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

Hank and Arlene Schmidt, Accused Parents,
and Frank Schmidt, Their Son

On the big-screen television set in their Utah living room, we watched the video of Stephanie, made in 1990 when she was a senior in high school. A radiantly beautiful young woman with long, dark hair, she sang a solo, part of a special program for aspiring professionals. Quietly, Hank and Arlene Schmidt wept, which was rare for them. In public, Hank hid his grief behind a jovial exterior, and Arlene behind a wall of competence. They had not seen their daughter since she accused them of incest early in 1992. Hank, a doctor, and Arlene, an editor, became so depressed that neither could work. They spent most of their time at home, living on Hank's retirement funds, trying to understand what happened.

“Stephanie was a dream child,” Arlene told me. “We always thought we had the most wonderful, stable, well-adjusted, in-charge daughter in the world.” Even as a baby, she was a delight, singing softly to herself in her crib. “As a teenager,” Hank added, “she never rebelled like her friends. We felt so fortunate.” Notes she wrote to her parents as a teenager bore them out. “I love you and think that you're the strongest man alive,” she wrote to her father when she was 15. “You are the best parents in the world and I love you.” Three years later, she wrote to her mother, “I love you and I appreciate all the things you do, even the little things you think nobody notices.”

Their first hint of trouble came in the fall of 1989, her senior year, in a letter Stephanie left on the kitchen counter. “I need help,” the letter began. “I've got this really bad emotional problem.” She described how she periodically suffered from “terrible emotional battles with myself.” When she wasn't in this state, “I feel fantastic and I'm very happy,” but then “I get so upset over nothing I can find, and a billion different thoughts and feelings collide and I get all confused.” She concluded that something was wrong with her, but “I'm afraid of finding out what it is.”

Completely surprised and dismayed, her parents arranged for her to see a psychologist. After three months, Stephanie said she thought she was all right, and the matter was dropped. After graduation, Stephanie decided not to go to college, took a job, and continued to dream of a singing career. Just before her 21st birthday, she moved out of her parents' home to live in an apartment with two friends, Marianne and Winston, but she continued to see her parents regularly. Then Stephanie became close friends with Josie, an older woman at her work, and spent less time with her parents. She began to read self-help books Josie recommended. Still, Christmas of 1991 passed uneventfully. It was the last holiday they would celebrate together.
Arlene: On Feb. 20, 1992, we got this letter from Stephanie, completely out of the blue. It began, “Dear Hank and Arlene,” something she'd never done before. “I'm writing to tell you that you won't be hearing from me for a while, and I don't want you contacting me either. I am working through some childhood issues, as I'm beginning to remember my childhood.” She said she needed a complete separation from her family and was “taking responsibility” for her life. She ended by writing, “This is what I need for myself, and my needs come first for me now.”

Hank: We said, “Huh?” It didn't sound like her at all. It sounded like some robot was talking. It didn't make any sense. It was just unbelievable. By this time, she had kicked her very best friend Marianne out of their apartment. They had been like sisters since they were 15. We had worried because Marianne seemed to manipulate Stephanie emotionally. Stephanie became whoever she was with; she'd take on the persona of whoever she was infatuated with. Now she dumped Marianne big-time, and shortly afterward, she dumped Winston, too.

Arlene: I called Winston, after we got this letter, and he said, “Mrs. Schmidt, she's saying all kinds of crazy things. I don't know what to think.” That's when I found out that Josie, her new friend from work, had gotten Stephanie to see this psychic, Ramona. Apparently, Ramona was hypnotizing Stephanie to help her remember all kinds of abuse in her past lives. Soon afterward, Winston showed up on our doorstep and told us she'd kicked him out, too. One night she had come back from seeing Ramona and told him, “I found out my parents did horrific things, so horrible I can't even tell you. They sexually abused me and did all sorts of things to me.” He was dumbfounded. And because he didn't get right in there and say how sorry he was in the right way, she booted him out.

He told us that night that Stephanie was having memories that we were in some sort of ritual abuse cult along with our Mormon friends. That was the most preposterous thing yet. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous than a devout Mormon couple inviting a group of other devout Mormon couples into their home for the purpose of sexually abusing their daughter? What a way to get into the Celestial Kingdom!

I'd written Stephanie a letter, of course, saying that “it is quite devastating to have someone you thought you had a great relationship with all your life drop this kind of bomb on you with no explanation at all.” I told her we'd agonized over this and couldn't figure out what we might have done to her, but that we should discuss any problems openly under the supervision of a trained counselor. No response.

Finally, I couldn't stand it any more. We'd received some mail addressed to her, so I used that as an excuse to go see her, and I wrote her a little note along with it, telling her how I was crying all the time and couldn't eat because of this, and pleading to talk. When she opened the door, she just stood there with this weird robot smile. “I can't talk to you now,” she said without changing her expression. I kept saying, “Why not? When do you think we could get together?” No matter what I said, she just kept repeating, “I can't talk to you now,” and I realized she'd been rehearsed to say this. I left the letters and walked away. She was still smiling. That's the last time I've ever seen her.

[Though Arlene didn't know it, her 25-year-old son Frank was asleep in Stephanie's apartment during their little conversation in the doorway. Stephanie had called and told him the new memories she was having, and he believed them. He'd traveled a thousand miles to come see her. I interviewed Frank separately and will allow him to tell part of his story here.]

Frank: Stephanie called me in January of 1992. She'd dropped some hints about sex abuse before this. It's funny. As she told me about these awful memories, she'd say she thought it was our father, but she wasn't quite sure. She'd say, “I think he did this,” then a minute later, she'd turn around and say, “He did this.” She had a lot of specifics. She said she had been threatened and brutalized and had been raped with a gun in her vagina and her anus. She claimed she had gotten venereal disease from Dad, and that he'd gotten her pregnant and done an abortion on her at home. And that when she was younger, Mom and Dad routinely locked her in a large chest at my grandfather's house. She told me the abuse had lasted from when she was four until 14. I was utterly stunned and shocked. It was unbelievable, but why would she make it up?

Also, you have to understand that I was still very angry at my father. We had a bitter falling out when I was 18 over his refusal to pay full college tuition so I could go to a little-known school near Mary, my girlfriend, who is now my wife. So I could imagine this horrible thing being done by him. I talked to Mary about it at length. She was horrified and angry at my father.

I called Stephanie the next week and offered to visit in March. She seemed genuinely surprised and pleased at my show of support and willingness to come. In the meantime, I was more and more distraught. I became quite depressed and found it difficult to go to work. I took a voluntary leave for six weeks and sought counseling at a local clinic with Lucille Hart, an M.S.W. She was about 36, very attractive, with long blond hair. She seemed very friendly and supportive. During our first session, I told her I was confused and depressed. I said, “My God, if this happened to Stephanie, could it have happened to me?” She said, “Of course. It probably did.”

That night, I was lying in bed and couldn't sleep. I sort of relaxed, and then I felt my whole body tense up, and I had a kind of pain in my anus and felt terribly afraid. At my next session, Lucille said, “Oh, that's an abreaction.” I said, “What's that?” She said it was a body memory. The natural conclusion was, “Oh, I've been raped anally.”

I was uncomfortable with the idea of being hypnotized. She told me, “This isn't really hypnosis, I'm just going to help you relax and think.” She explained that it was similar to the meditation I do before I write short stories. So we did guided imagery, where I would imagine myself flying around through the air, like flying into the past.. I flew back to the house where we lived when my father was in his residency, when I was six. I opened the door to my bedroom, and there I was tied down to my bed. My father was cutting on my penis with a scalpel. I got really frightened, so I flew back to the present.

[When Frank arrived in Arkansas to visit Stephanie that March, he believed that they were both incest victims, but he wanted proof. He convinced her to go to a gynecologist to check for the scars she claimed as a result of the abortion. When the doctor found none, Stephanie became enraged and said he was part of a conspiracy. She took Frank to visit Ramona, the psychic. He concluded that she was a quack and a fraud. Frank was upset when Stephanie told him about her mother's visit and how she had driven her away. “She laughed a wicked laugh and burned Mom's note.” Instead of the suffering soulmate he expected, he found his sister to be “cold and calculating, downright cruel.” By the time he left, it was clear that she had no use for him, because he wasn't the strong ally she wanted. In the meantime, Arlene was trying other avenues.]

Arlene: After my failed attempt to talk to Stephanie, I didn't know what to do. I decided that her behavior might stem from her lupus, a rare disease she'd been diagnosed with when she was 16. Lupus affects the autoimmune system, attacking connective cell tissue. It can cause depression, delusions of paranoia, and other symptoms which seemed to match Stephanie's situation. She had really liked Dr. Strunk, the lupus specialist, so I called him and explained the situation. He agreed to contact her and arrange an appointment. But she refused. I was so worried. I thought, “My God, Stephanie will have convulsions and die!”

Hank: Then we got another short letter from Stephanie, dated March 20, 1992. It started right out, “My memories are of sexual abuse. And although there were some others, primarily my abusers were the two of you. These are my memories. Whether you remember them or not, I know what I know, and I have to deal with it and heal my life. I have plenty of support, many very good friends, and an excellent counselor. I am doing well.” What can you do with something like that, knowing that your daughter thinks her parents were black-robed monsters who ate baby flesh? Oh, God. [laughs]

Arlene: Wherever we turned, we hit stone walls. When all this started, before we knew about the sex abuse allegations, I called Betty Carson, one of my best friends, to ask if she might help us find out what was going on. Betty is a psychiatrist. “It's funny you should call today," she said. “Stephanie just called and is coming by for dinner tonight. She said she wanted to play some new songs for us.” But when Betty called back, she said Stephanie hadn't told them anything. Later, when I told Betty about the incest allegations, she appeared to be truly shocked and upset. A month or so after that, I discovered that Stephanie was living with Betty and Sam Carson. I couldn't believe it! And when I tried to talk to either of them, they told me they couldn't talk to me without Stephanie's permission. These are people we've been friends with for 17 years. We just wanted to explain what we were going through and find out how Stephanie was doing, and they wouldn't even talk to us.

[Hank and Arlene became clinically depressed. They would stay up until 3 a.m. and sleep until noon. Neither did the dishes until they overran the sink. Arlene, not normally given to emotional scenes, would suddenly burst into gut-wrenching sobs. They were afraid to leave the house, for fear they might miss a possible phone call from Stephanie. They obsessively read books about child abuse, trying to find some explanation for what was happening. They began seeing a therapist who gave them recovery books to read. When their answers to a checklist in John Bradshaw's Homecoming matched the abuse profile, they began to search for their own repressed incest memories. Finally, they realized that it was a futile exercise. “All the talk about codependency and possible abuse took my mind off Stephanie for a while, all right,” Arlene said, “because I spent all my time thinking about me, me, me.”

They had not told Frank anything about the situation, hoping it would resolve itself without involving him. Then they accidentally learned that he had been in town to visit Stephanie and had not contacted them. Arlene called Frank]

Frank: Around that time, my mother called to fish for information about Stephanie. I was trying to act normal and be noncommunicative, but finally, I dropped my voice to a whisper and told her, “Dad did it to me, too.” It was not an easy thing to say. At the time, I felt a real physical fear of my father. I told her not to tell him because I was afraid for her safety.

Eventually, I came to realize that my father had not abused me. I started to have doubts when my wife Mary went to see a different counselor at the same clinic, trying to understand what I was going through. Mary's therapist wanted to know all about her childhood, and when she mentioned that her parents drank too much, the therapist immediately decided that they were dysfunctional alcoholics who had sexually abused her. Mary wouldn't buy it and never had another session. Looking back, we should have figured out that these therapists were sex-abuse happy, but at the time I still believed my sister. And after all, these people were professionals and had degrees.

What really got me thinking was when I visited Dr. Kurtz, the psychiatrist who headed the clinic. He was an old-style type, actually an Austrian. I had to see him before my insurance would pay for my therapy. When I told him my story, I kept seeing shock on his face. He obviously wasn't doing the best job of supervising; he was in it for the bucks. Finally, he said, “Boy, you are taking this well, aren't you?” His tone of voice hit me hard. That's when I came to realize that I wasn't feeling as much pain as the abuse would seem to warrant. My doubts spiraled rapidly. Then I went to a urologist because I thought there was a scar on my penis, this line running up the backside. He was a nice old guy and didn't laugh at me, but he told me it was perfectly normal, that everyone had that line.

I sat down on Father's Day and wrote Dad a card, telling him I no longer thought he did anything to me. Then we started talking, and I'm closer to him now than I've ever been. So in a way, this process has given me my father back. By the way, I've since learned from Winston that, at the beginning of the process, Stephanie thought it might have been me who abused her. I'm sure I'm on her list of perpetrators by now.

[In October of 1992, Arlene received another letter from Stephanie, though it was dated in August. “I have come to assume that you have made yourself unconscious to a lot of things,” the letter began. She told her mother that she could never love her again, that her life was “full and rich and very happy,” and that she simply wanted to be left alone. “I love someone else as my mother now,” she ended. “This is my life now, and you are never going to be a part of it.”]

Arlene: When I got that letter, I snapped. I cried all night long. But then I began to get angry. I was tired of fighting, of trying to understand. I whipped out a quick note and mailed it: “Stephanie—You got it—you won't hear from me again unless you initiate the communication.” I signed it, “The real victim, your Mother.” But I didn't really mean it. In the letter, I told her I was going to throw out all her stuff if she didn't come get it, but I couldn't do it.

In the next few months, I discovered the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and came to understand much more what Stephanie was going through. I also ran into a “retractor” who had met Stephanie in a hospital unit for those diagnosed with multiple personality disorders. Stephanie was supposed to be a satanic ritual abuse survivor, which is why she developed MPD. This retractor told us that Stephanie would stand up in group and say, “I just can't believe this. My parents are the most wonderful people in the world. They wouldn't do this.” And then the group would jump on her and convince her again.

I wrote Stephanie again early in 1993, trying to get her to see what was going on. I told her I would never understand why she couldn't face us or even write about the things she supposedly remembered. “Are your memories that insecure?” I asked. I told her how I had gone to visit Ramona anonymously and that she had not come up with anything accurate. Ramona did suggest that I was overweight because of something to do with sex and my father, though. I also mentioned that this same exact process had happened to thousands of other families, and I hoped she would eventually realize she had been duped. “Our love for you will never die, no matter what you say or do,” I wrote. “We will ALWAYS be here for you.”

Hank: Of course, she didn't answer the letter. We know now that Stephanie is seeing a psychiatrist in Betty Carter's group. She doesn't see Ramona the psychic any more. But educational level doesn't seem to matter, when every therapist sees sex abuse behind every bush. [He laughed. I commented that it was good that he had retained his sense of humor.] This is the face everyone sees, the laughing man. But I can't work, I can't do anything. There are days we don't get out of bed. Our lives are in the toilet.

Arlene: I sit around and daydream that the front doorbell will ring and she'll be there, and she'll throw her arms around me.

Hank: We're going to sell this house. There are too many memories here. Maybe that will help us snap out of this.

– • –

Philip Marsden, British Accused Father

Philip Marsden, a bank manager in Devon, England, worried about his daughter, Emma, who at 27 still lived in a community home for the mentally ill and who had yet to retract her allegations of sexual abuse against him. Yet he was hopeful. She was at least back in contact with the family as a “returnee.”
The first inkling I had of this whole mess was in the summer of 1989. Emma was 21 and suddenly disappeared. She had been on holiday with our son Simon’s girlfriend. When she came back, she was very upset because his girlfriend had been going out with other boys, and she felt sorry for Simon. There were a few tears about that. A couple of days later, I was working late and came home to find the house empty. Emma had just vanished. My wife Diane and I were desperate. We phoned the police and reported her missing. We sat up all night hoping she would call.

Until this time, she had been living with us, studying for a degree in sociology. Before all of this, she seemed great. Most people said, “You’re so lucky to have the ideal daughter.” She was very close to us, especially my wife, Diane. We never had to worry about her.

There were signs that Emma had problems, though. When she was 17, in the sixth form of Grammar School, she started to become very withdrawn. She didn’t want to go out, just wanted to spend all her time at home. She’s got very strong moral principles and was upset that other girls were sleeping around, and she didn’t want to. She did have a couple of boyfriends, but they didn’t last long.

To a lesser extent, this pattern continued in university. She studied pretty hard. I would say, “You ought to go to a social club or something.” She’d say she just didn’t want to. I felt, “Oh, well, she’ll get a job and her life will change that way.”

Then she told us she had been raped at university. She told us this in 1988, but she said it had happened a year before that. She’d been going to a rape crisis center for it. We believed it at the time and were very upset, but she seemed to be getting help for it, so what else could we do?

The day after she disappeared in 1989, she phoned to say she was all right and was coming home soon. She did come for a visit, but she wouldn’t tell us where she was living. This became a regular pattern. We used to take her back to town, but she would very carefully avoid letting us know where she lived.

She would visit once a week or so. This didn’t go on for long, because the rape crisis center called Diane and said, “You’ve got to come over here immediately. Emma has something to show you.” Diane thought it might be a tattoo or something. She went over, and there were two counselors, young women in their early thirties. We never learned their names. They said, “Give your mother the letter.” Emma did, then ran out of the room. The counselors told Diane that she must read the letter immediately. And that was when the allegations were made against me. The letter was very vague but said Emma had been abused from an early age, right up until the time she left home at 21. Of course, it said the mother must have known what was going on, too.

Diane drove home with this letter and showed it to me. We both went into a state of shock. The next morning, we went down to see our family doctor and personal friend. He was very kind, but he had no idea at that time what was going on.

That weekend, I started to have pains in my chest, and they went on for two or three days. Finally, they took me to hospital and said, “You’ve been having a series of heart attacks.” I was 52 then, and the shock of Emma’s accusations probably triggered the attacks. After that, they carried out tests on me, and I had to have a heart bypass. It was apparently a big success, since I’m still alive. I have subsequently told Emma that she actually saved my life. If I hadn’t had the minor heart attacks, I wouldn’t have known I needed surgery.

While I was in the hospital, Emma wanted to talk to other family members. Diane asked her sister Louise, and her best friend Charlotte, to go and see Emma. So her Aunt Louise and her mother’s friend Charlotte went to visit. To our horror, when they came back, they said, “Of course, it’s all true. Nobody could make all that up.” They made it clear they would support Emma and would not help us. We asked for a family conference because the psychiatrist Diane had gone to see recommended it, but they refused to talk to us.

After I got out of the hospital, it just went into stalemate. Emma didn’t want to see us. Diane’s family had all been persuaded by her younger sister, so they wouldn’t talk to us, either, including her parents and her older sister. And of course the assorted nieces and the rest of the cousins were warned off, told to have nothing to do with us. My side of the family has been quite supportive. My parents are both dead, thankfully. My brother and cousins have been very kind. They think the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous.

Diane’s former best friend and her husband started to get to some of our other friends, too. It’s amazing how some people react, even when they’ve known you a long time. They just cut you off without ever talking to you, and that’s it. But we kept most of our friends. I live in a smallish town, and because I am something of a public figure, this whole affair has been even more difficult.

Fairly soon, Emma called her mother and said she would be willing to see her, but not me. Diane and I discussed it, and we both agreed it was the only way to move forward, to keep in touch with her on whatever terms she imposed. So Diane would go and meet her in town.

In the summer of 1990, a man and woman walked up the drive to our home and asked if they could talk to me. They identified themselves as police officers from the county. They said, “You know what it’s about.” I said, “Yes, I can guess, it’s Emma. Thank goodness something is happening at last.” They were a bit surprised at my reaction. They said they wanted to interview us, and they had two other police with a warrant to search the house. They climbed about in the loft, went into the garden shed, and took away all my video films, most of which were of Turkish archeological sites. I said, “Well, you’re in for an interesting evening of viewing.”

We went down to the police station the next morning and were interviewed separately. For the first time, I discovered what had been said about us. It was so ridiculous and over the top. I had supposedly been abusing Emma from the age of three, and it went on and on and on. When she was 15 or so, I had somehow got her and a whole group of grammar school boys to perform sex acts on the stage of the school. Don’t ask me how I got into the school. Then a year or so after that, I decided she had to become a prostitute, so I took her off and introduced her to men I knew who paid her for her services.

Then, not content with that, I decided to form a satanic ring for ritual abuse. I got together a whole crowd of men, mostly civic leaders from Devon, a fire chief, a lot of the people who worked with me, about twenty men altogether. And don’t forget the vicar and a doctor friend. So it was a nice little group we had going. We all dressed up in black robes with yellow sashes. There was apparently one other girl there, the daughter of a friend of mine. We tied her and Emma down on a big oval table in my office. It all happened at my office.

Those were the allegations. The police wanted to come and look at the office. I said, “You’d better look at the boot of my car, too.” They laughed at that. The police seemed to know it was crazy. They said, “We believe you, but what can we do to prove your innocence?” I said, “Have Emma medically examined.” By this point, I suspected her story of being raped at university was fabricated, too. Emma agreed to the examination, and it showed that she was a virgin. After the police told me the results, they did a remarkable thing. They went to see Diane’s family and her former best friend, and they told them about the medical exam results. They told them that they had made the most terrible mistake and had blackened my name and maligned my character and had not in fact helped Emma at all, and they must stop encouraging her.

And do you know what? Diane’s two sisters and her former best friend refused to believe them! They ran off to Emma and got her to tell them that all those awful things had actually happened. Charlotte’s husband is a doctor, and he thinks all those things happened and she could still be a virgin. He’s got himself so involved that he cannot admit that he has made a mistake. What hope is there? Diane’s family was boxed into a corner. They can’t now bring themselves to say, “My God, we’ve made a mistake.” And Emma is getting so much support from so many silly people, she can’t take it back.

Then the police referred Emma to social services, who contacted the Crisis Centre, and she went there. Beginning with the summer of 1991, she lived there, then went to a community center halfway house, and that’s where she still is.

But ever since the police involvement, our relationship with Emma has been getting better and better. She now comes to see us once a week. She’s been on holiday with us twice. We went together to Crete earlier this year. She sends me presents. If you saw us together, you’d think, “Well, this is ridiculous.” She sent me a birthday card recently that read, “To a great Dad on your birthday.”

In the early days, I tried to talk to her about how she was a virgin and how impossible her allegations were, but she didn’t want to know. She wouldn’t talk about it. Now she’ll talk to me about false memory syndrome, and she accepts that it’s perfectly possible to have false memories, but she won’t say it happened to her.

I think her “memories” came from a combination of television programs, nightmares, and the influence of the counselors at the rape center. She also studied sociology, and I don’t think that helped. I think Emma did genuinely believe it.

The trouble with being a parent is, you think you know your children, but you probably don’t know them as well as you think. She was probably a genuinely troubled child and we didn’t realize it. We’ve tried to figure out what went wrong. We don’t know. Our only conclusion is that we were too caring and protective.

We don’t blame Emma, but I am getting to the stage where I think she ought to take some responsibility for what’s happened. She’s a lovely girl, and though it may sound stupid, she’s a very caring daughter. As time went on, I think maybe Emma had to keep everyone’s attention by making the stories more and more bizarre.

We can’t have sensible conversations with the therapists at the Crisis Centre. They aren’t interested in what Emma said about her past. They say whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. They say she’s emotionally disturbed. From where things were, Emma is indeed much better and has more confidence. But they haven’t helped her come to terms with reality.

Sometimes I think she really is emotionally disturbed. Because she’s over 21, we have no rights at all and can’t ask for more information. I suppose I could make a stink about it, but I don’t want to make things worse. I don’t want to spoil what we have. What we have is not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than no contact at all.

– • –