Posted on: Saturday, September 14, 2002

Sexual abuse review board psychiatrist criticized

By Brian Witte
Associated Press

BALTIMORE — Ever since U.S. Roman Catholic bishops set up a review board this summer to monitor the church's response to the clerical sex abuse crisis, victims' advocates have been voicing concern about a prominent psychiatrist named to the group.

Paul McHugh, 71, longtime department chairman at Johns Hopkins University, has vowed to fight child abuse "tooth and nail." But he is being criticized for his opposition to therapy for sex abuse victims based on recovered memory.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivor's Network for Those Abused by Priests, said his group is troubled by McHugh, who has testified in court on behalf of accused abusers he believed were innocent. Clohessy said McHugh's reputation could keep victims from coming forward.

"When people read that — whether it's fair or not — you know people are going to be tempted to say, 'Well, forget it. The deck is stacked,' " Clohessy said.

McHugh replies that "it's pretty ridiculous that people would say that I'm not on the side of abused children and young people."

The psychiatrist will join other members of the National Review Board for a meeting Monday in Oklahoma City, where they will discuss ways to evaluate how well dioceses are complying with the reform policy approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in June.

Opposition to McHugh has arisen in part because of his support for the False Memory Foundation, a Philadelphia group whose members work to debunk a therapy based on the belief that traumatic experiences can be repressed for years. McHugh said the therapy has created false memories of abuse in some patients, causing people to be unfairly accused. He believes people who have been sexually abused tend to remember the experience vividly.

"It's possible to be on the side of the abused person and still be on the side of somebody who was falsely accused, too," McHugh said. "Not only are they compatible, they are implicit in one another."

But Lana Lawrence, who has edited a news journal for adults who were abused as children, said McHugh and members of the False Memory Foundation have too often come down on the side of alleged abusers.