i just found something really unsettling about false memories.
One of the more intriguing examples of how false memory can lead to
baseless accusations, mass hysteria and ruined lives was reported by
psychologist Richard Ofshe in the International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis. Paul Ingram was the county Republican Party
Chairman of Thurston County, Washington and the Chief Civil Deputy of
the Sheriff’s department. By all accounts, Ingram was extremely
religious, and attended church several times a week. He is currently
serving twenty years in prison for rape-- and it’s possible that his
guilty plea may be based on false memories. The story begins in
September of 1988. When Ingram’s 22-year-old daughter Ericka attended a
Christian retreat, intended to encourage women to reveal abuse, she
claimed that Ingram had raped her when she was five years old. Within a
few weeks, Ericka’s story had changed slightly; she now accused her
father of having raped her nearly every night for the past seventeen
years. Her younger sister Julie, also at the retreat, began a similar
series of accusations-- that Ingram and his poker buddies would creep
into the daughters’ bedroom on Saturday nights and rape her every week.
(However, according to Julie, Ericka slept soundly in the upper bunk
bed while this happened.) When confronted with the accusations, Ingram
maintained his innocence. . . at first. But, in keeping with his
church’s doctrines on “Satanic deception,” Ingram acknowledged to the
interrogators that his memories of the events might have been blocked.
During his interrogation session (the first of 23 over a five-month
period), Ingram was maneuvered into agreeing that his daughters were
honest. He was repeatedly told that sex offenders frequently repress
their memories, and the interrogators promised him that, if he admitted
his guilt on the matter, his memories would return. The records of
subsequent interrogations demonstrated how those memories eventually
did ‘come back.’ A psychologist whom Ofshe calls “Dr. Smith”
participated in the interrogations; Dr. Smith led Ingram through a
series of relaxation techniques that, in Ofshe’s estimate,
“dramatically heightened suggestibility and trance logic.” While Ingram
was in this dissociative state, the interrogators made helpful
suggestions to visualize the poker game events. During the second day’s
interrogation, Dr. Smith asked Ingram if he’d ever had any involvement
in black magic. Over the next five months, Ingram was able to ‘recall’
a variety of depraved, Satan-related crimes. Ingram’s dissociative
state and fragmented memories also contributed to his being
misdiagnosed as having Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)-- not
surprisingly, a syndrome that is often ‘diagnosed’ among Satanic cult
members and survivors to explain their failure to recall their evil
deeds. During this time, Ericka Ingram – prompted by a reading of –
was claiming that 25 babies had been murdered by Satanic cults, and
identified locations where the bodies could be found. (None were.)
Julie, on the other hand, was talking about having nails driven through
her flesh and arms of dead babies being inserted into her vagina.
(Physical examinations found no scars on either daughter.) Both
daughters claimed that they’d been forced to attend hundreds of Satanic
coven meetings where these horrible events took place. (Ingram’s two
sons denied that these meetings took place.) But Paul Ingram had no
trouble ‘visualizing’ these events under Dr. Smith’s interrogation. By
September of 1991, Ericka had filed a lawsuit against Thurston County
alleging that, because the Sheriff’s department was controlled by
Satanists, no action was taken to prevent her ‘brutalization.’ Ofshe
was brought in to assist the prosecution’s case. However, when it
became apparent that Ingram’s memories were manufactured during the
interrogation process, Ofshe tried an experiment; he invented a false
allegation of Ingram’s forcing his son and daughter to have sex. Sure
enough; when Ingram was asked to relax and try to visualize the scene,
Ingram was able to ‘recall’ an event that even his daughters said
hadn’t happened. When it became apparent that Ofshe’s report on
Ingram’s interrogation was going to be released to the defense
attorneys, the prosecutor handling the case gave Ingram an ultimatum to
plead guilty to something, or be charged with additional crimes. In May
of 1989, Ingram, pleaded guilty to six counts of rape. (The 25 babies
allegedly killed by the cult suddenly became a non-issue.) The visits
by the interrogators and psychologists stopped, Ingram’s confidence in
his pseudo-memories had evaporated. As of this writing, Ingram was
attempting to have his guilty plea set aside, and to obtain a court
trial. Source: Ofshe, Richard J. (1992) Inadvertent hypnosis during
interrogation: false confession due to dissociative state;
misidentified multiple personality and the satanic cult hypothesis. The
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. XL,
No. 3., 125-156.
wm3.org/live/sp/document.php … ment_Id=79
this case is really screwed up too… this country is just … really messed up… the Salem Witch Trials were hundreds of years ago, but we still do this shit?
