Approximately eight months after I first presented betrayal trauma theory, my parents, in conjunction with Ralph Underwager and others, formed the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). Before the organization was formed, my mother, Pamela Freyd, had published an article presenting her version of family history under the name "Jane Doe" (Doe 1991). The Jane Doe article, when circulated to my professional colleagues and to the media by my mother, made public allegations about my professional and personal life, at the same time that it helped spawn the false memory movement. With the incorporation of the FMSF, my personal situation continued to become more public, and I began to receive almost daily queries and comments from my colleagues about this situation.
During the next two years I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the way in which my own efforts to work on betrayal trauma theory were constantly being undermined by personalized reactions from any professional colleagues, who had come to believe various things about me through the popular and national media (see, for example, Weiss 1993).
I was also uncomfortable with the way a distorted version of my story was being used by the FMSF and the media to create the impression that most adult women who recover memories of childhood abuse are deluded, unstable, or under the undue influence of others. In August 1993, two years after my mother's Jane Doe article and a year and a half after the formation of the FMSF, I broke my public silence and, at a mental health continuing education conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, presented my perspective on my family of origin and the formation of the FMSF (Freyd 1993b).
Having spoken my personal truth, and having addressed the issues necessary to meet my own standards of integrity and honesty, I have since returned my attention to the development of betrayal trauma theory. Yet hardly a day goes by that my work is not interrupted by challenges to my integrity or attempts to derail my work. Sometimes these challenges are quite intrusive. Other times they are obtrusive: in 1994 an FMSF member picketed the front of the building in which I work.
This pattern of diverting attention from the message to the messenger has shown up in the academic and scholarly world at large (see Chapter 3). It emerges, too, when children and adult victims of abuse who dare to attempt to communicate their experiences suffer attacks on their credibility. We see it in the current societal debate about recovered memories. This pattern is so pervasive and central that it ultimately demands explanation by the very theories that attempt to account for the psychological response to sexual abuse. If people who dare to speak about sexual abuse are attacked by those whom they have relied on and trusted, is it any wonder that unawareness and silence are so common?
