BFMS - British False Memory Society

bfms (british false memory society) was founded in 1993 in response to an epidemic of false claims of past child abuse by adults in therapy. the accusers believed they had 'recovered' unconscious memories of a hidden past, but scientifc evidence demonstrates that rather than being the recall of genuine experience, the process described was one of the accumulation of false belief - hence the term 'false memory'. such allegations are not a new phenomenon - known to arise under certain cultural conditions for centuries. however, flawed therapeutic trauma theories and investigative systems have aggravated the problem over the last twenty years with the result that there is now a widespread problem of poor differentiation between true and false allegations of child sexual abuse. theis is particularly the case with uncorroborated retrospective allegations that have created the greatest problem in recent times. bfms acknowledges and abhors the fact that there are many genuine cases of child a