Legal Issues
Some criminal cases have been based on a witness's testimony of recovered repressed memories, often of alleged childhood sexual abuse. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for child abuse cases has been extended to accommodate the phenomena of repressed memories as well as other factors. The repressed memory concept came into wider public awareness in the 1980s and 1990s followed by a reduction of public attention after a series of scandals, lawsuits, and license revocations.
In July, 2012, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that repressed memory is not acceptable as evidence in a legal action and is the equivalent of superstition, hearsay or "junk science."
In 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in Franklin v. Duncan and Franklin v. Fox, Murray et al., (312 F3d. 423, see also 884 FSupp 1435, N.D. Calif.) that repressed memory is not admissible as evidence in a legal action because of its unreliability, inconsistency, unscientific nature, tendency to be therapeutically induced evidence, and subject to influence by hearsay and suggestibility. The court overturned the conviction of a man accused of murdering a nine-year-old girl purely based upon the evidence of a 21-year-old repressed memory by a lone witness, who also held a complex personal grudge against the defendant.
In a 1996 ruling, a U.S. District Court allowed repressed memories entered into evidence in court cases. Jennifer Freyd writes that Ross Cheit's case of suddenly remembered sexual abuse is one of the most well-documented cases available for the public to see. Cheit prevailed in two lawsuits, located five additional victims and tape-recorded a confession.
On 16 December 2005 the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal issued a certificate confirming a Miscarriage of Justice to a former nun Nora Wall whose 1999 conviction for child rape was partly based on Repressed Memory evidence. The judgement stated that: "There was no scientific evidence of any sort adduced to explain the phenomenon of ‘flashbacks’ and/or ‘retrieved memory’, nor was the applicant in any position to meet such a case in the absence of prior notification thereof."
Read more about this topic: Repressed Memory
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