Abstract
With increasing frequency, adults are coming forward to allege that they suffered sexual abuse in childhood. Legitimate questions are then raised in these “historic” cases about whether adults can accurately remember sexual acts experienced as children. In this chapter, we review the legal arguments, especially concerning the statute of limitations, and scientific findings relevant to victims’ abilities to remember sexually abusive and related events that occurred years ago. Although most memories fade with time and suggestibility about them can increase, empirical studies reviewed here show that accurate memories for traumatic, personally significant, and/or taboo acts can be maintained for decades. We also present evidence that victims often use adult language in accurately recalling childhood events, even if the adults failed to provide detailed information when questioned as children. Although false allegations of childhood maltreatment, possibly reflecting false memories, can occur, we contend that the available scientific evidence argues for case-specific analysis and against strict application of the statute of limitations.
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Acknowledgments
We received funding from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (Administration on Children and Families), National Science Foundation (No. 1424420), National Institute of Justice (No. 2013-IJ-CX-0104), and Amini Foundation for the Study of Affects. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, or other funding agencies.
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Goldfarb, D. et al. (2020). The Accuracy of Adults’ Long-Term Memory for Child Sexual Abuse. In: Miller, M.K., Bornstein, B.H. (eds) Advances in Psychology and Law. Advances in Psychology and Law, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54678-6_3
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