Adults’ retractions of childhood sexual abuse allegations: high-stakes and the (in)validation of recollection

Retractors are individuals who have repudiated their earlier claims of having been sexually abused. There has been relatively little research conducted with this population. The growing literature on memory verification strategies and non-believed memories provide a conceptual and empirical lens through which to revisit the accounts of these individuals to try and learn more about the process of making and retracting high-stake, consequential beliefs or recollections about the past. Do people attempt to validate or invalidate beliefs and recollections of such events in the same way as they do for the moderately significant events studied to date? The paper concludes by re-emphasising the social and contextual nature of remembering and argues for the primacy of belief over recollection.