Examination of Witnesses (Questions 968-979)
MR ANDREW PARKER, PROFESSOR GISLI GUDJONSSON, DR JANET BOAKES
AND DR WILLIAM THOMPSON
THURSDAY 11 JULY 2002
Chairman
968. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and welcome. This
is the final session of a short inquiry that we are conducting
into the conduct of investigations into past cases of child abuse
in children's homes. The witnesses today, we hope, are going to
help us to assess the credibility of some of the allegations made.
It would be helpful if each of you could, for the record, just
state your name and your occupation and the basis of your expertise
please. Starting with Professor Gudjonsson.
(Professor Gudjonsson) I am a Professor of Forensic Psychology
at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College, London and I am
the Head of the Forensic Psychology Services there. I have been
working with witnesses and suspects, in terms of testimony, for
the past 22 years. I work quite closely with the police and they
sometimes instruct me to see people before they interview them,
or assess them before the case goes to court. I have done some
research into recovered memories. My main area of specialism is
in the area of suggestibility and confession evidence.
969. Thank you. Mr Parker.
(Mr Parker) My name is Andrew Parker. I am a Detective Inspector
in the Metropolitan Police, currently working within the child
protection arena, working on protracted and major inquiries. The
basis of my expertise in this area, I suppose, would be my academic
study in the area of forensic psychology. I have a Bachelors and
Masters degree in psychology and I am currently writing up my
PhD thesis, which is on witness credibility.
970. Thank you. Dr Thompson.
(Dr Thompson) I am Dr Bill Thompson. I work at Reading University.
I am a Forensic Criminologist. My particular specialism in sexual
assault is the review of memorandum interviews and I have done
over 120 cases, been engaged in those.
971. Been engaged by who?
(Dr Thompson) Usually the defence. When it comes to false allegations,
Chairman, you might remember the case of Patrick Nicholls, I kicked
off 12 years ago and demonstrated that no murder had actually
occurred and opened up that case. I have been responsible for
opening up the Ayrshire Satanic case. I was involved and consulted
by two sets of legal representatives in the Orkney inquiry and
I have done several others. I also showed Professor Jean La Fontaine
how to review the interviews. I have done six major reviews of
so-called "care home cases" and for five years I taught
social workers, on a post graduate course, on interview error
and avoidance.
972. Thank you. Dr Boakes.
(Dr Boakes) I am a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist
at South West London St George's Mental Health Care Trust. I became
involved in this ten years ago when I was serving as the Public
Education Officer for the Faculty of Psychotherapy at the Royal
College of Psychiatrists and started to get media inquiries about
recovered memories, regression therapy and recovered memory therapy
which was just coming over from America. Arising out of that,
I became concerned about what psychiatry and psychotherapy seemed
to be doing, and I started raising this in the College. I was
a member of the Royal College's working party inquiring into reported
recovered memories, out of which came a report published in the
British Journal of Psychiatry. In the four years since that report
was published, I have had something like 80 instructions in both
civil and criminal cases and given oral evidence in about 15 cases
now of criminal—
973. On behalf of the defence or the prosecution or both?
(Dr Boakes) On behalf of the defence. I have twice been instructed
by the prosecution, but for various reasons it has not followed
through.
974. I see. We may be wrong, but we think that recovered memory
actually has not played much of a part in the allegations that
we have been dealing with. Does anybody dispute that? Bearing
in mind we are talking about evidence by people who were in care
homes against former social workers or people who formerly worked
in the homes.
(Mr Parker) I think by the nature of the way these allegations
are coming forward, it would be right to say that recovered memory
does not play a part in most of the allegations. I think evidence
of recovered memories themselves are rare and difficult to come
by. In my own study I have only five out of nearly 130 cases involve
what would be known as recovered memory. That is memories from
childhood which reappear within the therapeutic context.
(Dr Boakes) It depends on how you define recovered memory. If
you limit it solely to memories occurring during a specific therapeutic
encounter, that is probably right. But certainly I have been involved
in three cases in care homes where undoubtedly the memories were
not present when the police first approached the claimant and
were recovered later. For a variety of reasons, one needed to
be very concerned about those memories.
(Dr Thompson) Of the five cases that I reviewed, there were over
100 complainants and only one of those complainants appeared to
follow from what is now known as false memory syndrome. They received
counselling at a prison, at Her Majesty's Service, and it may
well be that their recollections came out of that memory. In the
sixth case, involving four complainants, one of those would appear
to be repeating what are known as recovered memories and there
is some indication that they have been in therapy.
975. Dr Boakes, you said there was a cause for concern in the
three cases that you had reviewed, about the way in which the
memory had been recovered presumably?
(Dr Boakes) Yes, absolutely. I think you have to be careful about
how you define false memories. If you limit it to formal counselling
with a specific and semi-intentional implanting, then obviously
it narrows it. But if you include a broad spectrum, we now know
that entirely false memories can arise outside any kind of therapeutic
intervention. People can persuade themselves or are influenced
by the kind of things that are available to all of us. I have
been involved in five care home cases, two are civil and three
are criminal. One, it came out in cross examination that the complainant
had had no memory of having been abused until a certain point
in time and I was called in at that stage. Of the others, one
complainant first of all talked about physical brutality and some
three or four months later said "Now I have remembered something
else" and over the next three months she made two further
statements of memories of sexual abuse. These progressed from
oral sex to rape and then became quite mountingly sadistic. All
of these new memories she claimed, had not been previously remembered.
976. What prompted that, do you think?
(Dr Boakes) I do not think it was clear. Rumination, thinking
about it, dwelling upon it.
977. Suggestion by the interviewer?
(Dr Boakes) Not that I have evidence of, but then there was no
transcript of the interview. It was a period of time. Certainly
her parting remark, at the end of the first interview, was "And
if I remember anything more, I will tell the police" so there
was implicit in the suggestion that it was possible that she would
remember more and indeed she did. Another man, similarly, started
out by saying "No, nothing" and gave a categorical statement
that he had never been abused and then the interviewers came back
a number of times. Then they came back and said "Ah, but
we know from other people that you were abused. Do you want to
tell us about it?" and he then began to come up with memories,
which seemed, when you put them together with other evidence,
to be extremely dubious, though I do not think that one could
wholly rule them out. The first woman I was talking about you
could wholly rule them out for a variety of reasons. Sorry, did
I lose you?
978. You said "I do not think you could wholly—
(Dr Boakes) In this particular man, I am not sure that you could
wholly rule them out.
979. Right. But the other two?
(Dr Boakes) But the other two I think you undoubtedly could. They
went back into such a very young age—the woman had been
in care almost from birth, was talking about memories from periods
where you really could be confident that they could not be possible.
Examination of Witnesses (Questions 968-979)
MR ANDREW PARKER, PROFESSOR GISLI GUDJONSSON, DR JANET BOAKES
AND DR WILLIAM THOMPSON
THURSDAY 11 JULY 2002
Chairman
