Elizabeth Loftus

About the author: Elizabeth Loftus is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is the coauthor of The Myth of Repressed Memory.

Modern-day accusations of child sexual abuse by adults who have supposedly uncovered memories of childhood molestation are analogous to the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like the "witches" of the past, parents and child-care workers today are often convicted of the most heinous acts with only the word of their accusers offered as evidence. Recovered memories of childhood molestation are often the product of suggestion by overzealous and ill-trained psychotherapists. Reform within the profession of psychotherapy is needed to end the production of false accusations of child abuse.

We live in a strange and precarious time that resembles at its heart the...