Searching For An Accurate View Of Past

Dear Jennifer: Can you recommend any reading material on recovered memories? An accusation of sexual abuse is being made in my family and I do not believe the events happened. - Meg

Dear Meg: I am working on a new research project on memory because it is so important to achieving an understanding of what we are and why it is so difficult to change. There is no absolute answer to what is real and not real in memory.

In the past, many victims of sexual abuse were told by therapists that they had “made it up.” Later evidence revealed they were right about the abuse they remembered.

Other victims remember abuse, but not the specific circumstances. They can only recover the emotions, or things like smells and sounds, because children often block out what they cannot handle.

These victims become very suggestible to any version of events a therapist may directly or indirectly re-enforce.

While I’m sure that there are some “therapist-created memories of abuse” and some confused or dishonest accusers, the vast majority of victims are real.

Something may have happened in your family, and you need to be sure before you make your own accusations. The temptation is to side with what we want to believe or what it is in our best interest to believe. We all have the ability to create or deny memories. - Jennifer

Dear Jennifer: In one of your Sunday columns you blamed the ACLU for the treatment of children as adults or the idea that pedophiles are curable. In this state, until recent challenges, a pedophile could be incarcerated indefinitely under the guise of “treatment.”

The imprisonment may be simply a variant of the old Soviet psychiatric prisons, a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Constitution.

The child vs. adult question is much more complex. I suspect that if you were to examine the cases you’re worried about, you would usually find other causes than the ACLU for the problems.

As a member of the ACLU, I’d appreciate it if you’d seek more information about our actual role in these matters before being critical in print. - Tim

Dear Tim: I spent 20 years studying female offenders, runaways, abused children and how our schools and courts solve social problems. My research articles and the reports from my grants from the National Institute of Mental Health are available through the NIMH library. I was a member of the ACLU for many years. I did not “blame” the ACLU, and there are almost always multiple causes for most social problems. What I learned in my research is that many pedophiles and violent sexual offenders cannot be cured. When the conscience does not develop in either areas of sexuality or violence, let alone both, it is a lifetime problem.

Our system of justice hates to give up on anyone and in many cases I would applaud that. But I have seen the extraordinary damage that pedophiles do to children even if they do not kill them. I believe that the repeat offender should receive life imprisonment for no other reason than that there is a 99 percent chance he will hurt more children.

The “treatment” option that has been recently challenged is just a way of saying we are not ready to understand what pedophiles do and are unwilling to truly protect children if it takes away the rights of an adult.

The ACLU is wrong on this issue, but because it deals with civil rights as a “pure” concept it cannot always make judgments based on the civil rights of all those involved in a case.

I ended my membership when too many of the ACLU choices deeply violated what I knew to be true.

The child vs. adult issue is one that is complex. I often fought in court for the emancipation of children because I felt they would be better off independent than with abusive adults. I draw the line at giving children the right to confront educators as equals if it is disruptive to the ability to maintain a safe school. I have never cared what students do with their hair or clothes but I do care what they do to teachers, administrators and fellow students.

I realize there is no way you could know that I have thought very seriously about these issues and that I am very familiar with the ACLU cases that I used to write that column. - Jennifer

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review