Is it possible to be sexually abused and not remember

But only in the past 10 years have scientific studies demonstrated a connection between childhood trauma and amnesia. Most scientists agree that memories from infancy and early childhood—under the age of two or three—are unlikely to be remembered.

Research shows that many adults who remember being sexually abused as children experienced a period when they did not remember the abuse. Scientists also have studied child victims at the time of a documented traumatic event, such as sexual abuse, and then measured how often the victims forget these events as they become adults. They discovered that some people do forget the traumatic experiences they had in childhood, even though it was established fact that the traumatic events occurred.

At the time of a traumatic event, the mind makes many associations with the feelings, sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch connected with the trauma.

Later, similar sensations may trigger a memory of the event. While some people first remember past traumatic events during therapy, most people begin having traumatic memories outside therapy. A variety of experiences can trigger the recall. Reading stories about other people's trauma, watching television programs that depict traumatic events similar to the viewer's past experience, experiencing a disturbing event in the present, or sitting down with family and reminiscing about a terrible shared episode—for some people, these kinds of experiences can open the floodgates of frightful and horrible memories.

Scientists believe that recovered memories—including recovered memories of childhood trauma—are not always accurate. When people remember childhood trauma and later say their memory was wrong, there is no way to know which memory was accurate, the one that claims the trauma happened or the one that claims it did not. A great deal of laboratory research involving normal people in everyday situations demonstrates that memory is not perfect.

Evidence shows that memory can be influenced by other people and situations, that people can make up stories to fill in memory gaps and that people can be persuaded to believe they heard, saw or experienced events that did not really happen. Studies also reveal that people who have inaccurate memories can strongly believe they are true. Trauma-focused treatments do work, though not all the time and not for every person.

In one year, she moved eight times, ending up in an informal foster home with other kids. There was one constant in the chaos: Corwin. With the assent of Kluemper and her father, Corwin was using the video of Kluemper as part of his training of fellow psychiatrists. He believed this recording was an unusually clear and effective illustration of a child explaining abuse. As a result, Corwin contacted Kluemper occasionally to ensure that she still consented to his use of the recordings.

But over the decades, Kluemper forgot what was actually on the videos. By the age of 16, Kluemper knew the videos existed and that they were being used as training aids, but no longer remembered what they contained. She contacted Corwin and asked if she could watch them. The request created an ethical dilemma for Corwin. Eventually, they agreed that they should watch the videos together when he was next in California. Meticulous as always, Corwin filmed Kluemper consenting to watch the videos.

On the video, they discuss the situation and suddenly Kluemper appears to remember the abuse. In a few seconds, she goes from truculent teenager to broken child. There are differences between her description at six and her recall at When she was six, she had referred to repeated assaults.

In the later video, she recalls only one episode. At 17, she is less confident that it was deliberate abuse. Today, Kluemper still looks bewildered at the surge of memories that overtook her so abruptly. Accidentally creating a video of someone apparently recalling sexual abuse was unprecedented. Once again, Kluemper granted Corwin permission to use her story, and he published an academic article carefully shielding his subject behind the pseudonym Jane Doe.

Despite having no recall of this for two decades, she insisted she was reminded of the killing when she looked at her own young daughter. There followed a number of high-profile cases that seemed to support those psychiatrists who believed it was possible for children to recover memories of abuse years later.

Now, a year later, along came Corwin with what seemed to be video evidence supporting the existence of repressed memories. For Kluemper, the second interview with Corwin had been an attempt to put the past behind her. She cut off contact with her mother and signed up for the US navy. She rose rapidly to become a helicopter pilot, a job that demanded extensive technical skills.

She operated from the naval base on Coronado Island, just off San Diego, and flew her helicopter for hundreds of hours over the course of her career.

She was part of a counter-narcotics force off South America, and the search-and-rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina , hovering over the flooded houses of New Orleans during the desperate hunt for survivors. She took pride in her job. It gave me an identity when I was sorely lacking one. It was a good scaffold for rebuilding my life.

But one day, she started hearing rumours of an investigation into her past. Inexplicably, a private investigator had turned up on the doorsteps of old friends.

It was a sickening feeling, to know there was someone watching. Kluemper, who adored her father, insists this was simply not true. Then she realised it had to be something to do with Jane Doe. S itting in her office in the University of California, Irvine, Loftus speaks with the confidence of a woman at the end of a long and distinguished career. A photograph of her with Bill Clinton sits on the book-lined shelves. The only jarring note is a gun target pinned to the wall, complete with bullet holes.

She worked her way up to a senior role at the University of Washington, before moving, in , to Irvine. Along the way, Loftus has carried out groundbreaking research into memory. I do not remember my father engaging in any explicit sexual activity with me [record scratches] I know. Yet, I call myself a survivor of child sex abuse. How did I come to this conclusion? Where I could think about him and not want to physically recoil and try to shrink my body into itself.

I remember daydreaming about running away when I was with him. I remember telling a child psychologist that I fantasized about him dying. I remember the years of nightmares about my father sexually abusing me, although I cannot remember when they began. I remember the nightmares being worse whenever I was near him, and becoming less frequent after cutting him out of my life. And then when I learned about how PTSD changes our physical brains and how common it is to have no memory of the abuse only for it to communicate to you through nightmares and other symptoms, I had to learn to trust my feelings instead of my memory.

Living with PTSD is like having a switch that can go off in your brain and tell your entire nervous system that you are back in the moment of your trauma.

That switch can go off without recalling any memory of your trauma. You have no control over when the Macarena starts playing, and you have no way to stop yourself from doing the dance. It can play on repeat for a few hours, or it can play for days on end. And my version of doing the Macarena choreography looks like: nightmares, heart racing, stomach cramps, recoiling in my body, fear of closing my eyes, feelings of helplessness, guilt and shame, and my voice gets really quiet.

And most of all, I try to hide these fun and sexy dance moves from the people around me. Even though the abuse has stopped and I am a grown ass woman, my brain is still pulling these fancy moves of blocking new memories of shit that is simply too painful. How many times did I hear the Macarana and do the moves? I have no clue.

It remains one big blur to me. But the biggest downside is the sense of mistrust that it can cause within myself. And, sometimes, the voice calling me those names is my own. Our society demands that survivors have undeniable, and at times impossible, proof of our abuse. This pressure is in direct conflict with the reality of so many of us, which is that we know the trauma occurred, yet lack any memory as our evidence.

What is left is for us to do the very difficult work of training ourselves to trust our feelings, instead of our memories, as our own personal evidence.