Smoke and Mirrors: The Devastating Effect of False Sexual Abuse Claims

Abstract

TERENCE W. CAMPBELL: Smoke and Mirrors: The Devastating Effect of False Sexual Abuse Claims. Insight Books (Plenum Press), New York, 1998, 338 pp., $28.95, ISBN 0-306-45984-1. Terence W Campbell's Smoke and Mirrors: The Devastating Effect of False Sexual Abuse Claims is both an indispensable reference for the practitioner and an engaging-if rather alarming-read for the layperson interested in current trends in psychological science. The book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with allegations by children of contemporaneous sexual abuse, and the second with claims by adults of recently recovered memories of abuse in childhood. In both cases, Campbell's book deals only with the issue of false allegations. The first part of the book dealing with allegations by children is by far the stronger. The researcher and practitioner will find well summarized, footnoted, and referenced, the most recent research on the reliability of indicator lists for sexual abuse, such as Richard Gardener's Sexual Abuse Legitimacy Scale of projective drawings, and custody specialist Barry Bricklin's criteria for analyzing children's drawings for signs of abuse, of anatomically detailed dolls, and of the so-called abuse accommodation syndrome. Of particular value to the practitioner who might find him or herself in the courtroom testifying about an assessment focusing on abuse are the detailed references and the suggestions to counsel for cross-examination of expert psychiatric witnesses. The section on how biased interview techniques can lead both the child and the practitioner into the realm of false allegations is also of particular interest. Most clinicians today are familiar with the works of Drs. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck on children's suggestibility, but Dr. Campbell has provided compelling illustrations of those techniques in action, adding a further dimensionality to Ceci and Bruck's work. The author covers the importance of assessment of patently incredible allegations, of the dangers of using peer-group pressure, coercive techniques, leading and suggestive questions, and of introducing negative stereotypes of the accused. Each is illustrated with examples from actual cases. Many of the illustrations in the child section of the book are from the notorious case of Margaret Kelly Michaels who worked as a 20-year-old college student for eight months at the Wee Care Nursery School in Maplewood, New Jersey. This case is of particular interest because mental health professionals were intimately involved with the investigation during the two-year period over which allegations were developed before trial, many of the investigatory sessions were carefully documented on tape, and because Michaels' conviction on over 100 counts of abuse and her sentence to 47 years in prison were overturned by the New Jersey Appeals court with a scathing indictment of the psychological practices used to develop the children's testimony. As Campbell notes, the court wrote, [The mental health professional] was permitted to lead the jury to believe that the process [she used] was rooted in science and thus was a reliable means of determining sexual abuse. Subsequent to the prosecution's appeal, the State Supreme Court ruled that the children had been interviewed so improperly that any evidence obtained from them should be considered inherently unreliable. …