Temporal Relations and Other Patterns in the Case of the Girl With the Phenomenal Memory

What Scharnberg (1996) called The Case of the Girl with a Phenomenal Memory is too comprehensive for a brief summary. What will be presented here is a limited sample of the facts.

The family were Jehovah's Witnesses. When Violet was 17 her father abandoned the family for a younger woman. This was a deadly sin according to the congregation. But since it is not punishable according to Swedish law, his wife got the idea of having him punished for sexual abuse. Violet may or may not have been as eager as her mother; we shall never find out. Be that as it may, Violet went to the police and reported her father. But she could not tell any details. For instance, what kinds of actions had he done At what time How often Here are two excerpts from the first police interrogations:

		"The interrogator points out to Violet that she has been very vague as to the details or rather the occasions. Could she herself supply any explanation as to why this is so Violet: 'If only I knew.`" [Q-401:1] [Interrogator:] "But dear little Violet, isn't there any event you could connect things with so as to arrive at any specific occasion What I'm thinking of is, if it was your birthday, if something special had happened in the family, or if a friend of yours had made a call, or something of the kind. If you could search your memory for any such things to connect with some of the assaults, in time and also in execution.` Violet shakes her head and says that she cannot do this." [Q-40:2]

There is a special reason why Violet's inability is particularly astonishing. In January 1985 one of Violet's schoolmates, 14-year-old Muriel, shot both her parents. Despite the large geographic distance between the town of Muriel (and Violet) and the work place of police officer Monica Dahlström-Lannes (not a pseudonym), the latter managed to become the head of the investigation. She made it clear to the girl that she would escape any sanctions, if her father had sexually abused her, and if her mother had knowingly tolerated it, and if these circumstances were her motive for shooting her parents.

By means of this strategy Dahlström-Lannes managed to get intensive and nation-wide attention, both to the case and to the subject of sexual abuse. Her exploitation was almost the start of the witch craze in Sweden.

Muriel's and Violet's school devoted an enormous amount of time to warning all their pupils of these things. Many meetings were held for the entire school and in each individual class. Police officers and other professionals were engaged, even from faraway areas. The school welfare officer had a private talk with each pupil.

Most families in the town talked very much about the incident. It is known that Violet's family did so, and that her father said that such fathers should have their c- cut off. (But isn't it strange that no one at a later time asked Violet what she thought when her father said that)

After the above-mentioned police interrogation there was an overwhelming risk that there would be no trial at all. To prevent this outcome someone wrote a short-story about what Violet had allegedly experienced. One section of the story was borrowed word-by-word from a TV program ([TV] Studio S: En skam utan like), which was broadcast on Swedish television, channel 1 on 1982-03-02. It is obvious that such a circumstance could not have been found in a narrative of any genuine incest victim. It has been conclusively proved that the short-story was not written by Violet. There are strong probability reasons but no full certainty, that the author was Violet's mother.

But here Violet and her associates made a mistake. At the training sessions Violet would memorise the very verbal formulations, in the same way in which a theatre actress will learn the lines of a manuscript by heart. As a consequence, the long monologues with which she started her testimony in the district court and the court of appeal were almost identical. She had even memorised the same slips of tongue.

In the district court the monologue comprised 2481 words. However, the two monologues were not completely identical, and it is worthwhile to take a close look at some of the differences.

The entire monologue can be divided into paragraphs, each of which is concerned with the same topic.

But then something occurred that had not been planned. After having delivered one of the paragraphs Violet spontaneously added a few trivial words. But in doing so, she broke the connection to the next paragraph. And then she reacted like an actor on the stage who had forgotten the next line. She stopped, made pauses, filled out with words or the first syllable of words, while she was searching her memory for the next step:

		"And [a pause of 3 seconds] in [a pause of 4 seconds] he cae-, he always [etc.] [Q-40:3]

But eventually she found another and somewhat later paragraph, and then proceeded fluently after having skipped the intervening paragraphs.

Pauses constitute a specific temporal relation. Sometimes very important information can be extracted by paying close attention to the pauses.

If Violet had really had a phenomenal memory, it would have been necessary to refute an alternative hypothesis, viz. that her monologue in the district court was a spontaneous production, and that it was repeated (almost) word by word in the court of appeal because of some automatic mechanism. - But even if we leave out of the excerpts from the first police interrogation, it remains a fact that during the subsequent cross examination in the court of appeal Violet was unable to answer any question for which she had not prepared the answer in advance. Any genuine incest victim would have had access to authentic recollections, and could not have shown such a pervasive absence of information.

Furthermore, during her long monologues Violet recounted that she was constantly afraid of her father (who was no longer living with the family). She incessantly turned round in the street because she felt that he might be just behind her.

Now take a look at the two excerpts from the first police interrogation. Who is capable of imagining that Violet on her walk to the police station incessantly turned round because she feared that her father was just behind her

Another slip of tongue (or rather slip of mind) was definitely not planned. It would be logical if Violet or her father had before the assaults arranged the Venetian blinds so that no one could see what happened from the outside. But it should be noted here, that in the Swedish language the substitution of the definite article with an indefinite pronoun will radically change the meaning of the verb. "I always ARRANGED the Venetian blinds". This sentence in the district court changed in the court of appeal into "I always PROCURED some Venetian blinds." This is not the kind of slip that would have occurred in a girl who presented authentic recollections. But it is natural for a girl who, when learning by heart a monologue written by someone else, had primarily focused on the verbal formulations, and not on the meaning of the sentences.

In November 1984 Violet decided to be baptised. According to her later narrative, her father had promised not to abuse her any more after she was baptised. And he kept his promise for three months. Nevertheless, she did not have the least recollection of the first time he broke his promise, nor of any feature of this event.

Jehovah's Witnesses is an intolerant community. The Elders might have doubted Violet's sincerity, if she had almost directly gone from the baptism to her father's bed. Because of this reason she would hardly have any other choice than to postulate a period of freedom from abuse around the time of her baptism.

Note that Muriel's double murder occurred during this three-month-interval. A whole town of 30,000 inhabitants knew more or less who Muriel was. During this period Violet had learned that sexual abuse was so harmful that it could cause a 14-year-old girl to kill both her parents. During these three months she had hoped that the abuse had stopped. This is why the first break of her father's promise must have been felt in an entirely new way.

None of the judges of the district court in this town could have been ignorant of the immense activity at Violet's and Muriel's school. Despite this comprehensive background knowledge, they accepted at face value Violet's testimony that she had never been concerned with incest in any other context than her father's abuse.

The above mentioned psychiatrist Elisabeth Bosaeus testified in the court of appeal that Violet had told the truth. She also presented the list of incest symptoms compiled by Mrazek & Mrazek (1981). But even if all Violet's alleged symptoms are taken at face value, 94 % of the symptoms of Mrazek & Mrazek's table are missing in Violet, while 42-75 % of Violet's symptoms are missing in the tables (depending on how we prefer to categorise them). - (In chapter 22 we saw that the same technique was applied by psychiatrist Kåreland, who also attached a list of criteria as an appendix and, I think, calculated that the judges would not detect the discrepancy between the appendix and the main text.)

In view of her superficial contact with Violet, the psychiatrist could not know if Violet really had nightmares, or if she merely said she did. Whatever the truth is in this case, the entire pattern of symptoms is so trivial that it could be found in innumerable diseases.

In 1988 the psychiatrist testified in the court of appeal that prior to 1981 she had encountered few if any sexual abuse cases. But in this year she had learned from the United States that sexual abuse is very common. She never said that she had learned anything about how to diagnose such cases. I myself have checked a large number of writings from this period, and it is flagrant that they give no guidance whatsoever in individual cases. Moreover, the pattern of Violet's symptoms is so ordinary that this psychiatrist must have encountered numerous teenagers with the same symptoms. If she prior to 1981 had interpreted these symptoms as deriving from other causes than sexual abuse, then she must have made erroneous interpretations during 23 years out of the 30 years of her clinical experience. A psychiatrist who has made false assessment over a period of 23 years should not be considered trustworthy 7 years later. - - But as far as I can see, the court of appeal counted her entire 30 years of clinical experience as a reason for believing in her current assessment.

Behavioural scientists are not strongly inclined to check quotations or accounts. But Scharnberg (1996, vol. I, chapter 46-48) checked half the sources invoked by Mrazek & Mrazek (1981). It turned out that it was often wild speculation that the patients had been sexually abused. And often the symptoms "quoted" by Mrazek & Mrazek were not attributed to them in the original writings.

One example. Allegedly Anny Katan (1973) is reported to have found that some mothers had permitted their husband to abuse their own children. And the cause for this was that they had themselves been sexually abused during childhood.

It then comes as a surprise that the abuse described by Katan solely consisted of the fact that the father would take a bath naked together with the couple's three-year-old daughter. Besides, the danger was not that the father might become sexually aroused at the sight of the naked little girl. The risk was that the daughter might become sexually aroused at the sight of the father. Katan believes that girls at this age masturbate while having fantasies of castrating the father.

To take in (=accept) interpretations is in Katan's view akin to taking in food. Hence, the fact that it was difficult to force this patient to believe that she had been sexually abused while at preschool age, proved that the abuse had included oral sex.



Next chapter

Uppdaterad: 2009-11-19

Yakida