Well, as I said, it was a chief justice, a court of appeals judge, and a trial court judge and the court said that their independent conclusion was that when Faller was interviewing these girls about the allegation of sexual abuse in this highly contested, arguably Parental Alienation Syndrome case, what Faller did was to create interviews that were suggestive, coercive, and untrustworthy. They went on to say that there were numerous inaccuracies and deficiencies in their work. They quoted Dr. Benedict, the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, who said that these Couldnt even meet the basic standard of care. The two other doctors that Ive referred to found coaching, bias, slanted questions, and failure to look at any alternative hypothesis.
In Benedicts opinion, she said that after reviewing a videotaped interview of Faller with a child, Benedict testified she did not believe the interview met the standards of unbiased interviews and she stated that the interview was replete with leading questions. Whats the worst thing you can do with a little kid that you want to find out, Has somebody hurt you? Leading questions. Whats the next worst thing you can do? Repeated questions, Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you? Did your daddy hurt you?, UhI guess., Aha! We got it. And gave the child a rare opportunity to say what actually happened. Now of the two court clinic psychologists that had seen hundreds of cases of abuse, one said that, the younger child was being coached, rehearsed, and prepared to tell what the interviewer and the defendant, the mother, wanted her to say. The children were set up verbally several times about what they were going to have to testify to. The interviewer undressed the male doll and fumbled with the penis while the older child was asked leading questions, wait, wait, PAS is not scientific, Kathleen Faller says so, and asked penis related questions which provided visual as well as auditory markers. The interviewer showed the child both visually and auditorially what she should say. Oh, ok, what happened to finding out what happened?
The second doctor that ran a court clinic, supervised hundreds of lower level psychologists and social workers, hundreds of cases done by lower level psychologists, and social workers involving highly contested custody circumstances, said that the interviews asked slanted, one-sided questions that were designed to obtain only the information that was consistent with the hypothesis that the children had been sexually abused. Ok, boy thats what a scientist does. Lets find it Bill, come on. Dont look at anything that says it isnt there; lets only look for whats there. The interviewers did not ask questions that could obtain information that disconfirmed their expectations. The interviewers questions created imagery in the childs mind and can result in the problem that the questions create the childs imagination. Ok. After doing therapy with children for decades, since the 60s, you know and I know that its difficult enough for little girls to deal with boys in the world. Difficult enough. I mean, come on. You know, boys, you know, hormones, we can be difficult. But to put images in their heads to supply them with ideas that their daddys bad and their daddy did bad things to them is obscene.
Ok. So, those are the detractors. Now lets talk about science. Im going to use what Dr. Campbell and I fought about for years to try to put in fairly succinct terms because lawyers dont think the way mental health professionals do. And Dr. Campbell informed me, over and over and over again as we were writing the text, Cross Examining Experts in the Behavioral Sciences, that I had to speak like a regular person. Just because I went to law school didnt give me the write to not speak like a regular person any longer. So we had to translate three important cases in the United States because they talked about science. Now, why am I talking about cases from the United States? Im talking about cases, and Ill talk about Mohan in a few minutes, from the United States because these cases were all reactions to big money judgments. One against big corporations.
Now, we know in Canada and we know in the United States that the law develops as cases come along, ok? Well, if theyre cases about some poor Schnuck that gets falsely arrested and falsely convicted, nyah. The law doesnt develop much there. If theyre cases about terrible, horrible, divorces, and kids being eaten alive.