GORDON KEENE VELLA. - On Point News

subjects are asked if they recall having been sexually abused in the past. The individuals are
then asked if they ever did not remember having been sexually abused. Generally, a small
percentage of the participants say “yes.”
Dr. Brown cites as supportive of dissociative amnesia these studies where people selfreport
that they forgot some traumatic event and then later remembered it. However, Dr. Brown
does not explain that almost none of those studies made an effort to validate or explain the
meaning of a “yes” answer. (Pope Decl. 14.)
For example, Dr. Brown cites a study by Melchert and Parker as one of the “87” peer
review studies that supports his hypothesis. (See Tr. Ex 7 at 3.) As one of the few studies cited
by Dr. Brown where an attempt was made to assess the validity of a “yes” answer, the results
here are particularly compelling with regard to Dr. Brown’s persistent misrepresentation of
scientific authority. In that study, individuals who claimed to have had a period of forgetting
were given the opportunity to answer a multiple choice question exploring what they meant by
having a period of forgetting. (Pope Decl. 15, Ex. 1-3 (referencing the Melchert and Parker
study.))
The unmistakable conclusion from that study is that it offers no support for Dr. Brown’s
hypothesis notwithstanding his assertion to the contrary. Participants were permitted to choose
from various options to explain their responses that they had once “forgotten” the abuse, such as
“because I didn’t want to think about it,” and “because I was afraid of remembering it.” The
option closest to “complete forgetting” was “because I simply had no memories of it ever
happening.” Yet not one of the 46 subjects reporting that they had forgotten responded that they
simply had no memories of it ever happening. Despite that fact, Dr. Brown presents the
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