December 09, 1994|By Jonathan Bor | Jonathan Bor,Sun Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA -- Pamela Freyd says she'd rather be doing anything than telling strangers the wretched details of her family tragedy -- the ugly feud that erupted four years ago when her adult daughter unleashed an account of childhood molestation.
The calamity unfolded when her daughter, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, suddenly kicked her parents out of her life, saying she had begun to remember that her father had forced her into sexual contact over 13 years.
This is unlike many publicized accounts of alleged abuse: the daughter has filed no criminal or civil charges and stopped talking to reporters months ago. But the parents willingly give interviews, and her mother operates a national advocacy group in Philadelphia for people claiming to have been wrongly accused of physical and sexual abuse.
"It is the most awful nightmare you can imagine," said Dr. Freyd, a woman in her 50s who holds a doctorate in education. "My fantasy is to go somewhere, change my name and grow potatoes. But I only know something terribly wrong is going on and it has to stop someplace. It may as well stop with me.""
In just three years, her organization, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, has attracted more than 7,500 members -- most of them parents who say they are victims of a national epidemic. Pamela Freyd, its director, has become America's most visible advocate for accused parents.
The group has attracted a following of psychiatrists and mental health professionals who say that while child abuse sadly exists, thousands of Americans have been accused of horrors that didn't happen. They blame colleagues who coax accusations and presume that anyone charging abuse must be telling the truth.
Dr. Freyd's foundation boasts an advisory board made up of professionals from some of America's most prestigious universities. Dr. Paul McHugh, chief of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is a member. So are professors from Harvard, Stanford, Emory and the University of Pennsylvania.
Beginning today, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is co-sponsoring a national conference in Baltimore with the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. The conference, the first of its kind at a major university, will feature scientific presentations through Sunday at the Stouffer's Harborplace Hotel.
"I'm involved in this because I believe a very great miscarriage of psychiatry and psychotherapy is in action here," said Dr. McHugh, who has written extensively on a trend he considers one of the worst "misdirections" of 20th-century psychiatry. "I see this as like a witch hunt, a witch trial."
Dr. McHugh said it is remotely possible for a person to forget traumatic events of childhood -- such as incest -- and remember as an adult. But he said he has never personally seen such a case, and has examined many patients who recanted accusations after leaving zealous therapists.
What disturbs him, he said, is that mental health professionals too often accept an accusation as truth without trying to confirm it with physical evidence, medical records, diaries or interviews with family members.
"What I'm looking for is a good-faith effort to decide," he said. "In most cases that have come to me. . . no effort has been made."
Just as the group has won its professional admirers, so has it sparked criticism from other therapists, academics and victims' advocates. Many fear the foundation has whipped up a backlash that could intimidate abused patients and keep them from seeking help.
Dr. Elizabeth Brett, president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, said the foundation has ignored decades of evidence that people can forget the worst features of natural disasters and war -- as well as sexual abuse. Sometimes, she said, the memory is rekindled years later by sights, sounds, smells or experiences that remind them of the event.
This pattern is one type of post-traumatic stress, she said.
Dr. Judith Herman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard medical school, said the foundation has made a habit of using case studies of accusers who later recant as ostensible "proof" that recovered memories are always coaxed.
HTC "That scenario is a silly caricature of psychotherapy," Dr. Herman said.
Only one criticism seems to truly rankle Pamela Freyd -- the charge that her work deflects attention from the nation's serious problem of child abuse. She says she abhors child abuse as much as anyone but thinks society lost its moorings in its zeal to root out perpetrators.
"Raising questions shouldn't mean that you are against progress in helping children," she said.
Her family "nightmare" began during the Christmas holiday in 1990, when Dr. Freyd and her husband, Peter Freyd, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, were visiting their daughter's home in Eugene, Ore.
