Citation

Loftus EF, Garry M, Feldman J. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 1994; 62(6): 1177-81; discussion 1182-6.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle 98195.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1994, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

7860815

Abstract

L. M. Williams (1994) has shown that many women who were sexually abused as children do not report the abuse when questioned 2 decades later. These findings do not support certain freely made claims about memory, but they do support other claims. The findings do not provide cogent support for the claim that a long stream of childhood sexual traumas is routinely banished from conscious awareness and then can be reliably recovered later. The findings do support the claim that many children can forget about a sexually abusive experience from their past. Extreme claims such as "if you were raped, you'd remember" are disproven by these findings.

Language: en