15 Clinical Accounts and Other Cases in Scientific and Academic Publications

15 Clinical Accounts and Other Cases in Scientific and Academic Publications

The case of "Claudia." Recovered memories of child sexual abuse by her older brother and corroborated by documentary evidence. Her case is notable for three reasons: first, it was written up in Science News, second, the memories cam back in the course of group therapy, and third, they were corroborated through powerful documentary physical evidence. As detailed by Bruce Bower:

"After losing more than 100 pounds in a hospital weight-reduction program she had entered to battle severe obesity, Claudia experienced flashbacks of sexual abuse committed by her older brother. She joined a therapy group for incest survivors, and memories of abuse flooded back. Claudia told group members that from the time she was 4 years old to her brother's enlistment in the Army three years later, he had regularly handcuffed her, burned her with cigarettes, and forced her to submit to a variety of sexual acts. "

"Claudia's brother had died in combat in Vietnam more than 15 years before her horrifying memories surfaced. Yet Claudia's parents had left his room and his belongings untouched since then. Returning home from the hospital, Claudia searched the room. Inside a closet she found a large pornography collection, handcuffs, and a diary in which her brother had extensively planned and recorded what he called sexual ‘experiments’ with his sister." Bruce Bower, "Sudden recall: adult memories of child abuse spark a heated debate." Science News (September 18, 1993), Vol. 144 , No. 12: pp. 184-86.

Six men who grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts (in additional to Frank Fitzpatrick and John Robitaille, whose cases are included in the legal section of this archive) who were sexually assaulted by Father Porter as children and "who reported no thoughts or memories of childhood abuse until the case broke." These findings were reported by Harvard psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, who surveyed 43 of the victims in 1993. [Katy Butler, "The Latest on Recovered Memory," Family Therapy Networker, Nov/Dec 1996: 36. ]

The case of "D." Boy in treatment for obsessive-compulsive symptoms, who eventually recovered memories of an attempted strangling by his mother years earlier. The events were subsequently confirmed by the mother. Nathan M. Szajnberg, Recovering a repressed memory, and representational shift in an adolescent," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1994), vol. 41 (3): 711-727.

Four adult women reported by Linda M. Williams. See case studies in "Recovered Memories of Abuse in Women with Documented Histories of Child Sexual Victimization," Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 8, No. 4,(1995): 649-73.

Two cases from Puerto Rico. See, Taboas A. Martinez, "Repressed Memories: Some Clinical Data Contributing Toward its Elucidation," American Journal Psychotherapy (Spring 1996), 50(2): 217-30.

The case of "Laura." Using both prospective and restrospective data, this case "circumvents many limitations of previous studies by including multiple corroborative sources of evidence of sexual trauma n early childhood, prospective evidence of memory loss in oral and written measures in consecutive assessments, and evidence of spontaneous recovery of memory outside of therapy in the context of late adolescence." Sunita Duggal & L. Alan Sroufe, "Recovered Memory of Childhood Sexual Trauma: A Documented Case from a Longitudinal Study," Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 11, No. 2, (1998): 301-21.