Fr. Shanley of Boston is challenging repressed memories in the Mass. Supreme Court.
Shanley is challenging his conviction based on an ongoing debate in the psychiatric community over the validity and reliability of repressed memories. The highest court in Massachusetts will hear Shanley’s appeal Thursday.
This is a very big deal, gets to the heart of many a case against the allegedly abuser priest.
Nearly 100 scientists, psychiatrists and researchers have signed a friend-of-the court brief denouncing the theory of repressed-recovered memories. Another group has submitted a brief supporting the theory.
His lawyer says he was convicted on
“junk science” testimony about repressed memories by prosecution witnesses.
It worked this way, he said:
“They needed repressed memories to normalize for the jury what was otherwise an extraordinary assertion — that he could be completely oblivious that this ever happened and then remember it 20 years later.”
Huge money settlements have been made to Shanley’s victims. His case led to the departure of Cardinal Bernard Law from Boston.
Blithe Spirit 
There are countless studies which prove that some people who have been traumatized as children can and do repress it. There are also confessions from abusers in repressed memory cases. Total amnesia for child sexual abuse happens in at least ten percent of victims.
According to several news sources, Church Heirarchy in the Archdiocese of Boston were aware that Rev. Paul Shanley endorsed sex between men and boys, but they promoted him within the church anyway. Cardinal Bernard Law also knew about Shanley’s deviant views on sex and young boys.
There are documents that indicate that Shanley was involved in the North American Man-Boy Love Association, also known as NAMBLA — an organization that promotes sex between men and boys.
http://www.google.com/search?q=shanley%2C+man+boy+love&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Child sexual abusers proclaiming their innocence and “mental health experts” willing to deny an abundance of research and evidence of repressed memories is nothing new under the sun.
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As a total non-expert, I wonder about how much credibility can be given to repressed memories? Remember the trials and jailing of those unfortunate nursery school owners on the east and west coasts based on the tales elicited from pre-school children? The cases were eventually thrown out because the social workers who questioned the children were too zealous and suggested demonic activities, etc. The impressionable children agreed with the suggestions and innocent people lost their savings and spent time in prison. Later, the then older children denied the accusations.
I know a woman, now 89, whose daughter will not speak to her because she did not stop her husband from molesting her. This woman was stunned by the accusation, as she knew her husband as a most wonderful man, father of six (five daughters). The daughter claimed a repressed memory. How do you fight that?
Also, I know that when people remind me of events they remember and I have totally forgotten, I then begin to “remember” parts of the events. Is that because it triggered the memory or is it merely due to my mind making connections due to their memories?
I am not being sarcastic; I am truly uncertain of what to believe.
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