When started my previous blog THE FALSE MEMORY TROPE COLLECTION, I found an online picture to use as a heading – a newspaper clip that read ”She has got false memory”. To the right of the text there was a photo of 17 year old girl. I clipped away the picture of the girl because it was actually the text I was after, and I felt uncomfortable about using her image to write about myself
The girl whose image I had clipped away became Virginia Giuffre née Roberts, a 41 year woman and mother of three, who has just died, reportedly by suicide.
When I used that newspaper clip as the heading for my blog, I didn’t understand the history of the photo attached or how it related to what I was blogging about – the so-called false memory people. I understand more now. So this blogpost is my tribute to Virginia Giuffre because in sharing that photo with the world, she gave from her own pain to others. Because it´s a tribute I’ve tried to keep her name in focus and have moved as many other names as possible down to the footnotes.
The picture itself was originally a snapshot she kept private for many years before showing it to a journalist ( 1).
The photographer who first made a copy of the photo for the Mail on Sunday has said
”She handed me the photograph, I just put it on the table in the hotel room and I copied it. I think I took over 30 frames, which is … overkill for copying one photo, but I thought I didn’t want to get it out of focus, or get it wrong, because I knew how important it was. Then I turned the photo over and I took … three frames of the back of the photo. The back of the image showed it was developed on March 13, 2011 at a Walgreens in the United States. It was a normal 6×4 print that you would have got from any developer at the time,” (2)
She also handed the original photo to the FBI (who visited her in the wake of the journalist) in the hope that they would investigate Epstein.
In 2022 a Guardian journalist wrote that that the picture itself had become a symbol for Virginia Guiffre’s case against Prince Andrew.
“She has accomplished what no one else could: getting Prince Andrew to stop his nonsense and side with sexual abuse victims,” (3)
Since Giuffre’s passing, another Epstein survivor, Joanna Sjöberg has said:
”For Virginia, half called her a hero while the other half called her a liar. That’s the risk you choose when you become a public figure. I cannot imagine the battle she had within herself to simply stay sane” (4)
How does this relate to so-called false memory?
When the website of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) was in business, their website used to post news alerts every month or so. Their last update was in My 2019. Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and after that the FMSF issued no further news alerts. At the end of the year a single sentence appeared which said the organization was no more. (5) This meant that when Loftus was an expert witness for Maxwell, the FMSF was no longer around.
In the UK, the BBC Newsnight broadcast an interview with Andrew in 2019 where he denied having ever met Giuffre. The interviewed was described as a car crash. Andrew said, “I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken. I don’t remember going upstairs in the house,” (6 ) He was not seen as credible and was removed from some of his official royal duties.
A couple of years later when Maxwell tried to use the false memory defence in her trail, Andrew’s spokespeople changed the information they gave to the media. Attention shifted focus from Andrew´s memory of a Pizza Express restaurant to Virginia Giuffre´s possible false memory.
The headline caption that I used a clip of for my blog was from the Sunday Mirror. ”She has got false memory” was blasted across their front page. Above it was a cation about an actress who doesn’t like undressing as part of her work, and another caption offering a 200 pound supermarket voucher. The small print next to the picture of Virginia Giuffre and Andrew reads that the Prince’s defence want to question her psychologist about false memory.
The New Stateman did an article which was largely critical of Maxwell’s false memory defence. However it also interviewed a BFMS advisory board member without mentioning his connection with the BFMS. (7) The I Paper then interviewed the communication person for the BFMS.(8) The June 2022 BFMS newsletter then reported on this article
By the time July 2022 BFMS newsletter came out, Andrew had agreed on a financial settlement with Virginia Guiffre. (10) So the attempt to threaten with the false memory argument did not succeed. Perhaps Virginia´s steadfastness put one of the final nails in the false memory coffin
This interview with the BFMS was also the organisation’s last mention in a British news publication. Thats is, apart from articles in which the BFMS was asked why a person who had received a prison sentence for a child sex offence and another person with a documented history of sexual harassment, were members of the their advisory board.(11) The BFMS denied any knowledge about this and closed at the end of 2023. (12)
So-called false memory and photography
Ever since photography started people have been discussing how photographs relate to reality. So its hardly surprising that false memory advocates have wiggled their way into these discussions too.
In 2002, one of the original members of the BFMS advisory board was had his work computer seized by the police. He protested this, saying that he had legal clearance to give advice on pornography. He also said that the images that the police had seized had been sent to him for consultation by the BMFS.(13) Quite why the BFMS needed his expertise on this is not something I have been able to find out. What did such images have to do with therapists implanting false memories? His name disappeared from the list of BFMS advisory members after that, and no mention or explanation of this was given in their newsletter.
IN 2000 one of the people who had worked with Elizabeth Loftus infamous ”Lost in the mall study” moved to New Zealand. (14)(15) Here she did research with another person who later joined the BFMS advisory board.(16) The research was about how fake photographs could create false childhood memories. In 2002 they published an article called ” A picture is worth a thousand lies: using false photographs to create false childhood memories”.(17) There’s now actually a whole subset of articles about how editiing photographs can lead to false memories.
In the leadup to Giuffre’s settlement with Andrew, an articles appeared in several British newspapers saying that a ”friend” of Andrew thought the photograph of him, Giuffre and Maxwell was a fake. The friend said that in reality Andrew is taller than in the photo and his hands ”chubbier”.(18)
DARVO and that photograph
DARVO is an acronym for Divert Attack Reverse Victim and Offender.(19) It describe the tactics of the False Memory people and other perpetrators who divert attention away from themselves to the person doing the accusing. The photograph that Virginia Giuffre shared of herself, Andrew and Maxwell became a weapon in her fight for justice. It also became an object of DARVO with a myopic focus on whether Andrew had been photoshopped.
The antidote to this DARVO would be to focus on what is not being shown by the photograph. Which in this case is all the other visual documentation that was made by the Epstein and Maxwell. Apparently when Epstein was specifically asked whether he was trying to blackmail Andew by trafficking Guiffre, he refused to answer. (20)
One of the lawyers who has represented other victims of Epstein says that the FBI has seized visual documentation but:
”They have yet to release any of the video tapes that were recorded in his home, both in the US Virgin Islands as well as Manhattan, and Palm Beach that the FBI has in their custody. release the tapes. ” (21)
One of the effects of DARVO is that when Virginia Guiffre allowed that photo to be copied and talked openly to the media, her personal character came into sharp focus. Another lawyer has said this week that he had to test her carefully before agreeing to take her on as a client, because even if she made innocent mistakes, she would be judged by the media.(22)
This DARVO also diverts attention from asking if the Metropolitan police should investigate Andew, by focusing instead on how ”chubby” his fingers are in the photograph.
Finally
The journalist who interviewed Prince Andrew in what is now known as the car crash Newsnight interview, has spoken this week about muttering heard when contradictory news reports came out about Giuffre’s health in the weeks before she died. She had been asked if she now thought Giuffre was ”unhinged”. Then after hearing about Giuffre’s death she wrote that the muttering stopped.
”Somehow a dead victim was a believable victim. And it made me feel really uneasy because it suggests that we can only believe victims of sexual abuse once they’ve literally lost their lives to suicide. As if that last act of self torture proved that they were speaking the truth all along……. We have to believe woman whilst they are alive. We cannot wait for them to die before we say, oh OK, maybe she was in pain……. Virginia Guiffre was subjected to myriad multiple abuse and she did the hardest thig of all by speaking out, trying to hold those in power to account.” (23)
Being accused oh having a false memory was just a very small part of the challenges Virginia Giuffre faced, but it has resonated with me. Her bravery must have influenced many people in many different ways. I hope she can now rest in peace and I wish her family well.
Footnotes
(1) The journalist Sharon Churcher for the Sunday Mail
