In conversation with Ross Cheit

In this chapter, Ross is in discussion with Ashley Conway. He describes his personal journey with recovered memory, and the reaction to it. He relates the difficulty in providing enough evidence to make the false memory advocates acknowledge the veracity of survivors’ accounts. He also discusses false memory syndrome supporters’ success in the media and the difficulty in responding because of libel law. Ashley

First, I know that you are not a psychologist – what are your professional qualifications?

Ross

I have a PhD in Public Policy and I have a law degree. I am professor of Political Science and International & Public Affairs at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA.

Ashley

What led you to write your brilliant book, The Witch Hunt Narrative (Cheit, 2014a)? Where is the beginning of this story?

Ross

It began with personal experience and I have made no secret of that fact. But when I look back to 1992, I was initially mortified at the thought people would know about this and not believe me. Anyway, I woke up one day with a strong recollection from a dream about a man I had not thought of for 20 years and I felt sick to my stomach. I thought of this man who was a counsellor at a summer camp I went to and realised he had sexually abused me. Had someone asked me directly before this if I had ever been sexually abused as a kid I would have said no. So, I woke up with this sick feeling, felt mortified and then my curiosity took over. I wanted to know what had happened and where he was, and my questions made me want to investigate this. There were times I felt I had prepared all my life for this moment as I had mustered skills that could help with this. I had practised law in Berkeley, California, where I had worked with a good private investigator and I had him find former boys, now men, who had been at the San Francisco Boys Chorus summer camp. He did a brilliant job of tracking down people who had been in this camp in the 1960s and I contacted people out of the blue asking if they remembered me. I then asked if they remembered Bill Farmer and I quickly discovered other victims of Bill Farmer, including a counsellor 8who had told the director of the camp. I ultimately proved a wide amount of abuse and cover-up. It happened to be that the final year of the camp was 1968, when I had just turned 13.

Ashley

You found other people who had that experience?

Ross

And other counsellors who did it. The private investigator tracked Bill Farmer’s history and he had gone from town to town where he held himself out as a religious figure, and he had been run out of various towns where he had been found out. There was a place where a judge’s son was abused, and the judge ordered him out. He did this five or six times. I will try and wrap this up, as this story could take the whole hour of our interview. It is compelling and involved issues after he was apprehended that were remarkable. Anyway, we found out where he was in a small town in Oregon and I had a phone number. I called that number as I wanted to confront him. And one night I got an answer. His wife answered. I said to tell him it is someone who knows him from a long time ago. He says “hello” and I say “hello, this is Ross Cheit. Do you remember me?” And he replies, “Yes. Yes. But I picture you as a 12-year-old”, which turned my stomach. I confronted him in direct terms and he asked if he could call me back and I said no this was his only chance to speak to me. My father, my late father, not an emotive man, said that this was the most remarkable conversation he ever heard. I didn’t know if taping the call was legal but it turns out I was in a state where there was one-party consent for recording. He fully confessed what he did to me and other kids. He then disappeared from that address and that state, so it was hard to trace him, but we did eventually find him in Corpus Christi. I went to the Chorus with an incredible amount of information. I had information about other victims, and I had statements from counsellors and I had a tape-recorded confession. What did I get in response? The lawyer for the Chorus said that the organisation had done “so well for so many kids”, and they criticised me for wanting to damage their reputation. The idea they just wanted to get rid of me was stunning, so we had a lawsuit. That would have been 1994. Right after we filed the suit, they went to a friendly judge and asked for the files to be sealed, claiming it would damage their reputation if it was made public. And the judge agreed without us there. I had so many things going for me, including a brother who is a clever lawyer and former journalist. We arranged to appeal the seal and we knew that all of the papers would be public at the appellate level for at least a day. So we made sure that a journalist saw the documents the day they were public. Within a year the Chorus settled with me, as I wanted an apology. In my mind it was never about money. It was about acknowledgement. But they still honour the woman who covered this up, so I was not as successful as I wanted. But I succeeded in many ways.

Ashley

And what happened to Bill Farmer?

Ross

We found him in Texas and served him with papers in my civil lawsuit. He never made an appearance, and I received what is known as a default 9judgement. I still had to appear and testify, and the judge awarded around $450,000. I never collected a cent.

California changed its statute of limitations during that time, as well, allowing for criminal charges in recovered memory cases to go forward if corroborated by multiple sources. I got two other men to stand with me and convinced a District Attorney to file criminal charges. Farmer was arrested in Texas and fought extradition, spending 17 days, I think, in a Texas jail. He was sent to California and immediately released because the lower court judge ruled that it was not clear whether the legislature really meant for the law to be retroactive.

Years later one of his kids rang me up to get help to have a restraining order so he couldn’t visit his grandchildren, and another kid rang me years later not wanting their dad to be on a transplant list. Since the lawsuit, I volunteered for years at the prison working with sex offenders as I wanted to understand how this man could do such things. And that work also gave me some empathy. Child molesters are responsible for what they do and should be punished, but they do not start out choosing this as a way of life. Many have had a horrid start in life themselves. But I don’t want to carry on about Bill Farmer.

Ashley

Yes. We could carry on for the whole conversation just on that …

On the topic of public disclosure by victims of abuse, it has been so powerful to watch the victims in the recent Nassar sentencing hearing make their statements [Larry Nassar was an American gymnastics national team doctor. He was accused of assaulting at least 200 young women and girls. He admitted to some of the accusations, for which he has received lengthy prison sentences]. I hope that will help a shift of views here in the UK. People having the courage to tell their stories, as you did.

Ross

I was just compelled to do what I did. I never called it courage. When I went to a lawyer the first thing he said to me was that I would be believed as I was a man. I knew intellectually that women were discounted but that hit me hard. I was so worried I would not be believed. But then thinking I was a white male with tenure and resources so if I did not do this, who would? I paid a real price in some ways, but it was also very successful.

Ashley

I have great respect for that Ross. I occasionally have colleagues asking me why I have done this work for 20 years. I suppose I have wanted to understand why people who disclose abuse have been called fantasists, or are accused of having “false memories”. My colleagues ask me why I want to be involved in such a contentious and demanding field.

Ross

I had a senior colleague who asked, “are you still studying that?” with disdain. He could not put words to it.

Ashley

In the coverage of that hearing I heard a definition of being complicit: Knowing what is going on, and doing nothing. I give the question back – and ask: How can you be a psychologist, understanding the reality of dissociative amnesia and recall, and not say anything? Why do we let people believe this 10does not happen, and why do we allow those who deny and minimise to have such a loud voice? I don’t understand that as a professional.

I remember reading a comment about you, from a FMS (false memory syndrome) advocate, I think, implying that your account was not accurate. What do you say to that?

Ross

The FMS has not denied that I was abused. But they have tried to discount my academic work because of my personal experience. They have also said “you must have remembered all along and were pretending you didn’t”, although there was no legal advantage for doing that and no reason I would have delayed taking the actions that I did when I remembered. One other critic, Mark Pendergrast (a freelance writer – see, e.g. Pendergrast, 2017), has said, “What happened wasn’t traumatic, and it only happened once” and therefore it was just “regular forgetting”. I have no idea how he can claim it only happened once. Anyway, they can’t deny the reality. But they have said that I never proved I forgot! How can you prove you forgot? I say, “look what I did when I remembered!”

Ashley

Bessel Van der Kolk (2015) makes a straight-forward point, that when we talk about traumatic amnesia in soldiers who have been in combat no one seems to argue with that. Early on in my professional life I worked with banks and other organisations where there had been armed robberies. I talked to many, many victims, and learned how they often had memory blanks and struggled to remember detail. They might have remembered seeing the gun, but not how many robbers there were.

Ross

They do attack the reality of this. Elaine Showalter has claimed that PTSD in the context of military people is phoney. There really are deniers of all of this. Already one of the Nassar victims has been accused of “illusory” memory. Mark Pendergrast said when one victim used the word “suppressed” that her memory must be “illusory”. No one in their right mind felt any of those victims were not genuine. This claim is so preposterous – I want this largely publicised.

Ashley

I guess that you are familiar with the Nicole Taus case? [Nicole Taus was the subject of a case study, who was assured anonymity. Elizabeth Loftus published information which made her identity very much easier to discover. See Kluemper, (2014). Taus now holds three postgraduate degrees in psychology].

Ross

I wrote why this was unethical from a journalistic point of view (Cheit, 2014b).

Ashley

I sent you a tiny analysis of Elizabeth Loftus’s TED lecture (Loftus, 2013) where, in my opinion, she inexcusably put Taus’s name up on a slide.

Ross

I was on a panel with Nicole Taus last year and she is now talking out publicly. However, they destroyed her life in many ways. In that TED talk Elizabeth Loftus makes statements about the facts of the case that are simply untrue. She said the mother was accused based on a recovered memory, rather than the statements of a little girl when she was 6 years old.

Ashley

11I Have heard of Nicole Taus’s case being referred to as a “black swan case”. You are another black swan aren’t you?

Ross

Yes. I would rather be called that than a poster boy! [Both men laugh]

Ashley

There seem to be a lot of black swans! I wonder if you have a way of making sense of this? For example, for some of those “experts” who so vehemently deny the existence of recovered memory, do you think that there could be any amount of evidence that could cause them to say, “Ah, this person has recovered a genuine, accurate memory, and they were abused?”

Ross

I think that is the litmus test for if someone is in any way open-minded. There are FMS proponents who allow that there might be a case that is true, but Loftus and Pendergrast are in the position where nothing will persuade them. I can’t locate where Loftus said it but she asked somewhere, “where are the corroborated cases if this is true?” and eventually I told her there were 100 on my website, but it could not persuade her.

Ashley

So, for me a big question is this: Is this about science? We are doing this interview for a book that I think is extraordinary. It started out being a second edition of a book written 20 years ago, and I felt rather than rewrite I wanted to review my old chapter. And my conclusion, sadly, is that this denial continues and I was naive. I thought it was about evidence and science. Now I realise it isn’t.

Ross

I study politics and in some ways this is about politics and not science, although there are scientists in this area. The most discouraging issue is that some of these scientists, like Ceci and Bruck and Loftus, are people with high prestige scientific jobs who are not acting like scientists in this area. I have colleagues who admire Loftus for her good scientific work on the fallibility of evidence, but in this area she is an advocate.

Ashley

Personally, I don’t think laboratory research involving implanting memories has much to inform us about traumatic experience and memory of trauma.

Ross

Gail Goodman understands children and abuse and has done some good laboratory experiments that get at this. [Gail Goodman is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California. See, e.g. Howe, Goodman, & Cicchetti, 2008]. She has been mercilessly attacked and they went after her in a way that scared other people from doing that research.

Ashley

And Maggie Bruck (see, e.g. Ceci & Brook, 1995) … you mentioned her recently. I realise that her work is more about implanting a story than recovered memory, but there are similar themes – what would it take to consider a different interpretation (e.g. the account is true)?

Ross

Yes, her work constitutes what I would call “credibility discounting” of children. Her laboratory work seems devoted to “proving” that children are highly suggestible. And she testifies to that effect for defendants which is, of course, something quite different from doing experiments. My research focuses on the kinds of cases in which she appears, so I take 12your question as “In what kind of case would she ever find a child’s word credible?” The answer seems to be that she is always against the child, no matter what. I found a case where she impugned the child’s testimony even though there was an adult witness to the abuse. I also found that she misrepresented the underlying facts in the Kelly Michaels case in order to get colleagues to sign the famous “Concerned Scientists” brief that was filed with the court. Her book with Ceci (Ceci & Bruck, 1995) included excerpts from interviews in that case that were doctored; it took years of work to get to those transcripts and make this discovery.

I felt I could not publish my book without giving her a chance to respond to what I found. So I sat in her office in Baltimore and I formed my questions very carefully. Eventually, I handed her a copy from the actual transcript and the part in her book and asked why they did not match. She asked, “How did you get this?” The transcript had been sealed and I explained that I had reached an agreement with the state that provided me with access to the transcripts subject to a promise, contained in the Human Subjects Protocol approved at my university, not to reveal any of the children’s names. Her response to that information was to say, “That’s rotten”. I guess she thought it was rotten that someone was able to check her work. She promised to get back to me with an explanation, but that was one of many things she promised to follow-up on, and never did.

Ashley

Isn’t that a marvellous way that someone from a discipline outside of psychology can use their skills to throw light on something that would otherwise have been in darkness forever?

Ross

There is no question that it was possible for me to do this work because I am not in the field. There are many academic psychologists who are aware of the ways in which Elizabeth Loftus has acted unethically and unscientifically, but they don’t dare speak out. They don’t want to be blackballed, have papers rejected, etc. I didn’t have any of those things at stake. They can’t affect my academic life, but if I was in psychology they could. I found a letter that Maggie Bruck wrote to the editors of peer-reviewed journals saying Gail Goodman was an extremist “who always thinks the children are telling the truth”. That is demonstrably not true; Goodman is a highly credible researcher who just happens to disagree with Bruck. I can see why psychologists keep their mouths shut.

Ashley

I am really interested in that, and I don’t know if it is the same in the USA. Here the FMS zealots represent only a small proportion of psychologists, but have a loud and powerful voice. For some reason Elizabeth Loftus has a place on the editorial board of our house journal, The Psychologist, and one of the British False Memory Society (BFMS) advisers was given a very important role on a British Psychological Society committee. I wrote him a reasonably polite letter, pointing out that there were factually wrong statements on the BFMS site, and I thought it ethically important that he ensures the accuracy of statements 13made as facts. I got a letter back saying I was being a bully and he did not want to hear from me again.

Ross

Wow.

Ashley

And our professional society, the British Psychological Society is affected. Their position is very unclear. They seem to give a voice to those who deny the reality of traumatic amnesia, while offering little guidance to victims of abuse or those trying to help them.

A few years ago, here in the UK a woman committed suicide mid-trial of her abuser. Her suicide was kept from the jury until after the trial. Her abuser was found guilty, and it turned out that she was advised not to have any therapy, as it might have disadvantaged the prosecution of the case. That narrative, that if you have therapy the defence can use that fact to discredit the account, is so toxic.

Ross

Before Larry Nassar, it was Jerry Sandusky, and Mark Pendergrast’s (2017) book argues he is innocent, as some of those boys went to therapists.

Ashley

I find myself reacting to that emotionally. I find it very hard to know what to say to that.

Ross

It is awful and stunning. Elizabeth Loftus, who offered that claim in the Sandusky case, has been less successful in court than in the media. The judge in the Sandusky case said that her theory was based “on an uncritical review of an absurdly incomplete record carefully dissected to include only pieces of information”. He rejected it entirely. I know many cases where she has lost and she never talks about those.

Ashley

How do these people still have such a loud voice? In the London Evening Standard a journalist wrote of the Weinstein case: “I suspect that false memory syndrome has increased the velocity of these tales …” I thought – the FMS zealots have got their story so deeply embedded into social consciousness, that a journalist with no knowledge puts that into the middle of an article. It is a brilliant PR job. They are so good at it.

Ross

No question. They have been very successful with the media and the media loves an innocence story. “Convicted man is guilty as charged” is not a story. But someone claiming to be falsely accused and convicted is loved and there are structural reasons why that story gets told so often. The defence in America can speak to the press but the prosecutor is prohibited by ethics. Defence people are out there pushing a slanted version of the facts and even more so after convictions because prosecutors have won and don’t speak. But the defence twists things more and more so that by the time 20 years have gone the twists are outrageous but there is no one to correct the record unless someone like me comes along.

Ashley

Can I ask you about the Eileen Franklin case? [In 1990, based upon the recovered memories of Eileen Franklin, her father, George Franklin was found guilty of the murder of 8-year-old Susan Nason. The conviction was overturned in 1995].

Ross

14Of course. I have got to write about this, as he has been called “exonerated”. One of the two reasons his conviction was overturned was because of his own self-incrimination. The Appeals court said that should not have been allowed in. He incriminated himself and the idea that someone can be exonerated when they incriminated themselves … A Michigan law school professor has created a list of “exonerations”. But of course, you can have a conviction overturned when you are still guilty.

Ashley

To sum that up – in a case where an issue of the legal process has meant someone is free to go, that then becomes described as exoneration?

Ross

Those kinds of constitutional structures prefer ten guilty to be free rather than one innocent convicted. I agree with that, but when the guilty go free we should not call them innocent. It is very hard to write about the guilty who go free because of the libel law. If you say the conviction was overturned but there was evidence of guilt you can say that, but not “they are guilty”.

Ashley

In both the UK and USA the false memory societies were founded by people accused of child sexual abuse.

Ross

Absolutely.

Ashley

And they are there to represent the interests of people accused of sexual abuse. It needs to be acknowledged. Even 20 years ago I realised it was easy for the press to report that someone is falsely accused, whereas the abused and therapist get no voice.

Ross

There are a variety of structural reasons why that story gets told more often, and that is one of them. If you went to a newspaper and said, “my father abused me and never got arrested”, they won’t publish it.

Ashley

Do you have any solution to that?

Ross

I don’t. But I think the problem begins with the media. The LA Times got a Pulitzer for attacking their own coverage of the McMartin Preschool case. Their media critic wrote that in the first six months of that case no journalist lit a match within a mile of the prosecutor’s feet. I think he was right about that. The press repeated everything with full incredulity. But by the end of the same case, things had reversed. Now journalists don’t light a match within a mile of the defence lawyer’s feet. We have gone from one end to another and I am waiting for it to swing back.

Ashley

Do you think it will move back?

Ross

I guess I do. I think it is moving right now. But I am attentive to people like Pendergrast who is already impugning a Nassar victim. But this moment is different.

Ashley

In your case – no one has said it never happened to you? But rather that there is something wrong with your memory? Is that right?

Ross

Yes – they say I remembered it all along and am lying or it was just ordinary forgetting. To me this is the Catch-22 people. Richard McNally, a Harvard psychologist, features a PowerPoint slide that says, “Trauma is memorable”. Okay, but how can you say that when someone forgets trauma 15it is just “regular forgetting”? That is their claim about every documented case of recovered memory.

Ashley

Does it offend you? This implication you are lying.

Ross

Sure. The implication is made that a civil lawsuit would not have been possible had I remembered all along. But that ignores the concept of comprehension-based statutes of limitation. And my suit was never about money anyway! I got a 500,000-dollar judgement against him, but I never got a penny as he didn’t have money. I knew that; I wanted acknowledgement and accountability.

Ashley

Your account reminds me of what I hear about Nicole Taus. That this is not about money.

Ross

Taus filed an ethics complaint, and got the wrath of Elizabeth Loftus in return. It should be noted that the University of Washington told Loftus she needed ethics training. Loftus left the university in protest. Taus’s civil suit was a last resort to gain some sense of justice.

Ashley

Anything more you want to say?

Ross

I do want to say – and I think this is important – the idea that a person might go to a therapist and come out with a false belief about something is possible. It is not impossible. I grant, as they will not in the instance of recovered memory, that there are cases that fit that description. I don’t think there were ever thousands of them but the idea that a vulnerable person with a single-minded therapist could lead to a toxic result is true; that is also true in other areas of therapy that have nothing to do with memory. It is important to say that. There can be members of the FMSF who come from a righteous place of injustice. The problem is there is no question but that the organisation also provides cover for the guilty, it attracts the guilty and they welcome all comers without question. That is really a problem.

Ashley

I absolutely agree with that. That kind of reasonableness. Why does it have to be polarised? Why can’t it be acknowledged that both false and recovered memory can be real? That memory can be malleable in different directions?

Ross

The world is complicated.

Ashley

People who are traumatised can be amnesic to parts or the whole of the event. And they might recall it later. Why is that so hard to acknowledge?

Ross

Why can’t the press understand the Goldwater Rule, which has been discussed recently because of Trump; it evolved from psychiatrists commenting on Barry Goldwater’s mental health when he was running for president. It was felt you can’t make public statements about people you don’t know and have not analysed. But the FMSF seems to think you can diagnose someone you have never met.

Ashley

That is a brilliant place to end.

Ross

It is stunning when you take it apart, and realise that people have not understood.

Ashley

16Thank you I really appreciate it.

Ross

And I would love to connect in the UK in the next few years. In some ways my life is too isolated.

Ashley

Ross, thank you very much.