Dear Sir/Madam,
We are conducting a survey concerning the experiences and memories of retractors. More specifically, we are interested in how your belief in the respective memory changed over time and what role therapy played during this time.
Retractors are individuals who have repudiated their earlier claims of having been (sexually) abused. The existence of such ‘retractors’ would seem to demonstrate, if their retractions are valid, that adults can be induced to falsely believe that they had been sexually abused in childhood. Some of the people have retracted their claims of abuse later indicating that they no longer believe the event took place.
The goal of this research is to examine retractors’ “memories” of (childhood) abuse before and after you withdrew this claim. Additionally, we are interested into the role of (psycho)therapy in the formation of these memories. We measure this through a questionnaire. We will compare the different memory details of (childhood) abuse before and after the claim of abuse was retracted. Also, we will examine what kind of therapy or ways can help people recover his memory or realize this memory is not true.
The entire questionnaire contains two parts with seven sections, a total of 120 items, each part will take about half an hour. You don’t have to complete the entire questionnaire in one time, but you can do the entire questionnaire in ‘sessions’ of your choosing at different times. Please read and answer each question carefully. If there is no suitable answer in the provided options, please choose “other” or fill in the direct answer directly. If you do not want to disclose some details or if it is too distressing in any way, please do not feel obliged to answer this question. Thank you for your reading this explanation and we hope that you will consent to participate by ticking the box below.
Your participation will play a key role in our research. With this in mind, we would like to ask you whether you would be willing to participate in our study. All your personal information will be confidentially stored and only used for the research. Also, you can withdraw your participation at any time during the study.