Titel Textual analysis of a recovered memory trial assisted by computer search for keywords
Volym 121 av Uppsala studies in education [no longer available as a book, but is available at http://www.yakida.se/max/start.html and for free downloading at
http://www.yakida.se/max/maxbok.pdf Författare Max Scharnberg
Förläggare Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2009
ISBN 9155474098, 9789155474096
Längd 205 sidor
Abstract
This book has two aims: to describe techniques for the analysis of legal evidence, which are valid and independent of specific features of the investigator; and to apply these techniques to the Södertälje case, which has hitherto neither been subjected to a logical nor a critical analysis. All pre-trial information, inter alia 40 police
interrogations of the injured party (“Elvira”), was scanned into one single document of 245,000 words. The following cardinal results were obtained:
(1) The foster mother knows literally every event Elvira “had experienced” several months before Elvira knows and confirms them. This pattern proves that the foster mother is the person who had fabricated and indoctrinated the assaults.
(2) The number of assaults may be around 250. Elvira has given concrete descriptions of only 12. This is important because Elvira claimed that her two-year-younger sister was an eyewitness of 11 of the 12 concrete assaults. At 7 concrete assaults there were additional eyewitnesses. – All alleged eyewitnesses deny that they have seen or experienced any indecent behaviour.
(3) When the five judges of the court of appeal presented their justifications for the verdict on pp. 42 and 44 of the written judgment, they had grossly false recollections of both the mother’s testimony in the very same court, and of their own account of the latter on p. 22 of the same judgement. As a result they succeeded in convicting the father of a large number of assaults of which Elvira had never accused him.
(4) During the three months that preceded the first police interrogation, four meetings occurred. At each meeting Elvira absolutely denied having any recollection of sexual
abuse. She denied the same thing during the first police interrogation. But here she was also absolutely sure that no assault had occurred during the last 5½ years. (Her psychotherapist confirmed that Elvira did not recount any concrete events until after the first police interrogation.)
No trace of the crimes for which the father was convicted can be found in any of the first four police interrogations.
Twenty-seven judges found the father guilty. None of them detected the cardinal facts. Many other important results were obtained, and some other cases were also studied. Further topics discussed are the judges’ responsibility for false verdicts, and how such mistakes can be avoided.
Keywords: Sexual abuse, textual analysis, witness psychology, legal evidence, statement validity assessment, sham evidence, ritual abuse, child murder, false memory syndrome, recovered memory therapy, false evidence, perjury, expert witness, computer analysis, false allegation, temporal relation, posttraumatic stress disorder, Snow-White syndrome, case study, Södertälje-case
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Summary:
The legal system in Sweden may be important for international science for several reasons. Very few documents are classified, and even these are usually handed out to researchers. There is no jury, and it is the obligation of the judges to produce a written justification of both the verdict and the sentence. Strictly speaking the concept of “impermissible evidence” is not recognised, although it has since 1993 tried to creep in through the backdoor. As a consequence, much information of great significance for several sciences (witness psychology, judicial evidence evaluation, textual analysis etc.) is readily available, while in most countries it is either non-existent or unobtainable or classified.
The present study has two aims: to present methodological innovations, and to analyse the evidence of the Swedish Södertälje trial. The following pseudonyms will be used: Oswald (father), Helena (mother), Elvira (daughter b. 1976, 15 years old at the time of the police report), Ingrid (daughter b. 1979), Fanny Mollbeck (foster mother of
handled by a Swedish court. It contains 40 police interrogations of Elvira, among which 28 were video-recorded and written out word for word. All pre-trial
information comprises 245,000 words. In the present study it was scanned into one single computer document (henceforth called “the central document”). This approach greatly facilitated searching for and comparing all variants of any specific event or setting. Uniformities and deviations could be detected, and it could be established what certain persons knew, or did not yet know, or would never learn, at what time. The most interesting result is that the foster mother (Mollbeck) “knew” literally everything that the injured party (Elvira) had experienced, before Elvira knew it herself. This is a clear indication that Elvira’s allegations were not recollections of authentic events. They had been fabricated by Mollbeck, who had also indoctrinated them into Elvira.
In the Södertälje family the father was a bisexual immigrant with little schooling, while the mother was deaf. It was not a harmonious family, and on a Sunday in
September 1991 when the atmosphere was particularly tumultuous the mother and the daughters left the father and moved to the home of one of Elvira’s schoolmates,
whose mother was Fanny Mollbeck. After several irregular movements a new pattern had crystallised in January 1992: the father lived alone in the villa, the mother had got herself an apartment, Elvira was Mollbeck’s foster child, and Ingrid had got another foster family. Elvira’s psychic health deteriorated seriously since she started to live
alone with the Mollbecks.
During the last three months before the police report various persons (therapists, social workers, etc.) arranged four group meetings, in which Elvira was asked about sexual abuse. The father was never asked to participate. At all four meetings Elvira clearly stated that she had no recollections of sex abuse. She said the same thing in the first police interrogation 1992-04-28. But in the latter she added that she was
absolutely sure that no sexual abuse had happened during the last 5½ years (= since the family moved to the villa). This is significant because the father was exclusively convicted of abuse during this period.
Mollbeck claimed that Elvira had recounted most of the assaults during the last three weeks preceding the first interrogation. But this cannot be true, because her incest therapist professed that she had recounted no concrete events or images at all until after the first police interrogation. Not until May or June did she get “an image” of her father lying on top of her. “She had asked herself if it was possible that this could have happened” – a clear sign that she did not experience this image as a recollection.
In the first four police interrogations there is no trace of those crimes for which the father was convicted a few weeks later.
Mollbeck and the police officer had continuous contact, and the officer’s primary aim was to make Elvira repeat to her what she had allegedly told Mollbeck. By
telephone Mollbeck informed the police on 1992-05-05 that Elvira on the preceding night had told her about “the consolation assault” (my term), which had taken place one year before and was the last assault. The father felt low because the mother was away for studies during some weeks. In the evening he lay down in Elvira’s bed next to her and started to fondle her decently. But the event eventually changed into a brutal rape and he said “I need you, don’t move, I will do this, if you move it will just be more painful to you”. The following is stated in the police annotations: “Mollbeck had not previously seen Elvira so upset. Her tears were floating, her chin was
trembling and it was altogether impossible to calm her down. Mollbeck got the impression that the father at this occasion was more threatening and scaring than at previous occasions.”
Three days later Elvira meets her psychotherapist and recounts the same event. There is no difference in the beginning of the event: in the evening the father had laid down next to her in her bed and fondled her. But after this beginning Elvira has no further recollection; no coitus or rape.
In the third interrogation 1992-06-04 the police officer asked about the
consolation assaults. Elvira’s first reaction is to state that what she had told Mollbeck was sometimes not correct. [MS: How could Mollbeck know that?] In addition, Elvira asks if the police will accept information that is not correct.
And then she provides a new version of the consolation assault. Like the previous versions it starts with the father laying down in the bed and decently fondling her. Eventually the event changed into a kind of attempted murder: “I cannot get rid of this image of the girl who is lying there and is about to be strangulated.”
Some rapists will half-strangulate their victim in order to break her resistance. But apart from the fact that Elvira recounts an image and not a memory, there is no sexual admixture in this version.
A second example of Mollbeck’s “precognition”. She is particularly fond of the bedside assault (my term): the father practiced coitus with Elvira while her sister Ingrid was sitting at the bedside. This event is included in both the first and the more detailed second police reports by the social agency (1992-04-28 and 1992-04-29), and in both reports Mollbeck but not Elvira is indicated as the source.
The bedside assault is also found in the first police interrogation of Elvira (1992-04-28), but she is in strong doubt whether it is a memory or a fancy image.
And it is found in the first formal police interrogation of Mollbeck (1992-04-09). This is where Mollbeck mendaciously claims that most of the assaults had been told by Elvira during the last three weeks – while her incest therapists claimed that Elvira had not told any concrete event or image until after the first police interrogation.
In both the second and third interrogation of Elvira (1992-05-04 and 1292-06-04) the police officer introduces the bedside assaults. At none of these occasions does
Elvira say anything that confirms or denies that anything of a sexual nature took place.
But when she introduces the event in the fourth interrogation (1992-06-09), the dialogue should be quoted literally. In this version both sisters are sitting at the bedside, while the father is not in the bed, and no sexual feature occurs.
P: I am thinking at Ingrid, the event you recounted about, when Ingrid is sitting at the bedside, do you see where you are?
E: It is at Elm Street, in my room in Elm Street. P: In Elm Street in your room. Is it day or night? E: It is night.
P: It is night. Why is Ingrid sitting at the bedside?
E: Because of the same reason that I am sitting at the bedside. We are just instruments in his hands. We are sitting there because he wants us to sit there. P: Why does he want you to sit there?
E: Because he wants to give free reigns to his hate, I do not why he wants, I do not know why he does so, he just does so, I do not know at all why he does so, I do not know why he is so, I do not know why he is not like other fathers, but he just is.
This is the most detailed version of the bedside assault which Elvira has ever provided during any police interrogation. Evidently, she has learned her lesson poorly.
Nevertheless, in the first judgement by the court of appeal (1992-11-05) we read: “At least once he has had sexual intercourse with her [= Elvira] in full view of her sister Ingrid.” What should we think about judges who write such things and see no reason to ask Ingrid if she had participated in such an event?
Returning to the fourth interrogation of Elvira, the police officer asks if Elvira has seen the father abusing Ingrid. Then she tells the following. At one occasion Ingrid painted the father’s anus with nail polish while Elvira watched it. But Elvira also recounts a conversation she had had with Ingrid about this event. Thereby Ingrid had said that Elvira’s memory was not correct. Actually it was Elvira who painted the anus and Ingrid who watched. So now during the interrogation Elvira cannot tell whether she or her sister was right. But she does convey that this recollection emerged soon after she during a session at her incest therapist painted a Ken doll with nail polish between his legs.
Still in the same interrogation Elvira recounts that she had been disobedient toward the father. In order to punish her he inserted his fingers into Ingrid’s vagina. Ingrid has been interrogated more than once by the police, and she always stated that she had neither experienced nor seen any indecent behaviour. If Elvira told too many things that were obviously false, the conviction of her father might be
know?" And Elvira answers: "How I know what-what, how I know, Eva, just now everything is so foggy, it won’t work, as it were, there is just one single lot of images that are just intertwined." – This weak contradiction was sufficient to make Elvira retract her entire account of the punishment scene. The same pattern is recurrent during the entire first years of the interrogations. We may wonder if she would also have retracted her accusations against her parents, if she had almost met a minimum of scepticism.
The fact that the police want a conviction regardless of whether the father is guilty or not, is well illustrated by the following excerpt from the first interrogation. When the police officer asks about the bedside assault, Elvira’s reaction is to beg for some support, so that she could have the courage to tell the truth despite Mollbeck’s strong pressure. But the police officer makes it clear that she is a part of the
indoctrinating team: Elvira: Maybe I’m lying
P.O.: We will help each other to find out what happened. This is what we will help with. We will help you to remember. Do you have any more memory? You told that you felt his dick in your hand and that daddy inserted his dick into your body.
Elvira: But maybe it didn’t happen at all, not even once.
P.O.: Well, but this is what you remember and what more do you remember? Elvira: Perhaps I don’t remember. Perhaps it is just something I’ve made up. P.O.: Well, but IF WE LEAVE THIS OUT OF CONSIDERATION.
Elvira: Hm.
P.O.: Is there any other recollection emerging? You talked about your sister. And daddy and you had no cloths on. Do you recall what room you were in?
Elvira: Perhaps in our room at our house and perhaps in our room in the apartment. To Elvira's final version belongs that the father's last assault took place one year before the police report. By contrast, the mother continued to abuse her even two months after both had moved to the Mollbeck family. Eventually she will recount an assault where each parent in the same bed and at the same time abused each daughter. Hence, it is strange that she during several months of police interrogations merely
believes that her mother is aware of the father's abuse. By contrast, Mollbeck told
about the mother's probable abuse already in the police interrogation 1992-04-29. The first interrogation in which Elvira accused the mother of abuse took place 1992-08-24. Further, Mollbeck told the police that Elvira since she was ten years old had provided male children for her father's homosexual paedophilia. He had even told her to use sexy dresses, so that she might better succeed. – Elvira will never confirm this. But she will eventually state that she already during preschool age had told her
maternal grandmother about the father's abuse. But this was a secret between both, and her grandmother had to promise not to tell anyone.
When she tells about clubs and abuse for the first time she says that at The Club
of Deaf People there are lots of guys, "like ants in an anthill", who rape her. This is a typical example of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, which is a recurrent
pattern when indoctrination is involved. – Her second version is that her father had hired out both her and Ingrid out prostitutes at sex clubs, almost since they started school. She had "a feeling" (but only a feeling) that her mother had also some relation to the sex clubs. But later she would accuse both parents of this crime. At sex clubs she had seen Ingrid be raped.
One night every staff had gone home, but had forgotten the two girls, who had been locked in. They were 9 and 11 at that time. They shouted to attract the attention of people. Eventually someone with a key opened up for them. – Many objections to this story should be obvious.
The temporal order in which the categories of stories have emerged, is well known from thousands of cases of the False Memory Syndrome (FMS), and Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT). The only unusual aspect is that the person who fabricated and indoctrinated the assaults was none of the four professional therapists she visited, often two at the time. It was a layman, viz. Elvira's foster mother Mollbeck.
She would continue to recount about ritual child murders. She had followed her father to Poland where they had bought children who would be murdered in
Stockholm. The murder sect also kept underage girls in cages and made them pregnant. They would cut out the foetus when the girls were still alive, and they
would eat the foetuses. Among the members of the murder sect were a named judge at the court of appeal in Stockholm, and his daughter who had been Elvira's closest friend since preschool. – However, the friendship stopped abruptly when Elvira accused her friend of murder.
Elvira pointed out the places in the wood where the murder sect had buried the bones of the children they had eaten. No less than 70 policemen dug through the wood, and their work was led by four police helicopters. The police also engaged highly competent experts from the Royal Technical University. These experts could prove that no one had dug at these places since the ice age (this is their own
formulation).
Moreover, Elvira told about mysterious telephone calls in which children scream in exactly the same way as they do, when they are murdered by the sect. – But when the police started to bug her telephone, these telephone calls stopped immediately. Likewise, when Elvira learned that the police actually investigated the graves in the wood, Elvira stopped and did not point out any further graves.
The sexual abuse was investigated by the police in Södertälje, while the child murders were investigated by the police in Stockholm. The latter devoted half a year to these narratives, but finally summed up:
”During the interrogations which Elvira has been put through, she seems to have a supply of horrible events to come up with, which never runs dry. Since a long time she has ceased to provide any information that can be checked, since she has learned that we have actually checked it. [...]
She shows an evasive attitude during the interrogations when she feels pressed. Then she says that she doesn’t remember just now but “it will turn up later”. She often wants a break when things become difficult, and if her foster
mother Fanny is present she wants to go to her for a hug.” (bold and italics
added)
It would have been interesting to see what had happened, if the police had dug
through the wood and had bugged Elvira’s telephone without telling her in advance? It would be interesting to learn whether she had then continued to point out graves and to recount about strange telephone calls.
Some additional facts are important. Steve Harvey is an American therapist who firmly believes that ritual child murders are frequent in the ISA (despite the fact that FBI has been unable to find any). He was in Sweden at the relevant time. The incest therapist arranged that Elvira had five therapeutic sessions with him. The first took place 1992-08-23.
This is very important, because it proves that Elvira had told about ritual child murders for some time earlier than that date. But despite several intervening
interrogations, she did not tell the police about them until 1992-11-22. And the
judgement by the court of appeal, in which the father was convicted, was delivered on 1992-11-05.
Someone (Mollbeck alone or together with the incest therapist) must have influenced Elvira to keep quiet about the murders, in order not to jeopardise the convicted of her father.
The judgement of the mother by the court of appeal was delivered on 1993-05-27. At that time the prosecutor was perfectly acquainted with the murder stories. So now he must have belonged to the team that helped to keep these stories out of the proceedings.
This pattern of facts should be compared with the police interrogator's brutal and efficacious manipulation, when Elvira says that maybe she has not been abused at all. The human memory does not at all function like recovered memory therapists
Authentic events can be forgotten, in more than one way. But they never "return" in the way postulated by these therapists. Again and again throughout the interrogations she promises further recollections which she has not got at the time of the
interrogation. She will go home and train in recalling more.
There are some few hints that Mollbeck participates in these training sessions. But Mollbeck has written a thick book about the case. It should not come as a surprise that she believes in the truth of all Elvira's narratives. But Mollbeck does tell that she and Elvira goes into the wood where they can be alone. And then Elvira will scream and whip the trees. – This is definitely a situation that is most suitable for suggestive influence.
The character of the evidence may now be summed up. To simplify the problem, I shall only focus on the fifth trial in 1994, when the case had been re-opened by the Supreme Court.
In Elvira's narratives each and every constituent whose truth-value had been investigated by the police, had turned out to be false. This outcome holds for both the murder stories and the stories involving sex clubs and prostitution. Elvira had not been able to find any sex club, and she did not recognise any of them when the police took her to the total number of sex clubs in Stockholm known to the police. In actual fact, her description of the internal architecture of the sex clubs is a plagiarism of The
House of Deaf People.
How about the sexual assaults by the parents?
Those which allegedly took place in Elvira's room at daytime and when other family members were at home, were false in the legal sense that Elvira had never accused the father of such assaults.
Those involving one or more eyewitnesses were false, unless we assume that all the eyewitnesses were lying. And according to Elvira, eyewitnesses were present at 11 out of the 12 assaults of which Elvira had given more than minimal information.
The 12th is the bedside assault, and it is easily seen that in none of the police interrogations does Elvira accuses her father of sexual intercourse while Ingrid were sitting on the bedside. In her most extensive account she merely said that both
daughters are sitting at the bedside, while the father was giving free reign of his hate. In so far, even without applying textual analysis, but merely on the basis of common sense, it is flagrant that all stories about murder, sex clubs, prostitution, sexual abuse while other family members were wake and at home, are false. And the same holds for all abuse stories that contain a non-trivial amount of concrete information.
In so far, even without applying textual analysis, all non-trivial evidence vanishes into thin air.
And if textual analysis is applied, it turns out (1) that Mollbeck had fabricated and indoctrinated all the stories, whatever their content; (2) that Elvira had no recollection of any sexual abuse at the time of the police report; (3) that Elvira had not merely postulated the presence of some eyewitnesses at some assaults, but she had postulated the presence of eyewitnesses at every assault of which she had provided any non-trivial information; (4) that the judges had erroneous recollection of what they had read in the police interrogations, and likewise of what the witnesses had testified in the court right under their nose.
However, there was a non-legal complication. Two Swedish trials (Södertälje and Umeå, both so named because of the town in which they started) happening at almost the same time. They were strikingly parallel. In both cases the father had got the maximum sentence for sexual abuse at that time. Both cases had been re-opened by The Supreme Court. The Umeå father had been totally acquitted just a few weeks before the re-opened Södertälje trial started.
If two fathers had first got the maximum sentence, and had then been totally acquitted, and it had become obvious that there had never been any evidence against him, then the confidence of the general population in the profession of judges would reach a minimum. The Södertälje judges cannot have been unaware of this fact. As a result an unusually large number of legal errors occurred during the proceedings. In addition, the chairman of the court stopped all evidence that told against the charge, with a fervour that would be inexplicable unless he had an inkling that the father was innocent.
But how to re-convict a defendant, when all evidence that had been investigated was either physically impossible or discrepant with the testimony of witnesses whose accounts are not doubted?
Three psychologists or psychiatrists assured that Elvira's sexual abuse narratives could well be true, even if her murder narratives were false. Both psychologists had for more than ten years been involved in sexual trials, and had invariably supported the prosecutor. One of them had in the Umeå trial witnessed that the daughter had not been exposed to any influence, but had recounted authentic recollections. – He did so, despite the fact that the Umeå daughter had been exposed to a much greater
indoctrination team than Elvira. At the re-trial it even turned out that the Umeå daughter's hymen was still at that time intact.
The psychiatrist in the Södertälje trial testified that Elvira suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and that this is a common effect of sexual abuse. He also explained that the mind of real abuse victims may darken, so that they recount many more assaults than those that had really taken place. As a consequence, Elvira's narratives about ritual child murders do not retract from the truth of her abuse
narratives. On the contrary, they constitute further evidence that the abuse narratives are indeed true.
Because of space considerations only a few of the relevant errors can be discussed here. In the book by MS much space is devoted to the question what faults judges have no chance of detecting and, hence, could not be blamed for having failed to see, and what other faults they cannot be excused for having overlooked.
In innumerably many Swedish cases the judges have proved that the injured party had told the truth by means of phrases that are highly similar to the following: "She has, when she made her account, shown considerable caution and has evidently taken great pains to supply only such information that she could hold on to what she said." (bolds added). It is irrelevant that this quotation is borrowed from a case handled by a different court. It cannot be excused when judges make a U-turn and use maximally opposite evidence in different cases for proving that the dependant at hand is guilty.
Much need also be said about posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). It is irrelevant that the diagnostic category did not enter the DSM manual until 1980. The
formulation "posttraumatic personality change" can be found in 1944. But the
suggestion of a connection between PTSD and sexual abuse is very recent. 1990-1993 Swedish authorities and semi-authorities published four books by supposedly
acknowledged experts on the effects of sexual abuse. PTSD is not at all mentioned in any of them. In 1981 Mrazek & Mrazek compiled a list of 54 negative effects of sexual abuse which had been observed in 42 books or articles over a period of 49 years. None of these 42 books mentioned PTSD.
Although sporadic instances can be found since 1982, the conception of a connection between sexual abuse and PTSD did not become widespread until 1993. When both the defendants in the McMartin trial for acquitted twice for the same crimes, some people realised the need of additional weapons. It was Jill Waterman and her co-workers who in 1993 invented that the McMartin children suffered from PTSD.
The conception had not occurred to any of the numerous doctors and psychologists who supported the prosecutors during both trials that PTSD was involved. But now this conception became widespread. It reached Sweden in 1994. I have been unable to find any Swedish trial prior to 1994 in which this diagnosis had been postulated.
It is quite possible that Elvira was the first patient ever to whom the main psychiatrist in the Södertälje case had ever attributed PTSD. – In 1994 the incest therapist joined the psychiatrist's PTSD diagnosis. But she had never on her own detected this diagnosis, though the same case had undergone four sets of proceedings.
It has been noticed in the medical literature that when there is no proof against the defendant, a psychiatrist will often take a brief conversation with the injured party. Thereafter he will – for the purpose of achieving a conviction – testify in the court that the injured party suffers from PTSD.
It was the judges' duty to detect that the psychiatrist in the Södertälje case introduced an entirely new conception, which the judges had never heard before, despite their handling of a large number of cases of sexual abuse.
Another aspect should likewise be obvious to the judges. Persons who have got PTSD after having been confined in a German death camp, strongly try to avoid the crucial places and any thought about them. But after the first few months Elvira is in a very good mood when she tells about the sexual and ritual abuse, and likewise when she is helping the police to find these places.
In 1994 the False Memory Syndrome (FMS) was sufficiently well-known in Sweden. The TV programs concerning Little Rascals in North Carolina had been shown in January. It had attracted enormous attention, and it had led to large debated in TV and newspapers. It is impossible that the judges who handled the Södertälje in 1994 did not realise that RMT and FMS must be taken into account, at the very least as a hypothesis. In actual fact one and only one of the expert witnesses (Astrid
Holgerson) realised that Elvira suffered from FMS. But she was forbidden to tell it in the court.
A total of 27 judges passed verdicts in the Södertälje case. None of them discovered any of Scharnberg's four cardinal results that are stated in the abstract.
