Guest: Lynn Crook, M.Ed.

This week we welcomed Lynn Crook, M.Ed., on the podcast:

Lynn Crook, M.Ed., has a Master’s Degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington (1970).

Lynn was herself a therapist when she recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Lynn Crook, MEd, successfully sued her parents for damages in 1994, based on a corroborated claim of childhood sexual abuse.

She was one of the first to sue parents for abuse, just as the Memory Wars of the 90’s were beginning to unfold.

Elizabeth Loftus, the professor who led the “Lost in the Mall Study” was paid to testify in the trail as an “expert witness” against Lynn’s case in the trial.

Lynn’s own research into those transcripts and then the study itself began her advocacy work for other survivors.

Crook reports that Loftus, who testified for the defense in Crook’s trial, misrepresented Crook’s case to the media. 

Crook filed an ethics complaint with the APA, and Loftus resigned. 

After discovering that the lost-in-a-mall study results had been misrepresented,  Crook presented her findings at conferences in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and at the United Nations.  She has appeared in two documentaries--  “Memory” by Korean Broadcasting System, and “Am I Crazy? My journey to determine if my memories are true” by filmmaker Mary Knight.  Crook is completing her investigative memoir,  FALSE MEMORIES – The Rest of the Story.  The book documents the history of a $7M false memory PR campaign by run by accused parents who harassed critics and subjected adult survivors to gaslighting.    

Lynn is an editor emeritus of Treating Abuse Today.

She offers THIS timeline for a brief overview of these incidents she describes in the podcast episode. Links and citations are included there for each statement.

You can read the Wikipedia entry on the “Lost in the Mall Study” HERE, including about the ongoing controversy regarding the failure of the study despite its continued citation in mainstream media and other court cases.