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

Bart Stafford, Accused Sibling

When Bart Stafford's younger sister Cindy told him that she had recovered incest memories about their deceased father, he was horrified and supportive. A few months later, however, she identified him, too. Stafford, 40, was a North Carolina public relations man, the second oldest of five children. His sister Cindy, 33, was the youngest. When Bart chose to go public with his story, he discovered who his real friends—and enemies—were.
Cindy and I had lunch at a New York coffee shop just before Thanksgiving in 1991. For the first time, she told me she had started to recover memories about my father. She didn't get real specific, just said she'd been sexually abused as a kid. I was completely shocked and didn't think it was something my father would do, but why would I not believe her? She had been in therapy for a long time. I didn't realize it then, but she had recently switched therapists.

She was 30 at the time. I should mention that my mother was also undergoing recovered memory therapy at the same time, at the age of 62. It's a little unclear whose memories came first. I think my mother's did, but then they overlapped. My mother's started when she was six months old, so the memories were buried for over 60 years. Subsequently, Mom discovered abuse by the chauffeur, the maid, her brother and her father. But I didn't know any of this when I was talking to Cindy.

At the coffee shop, I said, “Gee, that's awful. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.” The last thing I said was, “Well, at least you know the root cause of some of your problems now.” Cindy was physically obese, never went on dates. She had only a few friends, and she hated her job. In other words, she fit the profile of a miserable young single woman in New York City.

My father had died long ago, when I was 17 and Cindy was 10. Our mother had been ill a lot with manic-depression and was addicted to Valium and alcohol. So Cindy had no parents, in a way. She really did have a lousy childhood.

I saw no indication of tension toward me that November, and Cindy gave me a nice Christmas present. Then on February 4, 1992, I got a Federal Express letter from Cindy covering both sides of a single sheet of legal paper. It essentially said, “You raped me orally, anally, and vaginally, over and over. I don't know when it started or stopped, but it went on for years, and you're a sick and disgusting person.” She said she'd sent copies to my mother and brothers, and that I should never contact her again.

I sat reading this in my living room. There was no one else home. I was just flabbergasted. I read it several times, thinking, “What is this about?” It could not have been more out of left field, a total mystery. I was too shocked to be hurt at the time. It just seemed like an act of insanity. She accused me of doing things I've never done with anybody. What was so startling was the breadth of the accusations. I would have had no time to do anything else. I was actually away at boarding school and college during much of this period. I would have had to cram in a lot of activity during vacations. I would have had to rape her every spare minute I had.

The next day, I wrote a letter I didn't mail, basically saying, “This is crap. First it was Dad, now me. When are you going to take responsibility for your life?” Then I mailed a much more measured response, saying, “Obviously, something did happen to you and I feel sorry about that, but it has nothing to do with me. I'll be glad to help you in any way, meet with you and your therapist to try to get to the bottom of this, but it wasn't me.” I sent copies to my mother and three brothers.

Nobody in my family sided with me. No one called, with one exception. My mother called to tell me she believed Cindy. “I love you, I'll always love you,” she said, “but I believe Cindy.” I had to initiate all other contact. My older brother began a two year fence-straddling exercise. He says he doesn't believe or disbelieve her or me. Mind you—in this letter, there was no evidence, simply pure accusation, pure venom. Only one brother has ever wanted to hear my side of the story.

That's been the focus of this tragedy for me as much as Cindy's accusations—trying to understand why my family wasn't there for me. It was crunch time, and they abdicated. They never tried to find out the truth. Instead, they kept saying I would find the answer inside me, that somehow it was my responsibility to—what? Go back in and recover memories. I should go through years of therapy to find what really happened.

I went through a six-month period when I considered whether it could have happened. I went to a therapist who had worked with victims and perpetrators. I asked him, “How can you tell if someone is really a perpetrator? What do they sound like?” He said, “A perpetrator would be saying exactly what you're saying, only he would be lying.”^27

I only saw him a few times. I stopped going because he was too understanding. I wanted him to be a devil's advocate, to flush me out, see if there was any truth to what Cindy said. Then I went to see a woman therapist, who seemed very reasonable. My wife Cheryl had been seeing her, too. When I stopped, she told Cheryl that I didn't want to learn about myself, that I was in denial.

Cheryl has always felt that I have a dark side that I'm trying to hide all the time, so she wasn't sure about the allegations. She would use them against me when we were arguing. “Cindy was right about you.” But I didn't think Cheryl really believed that. Now that she's gone to some FMS Foundation meetings, she understands.

I found out about the FMS Foundation in August of 1992. It was a real life raft, like a life preserver from the deck of the Titanic. You just feel total isolation, accused of doing the most hateful thing you could do to a person.

I went public in April of 1993, doing an on-the-record interview with a local newspaper columnist. I thought it was important for someone using his real name to say, “This is going on, and it's screwed up.” Anyone who knew me would never look at this issue again the same way. Also, I lived in fear of this getting out, even though I hadn't done anything wrong. I didn't want this thing hanging over my head. It gave Cindy power over my life.

My big mistake was in not calling up everyone I knew beforehand and informing them. I also didn't enlist the support, advice, and counsel of my wife. Her bitterness and resentment over how it affected our family were hard to cope with.

The newspaper article was generally accurate, but it left out one tremendously important fact—that my sister had also accused five other people, including my father, a maid, and a few more I didn't even know. I think the reporter thought it would make a better story, just her word against mine.

A lot of people in the community read that article and had a field day with it. I am now the world's authority on the knowing glance from across the room, field, or road. People in this nice little suburban neighborhood closed up shop. My eight-year-old son Jeffrey got picked on at school. He became a pariah. One day we were walking around the block with Jeffrey and ran into neighbors, out with their son, who was in Jeffrey's class. They refused to let them play together. The mother said, “You are sick. If any of you come to our house, I'm going to kill you.”

When the story came out, any relationship that was the least bit strained started to crack. Anyone who had ambivalent feelings about me or a shade of negative opinion turned on me. The good part is that a lot of my friends came up and said, “That's awful.” I got a lot of sympathy. One of the hardest things to go through is the silence, when you feel so terrible but can't tell anyone.

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Rhonda and Paul Hallisey, Accused by Facilitated Communication

Rhonda and Paul Hallisey were initially intrigued in 1991 when they heard about facilitated communication, a revolutionary new method that might allow their autistic teenager, Lyle, to communicate with them. “I went to Douglas Biklen's seminar. He's the guru of facilitated communication, from Syracuse University. I came back really excited about the wonderful results,” Rhonda remembered. By supporting the autistic subject's hand, wrist, or arm, the “facilitator” could help the individual type out messages on a keyboard. Consequently, children previously locked in a silent world could now write poetry, do math problems, write essays, and reveal their innermost thoughts. Until then, Lyle could say only a few words, such as “bathroom.” Eager to try it out herself, Rhonda had no success with her son, but she saw no harm when special education instructor Sally Hall, who had been trained by Douglas Biklen, began to facilitate with Lyle. On the last day of school in 1992, she got an ominous phone call. . . .

It was clear from the phone conversation that this had something to do with sex abuse. I worried about it while I drove to the school. I knew, of course, that Lyle was in a vulnerable position to be victimized. We weren't hysterical about it; we were just aware. So we wouldn't let him go to public bathrooms alone, things like that. I assumed this had to do with one of the school kids in the bathroom or something. When I got there and they told me the allegations involved my husband, I just said, “That's impossible.” I was relieved, because I knew that was ridiculous. But then the social worker from the Child Protection Agency handed me a piece of paper with the message Lyle had supposedly facilitated with Sally several days before. It was unbelievably awful, typewritten. I could hardly even bring myself to read such filth. “Poppa stiks his prik up my butt. He make me mouth cock.” That's part of it. Supposedly Sally, the special ed teacher, had facilitated this with Lyle in the afternoon on a letterboard and had typed it from memory that night.

The social worker told me they had a warrant for my husband Paul's arrest. That's when I knew this was really serious. I started firing questions at her. Why wasn't this put on the computer initially? Why wasn't I notified immediately? The social worker was real condescending. “Mrs. Hallisey,” she said, “if you don't settle down, I will leave the room until you calm down.” That really got me angry, that's what you say to children. I said, “Just a minute! If you don't answer my questions, I will leave the room.” She was very cool, aloof. I wanted to know where my husband was. She said she had no idea.

They had to take Lyle for a physical. I was very upset about that, because he has always been very fearful of doctors. Even to clean teeth, we'd go three or four times before the actual cleaning for him to be comfortable. I said, “Wait a minute, don't I have some say in this?” I didn't. At this point, I was just in shock, and I wanted to get some word to Paul. I followed in a car behind them to the hospital. They wouldn't let Lyle travel in the car with me. I was there during the exam. There was no evidence of sexual abuse. It was a horrendous experience. I'm a person who tries to find the good in everyone no matter how bad they appear. But by now, I was so angry and upset, I had to struggle not to jump on them and attack them, that's how bad it was. Nothing that I said made any difference.

After the exam, the social worker went into another room to make a phone call. This whole time, Sally was facilitating with Lyle like mad. I watched very carefully. I always had questions about FC but never voiced them much. I saw Lyle turning his head, looking around, and Sally was guiding his hand. It was just flying over the keyboard. While this was going on, she was saying what he typed aloud. “I'm sorry, Mom, I didn't mean to hurt you.” I thought, how could anyone possibly believe that he's doing this?

After the physical, I went home. I still didn't know where Paul was. Our oldest son John was graduating from high school the next day, and several relatives were staying with us overnight. A police officer came by with a warrant. I told him it couldn't have happened on one alleged day. On that particular night, Paul had come home, I handed him a hamburger, and we went right out the door. The policeman said, “But why would Lyle, such a bright intelligent kid, say something like that if it wasn't true?” I just looked at him in disbelief. He had just been fed this line by the school and by Sally about how smart Lyle was. I thought, “You wouldn't even know this kid if you fell over him.” This was frightening, because these were the “professionals” supposedly in charge of situations. Finally, we agreed that Paul was not to go into the house, and he wouldn't be arrested.

When Paul finally got home, I met him at the door and explained what had happened. It was terrible. Paul couldn't believe it. He wanted to talk to Sally, the facilitator. At this point, we were terrified that they would take Lyle away and put him in a foster home, which they had threatened to do. That's why Paul went to live with a friend. Finally, six months later, the judge let him move back in.

Sally appeared to be very possessive of Lyle. It came out in court that Lyle, while being facilitated by Sally, said he wanted to live with her. It became obvious that Sally thought I was not allowing Lyle to grow or recognize his capabilities. You know, “The Bad Mother.” Sally was young, in her mid-20s. We never found out whether she was sexually abused herself. We still don't understand why she facilitated these horrible allegations.

Immediately after the charges came out, Paul and I decided to take Lyle to a psychologist. We thought, perhaps there's really something bothering him. I knew Paul hadn't done anything to him, but maybe it was something else. Your heart would go out to Lyle when he sat watching his brother going out on a date. We worked frantically to get kids to be his friends. Maybe he feels badly about something, we thought. We wanted to be sure, not just brush it off. So we asked around for a good therapist who also knew about autism and facilitation, and we found Shirley Dodd, who was in her mid-30s.

The first meeting, all three of us went, and we told her the situation. We were there an hour. One of the first things she said to me was, “Do you have an open mind?” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Do you have an open mind that there's a possibility that your husband did these things?” I replied, “Yes, I have an open mind. But I know Paul didn't do any of these things.” She asked Paul a question. She was very hostile, insisting, “Just answer me yes or no.” Paul said, “Just a minute, I want to explain a little.” It was obvious that she thought Paul had done something. Out in the car, Paul said, “Well, I'm guilty, aren't I?” We couldn't believe it. Cross that lady off our list. The therapist's attitude surprised me, really shocked me. I expected listening, counseling, getting our feelings out, getting to know us, getting a perception. It just wasn't the case. She had a mindset. Throughout these sessions, when I'd say, “Let's talk,” she brushed me off. Later, during one of the court sessions, the judge ordered Lyle to go see Shirley with Sally facilitating for him. We were there in court, saying to ourselves, “No, no, you fool, don't do that.”

Fortunately, the judge wasn't a fool after all. He asked better questions than our lawyer. A research psychologist from a nearby university tested the facilitation with Lyle, and he concluded in a well-designed test that it was the facilitator who was influencing the communication, not Lyle. He'd show them different objects without telling them, and it was always the one the facilitator saw that got written down. The judge dismissed the case. The state filed an appeal, but all the charges were eventually dropped.

I think that whole year was very hard on Lyle. He's been accustomed to going everywhere with the family. But that year, I couldn't take him anywhere. He wouldn't leave the car. I had a hard time getting him out of the house. He refused even to go to the library or the market. He just said “Stay, Stay.” Because of the judge's orders, I had to take him to see Shirley, the psychologist. She made me leave the premises, saying that if Lyle knew I was close by in the waiting room, it would make him uncomfortable. I believe some of those sessions were horrible for him. I could hear him yelling when I pulled up outside the building to pick him up.

Sally Hall has now left the school, but I still believe they support FC. Those people who believe in it will never change their minds, even after repeated tests which have indicated that it doesn't work. I asked the facilitators to try it without looking at the board and see what happened. I don't think they ever did. It's more than digging in their heels; it's something they just believe. Everyone keeps talking about trust—Lyle's lawyer, the facilitators, the psychologist, the social worker, the teachers. “You have to have trust. The children won't facilitate with just anyone.” It was like, it won't work unless the autistic child trusts you. It's that belief system—they won't let it go. I understand, I'm an educator myself. You have this sense of mission, of helping, saving the world. I do, too. So many times I wanted to take these kids home, thinking, if they only had a decent environment, they'd do okay. Because of Lyle and involvement with other special-needs families, I can see where Sally was coming from.

From day one, we felt because of the way society at large thought about abuse, the automatic biases, we needed to go public with our story. We got some phone calls, people thanking us, a woman in tears. Our story had freed her, she said. She was grieving in secret before that. Others called who were accused of sexual abuse that had nothing to do with facilitation. These people were petrified that their children would fall down and be bruised and they would be accused of abusing them. I was so appalled about what was happening. One of the hardest jobs in the world is to be a parent, and for someone to negate everything that you've done and not have it count is just deplorable.

[After Rhonda had told the basic story, Paul Hallisey agreed to talk. He was still very bitter about the accusations.]

Paul: It's been devastating. My life has always revolved around my kids. They're the most important part of my life. I've been a very involved parent and active community member, helping out with kids' programs. To accuse me of sexually abusing my son is the worst thing in the world. It was devastating to be kicked out of my own house for six months.

Not once was I put on the stand to testify. To this day, no one has asked me if I was innocent or guilty. They kept me on this string for almost nine months. I won't be satisfied until they admit they've made a mistake. The school officials say, “We are mandated to report allegations.” I don't buy that. I'd be the first one to go to bat for a sexually abused kid, but to use someone holding someone else's wrist over a keyboard to automatically find me guilty, that doesn't make sense. People have to be made accountable. The attorney for the Child Protection Agency had me guilty from day one. She really wanted to get me.

Even though the charges were dismissed, I still feel people look at me differently. You never know what people think, even my friends. For instance, when I was staying at my friend's house, the thing that kept me going was seeing his little kids. They looked at me with innocence. They didn't know about this garbage that was going on. But I'm still not sure whether he'd ever let me babysit for his kids. And that hurts. Going down the streets of this small town we live in, I've always got it in the back of my head: “Do they think I'm guilty?”
Chapter 4a: The Retractors

I did it not out of any anger, malice or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them, but what I did was [done] ignorantly . . . . I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families.

—Ann Putnam, writing in 1706, 14 years after her accusations helped spark the Salem witch trials²⁸

Interviews in this chapter:
Olivia McKillop, retractor

Linda Furness, British retractor
Laura Pasley, retractor (her real name)
Maria Granucci, retractor
Leslie Hannegan, Christian retractor
Nell Charette, MPD retractor
Stephanie Krauss, retractor from a psychiatric hospital
Robert Wilson, retractor
Some of the most compelling voices in this book belong to those who were once convinced that they had recovered memories of incest and then changed their minds. I call them “retractors,” for lack of a better term, though that sounds awfully clinical. A longer but more accurate description would be ventured-to-hell-and-back-survivors. They offered startling personal insights into the repressed memory phenomenon.

I hope that, after reading these stories, readers will better understand how and why someone could come to believe in bizarre, unreal allegations. Most entered therapy wanting to get better, to find answers to extremely unsettling problems. “I was desperate,” Laura Pasley explained. “It was like I was drowning and this person reached out a hand to me, and he was my only hope.” As a result, they usually became extremely dependent on their therapists. “It's like I sold my soul to this man,” Pasley said.

It is difficult to read these stories without becoming enraged at the therapists who fostered these illusions, even when they appeared well-intentioned. Some of these professionals clearly brought their own needs, neuroses, and insecurities to their work. Nell Charette's therapist, for instance, styled himself as a mini-guru and had sex with clients, while ex-Marine Robert Wilson's counselor took a more intellectual approach. “She was trying to create a monster,” he observed, “and I happened to be her monster.” Clearly, there was something sick about these therapists' voyeuristic delight at their patients' self-destruction. Olivia McKillop recalled bitterly how her therapist smiled in triumph after a particularly harrowing memory retrieval session, then practically ordered her to hurt herself.^29

Yet blaming only the therapists is too simplistic. Leslie Hannegan provides an example of a self-made repressed memory survivor who convinced herself, largely without a therapist's assistance, that her father had committed incest on her. She read Christian Survivor self-help books and interpreted sleep paralysis and panic-induced choking as evidence of returning memories. Later, Hannegan promptly dumped a therapist who expressed skepticism about whether her father had really committed these acts. Clearly, all of these retractors “bought into” the process and, at least at some level, enjoyed the resulting attention, drama, and sympathy.

I have come to regard the process as a warped kind of tango in which therapist and client danced through a fractured hall of mental mirrors. During most of the dance, the therapist led, but at other times, the client took over. Between them, they clasped childhood photos and The Courage to Heal, implicated in nearly every case, or other self-help recovery books. My dance analogy breaks down, however, at its height. It was not the therapist who cut herself, tried to commit suicide, developed multiple personalities, wrote hate letters to her parents, became a drugged-out zombie, got divorced, or found herself bound in psychiatric ward restraints.

I am not sure these early retractors were entirely representative. It takes great courage to admit that you were wrong about something so major and serious. Though these retractors were indeed courageous, I believe that they had to get out of therapy or die. In general, their therapy was so coercive and horrible, their mental and physical state so shattered, that they had little choice but to flee. There were other “Survivors” who remained firmly convinced of their recovered memories, because they did not have such atrocious experiences—though they all went through the pain of losing their families and redefining their identities.

Nonetheless, the eight stories recounted here provide lessons and hope. They make it clear that to escape from harmful therapy and begin to question memories, people needed to get away from their recovered memory therapists and stop taking massive, inappropriate drug doses^. Once they took these two steps, their minds began to clear, and they could begin to make more rational life choices. It also helped if trusted acquaintances or authority figures planted seeds of doubt. When Olivia McKillop's friend Fran told her she didn't believe in the incest memories, McKillop was livid—but she began to question her therapy. Similarly, when Leslie Hannegan's pastor confronted her, she refused to believe him at first, but then “it was like a wall coming down around me.”

As I have already stressed, it is difficult to find a reliable common denominator for those who recovered memories. Most were women, though macho ex-Marine Robert Wilson offered proof that this delusion could be fostered in either gender. Most were white and came from middle- or upper-class backgrounds, probably because they could afford therapy. Many, such as Nell Charette and Maria Granucci, found memories as housewives in their 30s and 40s, while others, such as Olivia McKillop and Leslie Hannegan, were much younger.

I did not have room here for Faith Sylvester's narrative, one of the saddest stories I heard. When she was only 12, Sylvester's aunt persuaded her to read The Courage to Heal and recover “memories” of being abused by her stepfather. As a consequence, Sylvester spent most of her adolescence living with a man she thought had molested her. When her mother discovered her journal about it, the situation blew up. Even though Sylvester, 19 when I interviewed her, had realized that her allegations were wrong, her mother and stepfather had yet to forgive her.

Some of the retractors, including Olivia McKillop, fit the pattern of young women who never rebelled as teenagers and who became incest Survivors partly to individuate from their parents. Like many others, McKillop was highly creative, dramatic, empathetic, and suggestible. Nell Charette told me that she had discovered her artistic and literary creativity in the process of becoming a multiple personality. “I do have a lot of talents in me that I probably wouldn't have known about, but they're my talents, not my alters',” she concluded.

Others who sought memories might have suffered from an inherited biological disposition toward depression. Leslie Hannegan and Robert Wilson appear to be examples where such tendencies ran in the family. Some retractors, such as Laura Pasley and Stephanie Krauss, really were sexually abused as children, though this always-remembered experience wasn't enough for their therapists. Many others weren't victims of incest, but certainly endured difficult childhoods. Robert Wilson, for instance, was harassed by his alcoholic father, while Leslie Hannegan was raised by a chronically ill mother and depressive father. Olivia McKillop, on the other hand, grew up with adoring parents, but she still felt neglected. Maria Granucci wasn't abused, but missed parental hugs and affection. The bottom line? Regardless of their backgrounds, the retractors—like all children—felt some resentment toward their parents. Essentially, I agree with Olivia McKillop and Robert Wilson, both of whom said, “If this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.”

Once they finally realized that their induced incest memories weren't real, all of the retractors experienced profound shame, guilt, and depression—particularly if, like Maria Granucci, their accused father nearly died before they retracted their allegations. Or, like another woman I interviewed, it took her mother's death to snap her out of it. “Post-retraction is no bed of roses,” Granucci told me. Some people, like Olivia McKillop, Laura Pasley, and Stephanie Krauss, sought qualified counselors to help them sort out issues and reestablish family relations. Others, like Maria Granucci or Robert Wilson, were too distrustful of therapists to go anywhere near them.

Even when the incest accusations had been dropped, family relations inevitably remained strained. Spouses of retractors, who supported them throughout the ordeal while watching their families disintegrate, often expressed deep bitterness over what they've had to go through. In rare cases, such as that of Faith Sylvester, the formerly accused parents might be so hurt that they wouldn’t take their children back. Even in the majority of the cases, where mothers and fathers gladly forgave and celebrated the prodigal's return, there might be an abundance of love—but trust took longer to rebuild. Sometimes retractors couldn’t get the well-rehearsed abuse images out of their heads. “I still have flashbacks in a way,” one retractor told me in an unpublished interview. “The memories still seem so real. It's frightening.”

Retractors struggled to understand how they could have been so sure of such unlikely events. What did it all mean? How could it have happened? As Melody Gavigan put it in the first issue of her newsletter, the Retractor, “We are frightened, we are embarrassed, we are confused, and we are in shock.” While attempting to understand the process that engulfed them, however, she recognized that they must learn to forgive themselves. She quoted Dante, who also journeyed to hell and back: “Midway life's journey I was made aware / That I had strayed into a dark forest / And the right path appeared not anywhere.”³⁰

Fortunately, the following people found their ways out of their own dark mental forests.

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