ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the written nearly 25 years ago at the height of discussion on sexual abuse and its denial in the form of the propagation of false memory syndrome, Susie Orbach shows the part that feminism played in the understanding of the extent of abuse against women and children. She examines the processes of personal denial in the consulting room, as well as societal denial and the role of the media. But a meeting with Roger Scotford on television has continued to worry about the British False Memory Society and its influence in generating articles like the Simon Hoggart piece in The Observer of 23 March 1994, which argued that rational argument is impossible. Hoggart has likened the pressure on parents falsely accused to the “Red Scare” that swept North America in the 1950s. Such articles promote the idea that the sexual abuse of children is secondary to the major problem of false memory.
