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False Memory

False Memory

Titel: False Memory Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Dean Koontz
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wiping his hands on a small towel. “Your friend.”
    “We found her body this afternoon,” Dusty elaborated.
    Closterman sat at the table and took one of Martie’s hands in both of his. “And you thought she was getting better.”
    “That’s what Dr. Ahriman told me yesterday.” Dusty said, “We have reason to think that Martie’s autophobia— as we now know it’s called—isn’t naturally occurring.”
    “I went with Susan to his office twice a week for a year,” she explained. “And I’ve begun to discover... odd memory lapses.”
    Sun-seared, windburnt, with permanent dashes of red in the corners, the doctor’s eyes were nevertheless more kind than damaged. He turned Martie’s hand over in his and studied her palm. “Here’s everything important I can tell you about the slick sonofabitch.”
    He was interrupted when Charlotte raced into the kitchen with a ball in her mouth, Valet on her heels. The dogs slid on the tile floor and shot out of the room as pell-mell as they had entered.
    Closterman said, “Toilet training aside, dogs can teach us more than we can teach them. Anyway, I do a little pro bono work. I’m no saint. Lots of doctors do more. My volunteer work involves abused children. I was battered as a child. Didn’t scar me. I could waste time hating the guilty... or leave them to the law and to God, and use my energy to help the innocent. Anyway... remember the Ornwahl case?”
    The Ornwahl family had operated a popular preschool in Laguna Beach for over twenty years. Every opening in their classrooms led to heated competition among parents of potential enrollees.
    Two years ago, the mother of a five-year-old preschooler filed a complaint with the police, accusing members of the Ornwahl family of sexually abusing her daughter, and claiming that other children had been used in group sex and satanic rituals. In the hysteria that ensued, other parents of Ornwahl students interpreted every oddity in their kids’ behavior as an alarming emotional reaction to abuse.
    “I had no connections with the Ornwahls or with families whose children attended the school,” Roy Closterman said, “so I was asked to perform pro bono examinations of the kids for Child Protective Services and the D.A.’s office. They were getting pro bono work from a psychiatrist, too. He was interviewing Ornwahl preschoolers to determine if they could give convincing accounts of abuse.”
    “Dr. Ahriman,” Martie guessed.
    Roy Closterman got up from the table, fetched the coffeepot, and refreshed their cups.
    “We had a meeting to coordinate various aspects of the medical side of the Ornwahl investigation. I instantly disliked Ahriman.”
    A twinge of self-reproach caused Dusty to shift uneasily in his chair. That persistent inner voice shamed him for his disloyalty to the psychiatrist, for even listening to this negativity.
    “And when he mentioned offhandedly that he was using hypnotic-regression therapy to help some kids revisit possible incidents of abuse,” Closterman said, “all my alarm bells went off.”
    “Isn’t hypnosis an accepted therapeutic technique?” Martie asked, perhaps echoing her own inner counselor.
    “Less and less so. A therapist without finesse can easily, unwittingly implant false memories. Any hypnotized subject is vulnerable. And if the therapist has an agenda and isn’t ethical...
    “Do you think Ahriman had an agenda in the Ornwahl case?”
    Instead of answering the question, Closterman said, “Children are highly susceptible to suggestion, even without hypnosis. Study after study has shown they’ll ‘remember’ what they think a persuasive therapist wants them to remember. Interviewing them, you have to be very cautious to avoid leading their testimony. And any so-called repressed memories recovered from a child under hypnosis are virtually worthless.”
    “You raised this issue with Ahriman?” Martie asked.
    Resuming his work with the yellow peppers, Closterman said, “I raised it—and he was a condescending, arrogant prick. But smooth. He’s a good politician. Every concern I raised, he answered, and no one else in the investigation or the prosecution shared my concerns. Oh, the poor damn doomed Ornwahl family didn’t like it, but this was one of those cases when mass hysteria subverts due process.”
    “Did your examinations of the children turn up any physical evidence of abuse?” Dusty asked.
    “None. There’s not always physiological evidence of rape with older children. But these were preschoolers, small children. If

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