Elvira and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

This pseudo-theory rather soon spread to many other countries. It reached Sweden in 1994, that is, one year after the publication of Waterman et al. (1993). I have been unable to find any Swedish trial before 1994 in which the PTSD pseudo-theory has been applied. But since then its frequency has steadily grown.

It is applied in the following way. When the evidence is particularly weak or altogether non-existent, a specifically selected psychiatrist may have a brief conversation with the injured party. In turn he or she will testify in court that the injured party suffers from PTSD, and that PTSD is a frequent effect of sexual assault. During the testimony the psychiatrist may reveal his or her minimal knowledge of the thoughts, feelings, situation and personality of the injured party. The psychiatrist may not even know that the injured party has had all the symptoms that supposedly proved PTSD more than ten years before the alleged sexual assaults. But judges will seldom perceive any weakness in the testimony of a psychiatrist who is allied with the prosecution.

Elvira's father and mother were tried separately by the district court and the court of appeal, before the case was re-opened. But during none of these four sets of proceedings did it occur to any of the clinicians or non-clinicians who worked for the prosecution, that Elvira suffered from PTSD. At the final proceedings after the re-opening the prosecutor was supported by 9 psychiatrists and psychologists. But only one of them (Hans Kåreland, not a pseudonym) attributed PTSD to her.

What is one to think of those judges who overlooked the recency or considered it irrelevant

Kåreland applied a technique of bluffing that is frequent in this variety of legal cases. In his affidavit he enclosed an appendix containing an official list of criteria which must be satisfied in order to apply this diagnosis. But he calculated [correctly] that the judges would not compare the content of the appendix with the content of the main text and would therefore not notice the glaring discrepancy between them. In the appendix it is truthfully stated that it belongs to PTSD that the traumatic events are continually present in the patient's mind in the form of severe pain analogous to tooth ache. It is also stated that the patient tries to avoid things that resemble the traumatic events. In other words, the documented total absence of any recollections by Elvira during three months, is incompatible with this diagnosis. The same is true of Elvira's pleasure when she drove around in Stockholm together with the police, with the aim of finding the sex clubs and places where murder had been committed.

Kåreland gave Elvira the diagnosis PTSD in 1994. And he testified in the court of appeal the same year. Cross-examination of Kåreland would almost certainly have revealed that prior to 1994 he had not attributed PTSD to any patient whom he deemed to be a victim of sexual abuse. It is entirely possible that at the time of his testimony Elvira was the only patient to whom he had ever given this diagnosis.

He presented a second argument as to why Elvira had told the truth about sexual abuse: it is a distinguishing trait of real victims that the power of their mind will decrease, so that they will start to spin yarns about much more than what had really taken place. Consequently, Elvira's false narratives about murder and cannibalism do not reduce her trustworthiness. On the contrary, it constitutes further proof that she had really been sexually abused by her parents.

Note that this is a temporal relation.

The five judges, who had previously handled a considerable number of trials for sexual abuse, were aware of the fact that they had never heard this psychiatric argument in any previous case. Despite this they accepted Kåreland's construction.








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Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

Yakida