Category: “The Psychologist”

In response to their last blog post, David Pilgrim and Ashley Conway received the following email from Jon Sutton, Managing Editor of The Psychologist and Head of Science Communication at the BPS:

Hi both, saw your blog. In the interest of completeness, feel free to add this as my response:

In terms of ‘feelings’, you repeatedly used the phrase ‘high handed’ in our exchange, which is defined as ‘using authority forcefully without considering others’ feelings and opinions’.

Your article being critical of the BPS had absolutely zero bearing on the decision to reject. Everyone is welcome to explore our complete archive to find numerous pieces we have published over the years that are critical of the BPS, including from you on this very topic. 

You have, yourselves, often talked of the importance of editorial freedom, and that is something that has been vigorously supported over decades by a representative body of members on the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee. It has also been, in my experience, supported by both Trustees and senior leadership as a vital part of a healthy organisation.

In reply to this, David Pilgrim posts:

The response above from Jon Sutton is very unusual. The collective stance of senior BPS employees like him has been to studiously avoid responding to any post on BPSWatch. For any Skinnerians left out there, we were placed on an extinction programme. I am not sure how to interpret this precedent but am glad that Jon Sutton has at last come out to defend his judgment and his purported independence. However, he cannot be independent because of his conflict of interest as an employee, now with a Director title. 

Sutton’s personal style, which can be glib (one liners ending in ‘cheers’ are par for the course) and patronising (feigning worry that we might be ‘hurt’ by the rejection) is mildly irritating. However, it is not the central matter here. This is not about Jon’s personal style but the role of the editor and its funding, which I think places The Psychologist in a similar structural relationship to the BPS that Pravda had in relation to the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party. The editor is given discretion, but he or she must stay strictly in the lane set by their political masters.

In my previous post with Ashley Conway, there was much that we omitted which was relevant to the rejected piece and the precarious position for now held by the BPS about memory and the law. Here I say more on this.

Why was the piece rejected?

Why was it so important for the editor of magazine of the British Psychological Society to deny its readership a reasoned view on a topic that remains of serious public policy interest? It is not that Sutton is opposed to politics being foregrounded in The Psychologist. If he had an old-fashioned positivist stance of guarding ‘disinterested’ knowledge that would be consistent, but quite the opposite is the case. When it comes to one version of politics, identitarian special pleading, he frequently grandstands about championing this or that partisan group cause (Tosi and Warmke, 2020). 

Transgenderism has been high on his agenda, even coaching activists who were neither psychologists nor BPS members to provide a prepared riposte to appear the day after a Judicial Review judgement was published https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/blow-rights-transgender-children. The decision to publish this planned provocative article was discussed in Pilgrim (2023). Sutton responded to criticism of him about the bias, confirming that he had indeed initiated the article and quickly amended his position to challenge the judgement of the Judicial Review by stating in The Psychologist “The ‘truth’ is not always so simple, and the ‘law’ can be questioned.’”

So, something is going on here in Sutton’s selective decision-making as a gatekeeper of knowledge when politics are concerned. In the previous post, Ashley Conway and I were of the view that this is about protectionism in relation to the current memory and law policy of the BPS. In his reply to us Sutton simply denies this charge, claiming that he has been even handed. In relation to the ‘memory wars’, I can only find the piece by Chris Brewin and Bernice Andrews that was a moderating view and challenged in part that of, for example, Chris French and Dan Wright (who were advisors to the BFMS). 

It is noteworthy that a full-scale attack on the science and personal consequences of the false memory movement (barring our new book) has been missing from British psychology. This has left an open goal for the false memory experimentalists to keep churning out the same case for defending those accused of serious crimes, while patronisingly deeming ordinary people on juries, survivors of abuse and clinicians working with trauma to lack ‘scientific literacy’. 

In the US psychologists have challenged that movement forcibly at times. One, Anna Salter was sued unsuccessfully by members of the advisory group of the FMSF and another developed important concepts, such as ‘betrayal trauma’ and ‘DARVO’ (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) (Salter, 1998; Freyd, 1997). By contrast, British psychology has tended to celebrate the false memory movement (look at its taken-for-granted appearance on the curriculum), with no public and sustained opposition from within, giving it a relatively easy ride this side of the Atlantic.  This may have given Jon Sutton the confidence to bat away our piece, knowing quite correctly that a wider campaign to resist the false memory movement has been absent in British psychology. His decision could be made knowing that there would be little come back.     

Despite the modish critical social justice posturing in The Psychologist, in my view the balance of articles and discussion permitted largely defends two deeply reactionary policies. Both undermine the rights of women and children, especially when they are the victims of patriarchal power. One is in relation to excluding gender critical views and the other in relation to memory and the law, which we explained in the previous post. Sutton may deny this claim, but it is for readers to judge his credibility and that of our critique. Our piece was an opportunity for Sutton to set out the case for discussion of the ‘memory wars’ in a new context dominated by the fall out of the Epstein scandal. Instead, this is what he said when delivering the news:

Dear David and Ashley,

I have now had views back on your submission; I’m afraid the consensus is that it’s not suitable for The Psychologist. Reviewer concerns centred on whether it’s a clear, persuasive and truly psychological argument (e.g. ’seemingly forget’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting, in an article ostensibly about false memory); and on the feeling that a lot of it sits at the borderline of what might be considered professionally or even legally acceptable. You may have more luck placing it with an outlet that has that wider scope, and is more set up to do the necessary checks.

Readers of this blog can go back and check this summary dismissal to see if it makes sense, given the content of the rejected piece. What does the phrase ‘truly psychological argument’ mean? Given that psychology is such a contested discipline, is there even a consensus on what constitutes a ‘truly psychological argument’?  What exactly is wrong with the words ‘seemingly forget’ which referred to the post-Epstein reckoning of key elite actors like Mountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson?  What does the recent vernacular metaphor ‘heavy lifting’ mean exactly in this context? We pressed Sutton for more clarification, but he simply refused, invoking his unilateral editorial right to do and say what suited him and threatening to seek managerial permission from the BPS to block our emails. The dismissive position he adopted would not matter if the piece was irrelevant to the public interest and it was not properly reasoned and referenced. None of that was true about our submission cuing the next claims about the piece from Sutton.

Was the rejected piece professionally or legally unacceptable?

A nuanced put down in Sutton’s vague rationale is worth a reflection, it is this phrase: ‘the feeling [sic] that a lot of it sits at the borderline of what might be considered professionally or even legally acceptable’. What was in our piece that was even remotely unprofessional? Was it that we recorded the facts of the four cases of discredited members of the BFMS or FMSF (three of whom were psychologists). Surely it is professionally valid, and even laudable, to draw attention to ethically dubious conduct in our disciplinary midst?

Was it recording the track record of a key leader of the false memory movement, Elizabeth Loftus, when she worked preferentially in defending accused perpetrators and not their accusers, a fact that she has never hidden (Abramsky, 2004; Loftus and Ketcham, 1991)? That punching down effect is obvious when her long career, note as a (very) public intellectual, is appraised fairly. Her celebrity swansong might now be in relation to Ghislaine Maxwell, jailed for good reason. This simple fact is in the public domain.  

It is also a fact that Elizabeth Loftus was a member of the advisory board of the British False Memory Society. It is also a fact that since 1991, she has remained a lifetime member of the BPS and honorary fellow of the Society. Note she resigned from the American Psychological Association abruptly in 1996 in the wake of criticisms by survivors of abuse and some APA members, and note before the ethical claims against her were investigated and ruled upon (Dalenberg, 2014; Brand and McEwen, 2016). When Karl Sabbagh, the sex offender, who was still on the advisory board of the BFMS while in prison, ten years previously wrote his self-interested book in defence of the false memory movement, Loftus said this on its back cover:

A terrific book. Sabbagh’s journey into childhood memory shows keen insight into how it works and what it means. He offers a masterfully original and beautifully written perspective on one of the most fundamental aspects of the human mind.

That book was published by Sabbagh – that is a fact (Sabbagh, 2009). Loftus warmly commended it – that is a fact. The more we unpicked the false memory movement, as we do in our book, the more its shocking aspects kept appearing for us to report. 

Given this fact-checked picture, did Sutton’s comment, a touch menacingly, imply that our writing on these serious matters was libellous? If so, then he must be aware that libel is only relevant when a claim might both affect the reputation of a person detrimentally and that claim is factually inaccurate. If not, then it is a matter of fair comment or legitimate viewpoint. We did our best to ensure that the rejected piece was all fair comment, and all evidentially based (as we have done throughout the book that we are about to launch).  In this piece, who exactly might we have libelled?

A healthy decision to test our confidence in this overall claim, would have been for Sutton to publish our piece and then let the reviewer (or reviewers) say why we were wrong, in whole or part, and explaining why our claims were unprofessional or even illegal. That open debate would have been in the public interest (another key consideration when weighing up libel claims). The suppression of it by Sutton is, in my view, against the public interest. Again, the readers of this blog can come to their own conclusion.

There is more to come

Only around half of the Epstein files have been released. The wide ranging online and printed explorations we see about this partial picture are encountered by us all daily. One aspect of the emerging story is the association of key intellectual figures, some of whom were psychologists, including Steven Pinker, Michael Gazzaniga, David Buss, Jonathan Haidt and Daniel Kahneman. Elizabeth Loftus joined their esteemed ranks, when invited to speak at the intellectual salon of Edge.org.  This project was driven by Epstein’s funding for the Edge Foundation, which had been organised since the 1990s by the literary agent John Brockman. 

After Epstein’s arrest, confidence in the intellectual salon of Edge was undermined and its activity declined.  Epstein did not merely enjoy, and manipulate, his wealth and sexually exploit minors. In addition, his political backers encouraged the cultivation of cultural, especially scientific, influence. This is an emerging matter for current commentators and future historians. Epstein was not a rogue and evil individual working alone – he was supported by political and financial actors, who were the beneficiaries of his maleficence. They certainly included superrich patriarchs, but probably also the security services of more than one country: Russia and Israel are the focus of investigators for now. 

Finally, returning to Sutton’s advice that we might try an outlet other than The Psychologist with a wider scope, this does make a sort of sense given the above complexity, which is beyond the competence of psychology as a sole discipline to understand. But should psychologists now completely outsource their reflexivity and social responsibility to other fora? Is that a wise and ethically defensible stance? 

In for a penny in for a pound. If Sutton wants psychologists to be politically engaged with the world, he cannot pick and choose where that might take us. It cannot only be about fronting the views of transgender activists in opposition to their political setbacks or favouring the false memory experimentalist position and its intellectual leadership (which he denies). However, from where I sit, that does seem to be where we are up to when it comes to the current stance of the editor of The Psychologist. Politics is what he wants it to be because he is in charge of a node of power; but of course, someone is also in charge of him. 

References

Abramsky, S. (2004). Memory and manipulation: the trials of Elizabeth Loftus, defender of the wrongly accused. Orange County Weekly September 9th. hhtp://doi.org/10.1177/21582440231173915eekly.com/features/features/memory-  

Brand, B. and McEwen, L. (2016). Ethical standards, truths, and lies. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. 17. 1-8.

Dalenberg, C. J. (2014). Protecting scientists, science, and case protagonists: A discussion of  the Taus v. Loftus Commentaries. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29(18), 3308-3319.

Freyd, J. J. (1997). Violations of power, adaptive blindness and betrayal trauma theory. Feminism & Psychology, 7(1), 22–32.

Loftus, E. and Ketcham, K. (1991). Witness for the defense. New York: St. Martin’s Press.  

Pilgrim, D. (2023). BPS bullshit. In D. Pilgrim (Ed.) British Psychology in Crisis. Oxford: Phoenix Books.

Sabbagh, K. (2009). Remembering our Childhood: How memory betrays us Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Salter, A. (1998). Confessions of a whistle blower: Lessons learned. Ethics and Behavior. 8(2), 115–124.

Tosi, J., and Warmke, B. (2020).Grandstanding: The use of moral talk. Oxford University Press Online

David Pilgrim and Ashley Conway post…

Recently we submitted an article to The Psychologist (appended below in full). Its title reflected a serious current political context in the wake of the release of the Epstein files. The argument we pursued was well referenced, reflecting the research we had completed for our book length critique of the false memory movement, about to appear this year and cited in the piece. 

The decision to submit the article would have one of two outcomes. First, it might have been published, which we thought important given the contention of the false memory debate in psychology and its implications for the victims of crime, especially children. Second, and more likely it would be rejected, given that The Psychologist rarely allows articles which are critical of the BPS. In this case the existing policy position on memory and the law still reflects the cynical view about victim testimony, and jury decision making, in cases of contested claims of abuse from the past. 

Not surprisingly then, the piece was rejected and so we pressed the editor Jon Sutton to tell us why, but he gave no detail except to say that he had had it reviewed and it would not ‘fit’ in The Psychologist. We pressed him for all the feedback offered by the reviewer or reviewers he had used (the norm in academic journals) but he refused saying this:

The Psychologist is a magazine. We [sic] state this clearly and repeatedly, and have done for many years. As editor, I make the final decisions on content, and I do so with consideration, consultation, and accountability (to a representative body of BPS members in the Psychologist and Digest Editorial Advisory Committee, and ultimately to the Trustees). We [sic] have publicly available policies and protocols.

I absolutely understand that rejection can hurt. I’m sorry if my handling of your submission did not adequately take into account your feelings. But I’m really keen to keep this professional. So I ask you, please, do not copy me into your own continued discussions and personal criticism of me. If you do so, I believe I would be justified, with my manager’s approval, in blocking your email addresses.

Best wishes 

Jon

The allusion to criticism of him was to this from a message from DP to AC, which was copied deliberately to Sutton to be transparent about our disdain for his rejection. We were trying to model what the BPS and its apparatchiks clearly fail to do routinely: be open and complete about our thoughts about the decision. This is what DP said to AC about the editor and his decision, to his face rather than behind his back: 

“First, he [Sutton] shows clear bias on this matter (we have the receipts about the lionisation of Loftus and his denial that the BPS was aligned with the British False Memory Society). Second, if that bias were not related to major public policy questions about child protection and our new post-Epstein context of reflection we could move on. However, we cannot move on because that external context embeds the views of both us and Sutton, and so we have a shared responsibility to engage in a serious discussion about, what we consider to be, the partisan faux-science of the false memory movement.

Sutton blocking that discussion unilaterally was not wise but he did it, because he could (a motif of power). It aligns with the adolescent ‘no debate’ position common now in immature identity politics, which in my view have infected the discourse now dominant in The Psychologist. Debates are never over they are only blocked or ignored for a while.”

The allusion from Sutton about our feelings was seemingly odd (we were not hurt but angry at Sutton fronting the inadequate policy on memory and the law in such a glib manner). However, he is an invidious position. He works for the BPS, so he has a conflict of interest, when and if submissions criticise the status quo in the Society, which implicitly our submission did. If he were to be replaced as editor, any newcomer would be in the same bind.

With regard to the current BPS position, the fact of the matter is that once the balanced stance on memory and the law from John Morton and others in the 1990s was superseded by a group led by Martin Conway, containing current or imminent members of the scientific advisory group of the British False Memory Society (BFMS), then everything changed. This was policy capture in the BPS, insinuating the campaigning position of the BFMS (no doubt to the glee of those in latter). All balancing arguments and evidence from clinicians working with trauma and in child protection work, as well as more wary experimentalist was now excluded in the BPS policy. As a result, it remains tunnel visioned and indifferent to wider questions about victims. We laid out our position about that alignment between the BFMS and the BPS in a previous publication (Conway, A. and Pilgrim,(2022). The policy alignment of the British False Memory Society and the British Psychological Society. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. Mar-Apr;23(2):165-176.)  In a prior email to us, which we can cite, Sutton flatly denied the truth of that alignment. 

That is the political context of the tetchy exchange between us and Sutton. Readers of this blog are now given the rejected piece in full. They can make their own judgment about its academic worthiness and whether the readership of The Psychologist might have benefitted from its publication rather than its rejection:

THE EPSTEIN FILES: TIME TO RETHINK THE FALSE MEMORY DEFENCE?

David Pilgrim and Ashley Conway

False memories have been discussed previously in The Psychologist in a particular way, related to the plausibility of victimhood (Wright et al., 2006; French, 2018; Brewin and Andrews, 2017). In the recent context of the partially released ‘Epstein files’, a fresh controversy has arisen about the credibility of the recall of the rich and powerful, related to their past actions and inactions. The previous focus was promoted by a leading public intellectual, Elizabeth Loftus (Loftus and Ketcham, 1995; cf. Conway, A. and Pilgrim, 2026), who found loyal supporters within one part of British psychology (e.g. Blank et al., 2020; Conway, M. 2012). However, some other leading memory researchers, using a wider lens, were cautious about the narrow claims of this group (e.g. Baddley et al., 2025; Brewin, et al., 2020). 

The loyal group, including Loftus herself, were longstanding members of the scientific advisory board of the British False Memory Society (BFMS) (Felstead and French, 2021). They and their equivalents in the US False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) advanced three interlocking claims:

1 False memories can be implanted in unsuspecting clients during forms of psychological therapy that are trauma-preoccupied and technically biased towards hypnosis and guided imagery. This leads to the reporting of unfounded recovered memories, involving alleged past abuse or crimes. Accordingly, both accusers and the accused are shared victims of wrong-headed psychotherapeutic norms.

2 Recovered repressed memories are an unscientific myth. Genuine cases of abuse are not forgotten by their victims. ‘Recovered memory therapy’ thus creates miscarriages of justice.

3 In ‘recovered memory therapy’ the concept of dissociation is a sleight of hand to re-vindicate the discredited unscientific psychoanalytical notion of repression. 

By contrast, clinical and survivor researchers have responded to those points thus:

1 People report recovered memories before entering therapy or they may have never even been in therapy (Cheit 2014, 2023; Goodman-Delahunty et al, 2017; Smith et al.2000). 

2 Directive efforts to implant memories are at odds with the norms of mainstream models of psychotherapy (cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, existential or person-centred). Exploring historical trauma is good practice in mental health work and is not a form of covert persuasion, because childhood adversity is a strong predictor of adult mental health problems, independent of diagnosis (Hillberg et al 2011). There is no evidence that there exists a practicum of ‘recovered memory therapy’, nor does it have a recognised training institute; it is thus a ‘straw man’. Academic doubts about what happens in therapy are based on surveyed therapists’ beliefs in relation to the possibility of recovered memories in the wake of real trauma, implying a link to widespread manipulative ‘recovered memory therapy’ in practice (Otgaar et al 2022). However, those sceptical experimentalists have no clinical knowledge of relating to victims of trauma and its complexities. They unwisely reject clinical research for its assumed inferiority, compared to experimental psychology (cf. Barker et al, 2023). 

3 Dissociation is accepted by a wide range of clinicians who have no commitment to a psychoanalytical approach to their work. Disrupted and delayed recall are common in trauma victims. Dissociative phenomena are now well established and part of the routine focus of mental health practitioners, as well as being part of standard psychiatric nomenclatures, such as ICD and DSM, whereas the putative ‘false memory syndrome’ is notably missing from them (Lowenstein, 2018; Ross, 2022; cf. Otgaar et al 2019).

Tunnel vision and the four scenarios of false memories

A feature of the false memory movement has been its tunnel vision about one scenario: a person recalls something that in fact did not happen. However, logically if human recall is inefficient generally in life, which common sense tells us that it can be, but not always, then surely all scenarios are worth addressing in an open-minded way. The fact that in the original ‘lost in the mall’ study, most of the subjects were not duped, shows that memory frailty implies caution but not nihilism (Brewin et al, 2020). This point is reinforced if we take a wider lens on false memories, when comparing the four cells Table 1, which all in their own way provide examples of false memories.

Table 1. Four scenarios of false memories          

	Accuser	Accused
False Positive	“I was abused” but this is not true False memory	“I committed a crime” but this is not true (false confession) False memory
False Negative	“I was not abused” but this is not true False memory	“I did not commit a crime” but this is not true False memory

Those supporting the false memory movement were overwhelmingly preoccupied with the top left cell in Table 1. The top right cell is intriguing but not connected to claims about therapeutic manipulation (Gudjonsson, 2018). Moreover, in the spirit of scientific equipoise, interest should have been expressed for completeness in the bottom two cells. Indeed, prospective studies of medically recorded abuse in childhood have demonstrated that victims may have no later memory at all of what happened to them (Williams, 1994). We return later to the importance of the bottom right cell in a post-Epstein context.

Legitimation and de-legitimation of the false memory movement

Pope (1997) was an early critic of the rhetorical over-claiming from the false memory movement. Such doubts about the empirical credibility of the false memory defence were also rehearsed by Blizzard and Shaw (2019).  Despite such appeals for critical self-reflection and restraint, from the 1990s onwards Elizabeth Loftus persisted in her public role in several high-profile cases, including her work for the defence teams of, amongst others, Ted Bundy, Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Robert Durst, O.J. Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (see later). 

Three other factors are relevant in relation to that pattern of the ‘punching down’ role of the false memory defence (with the rich and powerful looking to it as a potential source of judicial exoneration). The first is that its success rate has been lacklustre; most of the accused were then found guilty of serious crimes entailing sexual or non-sexual violence or lost appeals when already convicted. 

The second is that much of the work using the defence was not related to celebrities or notorious clergy (such as the paedophile priest Paul Shanley) but disputes about firms using asbestos. The defence was used to cast doubt on the temporal link between a person with industrial disease and those who employed them (Hoult, 2023). 

The third is that the use of findings from the psychological laboratory to query any human testimony, based on historical recall in court, is not analogous to the use of say DNA laboratory testing, which is of shared interest to both defence and prosecution teams in a court context.  A technique is applied to the circumstances and specifics of a case in focus. With the false memory test there is a different logic and role for an expert witness. All that is offered is a generic doubt, based upon distal closed systems findings, provided selectively in the interests of the defence case. This doubt-casting is dubious because it entails the ecological fallacy, creating a spurious scientific confidence and biased reasoning (Uher, 2021; Smedslund, 2016; Adolph, 2019).  Accordingly, judges in both the UK and the USA have at times ruled out the views of false memory expert witnesses because of that diffuse and generic doubt-casting and its consequent lack of case-specific situated relevance.

Evidence of biased personal interest

The bias in the false memory movement, and the punching down effect it has created, mainly undermined its legitimacy. But there was more; in addition, the bias against those complaining of their victimisation came at times from some on the scientific advisory boards of the FMSF and BFMS, who were clearly self-interested. Four stand out cases exemplify this point. These are relevant, because when bias in scientific research is evident (as in this case) our routine caution about ad hominem reasoning can be bracketed quite legitimately (Walton, 1998). 

The first was Ralph Underwager a developmental psychologist who defended ‘intergenerational sex’ as harmless and God given in an interview in the Dutch paedophile magazine Paidika (Geraci, 1993). He was an early authoritative member of the FMSF scientific advisory board.  During the 1980s he had led the campaign group VOCAL (Victims of Child Abuse Legislation), which argued that left wing social workers routinely removed children from good Christian families.  This anticipated the campaigning stance of the FMSF during 1990s and after that respectable parents claiming their innocence were self-evidently innocent. 

The second was a cognitive psychologist Dan B. Wright, who sexually harassed junior female colleagues. He has been a central figure in researching dubious recovered memories (Wright et al., 2018) and was on the advisory board of the BFMS. He claimed no memory of the accusations against him from the testimonies of ten separate complainants, which was then reported by journalists in Florida and then Nevada when he moved employment (Hargrave, 2022; Longhi, 2022).

The third was Mike Pendergrast, a popular science writer whose daughters were to complain about his sexualised conduct towards them, and he blamed their absurd claims on ‘hysterical’ therapists. He was a regular contributor to the FMSF newsletter and though not a psychologist sat on its scientific advisory board.

The fourth was a public intellectual and psychology graduate, Karl Sabbagh, a BFMS advisory board member, who groomed a 14-year-old girl online. In 2019, the police intervened to prevent intended sexual contact. The married 77-year-old was prosecuted, imprisoned and placed on the sex offenders register for life (see ‘Paedophile Karl Sabbagh, author and film maker, jailed for grooming child’ Oxford Mail September 22^nd, 2019). Ten years prior to his fall from grace Sabbagh produced a book promoting the false memory argument (Sabbagh, 2009). With resonances of the Underwager position, Sabbagh argued that paedophilia was a moral panic, with evidence being lacking about its harm (see Pilgrim, 2018). 

Sabbagh and Wright were removed from the advisory board of the BFMS by its Director, Kevin Felstead, after journalists informed him of their crimes or misdemeanours (Delahunty, 2023). Sabbagh was thus still on the board while in prison. Felstead denied any contact with Wright over his ten-year presence in the organisation, indicating its lack of meaningful functioning. 

Past and recent uses of the false memory defence

The false memory movement began to accrue criticisms from its inception, (e.g.  van der Kolk et al., 2001; Freyd, 1998, 1996; Cheit, 2023, 2014; Crook,2022;  Hoult 2023, 1998). By the time Epstein’s rich and powerful network came into view (including politicians, rock stars, stellar academics and royalty), the false memory movement was in decline; hence the closure of the FMSF in 2019 and the BFMS in 2022, though the latter had been barely functioning for a decade. 

Nonetheless, the high-profile defence role of Elizabeth Loftus persisted, now in relation to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner in crime. This trial in 2021/22 was par for the course, the false memory defence cut no ice, and Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in the trafficking of female minors and their sexual victimisation by Epstein and his friends and contacts. At times she participated directly in the abuse of the girls, who were as young as 14 years. 

A close friend of Epstein and Maxwell (the then Prince Andrew, Duke of York) was involved in a relevant negotiation. After his interview on Newsnight in 2019 (September 19^th), he reached an out of court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, one of many victims of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s sexual exploitation. He paid her a reported figure of £12 million in 2022. He said on camera, “I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.” Shown a photograph of him with her, when she was 17 years of age, accompanied by Ghislaine Maxwell, he denied any recollection still and lamented that his team of investigators had not been able to establish that it was a fake (his only explanation for his innocence).  

However, despite his seeming perplexity about a non-event in his life, in February 2022 he paid ‘the lady’, Virginia Giuffre, millions of pounds, while continuing to claim innocence of any wrongdoing.   Prior to his out of court settlement, his defence team were exploring the use of the false memory defence to undermine the credibility of Giuffre’s claims (Oppenheim, 2022). Giuffre went on to commit suicide in 2025.

This scenario was given more context when the Epstein files included photographs showing him on the floor crouched over an impassive young female. For legal reasons, news outlets continued to report his strenuous denial of any wrongdoing, but the mainstream mass media, the public, the King and parliamentarians were all to adopt their own criticisms and sanctions against him in advance of any police action or court prosecution. (His subsequent arrest was not in relation to alleged sexual misconduct but about exploring evidence of financial misconduct in a public office.) 

The Mountbatten-Windsor case is an example to be placed in the bottom right cell of Table 1.  The same is true in relation to the disgraced UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, another associate of Epstein, who found himself unable to recall frequent email contact with him, after his conviction for sexual offences. He also could not remember Epstein giving him the large sum of $75,000 in 2003/4.  Mandelson was arrested in relation to financial misconduct in a public office within a week of his old friend and business colleague.

Another example to be considered in the bottom right cell of Table 1 is the sole suspect in the rape and murder of Martine Vik Magnussen in 2008. The Yemeni prince Farouk Abdulhak fled to his home country and awaits extradition to the UK. At first claiming his innocence, in 2023 he subsequently, admitted responsibility for the crime note as a recovered memory, emerging from the haze of a past affected by sexual and emotional arousal, drink and drugs (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65033048). 

These cases raise important ethical and psychological questions about the relationship, from context to context in open systems, between recall, self-deceit, motivated self-interest and interpersonal dissimulation. That complexity cannot be clarified by studying decontextualised trivial events, with duped subjects in the psychological laboratory. Such reductionism offers us no understanding of the complexities of what has come to light about the toxic mix of patriarchy, financial corruption and probable manipulations by the security services of more than one nation. At this point psychology has reached the limits of its disciplinary ‘skill set’ and might well need to look elsewhere for help to make sense of distorted recall. The discredited elite actors in Epstein’s network, two of whom created a political crisis in the UK in early 2026, highlight why an open-minded memory researcher should not limit their interest to the top left-hand cell of Table 1.  

If psychologists are to regain any credibility for their contribution to memory science in judicial settings, then all four cells should surely be of interest.  Journalistic and political interest now is less about accusers claiming that something happened when it did not (e.g. Abramsky 2004). Instead, the media storm and political fallout of the Epstein files have shifted the focus to how powerful figures can seemingly forget their central role in scurrilous events in the past. That shift from the plausibility of the victim to the plausibility of perpetrator began with the emergence of the #MeToo movement and was then amplified with the partial release of the Epstein files, with more implications in the offing at the time of writing.

Conclusion

The political ambiguity about the impact of the false memory movement on mainstream academic opinion invites our historical interest, to prompt proper research in a post-Epstein context. Science and justice are not only served within the domain of individual cases, with contested accounts of accused and accusers. They are also served by a serious examination of a partisan social movement, which has claimed an unwarranted pre-eminent scientific authority and queried, and even belittled, the judgments of ordinary people.

We have argued above that the false memory movement invites that critical attention. It may be best approached by an interdisciplinary investigation involving serious academic historians, philosophers, lawyers and sociologists. To date psychology, as a single siloed discipline, has failed to establish its own a consensus appraisal and has thus not resolved ‘the memory wars’, in its midst.

References

Abramsky, S. (2004). Memory and manipulation: the trials of Elizabeth Loftus, defender of the wrongly accused. Orange County Weekly September 9th. hhtp://doi.org/10.1177/21582440231173915eekly.com/features/features/memory-  

Adolph, K. E. (2019).  Ecological validity: mistaking the lab for real life. In R. Sternberg (Ed.) My Biggest Research Mistake: Adventures and Misadventures in Psychological Research pp 187–190. New York: Sage.

Andrews, B. and Brewin, C. (2024). Lost in the mall?: Interrogating judgements of false memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology , 38, no. 6: e70012.

Baddley, A., Eysenck, M.W. and Anderson, M.C. (2025). Memory (4th Edition). London: Routledge

Barker, C., Taggart, D., Gonzalez, M., Quail, S., Eglinton, R., Ford, S. and Tantam, W. (2023). The truth project- paper two- using staff training and consultation to inculcate a testimonial sensibility in non-specialist staff teams working with survivors of child sexual abuse. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1177622-5.

Blank, H., Otgaar, H.  Nash, R.A, Patihis, L. and Rubínová, E. (2020). Special issue to honour James Ost’s contribution to memory psychology. Memory, 28:1, 1.

Blizard, R. and Shaw, M (2019). Lost-in-the-mall: False memory or false defense? Journal of Child Custody, 16:1, 20-41.

Brewin, C. R., Andrews, B., and Mickes, L. (2020). Regaining consensus on the reliability of memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29 (2), 121–125.

Brewin, C.R. and Andrews, B. (2017). False memories of childhood abuse. The Psychologist June 7^th.

Cheit, R. (2023). https://www.recoveredmemory.org/case-archive

Cheit, R. (2014). The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press 

Conway, A. and Pilgrim, D. (2026). Witness for the Prosecution: Resisting the False Memory Movement Oxford: Karnac.

Conway, M. (2012). Ten things the law and others should know about human memory. In L. Nadel and W.P. Sinnott-Armstrong (Eds.) Memory and Law Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crook, L. (2022). False Memories: The Deception that Silenced Millions New York: TM Publishing: LLC.

Delahunty, S. (2021). Charity reports itself after Third Sector alerts it to sex-offender advisory panel member. Third SectorFebruary 3rd.

Felstead, K. and French, C (2021). Dr James Ost’s contributions to the work of the British False Memory Society. Memory, 30, 6, 669-677.

French, C. (2018). Reaching ‘Brenda from the chip shop’: scientific literacy. The Psychologist March, 45.

Freyd, J. J. (1998). Science in the memory debate. Ethics & Behavior, 8(2), 101–113. 

Freyd, J.J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. 

Geraci, J. (1993). Interview: Hollida Wakefield & Ralph Underwager Paidika # 9, 2-12.

Goodman-Delahunty, J, Nolan, M A and van Gijn-Grosvenor, E L. (2017). Empirical guidance on the effects of child sexual abuse on memory and complainants’ evidence. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Sydney: Australia.

Gudjonsson, G.H. (2018). The Psychology of False Confessions: Forty Years of Research and Practice London: Wiley.

Hargrave, R. (2023). Expert faces axe from charity advisory board over historical sexual harassment claims Third Sector May 23rd   

Hillberg, T., Hamilton-Giachritsis, C. and Dixon, L. (2011). Review of meta-analyses on the association between child sexual abuse and adult mental health difficulties: a systematic approach. Trauma Violence & Abuse, 12, 1, 38-49; 

Hoult, J. (2023). Using experts’ casework demographics to evaluate expert witness credibility:  An empirical case study of the 1970-2020 legal casework of Elizabeth F. Loftus, Ph.D.  (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4502988, retrieved December 2nd 2024)

Hoult, J. (1998). Silencing the victim: The politics of discrediting child abuse survivors. Ethics & Behavior 8 (2):125 – 140.

Longhi, L. (2022). UNLV professor had prior investigation for sexual harassment  Las Vegas Review Journal August 26th                                 

Loftus, E. and Ketcham, K. (1995). The myth of repressed memory: False memories and allegations of sexual abuse. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Loewenstein, R.J. (2018). Dissociation debates: everything you know is wrong. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 20, 3, 229-242 

Oppenheim, M. (2022). The accusations of victim-blaming and gaslighting plaguing Prince Andrew | The Independent, January 18^th.

Otgaar, H., Mangiulli, I., Riesthuis, P., Dodier, O.and Patihis, L. (2022). Changing beliefs in repressed memory and dissociative amnesia. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 36(6), 1234–1250.

Otgaar, H, Howe ML, Patihis L, Merckelbach H, Lynn, S.J., Lilienfeld, S.O. and Loftus, E.F. (2019). The return of the repressed: the persistent and problematic claims of long-forgotten trauma. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 1072-1095.

Pilgrim, D. (2018). Child Sexual Abuse: Moral Panic or State of Denial? London: Routledge.

Pope, K.S. (1997). Memory, abuse, and science: questioning claims about the False Memory Syndrome epidemic. American Psychologist. 51, 9, 957–74.

Ross, C. (2022). False memory researchers misunderstand repression, dissociation and Freud. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 31(4):488-502.

Sabbagh, K. (2009).  Remembering Our Childhood: How Memory Betrays Us Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smedslund, J. (2016). Why psychology cannot be an empirical science. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 50, 2, 185-95.

Smith D. W., Letourneau E. J., Saunders B. E., Kilpatrick D. G., Resnick H. S. and Best C. L. (2000). Delay in disclosure of childhood rape: Results from a national survey. Child Abuse & Neglect, 24, 273–287. 

Uher, J. (2021). Psychology’s status as a science. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 55, 212-224

van der Kolk, B.A., Hopper, J.W. and Osterman J.E. (2001). Exploring the nature of traumatic memory: Combining clinical knowledge with laboratory methods Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma 4, 9-31.

Walton, D.H. (1998). Ad Hominem Arguments. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Whitfield, C.L. (2001). False memory defense: using disinformation and junk science in and out of court. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 9, 3, 53-78. 

Williams, L. M. (1994). Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women’s memories of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(6), 1167–1176.

Wright, D., Ost, J. and French, C. (2006).  Recovered and false memories The Psychologist June 18^th.