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Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Therapy falls out of favor Repressed memory therapy swept the mental health industry in the 1980s and early 1990s and resulted in some criminal convictions. However, it has been called into disrepute in recent years as researchers have found that some therapists can accidentally "plant" false memories. Last year, Washington state stopped paying for memory recovery therapy after a study showed patients were harmed rather than helped. Of 30 patients in the statewide study, 29 said they were abused in satanic rituals involving cannibalism, mass rape, torture or mutilation. Most claimed their abuse began when they were less then a year old. After memory recovery therapy, the patients' conditions appeared to worsen. There was a dramatic increase in the number who divorced, became unemployed, were suicidal or engaged in self-mutilation. "We no longer pay for memory excavations," says Dr. Gary Franklin, medical director for the Department of Labor and Industry, which runs the state's Crime Victims Compensation Fund. In addition to selecting counselors in Wenatchee who were sympathetic to the prosecution, CPS found Pine Crest, a tiny hospital in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, that was eager to help. DSHS says 29 children from the Wenatchee area were treated at Pine Crest between 1992 and 1996 at a total cost of $751,000. Thousands more were paid by the state Crime Victims Compensation Fund. Cherie Town's two sons were sent to Pine Crest for a month. When she and her husband, Meredith, were sentenced to 10 and 20 years in prison, respectively, they also were told to pay $60,000 for the Pine Crest treatment. Sarah Doggett went to Pine Crest on the afternoon of Jan. 10, 1995. After inviting her in for a talk, CPS officials in Wenatchee called a LifeLine Ambulance to pick up the 16-year-old. "There was nothing voluntary about it. They had an ambulance (crew) come to the DSHS office in Wenatchee, tie me to the gurney and drive me off to Idaho," Doggett says. "They put me in Pine Crest. The paperwork says I went there voluntarily, which is not true, not true at all. "Since when does voluntary mean handcuffs, restraints and shackles around my waist to the gurney?" Doggett was one of several teenagers forced into Pine Crest, even though state law forbids involuntary commitment of those older than 13 unless they are a proven threat to themselves or to others. "In this state, once you hit the age of 13 you have the right to decide whether or not to be in the hospital, and if you say no, you don't get hospitalized," says Dr. John McClellan, medical director of Washington state's Child Study and Treatment Center in Steilacoom. Doggett says CPS claimed she was suicidal and had an "obvious" eating disorder. "If those were their concerns," she asks, "why did almost all my treatment at Pine Crest deal with me having to remember sexual abuse that never happened? I never had sex abuse to talk about, and I wasn't going to begin fabricating." Jessica Cunningham, another Wenatchee child, admits she was a troubled 14-year-old when her parents sent her to Pine Crest for a two-week evaluation of disruptive behavior in 1994. Within a week, Pine Crest notified CPS that Jessica was accusing her father, Henry, of having molested her. "A week later, they arrest Jessica's father, and that was just the beginning of the nightmare," says her mother, Connie Cunningham. "Jessica was very frightened and wanted out of Pine Crest. But I couldn't do anything. CPS was making the decisions. They kept her there for 63 days." Jessica never accused her mother of anything. Yet Connie Cunningham was charged, tried and convicted of child rape and molestation on the basis of statements made by her husband. Though sentenced to 46 years in prison, her convictions were overturned after 21/2 years and she has since reunited with Jessica, who is 18 and living in California. "People don't know how much harm was done by CPS and its counselors and Pine Crest," says Jessica, who describes a visit by Perez and CPS caseworker Dean Reiman to her at Pine Crest. She says Perez and Reiman told her and hospital workers what they wanted -- her "to tell them that my parents did things to me and to my sisters . . . and if I didn't, I wouldn't get out of Pine Crest. "They (Perez and Reiman) had their own ideas of what happened in my family. When I disagreed and said they were wrong, they said I was lying. I was hiding the truth. "The staff at Pine Crest kept questioning me about the same things. I had to remember. I had to talk. Disclosure would make me feel better. It just never ended," she said. "I was a prisoner at Pine Crest." Even before he started investigating sex crimes, Perez had a relationship with Pine Crest. In 1992, he flew his 13-year-old foster son, David Sovey, in a private plane to Idaho for involuntary admission. "I was supposed to be there for 21 days but it was almost three months before they let me out," Sovey says of the treatment that cost Washington state $40,000. "I didn't want to be there. I didn't want the drugs they made me take. I may have had some discipline problems, but I'm not crazy." Sovey says the hospital staff refused to tell him why he was there, other than he had to "change his attitude." He says when he told the staff he wanted to leave, he was threatened with a longer stay. When he refused drugs, he was forcibly injected with Thorazine. "It was weird enough to really drive me crazy," he says of Pine Crest.
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