ABSTRACT
It was known as the ‘recovered/false memory controversy’ and started in North America in the mid-1980s and made its way across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. The controversy surrounded alleged episodes of childhood sexual abuse that were remembered by adults. Sometimes these claims were made after a period of therapy during which the individual ‘recovered’ memories of such abuse. In most cases, the individuals claimed to have had a significant period of non-awareness of the occurrence of the abuse (the argument was that the trauma of the abuse had led the individual to ‘repress’ or ‘dissociate’ all memory of it happening). As one might expect the accused (often the individual’s parents) strenuously denied any wrongdoing. In some cases the accused was the subject of both civil and criminal proceedings. Professionals were divided over whether these claims of abuse were based on genuine repressed memories that had been recovered by careful therapeutic intervention, or whether they were false memories induced, in part, by suggestive and inappropriate therapeutic techniques. Partly due to the paucity of direct evidence at the time, psychologists became engaged in something of a turf war concerning the status of these contested abuse claims (see Brainerd and Reyna, 2005; McNally, 2003; Ost, 2006).
