T H E S E  A R E  N O  O R D I N A R Y  M E M O R I E S "The incest survivor machine," as Carol Tavris dubbed the recovered memory network, is a juggernaut not easily halted. Although the reforms that have followed RAMONA - more cautious therapy and scientific scrutiny of the memories - have dramatically slowed the numbers of new accusations and filed lawsuits, a belief system so passionate and profitable is not easily relinquished. And so the memory wars continue to rage with great ferocity in America's courtrooms. As courts increasingly find against the reliability and admissibility of the memories and level multi-million dollar verdicts against therapists, the RM/trauma/incest survivor movement's champions are forced to develop new survival strategies -- new trauma and memory theories to shore up those being defeated. I follow them with fascination, as they appear in court declarations and testimony, in speeches, and in scholarly and professional journals. Two of the most vocal spokespersons for the "memory side" are Cynthia Grant Bowman and Elizabeth Mertz, who have carried their pro-recovered memory views to the influential pages of the Harvard Law Review and the ABA's Judges' Journal. I express my distress with their lengthy article in the Harvard Law Review in the Epilogue of SPECTRAL EVIDENCE, page 382: "Any doubt that the battle was now focused in the courts was dispelled by the January 1996 issues of one of the most influential legal forums in the nation, the Harvard Law Review, which ran a ninety-six page broadside against the Ramona case and third-party recovered memory lawsuits. This cannonade against a case that was not even a precedent suggested the size of the threat it posed for "the other side." The authors, two feminist law professors at Northwestern, argued a Gary Ramona-be-damned social policy: "In light of the other remedies available to the person falsely accused, we conclude that the interests of the victims and therapists outweigh the alleged abuser's interests." And in the book's chapter notes, page 42, I take Mertz and Bowman further to task: "The January 1996 Harvard Law Review article on the Ramona case, by Cynthia Grant Bowman and Elizabeth Mertz, stands as the classic example of skillful coopting of reputable science, social policy, and legal theory to make the political argument for recovered memory. I was dismayed to see survivor rhetoric replacing the academic rigor I expect of the Harvard Law Review; the authors admitted to reading no trial transcripts, relying "primarily upon the voluminous press coverage" of the Ramona trial, largely on a Los Angeles Times Magazine article by a writer who has demonstrated sympathy for the recovered memory side. Tapes of most of the testimony could easily have been acquired." Their Judges' Journal article appeared too late to comment on it in the book, and yet it required comment. For I see their work as threatening to the gains in critical thinking and old-fashioned justice that had begun to quell the memory wars. I wrote a letter-to-the editor which appears in the August 1997 Judges Journal. Their article can be found at any major or law library, Fall 1996, Vol. 35, No. 4. Do get theirs and read it carefully, for it contains the newest rationale for recovered memories. Are you ready? These are not special memories after all, we are told (and as has been claimed in an array of elaborate biological/psychological theories over the past few years). These are ordinary memories, some better than others-- so why should they be put to scientific test at the courtroom door? The same argument is being made in court cases, currently in Holly Ramona's lawsuit against her father in Los Angeles. On the following page, I print my letter in response to the Judges' Journal piece.
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