The psychology of false allegations

Started by The Biscuit Queen, Dec 02, 2005, 07:34 AM

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whome112

Quote from: "The Biscuit Queen"
So in a way, parents who falsely accuse their spouses and convince their children they were molested are really the molester, in a very real way. They created the same trauma in their children as if they had done the molesting in person.


You've got a good prof!

I agree with this idea. Parents who create false accusations are the child abuser and/or molester. We need to punish the more severe false accusers as if they did the crime they are "creating." There is good reason to protect children and the public from these monsters. We should also use the current "nuisance" laws against all people laying malicious charges (not mistaken ones and there is a difference).

whome
ay what you mean: Mean what you say.
http://jwwells.blogspot.com

Sir Percy

An excellent book on the subject is 'Victims of Memory" by Mark Prendergast. Should be compulsory reading. Janet Reno stars in it, in all her gory detail.
vil, like misery, is Protean, and never greater than when committed in the name of 'right'. To commit evil when they are convinced they are doing 'good', is one of the greatest of pleasures known to a feminist.

dr e

The problem is that false memories are indeed easy to incubate in a vulnerable and stressed individual.  People who lack integrity can use this to their advantage and the outcome is pain and chaos spread far and wide.  The other side of this is that there is such a thing as a suppressed memory.  It's a complicated mess that has no easy answer.
Contact dr e  Lifeboats for the ladies and children, icy waters for the men.  Women have rights and men have responsibilties.

The Biscuit Queen

My prof is indeed excellent. She is fairly young (my age) but very expirienced and very fair. She is also a very good teacher, on of the best I have had at that school.

She made the comment that described these psychologists well-"you could see a therapist who has worked with abused kids for years, truly believes that that child was abused, and thus feels that she is doing the right thing. But it isn't right."  

I just was really struck by the reality that when a parent and/or psychologist creates the illusion of abuse in a child, they really, truly, in a very visceral sense of the word, are abusing that child. To the child, it is no different than if that parent/psycholigist had raped them. The child's memory tells them it happened.

I had never really gotten the enormity of that.

About the supressed memories, she said that it is the norm when trauma happens  that people can't forget, not the other way around. She then went on to say that sometimes there is a storage problem with memories, that they are stored in a place that is not accessable to them the same way normal memories are, or an encoding probelm that they are encoded differently. She made a distinction between 'repression' and encoding/supression problems. I am not sure quite why, but this is only an introductory course, so she probably can't get into it too much. However, she cited a woman who did mountains of research on memories and repression who came out with the conclusion that Frued was mistaken on this one aspect in some major ways. She did say that she personally had been very conflicted by this research, as she had always believed Freud's theories, but that the research won out in the end. SHe is very big on research, and will throw out a theory she believes if you can prove it to her. Not your typical college professor.
he Biscuit Queen
www.thebiscuitqueen.blogspot.com

There are always two extremes....the truth lies in the middle.

dr e

Quote
About the supressed memories, she said that it is the norm when trauma happens that people can't forget, not the other way around.


Well, yes and no.  People often will be unable to forget the trauma that just happened but there are also people who go completely blank and literally not remember a thing.  It is not a simple problem.  People can go both ways.  The important thing to remember is that memories can be planted and grown in a susceptible person and that there are people who have no memories of a previous trauma.
Contact dr e  Lifeboats for the ladies and children, icy waters for the men.  Women have rights and men have responsibilties.

contrarymary

Quote
So in a way, parents who falsely accuse their spouses and convince their children they were molested are really the molester, in a very real way. They created the same trauma in their children as if they had done the molesting in person.


I would have to concur.  

There were no "recovered memories" in T's case - only CLAIMS of recovered memories.  The mother, very psychologically savvy, led - and the daughter was a willing cohort.  She was trained to hate her father at a very young age.  T's son struggled against it, but in the end he joined in the accusations, although previously stating his father never did anything to him, all of a sudden, when there was $$$$$$$$$ involved, he changed his story. He did this as a 17 year old.

Anyway, as a former psych patient, in the hospital more than a few times for my own problems, I have to state that this was one of the worst performances (of recovered memory) to which I have ever been privvy (albeit only on paper - I studied in detail and made notations the girl's psych hospital records in preparation for the civil suit which was, sadly, settled out of court).  HELL, I knew in the hospital when others were faking and took a lot of SHIT for not buying into the all bull that was flying around the eating disorders unit.  Basically, I was shunned by the other patients for it. I never said that I didn't believe most of them, but I suppose my air of complete incredulity shone through my usual dead pan (sarcasm) demeanor.  And let me tell you something - the only patients who received any attention at all were the ones who were screaming at night from recovered memories.  Some were obviously staged - for attention, and one woman admitted as much to me.  

The daughter claimed to have bulimia and claimed to have tried to cut herself and kill herself, although she was quite large (most bulimics are average weight or very slightly above - that's the whole point.  Trust me on this one) and had no scars on her body.  As opposed to myself - I saw her psych hospital intake chart - you know, where they have to map out what scars she had on her body?  There were two, from childhood accidents.  In my case, you'd have been hard pressed to find a clear spot on my body chart...LOL

Also, bulimics have enlarged glands (I forget what they are called - the ones right under the chin) and hers were fine.  The physician said there were no signs of bulimia as far as the other physical symptoms go.  Eroding tooth enamel, esophegeal damage, etc.  Most who have bulimics for years and who have thrown up many times a day (as she claimed) have some sort of damage.  Electrolyte imbalance, whatever...she had none.  And she was quite large as well  - most likely because she never threw up.  I know I was not here, and I have no proof, but I really really don't believe she was bulimic.  And the fact that she changed her story about almost everything every time she told it when it came to the abuse part of her "story" makes me not believe that she ever was an actual bulimic.

BUT - her mother knew (as do most women) that, allegedly, those who suffer from eating disorders are allegedly often times victims of sexual abuse.

What still makes me so upset is this woman, no longer a teen, was ready to go in the courtroom as an adult in her 20s and perpetuate the same lies.  She would have been torn apart, trust me.  We were sooooooooo ready.  We spent literally hundreds of hours in preparation.  However, I still feel we may NOT have won and why?  The prevailing feminazi hysteria over child abuse.  The callous attitude I have even seen here (from a woman -surprise!) that he most likely did something wrong. WHY?  Because some kids said he did?  Sorry, that's not enough.

I have no desire to see such a sorry and abused (by her MOTHER)  person hurt, but she has never once been made to face the man she accused, her very own father, and has never been made accountable for her lies.  I hope that somewhere in her, there is the good heart I am sure was there years ago, and that what she did will finally sink in - and, if she and the son do realize the enormity of their crime, I hope they are able to cope and actually grow as people from the resulting pain that any DECENT HUMAN would feel.

That said, they are still deeply loved by their father.  

Meanwhile, the evil ex still sends all her bills here.  No, we don't have to pay them, but there goes T's credit while he fights them.  I have finally convinced T she is NOT DYING OF CANCER.  He brings it up now and then, and I tell him the bitch should have been dead by now.  Of course, I don't use the word "bitch", but I'd like to.  I leave the name calling to T's sister.

And please - don't even try to tell me I have no sympathy for children who were really abused, or for women who were really raped.  I have loved ones who actually were raped - it's a horrible thing. But they WERE raped, they didn't just claim to be raped.
quot;I can resist anything but temptation."

 Oscar Wilde

hereandthere

Quote
And please - don't even try to tell me I have no sympathy for children who were really abused, or for women who were really raped. I have loved ones who actually were raped - it's a horrible thing. But they WERE raped, they didn't just claim to be raped.


nah, we understand where you are coming from.
at least i hope the rest do...

Quote
The callous attitude I have even seen here (from a woman -surprise!) that he most likely did something wrong. WHY? Because some kids said he did? Sorry, that's not enough.


he did.. he was born male.
i mean, if he didn't want to be used as a scapegoat couldn't he think of being born female?
sheesh.
hen I feel at peace: If you listen carefully to the sky, you can hear the voices of Heaven praising me...

contrarymary

OK, hereandthere, I'm beginning to understand your posting style.  I am sorry I was so harsh on you.  

Many of us have been hurt here, in different ways. I don't mean to demean your experiences.  I'm sorry.
quot;I can resist anything but temptation."

 Oscar Wilde

hereandthere

lol.
its ok.
frankly sometimes even i am not even sure what i am writing either.
hen I feel at peace: If you listen carefully to the sky, you can hear the voices of Heaven praising me...

contrarymary

Quote from: "Dr Evil"
The problem is that false memories are indeed easy to incubate in a vulnerable and stressed individual.  People who lack integrity can use this to their advantage and the outcome is pain and chaos spread far and wide.  The other side of this is that there is such a thing as a suppressed memory.  It's a complicated mess that has no easy answer.


Oh, yes.  The doctors tried and tried, and then I tried and tried, because that's what I was expected to do, or I would have been labeled treatment-resistant, but the only abuse I can come up with is discipline which really happened, and I remember very well - and, something which was much more devastating - my own siblings calling me names with even teachers and relatives joining in and stating I was too plump.

I love my father with all my heart and I understand why he did what he did, himself coming from foster homes and orphanages where he was routinely beaten.  That said, some of us are very sensitive and didn't really need the belt on a regular basis - and he admitted as much to me a few years ago.  "Oh, all I had to do was look at  you and you'd be sorry for misbehaving."  But his "policy" was that if a fight broke out, everyone in the room got it.  (No wonder I finally wised up and played on my own rather than face a beating for something someone else did!   :D   Quite frankly, I found the selfishness and sarcasm of my family a little too much to bear at an early age.)

Hey, I survived and, as I said, I love my father passionately.  I cherish the gifts that he specifically gave me, which include a strong sense of fairness and a great sense of humour.  

The abuse which was much worse and had a more lasting impact on me came from my siblings.  They called me fatso all the time, they told me how clumsy I was, they told me I was ugly - and I believed them.

And that's what led to the anorexia at age 12.

I have the last laugh  now, because not only am I not fat nor am I ugly, I'm happier now than I have ever been in my life while they are still struggling with the same issues they had years ago.

T says I have done all the work, and I suppose that's true.  I have forced myself to learn to speak up, although it's so hard at times.  He helps me and he even practices with me.  If one has a partner who truly loves her/him, and gives them the environment in which to flourish and that person wants to grow, to evolve, then growth is inevitable.
quot;I can resist anything but temptation."

 Oscar Wilde

Roy

One of the members of my M.F.A. committee way back in university daze was a prominent feminist lesbian professor. ( I liked her perky smile and her perky ummm.... politics!  :lol: )

Well, in her mid-thirties, she started to question her sexual identity.

Got into intensive therapy, and the whole "repressed memory" trip.

She was therapized into recovering memories of being abused by her father.

This caused her to futher question her lesbianism, and to seek alternative counseling.

After further years in the therapeutic house of cards industry, she "discovered" that her father had never molested her, that her promiscuous mother was the demon she was rebelling against, and that she was, in fact, heterosexual.

Today she is a happily married mother and still teaches cultural studies from a more nuanced feminist perspective.

(On the flip side, her brother recently had sex-change surgery. I wish I was making this up.... )
It's a terrible thing ... living in fear." (Roy - hunted replicant. "Blade Runner.")

The Biscuit Queen

Dr. E, I wish I had the freedom to just keep taking psych classes. This one has certainly whet my appetite, I feel I know enough to be fascinated, but lack huge amounts of the whole story.  Unfortunately, I need to get a degree I can make money at, and the best chance I have at that is an animal science degree, so I can work in the dairy industry.  Not that I am uninterested in that, but I certainly would love to follow my interests and just take psych.  :cry:
he Biscuit Queen
www.thebiscuitqueen.blogspot.com

There are always two extremes....the truth lies in the middle.

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