism exploits recovered memories of incest as a weapon in its ongoing war against the patriarchy. Keeping the spotlight on fallen stars like Eileen Franklin and Holly Ramona, the "machine" callously leaves the children who suffer real and corroborated abuse standing in the shadows. It is time to end the havoc. Congress should request a committee of the National Academy of Sciences -- a body that transcends the political, adversarial, suggestible climate of the courtroom -- to make recommendations on resolution of a mental health issue more divisive than abortion. An NAS committee should have as its core members leading memory scientists who stand free from public alignment with either side (Daniel Schacter, Larry Squire, Joseph LeDoux, for example), augmented by the nation's best experts in relevant fields, including those whose science and principles may have led them to advocacy roles in the memory wars. There is already momentum within the NAS for a committee. The Justice Department and/or National Institutes of Health should request it now. And America's major medical and mental health organizations should endorse the action, adding force to their official statements regarding the unreliability of recovered memories. It could put the wars to rest. Moira Johnston is the author of the just-published SPECTRAL EVIDENCE:
The Ramona Case: Incest, Memory and Truth on Trial in Napa Valley.
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