When psychological science fails to be heard: the lack of evidence-based arguments in a ministerial report on child sexual abuse

Abstract

One of the most debated issues in relation to child sexual abuse (CSA) is whether there should be a limitation period for prosecutions. In 2017 a French ministerial report was released proposing extension of the limitation period in part because of the sometimes long delay between the alleged events and the disclosure of the abuse. For this, the report relied on dissociative amnesia. It also advocated for the development of child victim interview protocols by victim associations. We show that dissociative amnesia is not consensual within the scientific community. Instead, we recommend scientifically reliable cognitive principles to explain the lack of memory. Moreover, interviewing techniques for children have already been designed by memory researchers to enhance recall and report of CSA, from which any uncontrolled deviation might put the child's testimony at risk. We conclude by advocating for the use of evidence-based psychology, and for cooperation between practitioners, judges and researchers.

A bibliometric analysis of the recovered memory controversy in the 21st century

“…The papers from the 21st century dealing with repressed and/or recovered memories were published from 2001 (Bornstein & Muller, ; Cannell, Hudson, & Pope, ; Coleman, Stevens, & Reeder, ; Dale, ; Davis, Loftus, & Follette, ; DelMonte, ; Esterson, ; Kaplan & Manicavasagar, ; Lalonde, Hudson, Gigante, & Pope, ; McNally, ; McNally et al, ; Pettifor, Crozier, & Chew, ; Porter, Birt, Yuille, & Hervé, ; Sadoff, ) up to 2018 (Brand et al, ; Brand, Collins, & McEwen, ; Chiu, , ; Dodier & Tomas, ; Efrati et al, ; Goodman, Gonzalves, & Wolpe, ; Loftus & Teitcher, ; Lynn, Merckelbach, & Polizzi, ; Merckelbach & Patihis, ; Page & Morrison, ; Patihis, Ho, Loftus, & Herrera, ; Patihis & Pendergrast, , ; Patihis & Place, ; Shaw & Vredeveldt, ).…”

The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma

“…The reason given was that because victims often delay disclosing their abusive experience (e.g., Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon, 2003; see also Connolly & Read, 2006), they are still entitled to have their day in court. However, a more controversial reason for increasing the statute of limitations given in the report was that traumatic experiences of abuse could lead to dissociative amnesia (Dodier & Thomas, 2019). Dodier and Thomas rightly noted that the use of such a controversial term in an official governmental report might lead people with a history of trauma to believe that their traumatic memories are atypical and that to uncover additional memories they should rely on methods such as recovered memory therapy that might result in false memories.…”

Recovered memories of child abuse outside of therapy

“…The debate was about whether it is possible or usual that trauma is blocked away from consciousness and unknown to the person, and secondarily whether recovery of previously unknown abuse from many years ago is reliable enough to be trusted in therapy or a court of law. Recent data show that this controversy is still being explored in the scientific literature (Dodier & Tomas, 2019;Otgaar et al, 2019).…”

“…Recently, the phenomenon of recovered memory has been used by the government in France to justify an extension of the statute of limitations period from 20 to 30 years (after the complainant has reached 18 years of age; see Dodier & Tomas, 2019). More generally, it seems that the recovered memory is a current issue in the field (e.g., in…”