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APA Fraud: Ethics Complaints Filed

Against Elizabeth Loftus, Board Member


of the False Memory Syndrome
Foundation, a CIA Mind
Control/Pedophile Front
23rd June 2010

Re the fraudulent “false memories of child abuse” bromides of anti-child propagandist


Elizabeth Loftus:

” … Jennifer Hoult (a concert harpist living in New York) and Lynn Crook
(a Washington State consultant) each filed separate complaints with the
APA, alleging that Loftus mischaracterized the facts of their legal cases in
published articles. Both women brought successful civil suits because of
the sexual abuse that the fathers (and the mother, in Crook’s case)
perpetrated against them during their childhoods. … In her complaint,
Hoult alleges that Loftus used distortion and misstatement of fact to
seriously misrepresent Hoult’s legal case. … Hoult argues that Loftus used
her scientific credentials in an unscientific effort to trivialize her memories
of violent abuse. ‘I’ve proven the charges against my father in a court of
law,’ … “

Notes From The Controversy

Ethics Complaints Filed Against Prominent FMSF Board


Member
APA Declines To Investigate
TREATING ABUSE TODAY (November-December 1995/January-February 1996 double
issue)

In December 1995, two women filed ethics complaints with the American Psychological
Association (APA) against Elizabeth Loftus, PhD, regarding her published statements about
two legal cases involving delayed memories of sexual abuse. Citing procedural
considerations, however, the APA has declined to investigate the women’s ethics
complaints.

Jennifer Hoult (a concert harpist living in New York) and Lynn Crook (a Washington State
consultant) each filed separate complaints with the APA, alleging that Loftus
mischaracterized the facts of their legal cases in published articles. Both women brought
successful civil suits because of the sexual abuse that the fathers (and the mother, in Crook’s
case) perpetrated against them during their childhoods. At their trials, they presented
corroborative evidence that met the requirements for judicial proof of their allegations.

Loftus serves on the Scientific and Professional Advisory Board of the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation, Inc (FMSF). She also had been an active member of the APA since
1973, but she resigned in January 1996, shortly after the filing of the complaints. In a brief
telephone interview with TREATING ABUSE TODAY, Loftus confirmed her resignation
from the APA, but she denied any knowledge of the ethics complaints. She also cautioned that
TREATING ABUSE TODAY should not state or imply that she resigned from the APA to
avoid investigation of the ethics complaints.

When the ethic complaints were filed against Loftus, Jeffrey N. Younggren, PhD chaired
the APA Ethics Committee. During his tenure in this position, Younggren appeared as
an expert witness in many trials involving so-called “false memory syndrome,” generally
as a witness for accused perpetrators or against therapists accused of implanting “false
memories.” At the time Hoult and Crook filed their complaints, Younggren and Loftus
were both working as expert witnesses on the same side of the same case. When asked
about this coincidence, however, Loftus stated that she had no knowledge of the fact, because
she worked on many cases simultaneously and didn’t always know which expert witnesses
were scheduled to testify in any particular case.

Responding to a query from Crook regarding the relations between Loftus and Younggren,
Marguerite Schroeder, a senior investigator in the APA Ethics Office, stated that, if
Younggren had faced such a conflict of interest, he would have recused himself from the
matter. She further stated that Younggren hadn’t been made aware of the ethics complaints
against Loftus, and so had played no role in the decisions regarding them. According,
however, to the Rules and Procedures of the APA Ethics Office, “complaints are evaluated
initially by the Chair of the Ethics Committee [Younggren] and Director of the Ethics
Office” (“Rules,” 1992, p. 1614). Crook and Hoult filed their complaints on or before
December 18, 1995, and Loftus submitted her resignation on January 16, 1996. In her
response to Crook’s query, Schroeder offered no explanation as to why Younggren hadn’t
been informed of the two complaints, even though they were filed nearly a month before
Loftus’s resignation.

According to both Crook and Hoult, Schroeder stated that APA policy generally bars the
resignation of members when they’re under the scrutiny of the Ethics Committee. Schroeder,
however, further stated that Loftus hadn’t yet come under the Committee’s scrutiny, and that
she hadn’t been informed of the complaints against her, even though Crook and Hoult filed
their complaints nearly a month before Loftus submitted her resignation.

Based on these procedural considerations, the APA Office of Ethics declined to investigate
the ethics charges. Schroeder told Crook and Hoult that it’s “unusual”
for a member to resign in the timeframe between receipt of a
complaint and a committee decision regarding appropriate action.
When such a resignation does occur, however, Schroeder indicated that
the APA no longer has any authority to pursue ethics complaints
against the member.

Both Hoult and Crook have contested the APA’s decision. In a


strongly worded letter of objection to Schroeder, Crook argued that
APA policy clearly bars the resignation of a member under the
scrutiny of the Committee. She asked that the APA immediately
rescind Loftus’s resignation and proceed with an investigation of
her complaint. Hoult asked for the same actions, as well as asking the
Ethics Office to send her the procedures for filing an ethics complaint
against the Ethics Committee.

A review of the APA’s published guidelines regarding investigation of ethics complaints


seems to bear out the objections lodged by Hoult and Crook. Information provided to
complainants states that “the date of filing is the date on which we [staff of the Ethics Office]
receive the correctly complete APA [ethics complaint] form” (APA, 1995, p. 2, emphasis
added). The Rules and Procedures further state, “Plenary ethics proceedings against a
member are initiated by the filing of a complaint” (APA, 1992, p. 1 622, emphasis added).
These two statements taken together would seem to indicate that Loftus came under the
scrutiny of the Ethics Committee on the date of the filing of the complaints, and thus the
APA should have barred her resignation, as stated in the Rules and Procedures.

REMEMBERING DUBIOUSLY

In her complaint, Hoult alleges that Loftus used distortion and misstatement of fact to
seriously misrepresent Hoult’s legal case. In 1988 Hoult brought a civil suit against her father,
alleging that he had raped and otherwise sexually abused her throughout her childhood. After
several years of legal wrangling, the case finally went to trial in June 1993. On July 1, 1993,
the jury returned a verdict in favor of Jennifer Hoult, awarding her $500,000 for the suffering
caused by her father’s incestuous abuse. All higher courts have upheld the jury’s decision,
including the first circuit appellate court. When Hoult’s father petitioned the US Supreme
Court, his petition was rejected as untimely. At some point during all these proceedings,
Hoult’s father joined the FMSF.

In the March/April 1995 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER (a publication of the Committee


for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP), Loftus published an article
titled “Remembering Dangerously.” Subsequently, this article appeared as a resource
document on separate Internet home pages maintained for CSICOP, for the FMSF, and for
Loftus at the Department of Psychology, University of Washington. In the article, Loftus
reviews a number of high-profile cases involving delayed memories of child abuse. The
introduction to the article, giving a cartoon view of the legal process, indicates Loftus’s
general approach to the cases she reviews.
We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the hysteria and
superstitious fervor of the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Men and
women are being accused, tried, and convicted with no proof or evidence of guilt other than
the word of the accuser. Even when the accusations involve numerous perpetrators, inflicting
grievous wounds over many years, even decades, the accuser’s pointing finger of blame is
enough to make believers of judges and juries. (p. 20) Of the several cases reviewed in the
article, Loftus includes “the case of Jennifer H” (p. 26). Though Loftus ostensibly offers
Hoult a degree of anonymity by using an initial for her last name, she actually identifies Hoult
by citing the case (Hoult v. Hoult) in the article. In an interview with TREATING ABUSE
TODAY, Hoult stated that Loftus’s article distorts her case through a broad range of unethical
practices. Among others, Hoult asserts that Loftus misrepresents her competence, expertise,
and personal motivation to speak as an expert on trauma and abuse. As many others have
already pointed out, Loftus has never worked as a clinician and thus lacks training or clinical
experience in child psychology, trauma, the processes of traumatic memory, the evaluation of
alleged sex offenders, and child sexual abuse generally. In this regard, Hoult alleges that
Loftus violated a number of APA ethics guidelines, including the need for truthfulness
and candor, misuse of influence, and making claims outside the area of her expertise.

Hoult also alleges that Loftus used mischaracterization and omission of facts to
misconstrue Hoult’s legal case against her father. She pointed out many inaccuracies that
support this allegation. In the article, for instance, Loftus claims that “Jennifer was a 23-year-
old musician who recovered memories in therapy of her father raping her from the time she
was 4″ (1995, p. 26). Actually, Hoult began to remember the abuse at 24, at which time she
was an artificial intelligence software engineer. Records in the case show that the bulk of her
memories emerged outside of therapy. Furthermore, Hoult never stated that the rapes began
when she was four, a “fact” apparently created by Loftus for the purposes of her article.

In another passage, Loftus claims that Hoult “remembered one time when she was raped in
the bathroom and went to her mother wrapped in a towel with blood dripping” (1995, p. 27).
A review of court records, however, shows that Loftus has added two elements of her own
making: the memory of the rape itself (the trial transcript shows that Hoult never claimed to
remember a “rape”) and the blood-soaked towel (again the transcript shows that Hoult only
reported a small amount of blood between her legs, which wasn’t visible to the mother until
Hoult dropped the towel from around her body). Hoult argues that these misstatements by
Loftus put her in violation of several APA ethics guidelines, among them ethics in media
presentations and ethics regarding matters of law.

IT’S MAGICAL. IT’S MALLEABLE. IT’S…MISREPRESENTATION.

In October 1991, Lynn Crook brought a civil suit against her parents based on her delayed
memories of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by her parents. Loftus testified as an expert
witness for the defense. On March 4, 1994, the judge in the case ruled in Crook’s favor,
awarding her $149,580 in damages against her parents, who chose not to appeal the case to
any higher court.

In the January/February 1995 issue of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, Jill Neimark published an


article titled “It’s Magical. It’s Malleable. It’s . . . Memory.” In her article, Neimark quotes
Loftus, who gives an abridged and (according to Crook) seriously distorted account of her
case against her father. In this part of the article, at the heart of Crook’s ethics complaint,
Loftus summarizes the legal case as follows:
Sometimes [Neimark states, summarizing Loftus] the memories become so seemingly
fantastical that they lead to court cases and ruined lives. [Quoting Loftus] “I testified in a case
recently in a small town in the State of Washington,” Loftus recalls, “where the memories
went from ‘Daddy made me play with his penis in the shower’ to ‘Daddy made me stick my
fist up the anus of a horse,’ and they were bringing in a veterinarian to talk about just what a
horse would do in that circumstance. The father is ill and will be spending close to $100,000
to defend himself.” (Neimark, 1995, p. 80) In an interview with TREATING ABUSE TODAY,
Crook stated that Loftus’s 79-word direct quote describing her case contained nine
misstatements. “Loftus reworded events I recalled, and incorrectly claimed that a ‘fantastical’
memory had resulted in my filing this case.” Crook pointed out, for instance, that Loftus
contradicted her father’s own sworn testimony that his health was “excellent.” Crook also
argues that Loftus should have pointed out that she (Crook) won the case, after presenting
evidence that included testimony from two of her sisters who also remembered incestuous
abuse perpetrated against them by their father.

Among other ethical concerns, Crook alleges that Loftus introduces the idea of memory
progression (“from . . . to”), even though this claim had failed to hold up during the trial
itself. During Crook’s trial, Richard Ofshe, PhD, another prominent FMSF board member
who testified for the defense, claimed to see a “progression” in her memories that called them
into doubt. The judge in the case specifically dismissed Ofshe’s attempt to cry “false
memory” based on memory progression:

Finally, Dr. Ofshe characterizes plaintiff’s memories as a progress toward ritual, satanic cult
images, which he states fits a pattern he has observed of false memories. It appears to the
Court, however, that in this regard, he is engaging in the same exercise for which he
criticizes therapists dealing with repressed memory. Just as he accuses them of resolving
at the outset to find repressed memories of abuse and then constructing them, he has resolved
at the outset to find a macabre scheme of memories progressing toward satanic cult ritual and
then creates them. (Lynn Crook v. Bruce Murphy and Lucille Murphy, Superior Court of the
State of Washington In and For the County of Benton, #91-2-0011-2-5) Despite the judge’s
statement, rendered from the bench, Loftus resurrected the “progression theory” in the
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY article. According to Crook, Loftus should have indicated that her
opinion had been rejected by the court, and that her failure to do so constitutes a violation of
APA ethics guidelines dealing with truth and candor.

According to Crook, Loftus also transformed another memory, her recollection of the event
involving the horse. In the quoted passage, Loftus does seem to imply that the memory
involving the horse emerged as an elaboration and distortion of Crook’s earlier memory
involving her father, an implication that Crook denies. Crook also points out that Loftus
omitted important information given by the veterinarian who testified during the trial.
Though Loftus chose to present the possibility of anal penetration of the horse as a wholly
fantastical absurdity, the veterinarian (who testified for the defense) pointed out that it’s a
common practice in veterinary medicine.

JUST TO BE BELIEVED

Crook told TREATING ABUSE TODAY that she hopes Loftus will be asked to corroborate all
cases that she reports to the media. “I’m dismayed,” she stated, “that Loftus would use her
position as an expert witness in my case to try to prove to the public that I was yet another
victim of ‘repressed memory’ therapy.” Crook further stated that PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
should have contacted her to check the facts of the case before they published Neimark’s
article.

While researching this story, TREATING


ABUSE TODAY contacted the magazine’s
editor, Hara Moreno, to ask about the
magazine’s formal fact-checking policies.
Oddly, Moreno became extremely hostile. She
demanded to know “on whose authority” we
had undertaken our investigation. She further
stated that we didn’t “know anything about
anything,” and that she would only speak with the
APA about the ethics complaint. We tried in vain
to get Moreno to understand that we didn’t want
her to discuss Crook’s complaint, that we only
wanted to know the formal fact-checking policy of
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. We never did get an answer. The editor of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER
never returned our call to discuss that magazine’s fact-checking policies, despite a promise
from Brian Karr, the executive director of CSICOP, that the editor would speak with us.

In “Remembering Dangerously,” Loftus warns that “supposedly de-repressed” memories


could “trivialize the genuine memories of abuse and increase the suffering of real victims who
wish and deserve, more than anything else, just to be believed” (1995, p. 29). Hoult argues
that Loftus used her scientific credentials in an unscientific effort to trivialize her
memories of violent abuse. “I’ve proven the charges against my father in a court of law,”
Hoult stated, “before a jury of his peers. I am believed, by my family and my friends.” Hoult
went on to say that she expects ethical treatment from people who call themselves scientists,
including Loftus.

Loftus in fact cites scientific considerations as the reason for her resignation from the APA. In
her letter of resignation, she claims that the organization had “moved away from scientific and
scholarly thinking.” Loftus further stated that she had decided to resign “to devote her
energies to the numerous other professional organizations that value science more highly and
more consistently.” During her tenure as an APA member, Loftus served “as President of two
distinguished divisions (Experimental Psychology and Psychology/Law),” a fact she points
out in her letter of resignation.

Alice Eagly, PhD, who presently chairs the APA Board of Scientific Affairs, expressed
puzzlement over Loftus’s abrupt resignation from the APA. Eagly dismissed Loftus’s attempt
to draw a “global judgment” regarding APA’s commitment to science. She pointed out that
the APA fosters a great many scientific endeavors, and that it publishes the premiere scientific
journals in psychology.

Loftus stated in her resignation letter that she resigned largely because of the increasing drift
of the APA “away from scientific and scholarly thinking and . . . towards therapeutic and
professional guild interests.” The APA, however, recently approved the FMSF as a continuing
education sponsor, [for more information on the APA's action, please see "APA Approves
FMSF as CE Sponsor" in the same issue of TREATING ABUSE TODAY (Vol 5 No 6/Vol 6
No 1).] and one of Loftus’s colleagues on the FMSF Scientific and Professional Advisory
Board (Ulric Neisser, PhD) also serves on the APA Board of Scientific Affairs. Neisser
declined to comment on Loftus’s resignation. TREATING ABUSE TODAY sent written
requests for comment to the other members of the Board of Scientific Affairs; with the
exception of Eagly, none responded.

Peter Freyd, PhD, co-founder of the FMSF, issued a puzzling Internet statement (February 8,
1996) regarding Loftus’s resignation. Under the subject heading, “It’s their stupidity, stupid,”
Freyd stated:

The RMT ["recovered memory therapy"] people certainly go in for believing whatever
rumors they like. For the record: there are no ethics complaints against Elizabeth Loftus. She
resigned from the APA because it has moved too far from science. From his brief statement,
Freyd appears to endorse Loftus’s claim that the APA no longer holds a strong, consistent
commitment to science. The APA, however, recently recognized Freyd’s organization as a
continuing education sponsor, a move that many see as evidence of Loftus’s claim that the
APA has indeed moved away from science by entering into a partnership with an organization
(the FMSF) that promulgates pseudoscience. Pamela Freyd, PhD, the FMSF executive
director, declined to comment on the ethics charges filed against Loftus and her resignation
from the APA.

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association. (1995). INFORMATION FOR INDIVIDUALS


FILING APA ETHICS COMPLAINTS [Brochure]. Washington, DC: Author.

American Psychological Association. (1992). Rules and procedures. AMERICAN


PSYCHOLOGIST, 47, 1612-1628.

Loftus, E. (1995, March/April). Remembering dangerously. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, 19,


20-29.

Neimark, J. (1995, January/February). It’s magical. It’s mystical. It’s . . . memory.


PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, 28, p. 44-85.

TREATING ABUSE TODAY has granted permission for Internet users to post this
article onto other mailing lists and home pages. However, the publisher asks that this file
be posted without revision and in its entirety.

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