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The Sex-Abuse 'Memory' Crimes
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They say they were raped and forced to kill—and that they just now remember it, 20 years later. Casey Schwartz on a mind-boggling claim of "recovered memory" rocking a tiny Missouri town.
Years ago, beginning in 1988, a group of children was coerced into participating in unspeakable acts: incest, bestiality, kidnapping, murder.
Or maybe they weren’t.
Last week, the tiny town of Bates City, Missouri (population: 245) was turned upside-down by such allegations. Six members of the Mohler family—four brothers, their uncle, and their father—were arrested on charges of sexually abusing one of the brother’s children for a period of several years starting in the late 1980s. The accusers, now adults, made other lurid allegations as well, including the claims that a girl was held captive in their basement long enough to give birth to two babies (one of which they say the men buried underneath the basement floor) and that they were forced to help kidnap and kill a man, brutally stabbing him to death.
The accusers claim that a girl was held captive in their basement long enough to give birth to two babies and that they were forced to help kidnap and kill a man, brutally stabbing him to death.
So far, authorities have filed 42 charges against the men, who have not yet entered a plea. Police are still recovering evidence from the Mohler household; on Friday, they found video tapes that they believe may contain footage of some of the assaults.
But what makes the accusations even more explosive is that they are coming out now, nearly 20 years later, because one of the plaintiffs says that she only recently fully remembered the events. Now 26 years old, the unidentified accuser says she “recovered” the memories after years of repressing them. The question now facing law-enforcement officials is how much credence to give these so-called recollections.
Few issues spur as much disagreement in the psychological community as that of recovered memory. Ever since Sigmund Freud asserted that repressed memories of sexual abuse were the cause of hysterical symptoms in patients (giving rise to psychoanalysis, or "the talking cure"), the subject of recovered memory has polarized psychologists, especially in criminal cases, when such memories have been used to give alleged rapists and molesters lengthy prison sentences.
Dr. Harris Stratyner, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, says the existing research on recovered memories is “split down the middle,” with one side arguing such memories are symptoms of a "false memory syndrome," and the other saying they shouldn't be assumed to be pure fiction. Dr. Peter Freed, assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia, points out that spontaneously remembering or realizing things happens all the time, and that such memories shouldn't really be thought of as "recovered."
“Have you ever 'suddenly realized' that you had a crush on your best friend? Or 'suddenly realized' that you are mad at your mom? Or 'suddenly remembered' that in second grade you wet your pants on the Ferris wheel? There is no real traction in thinking of these as recovered memories. In a sense we are constantly having 'recovered' memories—we don't have a choice. Working memory is tiny.”
“The real question,” Freed believes, “is why are certain things suppressed for so long?”
In recent years, "recovered memories" have made some high-profile court appearances. In 2005, a defrocked Boston priest named Paul R. Shanley was convicted of a decades-old rape largely based on the recovered memories of the victim, who said he'd suddenly remembered the abuse after seeing a news report. The defense was unable to convince the jury that the memories had been "planted" in his mind by friends and lawyers. And in the 1980s, amid a public panic about child abductions and Satanic cults, a rash of recovered-memory cases involving daycare centers made headlines, most famously at a Manhattan Beach, California, daycare where children who initially denied remembering any abuse later said they recalled being molested—after the leading questions asked by therapists and social workers apparently convinced them they did.
It's this whiff of witch-hunting, in cases where therapists may have inadvertently encouraged patients to remember something that never happened, that has made recovered memory such an uncomfortable topic. But the case unfolding in Missouri could shift the dynamic. Since the arrest of the six Mohler men, investigators have discovered what may turn out to be hard evidence that corroborates the victims' memories. According to at least one report, when police arrived at the home of Burrel Mohler Sr., the grandfather of the 26-year-old plaintiff, his wife showed them incest-themed porn that she had found in his living quarters in the basement (to which she had previously banished him—one can only imagine why).
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Casey Schwartz is a graduate of Brown University and has a Masters Degree in psychodynamic neuroscience from University College London. She has previously written for The New York Sun and ABC News. Currently, she's working on a book about the brain world.
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Casey Schwartz is a graduate of Brown University and has a Masters Degree in psychodynamic neuroscience from University College London. She has previously written for The New York Sun and ABC News. Currently, she's working on a book about the brain world.
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Casey Schwartz is a graduate of Brown University and has a Masters Degree in psychodynamic neuroscience from University College London. She has previously written for The New York Sun and ABC News. Currently, she's working on a book about the brain world.
nortonclybourn
This is irresponsible pesudoscience. The idiot mental health providers who perpetrated this recovered memory crap and the attendant embarrassments of "multiple personality disorder" and "satanic ritual abuse" were sued and had their licenses pulled or slunk away and went on to something else years ago. No, no covens, no evidence of sacrificed babies and other literal witch-hunting hysteria was ever found, and it won't be found there. What's the evidence here, that they found porn and broken glass?
Oh yeah, years of traumatic abuse, that's just like suddenly remembering that you have a crush on someone. There has been no corroboration of any of this crap. The only evidence that has been adduced is that some people fail to remember child abuse that was documented by a hospital visit--of course, that could be because few people can remember much of anything when they are 3 years old.
Let's put this 90's witch hunt craze behind us. Just because you found some shovelhead with credentials who hasn't been keeping up with the literature and a jargony word to magically pin the tail on this aging donkey does not mean that there is real scientific debate about this crap.
joymars
We remember abstract things, like events, names, words, timelines. But pain? No. We don't forget and then remember pain. Real physical pain. No. We remember that. We might not remember all of it. We might bury huge chunks of it, but that a painful trauma happened will always be remembered.
This sudden resurrection of long years of memory, lived when the person was not a small child is poppycock.
And isn't it peculiar that so many of these cases have to do with demonic behavior? Funny how not one of these supposedly rampant satanic cults get ratted on by people who have no memory lapses.
marmaymar
Having experienced recovered memory of being raped at age 20, nearly 20 years after the fact allows me to state without doubt that these cases should certainly not all be dismissed as 'poppycock'. The human brain is capable of so much more than we are aware of and does have the ability to bury especially painful experiences that might otherwise destroy us. Please, give people who claim to have recovered memories the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
nortonclybourn
You should definitely sue your therapist. An interesting aspect of recovered memory "therapy" - people show more distress, require more treatment and function at a lower level after "treatment."
Speagle
Mary;
While there may be some cases of "recovered memory" of, say, where you left your car keys, the phemenon you spoeak of is different; and quite common. Women who have borderline personality disorder OFTEN create fantasies of what happened to them.
The multiple rapes that Ray Buckley (the accused in the McMartin case) experienced in prison while awaiting trial were, however, very real.
Mary; your craziness and/or lying has consequences in the real world. Maybe you should shut up until the anti-psychotics kick in...
reader3
Bullshit. I hope no one went to jail on the basis of your "recovered memory".
gracie99
I've personally experienced the way that overwhelmingly traumatic experience can be simply pushed aside because it is too bewildering to think about: Eventually when the severity of the post-traumatic stress subsided, I was able to gradually start thinking about what happened. I don't think it was recovered memory, though, just a normal part of the very abnormal experience of extreme trauma.
What seems 'off' about recovered memory to me is how the victims just go to live semi-normal lives until they 'remember.' Of course, they usually have some garden-variety psych-type problems, but they don't wind up like I did, almost starving to death from anxiety so extreme that I could not eat after being sent to a state hospital back ward at age 17. And I think that's the sort of thing that happens in cases in which experiences are THAT overwhelming, so overwhelming that one can't think about them.
Nonetheless, the three responses that I just read to your post seem really unfair and unkind. Whatever your experience was, I don't think people should be scornful and rude.
ryokisan
So, if they find hard evidence to corroborate the women's stories do you believe that the women always remembered it and just didn't say anything until now? Or, do you believe they are making it up? I am not saying you are wrong about recovered memory, I am just wondering outsdie of that topic what your feelings are if they find evidence to suppor thte girls claims.
aminahyaquin
Beautifully balanced article on a very difficult subject to study, experience, explore, understand.
If we differ substantively, it would be on the point of what causes people to repress memories, and how shaky those memories are.
Like eyewitness identifications, mentally processed events are subject to refining and recollective processes of the mind. however, the essential truth of the experience, and the certainty of its occurence are accessible, immediate and visceral...in the instance of sexual crimes against children, life deforming for those children, in a myriad of ways.
Trauma is often blocked or repressed because many humans use the Scarlett O'Hara approach to surviving catastrophe ; I'll function now, and "think about it tomorrow".
QWhen tomorrow comes, thopse memories have all the power and immediacy of the original experience, and usually emrge when the organism has developed to the point that coping with the extremity of pain will not kill or maim it most severely.
The outcomes for folks who are essentially honest with themselves and others about the abuse, at the point when it becomes conscious memory, are excellent, especially with therapeutic counseling to strengthen and enhance processing of the horror with via "insight". That is, when the victims are believed.
In my heart, after working with those who have had to transcend the wounds of CSA, often with no help from family or community, I hope mightily that here, for once truth of the horror of such acts and the complete blocking of such traumatic events IN ORDER for the vic to survive, and that in at least some such cases, the researchers can find unequivocal proof of the not all that rare, secret and perverted subculture that spawns these atrocities, and that self-perpetuates every time the silence is maintained life long.
writerforhire
Cult, I believe, represents a community of misguided controlled likeminded individuals who are predominately given to distorted religious theories and beliefs taught through one person who is the only person able to enlighten.
Cults isolate themselves from outside interference; isolate adult singles from family members through any practice; isolate, through circumventing, any person that stops them from their goals. They prescribe to absolute explanations. They explain intervention methods as predominately jealousy based: "That person (outside influence) is only trying to tear you away from those people who care about you and offer you support. They're jealous of you."
Are the activities of these family members in this articles satanic? They're certainly not Christian. Good v. Evil.
I prescribe to a very different theory on pain memories than other respondents: I believe in Repressed Memory. Repressed memories are common in abuse victim; the more severe the trauma the longer the memory stays repressed.
As a one-time intake specialist at a Homeless shelter, I've seen people so traumatized with repressed memories and when the memories surface they cut themselves because the memory is so intensely evil and then they have a permanent scar. Something always remembered.
As a child I was vying for the bike race champion of my neighborhood and taking the last turn my bike slide out from under me. I wiped out. I tore my knee open. Blood was gushing, skin hanging mixed with inlaid asphalt particles. I remember crying, my bloody knee, the physical scar which is permanent, (and also a constant reminder) but I don't remember the intense pain associated with the accident. I just remember the details.
The majority of psychological research gives credence to the "repressed memory" theory as fact and most common in children of sexual assault and trauma (the lone survivor of a horrific traffic accident). The fact that children do repress memories is so well known, documented and accepted that adult predators use it as rational. Children are victimized in our society and around the world, trauma endured by children is so brutal, violent and heinous that the memories are equally brutal, violent and heinous.
As one matures into adulthood and makes personal effort for betterment and becomes more stable without the need for anesthetics (drugs, alcohol) the mind allows those memories to surface. And memories may surface on their own; without trigger.
So it all possible. Yes; repressed memories are not a witch-hunt. They allow for children to be heard, behaviors understood, and finally justice.
nortonclybourn
"the majority of psychological research" does no such thing. Children who have been followed after actual traumas, such the Chowchilla bus incident, never forgot it. And don't quote "Gone With the Wind" as the blogger above did, give me a real study. Your own anecdote contradicts your argument--you say that you remember the details of the accident. The self mutilation you saw may reflect psychiatric disturbance, it may be a reaction to trauma, but it is not proof that there is a cult of satanic covens sacrificing babies.
gracie99
In cases in which the survivors of trauma were followed by researchers, such as Chowchilla, the trauma is recognized by others. And that may improve memory dramatically. It's the private horror experiences that are ignored or unseen or denied by all around that may be the hardest to hold in one's mind.
Another difference with the Chowchilla kids: Most of them probably had rather normal childhoods except for that. However for a children who were tortured in their families (and that DOES happen -- children are sometimes gradually abused to death by parents) and have no one with whom to confide or too seek comfort or escape from, mere survival may mean simply pushing it from their minds as long as possible.
However I don't think that kids who experience extreme, private, prolonged terrors in their home lives go on to live reasonably normal lives until, pow, they 'remember.' They live hellish, extremely messed up lives and wind up on psych wards or jails as they gradually gain the ability to think about their experiences.
Aslanleon
The repressed memory movement was behind the witch hunts of the eighties and nineties. Janet Reno made her reputation sending thousands of alleged perpetrators away on the psychological techniques of searching repressed memories and interrogation techniques guaranteed to elicit a response of remembered abuse by children. Even in 1968, when I began as a child abuse investigator, we were shown how easily children could be led to make false statements if we used the very interrogation techniques we were trained to use with adult witnesses. In demonstrations, we were able to get a hundred per cent of all children questioned to say they saw a flying saucer on the way to school.
And hypnosis was even more likely to produce false reports. When the plague of child abuse and demonic cult nonsense began over twenty years ago, I was quite sure that it was almost all nonsense. There may be a case or two that are not, and this may or may not be one of them. However, the bulk of them were simply hysteria.
JackHughes
Child molestors are notorious repeat offenders, yet none of these "suspects" have ever been accused in any other cases over the past 20 years?
allykat7825
Enough, already. I remember the McMartin case, where supposedly 75 or so children were molested at satanic rituals. It turned out that the therapists were saying to the children things like,"Do you want to be the only child who does not remember what happened to her"? No wonder they finally got most of the kids to 'remember'. But vindication did not replace the lost business and the ruined lives of the McMartins. The previous writers who said this was discredited are right. Four men were sent to prison over this kind of crap, and all have been released many yers ago. One hysterical women 'remembered' her father molesting her and killing her friend and burying her. Never happened, but her therapist assured her it had. My own thought is that this derives from lonliness and a lack of attention. Unlike repressed memory syndrome. the ravages of lonliness are well established.
littlepitcher
Amateur hypnosis of the victims, by the perpetrators, has not been ruled out, nor is it out of the question. I was hypnotized this way twice, in my childhood, once to make me forget evidence of a crime, and it took me over 30 years to recall the hypnosis and the situation. A child will go along with this sort of amateur hypnosis, if only out of curiosity, once a video of a professional hypnotist has been presented to the child.
elcapitan520
I'd just like to say congratulations to Casey for getting published in the beast as a graduate student
aminahyaquin
WOW! the only pseudoscience that I seehere is strangely the kind that "doth protest too much"!
Actually In New york city I was one of the folks who helped to found the Children's Advocacy Center, worked with survivors for many eyars, but mostoften worked with casualties of teh system in foster care. Entire cutures of abuse can be created, which involve multiple people in dveloping a perpetration network of sorts. Such enculturation distorts normalcy for the kids, and it was not extant in the adults. Most rpedators are never caught, and many reoffend multiple times but are seldom if ever caught more than once even despite the purported community safeguards.
To dismiss out of hand the experience as reported by these children was something the writer of this article responsibly avoided.
It may strain credulity that cults have done such things to children and the meemories were repressed--however anyone who has EVER worked with developing children who were traumatized has encountered just such cases, and they are VERY common with adults. In fact there are mental illnesses which can be very well described and understood and trreated through an understanding of and respect for teh concept of repression. to state that trauma is not ever repressed is irresponsible to an extreme.It is also pop psychology.
Anyway, we do not strain our credulity at the existence of multiple personality disorder, which is a form of mental functioning that is a variation of a aprticular mental illness which ahs been strongly correlated with CSA.
And finally has no one been reading about the island of Jersey, and the multi-year, inter-generational, fully corroborated group culture of rape and child sexual assault and murder ?
chidlren, especially when they are very young, can repress both memory and be perverted for life in appetite and desire by acting out compulsively disordered adults who frighten the kids into such distress they are afraid to remember.
That is fact and the rest of this is speculation.
nortonclybourn
Obviously I am in on the conspiracy with the FBI, which concluded that "ritual abuse" is a load of horseshit. Clearly, I am either in the pay of the Satanists or they brainwashed me and erased my memory.
"there are mental illnesses that can be very well described and understood blah blah" if you are talking about DID (the replacement for MPD, which was dropped from the DSM after it made psychiatry into a laughingstock) you are showing your naivete. Unfortunately, the what gets included in the American Psychiatric Association manual is based on political votes, not on science. Some people are still afraid to step on the toes of the witch hunters. Shame on them.
judytoo
Are you in on the conspiracy with Scientology, then? Your disdain for therapy is quite effusive.
nortonclybourn
judy2--Many types of psychotherapy have been shown to be effective, but "recovered memory" therapy has been shown to be actively harmful.
gracie99
judytoo, Scientologists are not particularly critical of psychotherapy: They practice a type of psychotherapy. It is psychiatric drugs that they are critical of. There are plenty of critics of psychotherapy who are not Scientologists. Some of them, e.g. Jeffrey Mason, are former psychotherapists who realized that the practice is cheap manipulation and got out of the business.
MTinMO
I am not deciding guilt, but some of the info that has come out here- the children were relatives of the accused. Frequently in family situations, the abused to not report until much later. Local news had it that this family was in a "renegade" split-off from the Mormon church. They have not said much of anything about "recovered" memories in the local stories I have read, but more of a once the first one told the others came forward. If they find evidence of a baby or babies in the box the dug up from the basement, I would say they might be able to give some credence to the reports. I would hope they had some fairly good information to make the arrests. And even with the porn, one would think that people who watch incest porn are interested in that type of sexual behavior and may therefore have indeed perpetrated that type of crime. We will see as the charges and court proceedings progress.
mmanion
We had an ugly case of 'recovered' and planted memory that affected an entire town outside of Minneapolis called Jordan. The supposed sex ring involved a large group of parents and the activity was supposedly ongoing. After years of feuding between the psychologists in the case over recovered vs planted memories and manipulated testimony, the district attorney finally shut the investigation down. In doing so, he pointed out the real danger of these types of accusations. He felt there was little doubt that sexual abuse had occurred in at least some of the Jordan cases, but the misconduct of the prosecutors and of the mental health professionals (clear evidence of planted testimony) made it impossible to sort out fact from fiction. It was the worst of all possible outcomes--innocent people had their lives and reputations ruined and guilty people went free. The issue of recovered vs planted memory is not just an academic exercise the merits of which should be debated among psychological professionals. This is real life and it's time for the field of mental health to finally take a stand and create reasonable guidelines to direct investigations. It is exactly this mealy-mouthed 'we just don't know for sure' crap and constant theoretical infighting that keeps psychology and psychiatry in the realm of pseudoscience as far as the public is concerned.
nortonclybourn
And keeps carrion like Wendy Murphy feeding on fear and innuendo.
DBFan2009
"The accusers, now adults, made other lurid allegations as well, including the claims that a girl was held captive in their basement long enough to give birth to two babies (one of which they say the men buried underneath the basement floor) and that they were forced to help kidnap and kill a man, brutally stabbing him to death."
where is the proof that any of this occurred? who is this "girl" and where are the "babies"? who was the man, where is his body?
or can anyone just make things up and have someone arrested? i think they used to encourage that in china during mao, didn't they?
i cannot believe that this type of witch hunt is beginning all over again. didn't we learn from the mcmartin and other similar "cases" that it was fiction? didn't we learn enough from salem in 1692, for crying out loud?
if the aforementioned quote is part of any legal accusation, then why does not the "girl and the babies" or the "man kidnapped and stabbed to death" stories render the entire accusation useless?
where is the proof? their "recovered" memories?
i fell down a small hill behind a house l when i was 3 years old and cut my leg badly on a sharp rock. i still can recall the gushing wound and the light green painted walls of the hospital. i never forgot this terrible painful injury to my body.
i had a cousin repeatedly feel me up and kiss me when i was 9 years old. i can recall whether it was day or night, where it occurred, who was present elsewhere inside or outside of the house(s). i can even tell you how i pushed him away, turned my head. i never forgot these incidences.
and these are minor incidences compared to what these accusers are NOW reporting.
i hope clearer minds prevail in the end - or if there is evidence to support any of these claims then so be it. but where is the evidence?
ryokisan
wow, it is really sad to hear so many people just outright dismiss this story. I doubt if it iwas repressed memories and it may ber well not be true, but to dismiss it so summarily? strange to me. The only way I can understand it is that hte charges are so gross and disturbing that it is just impossible for many to people men would do this kind of thing, especially to their own daughters, neices, granddaughters, etc. Or, that they lived through the time in the 80's when all of the recovered memory stuff was going on. I remember that b/c I was a kid. Satanic cults, that was the big thing. Boy we couldn't even walk home after school anymore everyone was so worried, especially about blone haired blue eyed kids which apparently the satanists 'really liked' but there are differences, this is hardly just a repeated. These are adults coming forward now, not children who were goaded on by psychiatrists and it really is just painful to see so many people basically saying this young women are full of it.
Would you believe it if someone told you that a father built an entire second dwelling in a basement where he then kept is daughter for 24 years, where she had 7 children, 3 of which he raised in his home saying that the daughter had run off to join a cult and kept leaving them on the doorstep at night? That the other three were kept in the basement with the mother? That social workers visited te home regularly and had no idea of the basement dwellinng nor apparently did his wife? Wouldn't that just sound absolutely crazy? But we now know it is in fact very true, Fitzl in Austria.
What about if someone told you that two police officers were approached by a young man-a teenager who was obviously intoxicated and naked and was begging them for help and didn't speak english well, but that they dismissed him b/c a man they assumed to be his boyfriend, who was quite a bit older that he was simply drunk and they laughed and let them go only to find out later that the man killed and i belive ate soem of the boy-Dahmer. And those cops, they were reinstated to their jobs at some point I belive.
Unspeakable terrible things like this happen, things we'd never believe if someone just told us about them. I do understand everyone's need for proof and I too believe they are innocent until proven guilty but to dismiss these girls so quickly is really really sad and it disturbs me greatly no matter what ones view is of recovered memories.
gracie99
Thank you, Ryokisan, for pointing how harshly judgmental some of the responses to this story have been and for reminding us that incredible horror stories that aren't believe sometimes do turn out to be true.
I'm also skeptical of recovered memory and am finding the story hard to believe. But it deserves to be investigated -- and no matter what the outcome of the investigation don't deserve to be regarded with contempt.
gracie99
Pre-municipal garbage pick-up, people commonly disposed of rubbish by burying it in their yards. So glass containers and fragments of them are very commonly found in yards of older houses.
A baby buried under a basement floor sounds pretty far-fetched and overly-dramatic: There are lots of far safer and easier ways to dispose of dead newborns (dice and flush, for example).
junebug08
you are sick
bygones
I have yet to hear all the facts in this case but something seems to be a little off. There are supposedly a couple of kids who also experienced the same treatment as the accuser yet she is the one claiming the memory recovery?
She also claims to have had an abortion at the age of 11. Has anyone verified that with a hospital record? I am not sure who is telling the truth here but it does seem rather bizarre that so many of these men are being accused and no one else has mentioned any wrongdoing for the last 18 years.
Thank you.
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