On a July night in 1984, the homes of two women were broken into and both women were sexually assaulted. During a photo array one of the victims identified the attacker as Ronald Cotton and later confidently confirmed this suspicion during a physical line-up. These identifications mixed with other evidence resulted in the arrest of Ronald Cotton in August later that year. Cotton was later found guilty of both accounts of rape and received a life sentence plus fifty-four years in prison. Elizabeth Thompson, the female victim who identified Cotton as the attacker, provided a compelling and confident testimony during the trial and definitely impacted the juror’s decision in ruling Cotton as guilty. Though, in actuality, Cotton was one-hundred
…show more content…
As explained in Loftus’s book The Myth of Repressed Memories: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse, repressed memory is a memory that has been unconsciously blocked or “repressed” due to the memory being associated with a high level of trauma (Loftus 37). Patients would often go to therapy for an ailment such as depression or an eating disorder and leave with horrible memories of sexual abuse or bizarre satanic rituals. These memories are recovered during therapy using hypnosis, dream interpretation, and other types of techniques to ensure the patients remember (CNN Guilt by Memory). Most of the therapists who use these techniques are certain that the uncovered “repressed memories” are fully accurate and they cannot be false or imagined. One book entitled The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, explains this phenomenon by stating “If you do not remember your abuse, you are not alone.” It also claims that many women do not remember their abuse and some never recover the memory of the abuse, this does not mean that it did not happen (Loftus 2). A CNN special segment entitled Guilt by Memory, showed a CNN reporter undercover as a patient with depression reported to a therapist symptoms of depression and the therapist responded stating, “It seems to me that you have symptoms of someone who may …show more content…
She told parents to tell their adult children that when they were younger they were lost in a shopping mall. They were very unhappy and scared and eventually had to be rescued by an elderly woman. After hearing this story, the subjects responded with a detailed story about how they were lost even providing detailed physical descriptions of the woman who rescued them (CNN Guilt by Memory). Although being lost in a shopping mall is not as traumatic as routine sexual abuse, this experiment still showed how easily manipulated our memory can
As explained in Loftus’s book The Myth of Repressed Memories: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse, repressed memory is a memory that has been unconsciously blocked or “repressed” due to the memory being associated with a high level of trauma (Loftus 37). Patients would often go to therapy for an ailment such as depression or an eating disorder and leave with horrible memories of sexual abuse or bizarre satanic rituals. These memories are recovered during therapy using hypnosis, dream interpretation, and other types of techniques to ensure the patients remember (CNN Guilt by Memory). Most of the therapists who use these techniques are certain that the uncovered “repressed memories” are fully accurate and they cannot be false or imagined. One book entitled The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, explains this phenomenon by stating “If you do not remember your abuse, you are not alone.” It also claims that many women do not remember their abuse and some never recover the memory of the abuse, this does not mean that it did not happen (Loftus 2). A CNN special segment entitled Guilt by Memory, showed a CNN reporter undercover as a patient with depression reported to a therapist symptoms of depression and the therapist responded stating, “It seems to me that you have symptoms of someone who may …show more content…
She told parents to tell their adult children that when they were younger they were lost in a shopping mall. They were very unhappy and scared and eventually had to be rescued by an elderly woman. After hearing this story, the subjects responded with a detailed story about how they were lost even providing detailed physical descriptions of the woman who rescued them (CNN Guilt by Memory). Although being lost in a shopping mall is not as traumatic as routine sexual abuse, this experiment still showed how easily manipulated our memory can