Oral History Interviews of Therapists, Survivors, the Accused, and Retractors. Also available in print in

Bob Sculley, Accused Father

Bob Sculley, 56, was a short, balding fireplug of a man—slow to speak, hesitant to express emotion. He admitted that he was mostly an absent father to his daughter Nicole, 27, but that situation developed in part in response to his wife's devotion as a Jehovah's Witness—he tried to stay out of the way. Because of Nicole's accusations, Sculley's marriage, never on a firm footing, dissolved, and he moved away from Georgia. He was a confused and bitter man. Nicole's initial hostility stemmed from her stay in an eating disorders unit.^
I always thought Nicole was a happy, well-adjusted little kid up through eighth grade. She had friends, was outgoing, bubbly. Her two older brothers took care of her pretty much as the youngest in the family, though they excluded her from the typical boy's world. She didn't get to play cowboy, I mean. Yeah, I played with her some, not a lot. We all went fishing some, played some sports, went camping.

We moved to Georgia when she was in eighth grade, and that was really hard on her, leaving all her friends and having to adjust to a new school. At the same time, my new job in computer repair was very stressful and demanded 60 or 70 hours a week So I couldn't really pay much attention to her. Finally, I got a less-demanding job three years later.

Nicole had a lot of difficulty in high school, especially around boy-girl relations. She felt very guilty about anything she got into. I don't think she had sex, just normal things teens did. I pretty much stayed away from all that—that was her mother's world.

Nicole and her mother are both Jehovah's Witnesses, and I don't share that faith. Debby, my wife, converted 25 years ago. One of their major claims is that they are the only ones who have the truth, and they don't believe in celebrating birthdays or holidays. I believe that was the major source of Nicole's guilt, having to live by extremely strict moral rules. She couldn't go to dances, only to social activities with kids from the church.

At 16, Nicole quit school. Her guidance counselor agreed it was the best thing. She went to hairdressers' school and got a job doing that for a while. But then she quit to witness for the church, going door to door, and she cleaned houses to support herself. When she was 20, she got married to Fred, a church member 15 years older than her. He's never been able to hold jobs, because he dreams too much and has delusions of grandeur.

We saw Nicole fairly frequently until two years ago, when she moved to Texas. Now she's got two little kids and they've had a rough time, because she can't work and Fred can't keep a job. They're always in debt. So I gather things got pretty tense between them. I think Fred hit her, from what I understand. Nicole had a recurrence of bulimia, which she'd had when she was 16. So she entered a three-week in-house program in Texas around April, 1992. We knew about it. Yes, she talked to me about it. She thought it was because of trouble with her husband at the time.

When she got out, she got into some kind of support group. By the time she got out of that damn thing, I think she was into this ACOA [Adult Children of Alcoholics] program. Have you ever read the list of criteria for what makes you an ACOA? Basically, what they say applies to 75 percent of the people in the world. Communication with me went down to next to nothing. She wasn't openly angry with me, but I started to hear talk about “dysfunctional family” and “emotionally unavailable.” I got that through her mother telling me.

Yes, I certainly did drink too much for a few years from the mid-1970s to the early '80s, anywhere from four to seven beers a night, sometimes Scotch.

Well, we got to around Thanksgiving. We were supposed to make a trip down to Texas, and I got uninvited. Through her mother. They talk regular. So Debby went down, and I stayed home. I knew there was some kind of problem, but I didn't know what it was.

At that point, my marriage was reasonably decent. We weren't fighting or anything. The religion thing had been quiescent; we just stopped talking or fighting about it. We traveled together, and Debby liked that. I do business all over the world. I guess our children were the other real common denominator. But it was hard, mostly because of the religion, which covers almost every fiber of your life.

Anyway, Debby calls me from Texas on Monday, and all I got were vague statements about something very serious, but she wasn't at liberty to say what. She was obviously pissed and upset. They were very tense phone calls. So come Thursday, she asked me to go home and check my mailbox. “Nicole wrote you a letter on Friday, and you should have it by now.” There the letter was, all right, about two pages, fairly succinctly written, full of hate and anger, accusing me of raping her when she was three years old, forcing her to have oral sex, all kinds of trash about “It's not my shame, it's your shame, and I give you back your shame.”

It didn't sound like Nicole at all. For one thing, she would have rambled on for twice as long, and this was just full of all this jargon. You know, my first reaction was, “What a relief. I thought she was accusing me of something I really did. This is ridiculous.” You know, there were things I wasn't proud of. When she was three, we had a terrible debate about whether she would eat or not, and I whipped her ass. I'd say, “Eat,” and she'd say “No,” and I'd give her a crack on the butt or the side of her leg. You know, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't. I made it a test of wills. No, this wasn't when I was drinking too much.

Anyway, then I realized that Nicole was serious in this letter. I went into shock. I called my wife. It was some conversation, let me tell you. Talk about crossed communications! I was saying, basically, “Isn't this awful, what can we do to help our daughter who has this perceptual problem?” And she was saying, “You dirty bastard, why did you do this to my daughter? Repent and be saved.” Those weren't her exact words, but that was the emotional gist behind it.

I told Debby I didn't do any of those things, and she said she had to believe the evidence she'd seen. She had observed Nicole go through some sort of physical, emotional thing where she curled up in a fetal position and became extremely distraught, just lay there whimpering. Afterward, she explained it was a flashback to when I was supposedly doing these things to her.

My wife went to this therapist's office, where Nicole told Debby all this stuff. All I know is that she's a female therapist; I run into a wall when I ask questions about her. There were a number of therapists through this whole thing, at the hospital, and then for out-patient care.

After that, Debby and I talked every few days, but it was very tense. My wife came back in mid-December and stayed with friends. She has never moved back with me. I talked her into going to see a psychiatrist with me, who tried to explain how false memories can come about, but she wouldn't hear it. She has fundamentally embraced at the heart level some of the tenets of this recovery movement. It's turned into another kind of religion for her.

Trow, my middle son, was in Texas with Debby, and he got the same fetal position show, same meeting with the therapist. He seems to believe it all. I saw him once in person since then, and he isn't as definite as his mother. He'll say, “It's more likely you did than that you didn't.”

All I got from Nicole was that damned letter. Everything else has been second-hand. I wrote down everything Debby and Trow said, and it sounded like four different rapists. The stories were contradictory. When it started, she told them, “I specifically remember when I was three, but I think he was doing it regularly until I was twelve.” In more recent conversations with her mother, she said, “I'm willing to believe it only happened once or twice when he was drunk, and that he doesn't remember it because of that.”

Early in the game, I was willing to say, “Maybe something happened I don't remember.” But not 12 years of it. I've gone through the whole process now, and I just don't believe it.

– • –

Julia Hapgood, Wife of Accused

Julia Hapgood, a no-nonsense Britisher, was married to Arthur, a Maine pharmaceutical salesman. The first hint of serious trouble came when Julia got a call from the local police saying that their daughter Lisa's car had been found abandoned outside her therapist's office. Lisa, 18, had developed an overly close relationship—complete with love letters and daily phone calls—with Janine Woodley, an RN licensed as a social worker. Later that day, Lisa called Julia. “I have admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital for anxiety attacks,” she told her. That was Feb. 11, 1991. Everything since then had been one long nightmare, culminating in Arthur and Julia finding Lisa's journal, in which she revealed that she thought Arthur had sex with her at the age of eight while he held a knife to her throat. It was this memory, coming out under hypnosis, which had prompted her mental break.

Heavily drugged, Lisa, diagnosed with a dissociative disorder, stayed in the hospital until Good Friday, when her insurance ran out. She was immediately released without any referrals. For a while, Lisa stayed in an apartment attached to the Hapgood home, but she continued to talk to Janine Woodley for hours every day.

By the time I conducted this interview, Lisa, 21, had made tentative steps toward reconciliation with her family. She visited every Saturday, but she refused to discuss the sexual-abuse allegations, walking out of the room whenever anyone raised the issue. She continued to see Janine Woodley.
Nothing can hurt us after this. It would be a joke if it weren't so horrible. You know, in one of her journal entries Lisa wrote that she had a dream about “The Teddy Bears' Picnic.” It's true that she used to go to sleep to that song every night. Well, she wrote that the song was playing while Arthur was abusing her, and that he cut off her teddy bear's head with a Swiss Army knife. He's never owned a Swiss Army knife. I found the teddy bear packed up in the basement, not a mark on it. But none of that matters to Lisa.

The happiest day of my life was the day Lisa was born. I have racked my brain, and I can't for the life of me figure out what we did wrong in raising her. Arthur keeps saying, “We must have done something wrong,” but I refuse to feel guilty. We tried to teach her to be honest and trustworthy. Arthur would give her a whack on the rear end if necessary, or he'd ground her, but only if she broke house rules. Arthur has always traveled a lot, so Lisa is probably closer to me. But even now, if he's not around when she visits, she asks, “Where's Dad?”

Lisa's childhood seemed so good and happy. She was just a pleasure, with dark curly hair, great big brown eyes, lots of friends. When she got to high school, I thought to myself, “I am so fortunate that she's not into alcohol or drugs.” She seemed so open with me as a teen. And you've never seen anyone happier in college, right before this happened. She loved it, was on the Dean's List. It was a delight to see her.

That first day at the psychiatric hospital, we saw our daughter, slumped over in a chair, her eyelids droopy. She never once looked at us, just stared at the floor. It was dreadful. She was obviously drugged. We were told we should think of her as a distant relative, because she needed her space, but it was very important for us to continue to financially support her. I thought Arthur would burst a blood vessel. He was turning purple in the face. He asked, “Why haven't we been informed before?” They said it was because she was over 18, so they had no right to tell us. We were told we could not see her or call her. It was such a shock, like someone hit you as hard as they could in the stomach with a two-by-four, to see your child like that. I'd had enough. We got nowhere. No one would tell us anything. I was on the verge of tears and just had to get out of there. We didn't know what to do, where to turn.

She was released when her insurance ran out. I arranged for Lisa to go to a private psychiatric clinic in England, where I'm from, but she didn't like the psychiatrist. He said to her, “Has it ever occurred to you that this incest never happened?” He told me, “We're different over here—we'll talk to the parents.” I tried to talk her into seeing a woman therapist, but she wouldn't.

[Back in the United States, Lisa began to see Janine again, while she lived in an apartment adjoining her parents' house. Arthur and Julia decided in desperation to tap her phone, which led to a lawsuit. They eventually settled out of court by paying Janine Woodley $5,000.]

Janine would call her constantly, all calls of 90 minutes or more, and we learned how pushy and manipulative she was. She coerced her into saying she loved her. The day Arthur told Lisa he never sexually abused her, Lisa called Janine and told her she was having doubts. Janine answered, “In that case, it would mean that it was all just in your mind, and that would mean that you're crazy, and I know you're not crazy. Maybe your father just forgot. Maybe he dissociated. With all my years of experience, I know that you've been abused, and your family is a textbook dysfunctional family.” And this woman has never met us!

During this time, Lisa would be like two different people. She would come into the kitchen, bouncy, happy-go-lucky, just like she always was before all this happened. Then she'd get on the phone with Janine and would be depressed, tell her how we yell at each other and throw things—none of which was true at all.

It's all so unreal. Talk about fairy stories! Janine started giving Lisa these children's books and encouraging her to act like a little kid, get in touch with her inner child.

At least we're seeing Lisa now, and it has made a world of difference, but it's so frustrating not to have an open, honest relationship. I don't feel very warm toward her. She's caused so much hurt. Arthur nearly went to jail over this tape-recording business. We are now broke, both emotionally and financially.

How has this affected our marriage? I don't know how to express that. It's caused us so much pain. We never relax and have a good time any more. There were times I doubted Arthur, when I was feeling low. I'd think, “Could this possibly have happened?” But when I saw his face, his reaction, I knew he didn't do it. And I certainly know that the things she said about me and my mother are ridiculous.

There are days when I hate Lisa, but basically I blame the therapists. Arthur gets very upset with me when I say I hate Lisa. He says, “You can't blame her.” At the same time, I believe that everyone is responsible for what they do. She knew about this court business, for instance, and her attitude was, “Well, he broke the law.” It made me so angry, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

No, I haven't gone to therapy for myself. We never did think much of the mental health profession, but now we think even less of it. We don't trust anyone. How could it help? The only thing that would help would be if our daughter came to her senses.

The FMS Foundation meetings have done me a lot of good, just talking to other parents in the same situation. I wasn't surprised when we found out about the organization. I'd said all along, “There have to be other parents like us, but how do we find them?” I was thinking of putting an ad in the paper, when one of Arthur's business associates clipped an article about the foundation for us.

I wouldn't have believed this could happen if you'd told me a few years ago. When I saw someone accused of sex abuse, I always believed it. “Castrate the bastard! Of course he did it.” Now, I want to know all the circumstances before I make a judgment.

– • –

Dr. Aaron Goldberg, Accused Father

I met Dr. Aaron Goldberg at a 1993 Harvard-sponsored seminar entitled "Trauma and Memory," which turned out to be a one-sided event. The main objective appeared to be slamming the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and "validating" all repressed memories. Goldberg had two reasons for attending the conference: (1) he was a child psychiatrist specializing in child sexual abuse, and (2) his daughter, an Ivy League graduate, had accused him of raping, torturing, and impregnating her, based on memories she recovered during therapy with a trauma specialist. On the third day of the conference, Goldberg announced his displeasure with the slanted proceedings. Someone near me whispered, "He's got to be dissociated to dare say that here." Then a woman in the audience identified him as having been accused by his daughter. The room, filled with therapists, social case workers, lawyers and judges, erupted. "Pig!" someone screamed. "How dare you?"

I had dinner that night with Goldberg, a self-contained man who spoke calmly and deliberately. He told me about the day he had contemplated suicide:
I realized that my life as I had known it had ended. I sat down in front of the fireplace in my living room and listened to Bach's cello suites for eight hours while I seriously considered whether to put a shotgun into my mouth and blow my brains out. Finally, I came up with four reasons not to do it. (1) I couldn't do that to my wife, leaving her to find my brains splattered all over the living room. (2) If I did, people would think it was evidence that my daughter's accusations were true, and I had killed myself out of guilt. (3) I thought about what I told the abused teenagers I work with. “Just learn to survive. You can do it. Your life is not over.” I told them stuff like that all the time. So I had to take the same advice. (4) I grew up in Brooklyn, where I learned a maxim: Don't let the bastards get you.

Addendum: After the furor at the conference died down, a young woman spoke: “I'm a Harvard graduate and an incest survivor, and I have yet to hear from the FMS people any convincing explanation of what a survivor has to gain by this. My experience is that all of us have lost a great deal: family members we love, the belief that they were there for us, who we were as children, the image we had of ourselves. I don't know many people who would do that on purpose to themselves, just for a civil suit.” Goldberg joined the applause for her. So did I, because she quite eloquently stated the pain I knew that these young women were going through. Nonetheless, genuine misery does not translate automatically to genuine incest.

Goldberg's daughter initiated contact again in 1994, though she did not take back her allegations.

– • –

Harold Brightwell, British Accused Father

Retired British naval officer Harold Brightwell had lost all contact with two of his three adult daughters. Although he didn’t know it at the time, his troubles began when his middle daughter, Priscilla, sought help for her long-term backaches, kidney infections, Candida, and thrush. Having sought traditional medical attention without success, she went to see Rebecca Acceber, an American homeopath practicing in London. (Acceber’s name must have been her own creation, since it is a palindrome.) Somehow, during the treatment, Priscilla came to believe that her physical ailments all stemmed from long-repressed memories of sexual abuse. In September of 1991, she called her father and told him that she needed to see him because of what she had “re-remembered.” Puzzled and apprehensive, he drove several hours to her apartment in London ...
So on Thursday afternoon, I arrived at Priscilla’s London flat, and the door was opened by a young woman whom I didn’t know who introduced herself as Lena. She said that she was there to help Priscilla. She ushered me into the front room of the flat, which had a bay window, and in the bay window there was a raised dais where normally Priscilla’s boyfriend had his drum kit. But the drums had been replaced by my daughter, who was sitting there in a lotus position like a little Buddha. In the center of the room was a large chair, and she motioned me to sit in the chair. Lena came in behind me, shut the door, and sat by the door in the chair, like a guard.

Priscilla then said something like, “I want you to listen to what I’m going to say and what I’m going to read to you, and when I’m finished, I shall get up, leave this room, go into the garden, and you are to leave the house. I don’t want you to say anything. I don’t want you to ask any questions. I just want you to listen to me.”

My mouth went dry. I felt as if I was about to drop my guts on the floor. I said, “Can’t I even have a cup of tea, Priss?” She said, “No, I don’t want you to speak.”

She then started reading from a handwritten statement. The opening was a sort of preamble describing how she’d had a poisoned life up until now, that she’d managed to strip away the poisoned outer layers of her personality, and she’d been able to discover her true inner self. She then explained the reasons she had these poisoned layers. “When I was a baby of nine months, you started to tickle my clitoris, and you liked it. At two, you started sticking pencils into me. At four, you started buggering me. At eight, you started raping me.” There was a whole catalog of things, the most gross sexual abuse that you can imagine. Fingers, pencils, penises. It was all a complete shock to me.

I went numb. I could not believe what I was hearing. I remember thinking, “This is not real, this couldn’t be happening.” The only sound or gesture I made was when she said, “And when we were in France, you wanted to rape me.” This referred to a very recent holiday I’d taken with another couple and Priscilla. She’d come because Gloria, my second wife, had to drop out at the last moment. Gloria had suggested I take Priscilla, who used to think I favored her sisters. Because it was prearranged, we shared a twin-bedded room. She wasn’t ill-at-ease at the time, because she came back home with me and stayed another night in my house before going back to London. So when she said I wanted to rape her during this trip, I guffawed and said, “Oh, Priss!” Whereupon Lena exclaimed from the back of the room, “You laughed! You must be guilty!”

Priscilla moved into a second part to talk about the compensation she wanted to help her overcome the pain and suffering the supposed abuse had caused her. This was broken down into sections. She needed psychotherapy for two more years. She needed a safe place to live. And at the end of each item, she gave a monetary figure. At the end, she said, “So the total is 70,000 pounds,” but quickly added, “I’ll settle for 50,000.” I hasten to add I never paid her any money, other than to help pay for psychotherapy that I thought would help her.

Then Priscilla read out a letter from Rebecca Acceber, her homeopath. I subsequently got a copy of it, so I will read part of it to you. It is dated August 21, 1991, and addressed, To Whom It May Concern. “As a professional practitioner, I wish to state that all Priscilla Brightwell’s symptoms, whether physical, mental or psychological, are consistent with her being a survivor of father/daughter rape, over a continued period of time. I have a great deal of experience in working with people who have been abused as children, and sadly Priscilla is one of them.

“Her recent re-remembering is also very consistent with survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The obscured memories are a very common coping mechanism for children where the reality of the abusive acts are shelved, often for years.... Amnesia often occurs, where the memories may not surface for years, or may come back in vague flashbacks or nightmares or hallucinations, leading to a great deal of mental anguish. The healing only starts to begin with the re-surfacing of the memories.”

Then, in this letter, the homeopath talked about Priscilla’s schedule of monetary demands and how important they were. Finally, Priscilla read the end of the letter: “The abusive father, who could face many long years in prison, should seek help for himself and not deny the damage he has done to his daughter, whose safety was in his hands. He must not expect forgiveness from her.”

This whole scene lasted about half an hour. It seemed like an eternity, though. The only other thing I said was at the end. “Those things didn’t happen, Priss.” Any person with an ounce of common sense would know they never happened. And anyone who knew her as a child would know she couldn’t have been the Priscilla we knew had these things been happening to her.

I left Priscilla’s flat literally in a state of shock. I got in my van and drove round the corner to a phone box and rang up Rachel, my youngest daughter, who lived nearby. (My oldest daughter, Mary, was married and living on the Continent, so she wasn’t part of this.) I said, “Rachel, I just had the most disastrous meeting with Priscilla,” and she said, “Yes, I know. And I believe her.” So that was sort of a double blow. I said, “Well look, can I come round and talk to you about it?” She wasn’t at all keen, but I insisted. I went round and she came out of her flat in a semi-hysterical state and started shouting at me. The essence was, “Why would Priscilla say these things to you if they’re not true?” It occurred to me that maybe Rachel was catching the bug, too. I said, “Do you think those things happened to you, then?” She said “No,” then added the enigmatic phrase, “But if they did, it was only minor.” I said, “I assure you, Rachel, I did nothing to you or Priscilla.” She said, “Well, why is she saying it then?” And of course back in September of 1991, before the False Memory Syndrome Foundation had even started in America, it was a very difficult question to answer. I said I didn’t know.

We walked down the road and sat on a park bench and talked about two complaints she had against me. Neither was about sexual abuse. I said, “Well, how are we going to resolve this?” And she said, “I never want to see you again in my life.” We were both crying. I got up from the park bench and walked away, and I haven’t seen Rachel or Priscilla since. I have just celebrated the fourth anniversary of the loss of two daughters.

[When Harold told his wife Gloria about the accusations, she went to see Priscilla. While sitting at the kitchen table, she saw a number of books, including The Courage to Heal and Father-Daughter Rape. After listening to Priscilla, Gloria told her, “I feel sorry for you, Priscilla, that you think those things happened, because I know they didn’t.” Priscilla became enraged and asked her to leave. Back home, Harold contacted his ex-wife (the girls’ mother) Hannah.]

I went to see Hannah. Of course, she knew all about it. These accusations had been coming out for weeks, apparently. A meeting was set up with Hannah and two other friends of hers. I went to a sort of kangaroo court, where I was grilled by these three women. Why had I gone on holiday with Priscilla without a dressing gown? Why had I shared a room with her? I explained that I didn’t have a dressing gown and I hadn’t thought tuppence about it. Priscilla and I had never had any problems before. The thought didn’t cross my mind that I was transgressing any boundaries or anything. Finally, Hannah and I agreed we would seek proper therapeutic help for her. So we found a well-recommended therapist in London, Stephanie Brent, at the London Institute.

So off went the two girls to have therapy with Stephanie. I soon became very concerned that this woman had not made a proper diagnosis of their problems. She was treating them for the wrong disease. She was treating them as if they were victims of real childhood sexual abuse. She should have treating Priscilla as someone deluded into believing it. There was some pretty acrimonious correspondence between us which got nowhere. When I pleaded with her to help arrange some joint therapy, she wrote, “Both your daughters have to make their own decisions about their beliefs, I cannot change nor implement these. Should they wish to make contact, that too is their decision. You would need the agreement of your ex-family before they would enter therapy with you.” I was so outraged that she should call my daughters my “ex-family.” In the end, I stopped paying for them to have therapy.

[Two weeks after the disastrous confrontation in Priscilla’s flat, Harold wrote her a long letter. “My love for you has been assailed on all sides by every emotion a father could possibly have: shock, outrage, anger, humiliation and despair. Now I have an overwhelming feeling of anxiety for your safety and well-being. . . . Priscilla, I know, and somewhere inside you, you must know too that those terrible things did not happen to you. . . . Anyhow, Priscilla, when the truth does dawn for you, I’ll be here and I know that we will enjoy an even better relationship than before. Let that day be soon.” But it was not soon. A year later, an acquaintance in America sent Harold a copy of an early False Memory Syndrome Foundation Newsletter.]

For me, that newsletter was a revelation. It was the first ray of sunshine through dark clouds. I could clearly see that my daughters had been clobbered by this new seemingly American phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome. Naively and probably stupidly, I thought I had only to show Priscilla and Rachel the evidence of FMS and they would quickly see that they had become victims of it. I had not taken into account that I was not dealing with rational people. I sent them a copy of the newsletter and Melody Gavigan’s early Retractor Newsletter. Then all hell broke loose.

[Priscilla called and left a message on Harold’s answering machine. Her words tumbled out onto the tape in a bitter torrent: “Just fuck off, you’re a fucking wanker, you’re pathetic. Just because you raped me, you want to give me back the responsibility of your pain, your shit. Well, I’m not going to take it back, because it’s yours, you fucker, you raper of children. You know what you did to me? You want me to remind you? When I was a baby, you used to get me on the floor and stick pencils in my vagina. When I was two, you used to tie me down and stick your fingers in me, didn’t you? You used to put rubber gloves on like a bloody Nazi, you’re such a freak. Then when I was having stories told to me you used to come in and you’d get into bed with me and you’d fucking stick your fingers in my vagina, wouldn’t you, and it really hurt me so much, you bastard. And then when I was four, you took me to that fucking meeting where they killed a baby and then, and then, you watched, you stood at the back, didn’t you, in your bloody fucking uniform while you watched other men bugger me, didn’t you? And then when I was eight, you started raping me, oh how exciting, you used to come into my room every night you fucking bastard. I fucking hate you for everything you’ve done to me, and I’m over it, and I’m not going to ever let you get away with it, and I’m never ever ever ever going to forgive you for anything.”]

To me, the most important thing that comes across from that tape is that she really believes that those things happened to her and has integrated it into her personality. And she is not mad, I assure you. If you met her, you would see that she is perfectly normal. She simply believes all of this. It’s really frightening.

After a while, Priscilla wrote, “Now Rachel has remembered too, but it’s different.” I never discovered what the difference was exactly. But in August of 1994, Gloria and I went down to the Welsh coast, a place where I had gone camping when my children were young. So to remind her of the good times, I sent a postcard to Rachel. That provoked a letter by return in which she wrote, “I have remembered all the abuse you made me suffer. You did sexually abuse me and you did take me to a ritual abuse meeting where I was made to partake in the killing of a baby.” And she called me a great many names -- “child molester, sicko, monster, buggerer, weirdo, abuser, pervert, freak torturer demon user.” So here’s another one, apparently believing she was taken to different meetings where different babies were murdered.

So I now have two daughters out there, seemingly believing that I did those terrible things to them, when of course I didn’t. The whole thing is so stupid and implausible. I sometimes go back and read old letters, like the postcard Rachel wrote in 1986 after a holiday visit. She wrote, “I feel so lucky to have your caring and understanding -- much appreciated. Lots and lots of love, Rachel.” But that now seems like another world, another eon ago. And reminding her of that letter wouldn’t help, I’m sure. She would find a way to turn her former feelings into evidence of abuse, just as Priscilla told a journalist in 1992. “As a small child,” she said, “I idolized my father. To survive, I had to see him as the perfect daddy, separate from the monster who abused me.” It makes me shudder to read what else she told that reporter. “I have endless fantasies of what I’d like to do to him, like chopping up his willy and shoving it in his mouth, burning him or putting him in a box and burying him.” [Harold sighs.] How she must be suffering if she thinks such things!

There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about anything. Very little has happened on my personal front for quite a long time now. One wonders whether one is doing the right thing by not chasing them up, and then if one does, one is rebuffed. So I honestly don’t know how to help them realize that their nightmare images never actually happened, except to try to let them know that I still love, miss them, and think about them every day. My door is always open for their safe return. I hope it’s soon.”

– • –