Removing EMDR safeguards puts justice at risk
Queensland's DPP has dropped its EMDR safeguards and NSW may follow. The science on therapy and memory is unsettled, and a pre-therapy record protects everyone.
20 October 2026
False memory and ritual abuse
11 stories
Utah psychologist surrenders license after method concerns
The therapist who helped four relatives "recover" abuse memories behind 23 felony charges against Ruth Worthen has surrendered her Utah license, admitting her methods risked false memories.
23 September 2026
The Life and Death and Life of Repressed Memories
Harvard psychologist Richard McNally and social psychologist Carol Tavris on why the discredited idea of “repressed memories” is back — in Amy Griffin's memoir and Bessel van der Kolk's bestsellers — and what the research on fragmented trauma memories actually found.
19 August 2026
The Role of False Memories in Wrongful Convictions
Two Toronto defence lawyers set out how false memories reach the criminal courts, and what R. v Tan and R v SKM show about testing recovered-memory evidence.
16 January 2025
Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying false memories: misinformation, distortion or erroneous configuration?
A review of the cognitive and neural mechanisms behind false memories: misinformation, distortion and erroneous configuration.
7 September 2023
McMaster’s Imaginary Sex Ring
In 2020, a Canadian university tore up its psychology department in search of a non-existent network of sexual predators. Documents obtained by Quillette reveal how administrators allowed it to happen.
14 June 2023
The credibility and reliability of memory at trial
When an allegation of abuse dates back decades, probing the reliability of the accuser's memory is often the only defence — and a difficult one to run.
6 September 2022
German researchers create, then erase, false memories in people’s minds
German researchers planted false memories in volunteers through suggestion and repetition, then erased them — with implications for the justice system.
19 August 2022
Child institutional abuse probe’s approach under fire
Senior trauma and memory researchers say the $500 million royal commission has adopted a misguided victim-advocacy role and published “ethically dubious” research.
30 September 2017
‘Those events never happened’
She’s a highly influential activist for childhood trauma survivors. But questions are being asked about Cathy Kezelman’s own shocking story of abuse.
30 September 2017
On the trail of the IICSAthon
On the trail of the IICSAthon Part 2: Still waters running deep and the trigger that opened the floodgates
22 September 2016