Opinion ID: 2638169
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 2002 Skeptical Inquirer Article

Text: The May/June 2002 and July/August 2002 issues of the Skeptical Inquirer, a magazine published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), included a twopart article, written by defendants Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Guyer, [5] entitled Who Abused Jane Doe? The Hazards of the Single Case History (26 Skeptical Inquirer 24, 37 [hereafter, the Skeptical Inquirer article].) The stated premise of the Skeptical Inquirer article is that case studies, although useful to scientists, are bounded by the perceptions and interpretations of the storyteller and should be used to generate hypotheses to be tested, not as answers to questions. (Id. at pp. 25, 26.) To illustrate their point, Loftus and Guyer provide a case study of a case studya cautionary tale. (Id. at p. 26.) The case study they scrutinize is Corwin and Olafson's Child Maltreatment article. According to the Skeptical Inquirer article, psychological researchers and clinicians disagree as to whether the human mind represses memories of traumatic experiences in such a way that these memories accurately can be recovered years later through tools such as therapy and hypnosis. The article also states that the Child Maltreatment article has been offered and accepted as proof that traumatic memories eventually can be reliably recovered. The Skeptical Inquirer article summarizes the content of the Child Maltreatment article and offers the following summary of the reactions of professionals who had read about the Jane Doe case: Corwin's case study was vivid and compelling. Leading scientists were persuaded by it; indeed, emotionally moved by it. Few considered any other possible explanations of Jane's behavior at six or at seventeen. Few were skeptical that Jane really had been abused by her mother before age six, that her retrieved memories were accurate, or that `repression' accounted for her forgetting what her mother supposedly had done to her. [11] But we were. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 28, italics added by Court of Appeal.) The Skeptical Inquirer article related that the allegations against Jane's mother in 1984 grew out of a contentious five-year custody battle and were made at a time when many experts were unaware that interviewers looking for evidence of sexual abuse easily could manipulate children and taint their memories. Further, the article states that Corwin has a vested interest in persuading others that his initial finding of sexual abuse was accurate and that some repression-like process had prevented Jane from recalling that abuse during the period before Corwin re-interviewed her. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 29.) Therefore, as Loftus and Guyer explained, we set out on an odyssey to learn more about the case. Our investigation produced much valuable information that should assist scholars in making their own decisions about whether Jane was abused, and if so, by whom. (Ibid.) The Skeptical Inquirer article describes how Loftus and Guyer found clues to fuel their investigation notwithstanding the fact that Corwin had disguised the case. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 29.) For one thing, Corwin showed videotapes of his interviews with Jane Doe at a number of professional meetings and, at some point during the interviews, Corwin used Jane's real first name and a city where she spent some of her childhood. Using this information and other clues from the Child Maltreatment article, the authors of the Skeptical Inquirer article searched legal databases and found a published appellate court case relating to allegations that Jane's father had failed to comply with visitation orders. (See In re William T. (1985) 172 Cal.App.3d 790, 218 Cal.Rptr. 420.) That case provided additional factual details about Jane Doe's family. Further, the disclosure of the father's first name and last initial led to a successful search for the father's identity and, according to the authors, from there we uncovered the full history of the custody dispute and the abuse allegations. (Skeptical Inquirer,supra, at p. 29.) The Skeptical Inquirer article includes its authors' version of an accurate summary of the facts relevant to Jane Doe's allegations of abuse. This article does not disclose Jane's identity or the real names of persons connected to her case. It does, however, provide details about Jane's history that were not disclosed in the Child Maltreatment article, including unfavorable information about Jane's father and stepmother. Many of the details concerning Jane's history that are disclosed in the Skeptical Inquirer article were obtained through interviews conducted by or on behalf of the authors of the latter article. Jane's biological mother was interviewed. She continued to deny the allegations of abuse and, according to defendant authors, was eager for us to visit and told us a few things, of course from her perspective, that never appeared in any of Corwin's accounts of this case. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 30.) The Skeptical Inquirer article summarizes the mother's story and also reports that the maternal grandmother's best friend and Jane's older brother concur that Jane never was abused by her mother. The article also discloses that, after Corwin reviewed with 17-year-old Jane the allegations of abuse, Jane severed all contact with her mother. Jane's foster mother, also interviewed for the Skeptical Inquirer article, allegedly described how Jane was extremely distressed when she came to live with her. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 31.) Jane's father had had a heart attack and could not care for her; Jane's stepmother (who had divorced Jane's father long ago) was out of the picture, and Jane wanted to put the `puzzle pieces' of her past together. (Ibid.) Jane's foster mother helped Jane contact her biological mother but reported that the renewed relationship was destroyed after Corwin entered the picture. (Ibid.) Jane's foster mother opined that viewing the tapes convinced Jane the abuse had occurred, and that the interview with Corwin dramatically changed Jane: She went into herself. She became depressed. She started behaving in self-destructive ways, and soon left Foster-Mom's home. (Ibid.) According to this article, Jane's foster mother wondered whether Jane had rejected her because of the older woman's strict rules against staying out late and misbehavior, or because she was trying to run away from her own misery. (Id., at p. 32.) Jane's foster mother also wondered whether viewing the tapes was a mistake. Jane's stepmother, who also was interviewed for the article, allegedly volunteered that the way they [that is, Jane's father and stepmother] got Jane away from Mom was `the sexual angle.' (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 32.) During the interview, the stepmother displayed continuing and serious animosity toward Jane's mother, accusing her of such things as being a prostitute and a `leech' who always had her hand out. (Ibid.) According to the article, Jane's stepmother described how she and Jane's father `documented' their case against Jane's mother by, for example, bringing Jane to two hospitals to have her feet examined to support the foot burning allegation. (Ibid.) The stepmother also reported that, when Jane was between the ages of four and nine years, Jane spoke to her about the sexual abuse; she had endured. The Skeptical Inquirer article includes personal information concerning Jane's stepmother's marital history and legal problems. The authors of the article maintained this information was relevant because Corwin used comparable information regarding Jane's mother to discredit her credibility. In this article, defendants Loftus and Guyer offer several reasons why they doubt that Jane Doe was physically or sexually abused by her mother, including: (1) six-year-old Jane's reports of abuse were inconsistent; (2) the credibility of Jane's father was not superior to that of Jane's mother in terms of marital stability, criminal history, and other behavior; and (3) at least one expert who conducted a thorough contemporaneous investigation doubted that any abuse had occurred. The Skeptical Inquirer article also questions whether 17-year-old Jane's memory of an alleged prior event was, in fact, a recovered memory. The authors note, for example, that the evidence indicating that Jane had spoken about the allegations with her stepmother and others during the years between the 1984 interviews and the 1995 interview undermin[es] claims of massive repression or dissociation. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at p. 32.) Further, according to this article, `[t]o the extent that Jane's memory can be regarded as an instance of a recovered, accurate memory, there must be some objective and independent corroboration of the events she purports to remember. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at pp. 37, 38.) The authors suggest for several reasons that the required corroboration does not exist: (1) Corwin's original clinical evaluation was neither objective nor reliable; (2) there is no evidence to support the allegation that Jane's mother burned Jane's feet; indeed, the authors' own research supported the conclusion that, if Jane's feet had been burned, the injury would have been documented by the hospitals where Jane was taken or by Child Protective Services, and no such documentation existed; (3) there is no evidence, prior allegation, or even reference in the reports or the evidence to support Jane's supposed recollection that she previously had accused her mother of taking pornographic pictures of her and her brother; and (4) the emotion and personal details captured on the-videotapes of the 1984 interviews could persuade not just knowledgeable scientists but Jane herself that the abuse had occurred even if it never had. The Skeptical Inquirer article contains a postscript in which defendants Loftus and Guyer describe unexpected resistance to their efforts to critically evaluate Corwin's claim that Jane Doe recovered a repressed memory. (Skeptical Inquirer, supra, at pp. 37, 40.) Defendants contend that critics of their inquiry impeded the publication of their work and that even their respective universities warned them not to publish any of the material they had gathered, even that which is in the public domain and readily found by anyone with access to a modem and Google search engine. (Ibid.) The authors stated: We are alarmed on behalf of all members of the academic community that our universities, institutions that above all others should be championing the right to free speech and academic debate, so implacably opposed it in this instance. (Ibid.)