The third possible scenario would be that the traumatic event never happened and the memory is false. Techniques used in childhood memory recovery therapies are capable of inadvertently implanting memories for events that never occurred. Many of the studies listed above have been conducted on people who were or had been through different kinds of therapy. More importantly though, we do not know when exactly these patients recovered their memories, before or after the onset of therapy. Kluft especially explicitly mentioned using some of these techniques.
Childhood amnesia refers to the inability of people to retrieve memories from early childhood.
Many of these studies have subjects that claim to recover sexual abuse from a very early age that would qualify as a part of childhood amnesia. If one cannot accurately retrieve memories from this crucial time period then, we must be skeptical of such traumatic claims from that allegedly occurred. Childhood amnesia also applies to William's results, however not in the sense that it doubts the actuality of the abuse but rather could serve as an explanation for not reporting the abuse during the study. This brings us to an examination of the quality of the corroboration of these cases. Corroboration is the single most important way to examine the veracity of alleged sexual abuse cases since it serves as a direct and solid way to judge the case, as opposed to offering alternative explanations to these allegations.