Plenum Publishing Corporation This 299-page book is written for readers who want to know about false allegations of sexual abuse. It is divided into two main parts: false allegations concerning children and claims of repressed memories. Although the book is targeted toward a lay audience, endnotes give references to the scientific literature that support the text. The book, therefore, is helpful for mental health professionals and attorneys who encounter cases of alleged sexual abuse but who lack experience in this arena. Dr. Campbell uses real cases to illustrate how false allegations can happen "anywhere to anyone." He describes several highly publicized cases from the 1980s (e.g., Jordan, Minnesota; Cleveland, England; Bobby Fijnje in Miami; Kelly Michaels in New Jersey) along with more commonplace cases. What makes Dr. Campbell's approach unique is his detailed explanation of how false sexual abuse allegations originate, develop, and eventually take on a life of their own. He depends upon powerful situational variables, such as worried parents facing ambiguous situations, rather than personality variables in understanding this process. Toward this end, he not only draws on current research, but also refers to the older literature in social psychology. Dr. Campbell critically examines commonly used procedures and assumptions that contribute to unreliability and inaccuracy, such as reliance on lists of behavioral indicators, Roland Summit's Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, projective drawings, and anatomically detailed dolls. He describes how biased interviews can teach children accounts of abuse that never happened and gives several examples of interviewing techniques that violate the guidelines for how children should be interviewed. He suggests how to conduct an effective interview that yields reliable, uncontaminated, forensically useful information from the child. Dr. Campbell distinguishes between "false" allegations, where sincere people jump to mistaken conclusions, and "fabricated" allegations, where someone deliberately concocts a false charge of sexual abuse. Although fabricated allegations are infrequent, they can and do occur. He devotes a chapter to deliberately fabricated allegations by older children or teenagers and by parents through what has become known as the "parental alienation syndrome." He dedicates a chapter to play therapy and how this misguided therapy technique not only fails to help children with whatever problems they may have, but can alter their memories and persuade them that they have been victims of abuse that never happened. This is an important chapter due to the ubiquitousness of play therapy, especially with children who are believed to be victims of abuse. I have reviewed hundreds of files where alleged child sexual abuse victims have been given play therapy and can attest to the accuracy of Dr. Campbell's observations. In the section on repressed memory claims, Dr. Campbell describes several actual cases where he served as an expert witness. He illustrates the pain and suffering involved by quoting portions of letters from parents that originally appeared in the FMS Newsletter. He discusses and critiques the relevant research and shows how therapists engaged in what has come to be called "recovered memory therapy" violate the appropriate standards of care. He describes a civil suit by a woman who sued her therapist after realizing her memories of satanic cult abuse were false, and a civil suit by parents against their daughter's therapist. He lays out the methods used by therapists that has resulted in unfortunate patients coming to falsely believe that their parents abused and tortured them as children. In a chapter titled "Myopic Guilds and Flawed Evidence: Professional Organizations Defending Their Reputations," Dr. Campbell sharply criticizes the three clinicians on the American Psychological Association Task Force on Repressed Memories, maintaining that they misinterpret data, minimize the problems created by recovered memory therapy, and are guilty of "rank hypocrisy." He substantiates this latter assertion with quotes from a book by Christine Courtois, one of the three clinician task force members, that contradict what the clinicians later claim in their task force report. He ends his book with a chapter called "Changing Psychotherapy," in which he suggests ways for therapists to better respond to the needs and welfare of their clients. Despite his harshly critical and iconoclastic approach to many traditional beliefs, such as play therapy, Dr. Campbell's thought-provoking book should not be dismissed because it is controversial. As Steve Ceci stated, "It is not a tribute to one's scientific integrity to walk down the middle of the road if the data are more to one side" (p. 18)1. There is much scientific data to support Dr. Campbell's observations. And it is hard to see how one can be overcritical towards professional practices that result in an unabused child believing her father sexually molested her or an adult woman becoming increasingly dysfunctional as she develops memories of being ritually tortured by her parents and grandparents in a satanic cult. The greatest strength of this book is its detailed explanations of just how such things can happen. I have been involved in many cases where the allegations are most likely false. The question that always must be answered is, "If the abuse is false, then why is the child making allegations?' This book answers that question. 1 Ceci, S. J. (1994). Cognitive and social factors in children's testimony. In
B. D. Sales, & G. R. VandenBos (Eds.), Psychology in Litigation and Legislation
( Reviewed by Hollida Wakefield, Institute for Psychological Therapies.
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