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How much can we trust our own memories?
In 1990, Eileen Franklin-Lipsker suddenly knew who had killed her childhood best friend, 8-year-old Susan Nason, more than 20 years ago.
She had been there, she said. A repressed memory, long buried, had revealed itself.
She vividly recalled the details of the 1969 murder. The van. The remote spot. Her own abusive father lifting the rock. The crushed ring on her friend's hand.
A jury believed her, and George Franklin was sentenced to life in prison.
Five years later, the conviction was overturned. His daughter's testimony collapsed under scrutiny.
Details, such as time of day and who was there, would change.
She later accused her father of another murder, but DNA proved he couldn't have done it.
Gabrielle Principe is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Charleston and the author of several books specialising on memory formation.
She told Sunday Morning's Jim Mora the Franklin case is a cautionary tale, a lesson that our memories can feel true, and be totally wrong.
"Eileen was recalling something that she had allegedly seen 20 years ago.
"However, the memory was only a year old.
"So the question is, you know, how could you have a one-year-old memory of something that happened twenty years ago?"
Memory is not a video camera, she said, faithfully recording and storing events for later playback. Instead, it is malleable, fragmentary, and heavily influenced by attention, emotion, and suggestion.
"Our memories are subject to distortions, modifications, additions, and deletions.
"You can create richly detailed, vivid, compelling false memories that people truly, truly believe.
"What may have happened to Eileen... Maybe a memory of something that didn't happen that was suggested to her, that she imagined over the course of, you know, years. And it became to feel familiar and it became to feel real."
"You can be 100 percent confident in a memory... and 100 percent wrong."
False memories, real victims
And while the idea that traumatic events can be completely locked away and then resurface decades later as pristine recollections remains a popular belief, Principe said it's not supported by the research.
"We have no scientific evidence that memories can be locked away completely and then recovered intact," she said.
And the legal system, she warns, must be extremely cautious. Like DNA or blood samples, memory can be contaminated through conversations with police, therapists, and even family members.
Taken to its extreme, this can create entirely false memories.
"The way that that procedure works... is to start with a kernel of something, that's familiar and to suggest things.... and get individuals to think about it and imagine it, and talk about it, and to do that repeatedly.
"If you do that sort of thing to people... roughly a third of people will develop richly detailed false memories that range from a crime, engaging in a crime... even to things like witnessing a demonic possession."
In 1993, Christchurch childcare worker Peter Ellis was convicted of abusing children in his care. The case was largely built on the testimony of children whose accounts had been shaped by repeated, highly suggestive interviews.
Over time, their stories became more elaborate and fantastical, including claims of Satanic ritual abuse.
Ellis spent seven years in prison and died in 2019, still fighting to clear his name.
In 2022, the Supreme Court quashed his conviction.
Why memory changes, and why that's okay
But while clinicians and courtrooms must remain sceptical, Principe argues, the fact that memory shifts over time is not a flaw but an evolutionary advantage.
"We wouldn't have the room in our brain to store memories of every single thing we experience. We have a great mechanism that we sort of rebuild things, and it usually works just fine, most of the time.
"It's just that the legal situation or the legal arena demands the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Sometimes, we even rewrite memories to make ourselves feel better - to soften heartbreak, to boost confidence, to forget pain.
Understanding the dynamic, reconstructive nature of memory can not only prevent miscarriages of justice but also improve our relationships.
"If you're in a relationship with someone and you're disagreeing over who said what or who said they would do what.
"You can all be right because your memories are based on what you paid attention to, and your memories change.
"So, fighting over the details of who said what or what wasn't said, it doesn't make sense if you know about and understand how fluid, constructive attention and memory can be."
By understanding our memory, she said, we can stop pretending that it's perfect.
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