Defendants in sexual assault cases are just as likely to misremember the event as alleged victims—new study

Psychologists have intensively studied the factors that make eyewitnesses and victims more or less sensitive to the distortion of memory. But to date, there has been no experimental evidence comparing the suggestion of memory between the complainants and accused in cases of sexual assault.

My recent study was the first to compare memory errors between the complainants and the accused. The results of this study, which examined the memories of the people involved in a case of fictitious sexual assault, suggest that the two parties are also likely to deserve the details of what happened.

Imagine that you were called upon to sit on a jury, evaluating an alleged sexual assault case. In this case, David and Rebecca are university classmates and went to a party on a Saturday evening. Towards the end of the night, they went to a bedroom upstairs, where sexual activity took place. The next day, Rebecca went to the police to file a complaint of sexual assault, declaring that she had not made sex with David.

In this trial, as is often the case in real judicial cases, the accused, David, maintains that sexual activity was completely consensual. As a juror, this puts you in a difficult position. The two parties agree that sexual activity has taken place, so that all physical proof will probably be of limited use. To make your decision, you must count on the testimony of David and Rebecca, according to their memories of the evening. This means that you need to assess the credibility of David and Rebecca’s memories.

When a judicial case depends on the memories of victims or eye witnesses, expert witnesses are sometimes called upon to explain the science of memory to the jury. The question is sub-studied, but the evidence suggests that in cases of sexual assault, these experts are almost always called by defense rather than by the accusation.

In the case that I described above, this means that expert testimony would be used to assert that Rebecca’s memory – but not David – could be distorted.

Research on the literature on the memory of eyewitnesses is largely motivated by the desire to reduce errors of eyewitness and to avoid false layers of justice. Consequently, the majority of the evidence on which the expert can count by giving their testimony will be focused on the distortion of the memory between witnesses and the victims of crimes. This can give the impression that witnesses and complainants are particularly subject to memory errors, while the complainant’s memory is infallible.

People accused of crimes are also human, and their memories are subject to the same reconstructive processes as anyone. In response to this question, my colleagues and I have conducted a series of experiences – recently published in Scientific relationships-What has shown that the two parties in a “He said, she said,” the case is also likely to suffer from memory distortion.

In our study, the participants were invited to imagine that they made an appointment with a man or a woman. They then watched a video of scenes from the date, filmed from the point of view of the first person. After the video, the participants were informed that an accusation of sexual assault had been made and was randomly assigned to the role of complainant or the accused.

Then, they were shown declarations of the witnesses of a security guard, a bartender and a taxi driver who included deceptive descriptions of the date. For example, the declaration suggests that the accused exercised the complainant with drinks, or that the complainant was sexually aggressive. During three experiments, we found that the “accused” and “complainant” were also likely to incorporate these deceptive details into their memory of the date.

Many people tend to think of remembering as a simple act of access to information, such as drawing a computer file. But research has shown that we rebuild each memory from zero each time we remember, as if we built a Lego tower from individual bricks, rather than recalling the event as a whole. This reconstruction can be subject to errors, and we sometimes incorporate disinformation in our memories, such as the addition of a brick in turn where it should not be.

The problem arises when we expect human beings to have a memory similar to a machine for the details of an event, and judge them harshly when they do not.

These errors can have devastating consequences in a judicial environment. The independent independent project based in the United States, the Innocence project reported in 2014 that 72% of the erroneous convictions which were canceled later when DNA evidence emerged initially supported on a testimony of defective eyewitness.

But psychologists have developed techniques that interrogators can use to obtain an unused eye testimony. For example, investigators can be trained to extract ocular witness reports using cognitive maintenance techniques, a technique developed by psychologists to avoid introducing post-event disinformation and distorting memories of witnesses. In this technique, the interviewer can help witnesses to recall the details by asking them to form an image of the original scene (such as the location of objects in a room), to comment on their emotional reactions at the time and to describe all sounds, odors and other physical conditions.

When people ask why we have not changed perfect memories, the answer is the same as when we ask why we have not evolved to measure 4 meters or have hearts that beat 300 times per second: we did not need it. The evolutionary pressures have pushed us to stand up and reach a height that supported our ability to eat and defend ourselves, but once this need has been satisfied, natural selection is no longer privileged with a constantly increasing height.

In the same way, our memories have evolved to support our daily life – to help us make decisions and make measures – not to be an infallible registration device.

Regarding the memory of eyewitnesses, we must treat it like any other form of evidence, recognizing its value but also understand that it can be contaminated. In the case of sexual assault, it is important to understand that the factors that could undermine the account of a victim, including the passage of time since the event, the consumption of alcohol and exposure to post-event disinformation are just as likely to apply to the accused.

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