Do not say my name | Dangerous Memories Ep 3

Transcript

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Speaker 8 Tortoise.

Speaker 28 Just a warning before we start.

Speaker 28 This episode contains references to child abuse and to sexual assault.

Speaker 29 After she'd bicycled away, and I didn't know where she'd bicycled to. So, you know, I was in absolute, I was in a terrible state.
I mean, really, really bad, just worrying and worrying.

Speaker 28 And did you have any idea where she was or any means of finding out where she was?

Speaker 31 I, no, no, no, she never came back.

Speaker 28 When Huey's mum, Sarah, watched her daughter disappear into the distance. She had no idea what had led her to leave.

Speaker 28 What Sarah remembers about the confrontation is how the look on Huey's face changed.

Speaker 28 Initially, when she saw Sarah, she seemed surprised, but then her eyes glazed over, like a zombie, Sarah said, and then she left with no explanation.

Speaker 28 What Sarah didn't know then was that under the guidance of Anne Craig, Huey had decided to turn her back on not just her family, but her whole world.

Speaker 28 By this point, she was two years in to her sessions with Anne.

Speaker 28 She'd moved out of the pub and was living alone.

Speaker 28 It was just her and her cat sleeping on the floor of a single room above a car wash.

Speaker 28 She'd cut ties with her family. and she'd stopped speaking to all her friends.
Huey was now totally isolated and totally consumed by her work with Anne.

Speaker 28 In fact, she was so consumed that she had no space for a full-time job. She was short of money, hungry and cold.

Speaker 28 At one point, she reached out to a homeless shelter for living support.

Speaker 28 Of course, there were so many people Huey knew who had plenty of money and accommodation to spare as well. But accepting gifts or financial support from the people she'd cut ties with was discouraged.

Speaker 28 It would interfere with her journey to healing.

Speaker 32 I couldn't afford heating in my house. I couldn't, if the gas bottle ran out, I'd be cold in the middle of the winter.
So I'd be taken into her warm, cozy home. I'd be given a warm cup of tea.

Speaker 32 She'd have her soft voice speaking to me.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 she became my only source of comfort and my only source of homeliness and love.

Speaker 32 And even just a phone call from her,

Speaker 32 you know,

Speaker 32 my world would light up and the room would light up and everything would be kind of glowing orange. And as soon as I'd hang up the call from her, I'd be back in cold,

Speaker 32 blue-toned, negative emotions because I was constantly frightened, constantly alone.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 had no one and nothing.

Speaker 28 And Huey was now totally dependent on Anne.

Speaker 32 And what I'd like to get across as well is that she did have a God complex.

Speaker 32 Her self-confidence that she was the only person on this earth that was light and good and true was so magnetic that it was really easy to believe her.

Speaker 28 Anne represented light and everyone else was darkness. And now it was just the two of them alone on their journey without interference from the outside world.

Speaker 28 But the world was about to close in on Anne.

Speaker 28 I'm Grace Hughes Hallett and from Tortoise this is Dangerous Memories,

Speaker 28 episode 3.

Speaker 28 Do not say my name.

Speaker 32 She called me one morning and she was absolutely frantic. It's the first time I've heard her really frantic.

Speaker 32 And I think I woke up late and there were like so many missed calls from her and messages from her saying, call me, call me, call me.

Speaker 32 And she said

Speaker 32 one of her ex-clients was trying to sue her.

Speaker 28 That ex-client was Fipsy.

Speaker 28 While Huey was becoming more entwined in Anne's web, Fipsy was putting her freedom to use.

Speaker 28 By now, her curiosity about what had happened to her, about whether she had been manipulated into some kind of cult, had turned to anger.

Speaker 28 And she wanted to let Anne know that she was on her case.

Speaker 28 So she wrote her an email, and in it she demanded a refund of the money she'd spent on the sessions with Anne.

Speaker 28 She set a deadline, and if that passed, Fipsy said she would take further action.

Speaker 33 As I said, if I do not have the money in my bank by the 15th of May, I will have to take further action. You should also know that I am not alone.

Speaker 33 There are other past clients of yours who feel the same and are more than willing to take it further.

Speaker 34 If, for some reason, you wish to contact me, please do so over here.

Speaker 28 Anne told Huey about this email.

Speaker 32 And she was so panicky about it.

Speaker 28 It was the first time that Anne seemed to be vulnerable. But if Fipsy had hoped that her letter would bring an end to Anne's sessions with her remaining clients, she was mistaken.

Speaker 32 And I think what really stays with me is the fact that she said, this isn't about me. They're not trying to sue me because it's anything to do with me.
They're not angry with me. It's you they want.

Speaker 32 They want you off the journey, Huey. They don't want you to get to the light.

Speaker 32 And so there was another part of me feeling frightened of these people that I'd like to let go because I was being told that look at the lengths that they'll go to to make sure that you never are happy, that you never reach your dreams, that you never reach your goals.

Speaker 32 They're prepared to take me down down just to destroy you. So it was this constant

Speaker 32 panic and nervous system being in panic mode and

Speaker 32 kind of clinging to Anne more, thinking, oh my gosh, she's this poor victim that's being attacked by these people,

Speaker 32 and she's protecting me and she's the only veil between me and them.

Speaker 28 Fhipsy's letter had inadvertently fueled Anne's narrative. It's us versus them.

Speaker 28 When Huey decided to leave her friends friends and family behind, she didn't just stop replying to them. She effectively went on the run.

Speaker 28 After the confrontation with her mum, Huey started looking for a new place to live, a new address where Sarah and the rest of the family wouldn't be able to find her.

Speaker 28 She went online and found an advert on Gumtree.

Speaker 28 A woman called Lee was looking for a lodger.

Speaker 28 She wanted someone who could live in her spare room in Kensal Rise at a discounted rate in return for babysitting her children.

Speaker 31 I just thought she was absolutely lovely.

Speaker 31 She was really open.

Speaker 31 I never took references from lodgers. I know it's really weird when you live alone with kids, but I always trust my judgment when it comes to people.

Speaker 31 And I'd never really been wrong and she just seemed perfect.

Speaker 28 Lee liked Huey's reply to her ad and she liked her when she came around for a chat so Huey moved in straight away in late 2013.

Speaker 28 Me and my producer Gary went to meet with Lee at her home recently. We sat in the living room right below the room that Huey used to stay in.

Speaker 28 It was clear pretty quickly that Lee's very laid back and has an accepting approach to life.

Speaker 28 But

Speaker 31 there were things that were odd. So she'd burn all this paper and then I kept finding little piles of ash around the, like, around the garden in the bushes.

Speaker 31 She was very just kind of blase about it and just said, oh, it's an artist's technique that I was taught.

Speaker 31 When you want to start painting,

Speaker 31 you just scribble down all the thoughts in your head and then you burn them and you don't reread them and it just clears your mind and you burn them and get rid of them.

Speaker 28 Then there was the time Lee found her in a vest, covered in sweat, attacking her best sofa cushions with a cricket bat.

Speaker 31 Everything she did was quite delicate and suddenly she was kind of beating the crap out of the sofa and she just kind of went, oh, it's just

Speaker 31 a technique to get anger out before you paint.

Speaker 28 Lee wrote it off as the behaviour of a quirky artist at first.

Speaker 28 About a month after Huey had moved in, Lee started to ask her what she had planned for Christmas. The house was going to be empty because she was heading off to Ireland with her children.

Speaker 31 And she said she was just going to stay at ours,

Speaker 31 which I thought was odd at 25 to be on your own for Christmas. So I remember, you know, just saying, oh my God, you know, you don't want to be on your own at Christmas.

Speaker 31 And she just kind of went, oh, God, you know what? I've always been with my family. Like, and she went, this year I think I just really want, you know, the peace and quiet i just want to have a day

Speaker 31 um

Speaker 31 and be on my own and that was that was probably my very first observation that maybe she wasn't quite such a happy go-lucky 25 year old she never seemed to go out she never she just went to work came back so obviously that made me wonder what was going on like sarah Lee didn't have an answer to that question.

Speaker 28 Huey kept the details of her time with Anne secret. Lee had no idea Anne even existed.
And Huey kept herself to herself.

Speaker 28 She'd found a part-time job teaching art that she would go off to, and when she wasn't at work, she stayed around the house. She lived a quiet life.

Speaker 28 But in the other part of her life, with Anne, a lot was going on.

Speaker 32 When I was living with Lee,

Speaker 32 a lot of stuff was coming up about my mum in sessions with Anne, so Anne really started to hone in on my mum.

Speaker 28 She asked Huey to focus her writing and thoughts on her mum.

Speaker 28 She suggested there was something to uncover involving Sarah.

Speaker 28 But it was up to Huey to work out exactly what had happened.

Speaker 28 She was tasked with uncovering the pieces, as Anne called them.

Speaker 28 pieces to complete the puzzle and reveal the bigger picture.

Speaker 28 All part of the effort to get to the root of the problem.

Speaker 28 Huey desperately tried to remember what might have happened to her when she was younger, but she just couldn't.

Speaker 32 I had no memories of any of it,

Speaker 32 so it confused me a lot. Why can't I remember any of this? But Anne said, would say that, you know, when the trauma is so severe, a lot of children who've been abused can't remember.

Speaker 28 But she desperately wanted to please Anne, her only source of comfort.

Speaker 32 And I had this session with her, and it was like a four-hour session. And I remember it got to the end of the session, and I was in floods of tears.

Speaker 32 I was like, I don't know, Anne, I can't remember anything, I can't see anything, nothing's coming up in my drawings or my writing. And I was crying, crying, crying, crying, crying.

Speaker 32 And she was like, okay, fine, I will tell you what happens. It was always Anne telling me what happened.
It never came from me. So she was like, when your mother was...

Speaker 28 Anne told Huey things about Sarah that were graphic and extreme.

Speaker 28 Of course, they were also untrue, and we've decided not to repeat them in detail.

Speaker 32 It just painted this picture of my mum as this...

Speaker 32 as this absolute monster.

Speaker 28 And ultimately, it was Anne who painted the picture, not Huey.

Speaker 28 Huey had no memory of the scenarios Anne was describing. But back then, then, Anne was the only voice she was listening to.
Anne knew Huey better than she knew herself, or so she thought.

Speaker 28 So she started to believe it might be true. And this feels like a really important distinction between memory and belief.

Speaker 28 Huey didn't have any memories of these episodes, but she believed they had happened to her.

Speaker 28 When you condense that pivotal moment down to a couple of of minutes in a podcast, it's hard to understand

Speaker 28 how

Speaker 28 that gap between a real memory and a belief in a fabricated one could be bridged.

Speaker 28 But the way I've started to think about it, it's like those cases of false confessions that have led to wrongful convictions, when during police interrogation, a vulnerable suspect says they're guilty of a crime they didn't in fact

Speaker 28 Research has proven that hours of intensive interviewing with coercive questioning can lead you to say something that isn't true and even to believe it.

Speaker 28 And as Huey said, it never came from me that the mother she'd adored her whole life was in fact her abuser.

Speaker 32 I've always been so attached to her and loved her so much. And I just remember just going into this total,

Speaker 32 by this point, this total space of like

Speaker 8 collapse.

Speaker 32 Like, I couldn't, I just stopped being able to function.

Speaker 28 Huey left Anne's house burdened with the weight of this new information, and she made her way across London back to Lees.

Speaker 32 I tried to sleep and

Speaker 32 it must have been the stress or the trauma or something but my dreams were so graphic and so vivid that it was kind of like I wasn't asleep.

Speaker 32 I couldn't really sleep and I had this major headache and my stomach was kind of being twisted into this knot and it felt like there was a knife cutting into my stomach. I was in so much pain.
pain.

Speaker 28 It was as if Huey was having a physical reaction to what Anne had told her.

Speaker 32 And the next morning I told Anne and she was like, oh, this is about your freedom.

Speaker 32 It's showing you that nothing is blocking you anymore, that you found one of the most traumatic pieces you could find, what your mother did to you. You're now free.

Speaker 28 But the pain kept returning.

Speaker 32 This is only happening at night because I was abused at night and this is the severity of the abuse coming out. My body is kind of purging it all.

Speaker 28 Hours into her third night of enduring this agony,

Speaker 28 even knowing that Anne said this was necessary catharsis, Huey couldn't bear it anymore. She went to Lee for help.

Speaker 31 I woke up one morning and she was in my bedroom and

Speaker 31 said that she hadn't slept and she was in terrible pain and could I take her to A ⁇ E?

Speaker 32 And I just broke down on her floor and was like, please help me, Lee, please help me.

Speaker 32 I'm not, I can't hope something's happening to me. And I didn't ask Anne's permission.
It was just something that I had to do. Normally, I'd need her permission for everything.

Speaker 28 Blinded by the pain, she was too distracted to think about how Anne would react.

Speaker 32 So she took me to the hospital and Anne called me outside the hospital and she said,

Speaker 32 you know,

Speaker 32 whatever you do, when you go in there, do not say my name. Do not say that you're working with me.
Do not say that you, you just say that a friend is helping you, but you cannot mention me.

Speaker 32 You cannot talk about me.

Speaker 32 So I remember being like, why? Why? I remember being quite confused. Like, why what's she so panicky about? Why is she telling me I can't talk about her?

Speaker 32 She's always saying that what the work she does is so

Speaker 32 pure and so amazing. Why, why is why am I not allowed to talk about her?

Speaker 28 To me, this feels like another indicator of Anne's self-awareness.

Speaker 28 If Anne believed she was helping Huey and doing beneficial work with her,

Speaker 28 what did she have to hide from the doctors?

Speaker 28 Along with Anne's motive, something else I've struggled with through this investigation is whether Anne might actually have believed the lives she was leading or trying to lead her clients to believe

Speaker 28 or whether the truth is something darker

Speaker 28 that she knew she was lying to them.

Speaker 28 Like the encrypted emails and the instructions to burn all homework, this panicked order to not say her name feels to me like a covering of tracks.

Speaker 28 Which makes me wonder,

Speaker 28 did she know she was leading Huey down a dangerous path? and was doing it anyway.

Speaker 28 When Huey got off the phone to Anne, a doctor came into the room to ask her about her symptoms.

Speaker 32 And they said, you know, who do you see? What's going on? Ask me loads of questions. And I was just probably quite

Speaker 32 shit, you know, reserved and

Speaker 32 kind of cagey, which they picked up on. And they said, well,

Speaker 32 look,

Speaker 32 if you're not going to tell us any details, then,

Speaker 32 you know, maybe you just have IBS.

Speaker 28 Huey kept her word to Anne and didn't tell the doctors about what she was dealing with. With little to go on they stepped away and in a state of panic Huey got back on the phone to Anne.

Speaker 28 She was in tears with the doctors unable to do anything for her she was very afraid of the pain returning that night.

Speaker 32 And then a doctor came in afterwards and they said we've heard you on the phone. Who are you speaking to? And I said oh no one.

Speaker 32 They were like no we just heard you on the phone. Who are you speaking? Who are you crying to and asking for what to say? And I was like, oh, it's just a friend.
And I started feeling really panicky.

Speaker 32 I think that's when they said, oh, we'll bring in someone who can do a more thorough assessment with you. And I just asked for sleeping pills, basically.

Speaker 32 And they gave me sleeping pills and a prescription. But they kept wanting to know, you know, what was really going on.
And

Speaker 32 I couldn't say anything.

Speaker 28 It's a measure of how entangled in Anne's web she'd become and how dependent on her permission she was, that Huey kept Anne's secret.

Speaker 28 The doctors had extended their hands, offering their support,

Speaker 28 but it would mean letting outsiders into the protective worlds that only Anne and Huey lived in.

Speaker 28 Huey had a journey to complete, and as painful as it was, she was convinced she needed to complete it alone.

Speaker 28 So later that day, Lee came to pick her up from hospital and when they got in the car, Lee started to probe.

Speaker 28 The odd behaviour was just getting harder and harder to justify.

Speaker 28 The way Huey was at home had become increasingly bizarre, like the time when Huey's beloved cat had been bitten by another cat and developed an infected leg.

Speaker 28 Lee took Huey and the cat to her vet, who prescribed antibiotics. But Huey ignored the vet's advice.
Instead, she started treating the infection with white bread.

Speaker 31 She'd keep it in the freezer. She would take a piece out, dunk it in boiling water,

Speaker 31 and then wrap it around the cat's foot and then cling film round the bread.

Speaker 31 I do remember many an evening where we were all in the kitchen kind of cooking dinner and in the background Huey had the cat pinned on the

Speaker 31 shelf, trying to get this white bread on. She was like, Antibiotics are really bad for the cat, and

Speaker 31 this draws the poison out slowly. And I said, Where did you get this from? She said something like, Oh, a lady that

Speaker 31 knows a lot about animals or something.

Speaker 28 This episode with the cat, Huey burning more and more of her writing in the garden despite Lee asking her to stop, and now this weird hospital trip, it all made Lee think it was time to start asking some questions.

Speaker 31 And I said, okay, so like, what do they think's wrong?

Speaker 31 And I remember just, I really couldn't get much out of her, but I remember as we were driving up, we were about a mile from the house, and she just said, I've got a bit of PTSD.

Speaker 31 post-traumatic stress. I don't know if she said PTSD.
And I said, what from?

Speaker 31 And she said, oh, something that's happened in my childhood. And I said, oh, you know, really sorry to hear that.

Speaker 31 And that's all she ever said about

Speaker 31 what was going on.

Speaker 31 Obviously, that made me concerned a bit because she'd been hospitalized and they couldn't find anything physically wrong with her. I then did kind of start thinking, what the heck, you know, what is

Speaker 31 going with you?

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Speaker 32 When these big pieces would come out, Anne would

Speaker 32 be very loving towards me, so I'd get a lot of love.

Speaker 32 I would get all those stress-relieving

Speaker 32 vibes from her. And

Speaker 32 I guess that made me then

Speaker 32 just very much want to believe that all this was true, which makes me sound really

Speaker 8 awful.

Speaker 28 Perhaps if she'd had the ear of a single friend or family member, the physical breakdown might have been the moment that Huey pulled away from Anne.

Speaker 28 But instead, with everyone in her old life cast into the darkness, Huey started to work even harder.

Speaker 32 And it was around this time that it started kind of coming out this belief that so I'd been abused as a child but also that the abuse was somehow linked to this wider network of a paedophile ring.

Speaker 28 Anne started telling Huey that the abuse she now believed she'd suffered and repressed was part of something even more sinister, something bigger that Huey couldn't yet comprehend.

Speaker 32 But it started to more be about

Speaker 32 using art and my gift and uncovering childhood memories to

Speaker 32 heal people who'd been raped and to help people,

Speaker 32 women and children, by suffering myself. I could help people to be liberated from abuse.

Speaker 32 And that it felt like I was on this, I had this really deep purpose and this really deep mission, and I felt part of something which

Speaker 32 felt so

Speaker 32 important.

Speaker 32 So that was a big shift in

Speaker 32 process with her.

Speaker 28 I can't know what Anne was reading and watching in her moments alone,

Speaker 28 but it is interesting that the news cycle around this time was dominated by the Jimmy Saville scandal.

Speaker 28 In 2013, the same year that Huey moved in with Lee, the celebrated English TV personality and DJ was labelled a prolific predatory sex offender following a police investigation that revealed hundreds of sexual offences across half a century, and over 70% of his victims were children.

Speaker 28 And Anne wove this scandal into her sessions with Huey.

Speaker 32 When the Jimmy Salvador case came out, which was massive, she was like, this is coming up because of our work. This is coming up because we have uncovered.
And that was such a massive.

Speaker 32 So there's all these like affirming things that happened to make you believe like, oh,

Speaker 32 we're changing the world, which is what she was promised we were doing.

Speaker 28 So, Huey's mission was now about more than just her own experiences.

Speaker 28 It was just one part of a pedophilia problem,

Speaker 28 one that seemed to be embedded in the rich and famous circles of British society.

Speaker 28 One that Anne Craig was determined to fix.

Speaker 28 Again, Huey was instructed to find the pieces to make sense of the puzzle. Anne said that she needed to work out what happened herself, to figure out how her abuse was part of something much bigger.

Speaker 28 So Huey started looking for signs in everything,

Speaker 28 because Anne placed as much importance on signs in everyday life as she did on dreams.

Speaker 31 I'd overheard a couple of conversations she was having on the phone.

Speaker 31 She was pacing up and down outside.

Speaker 31 And I remember one,

Speaker 31 I'd heard an ice cream van go past half an hour ago. And I heard her really angrily on the phone to someone.

Speaker 28 As the search for the pieces became more intense, Huey's behaviour became harder to hide from Lee.

Speaker 31 And given she was never on the phone, it was really weird because I'd never even seen her talk to anyone on the phone because she never seemed to have

Speaker 31 friends. But I heard her saying, I just need you to tell me what the meaning of the ice cream ban is.
And I was thinking, like, the hell? Like, it's an ice cream ban.

Speaker 31 And she was going, yeah, but I've heard it before and I've heard it again. I heard it this afternoon.
Like, what's that? What is that?

Speaker 28 She had no idea that it was Anne on the other end of the phone, offering her analysis of what Huey was seeing, fueling the search.

Speaker 32 Those are the kind of pieces that Anne was always trying me to get to.

Speaker 32 But by the time we were working on the paedophile ring, I couldn't get to this source of information because my brain was so fried, scrambled, and terrified all the time.

Speaker 32 And then I obviously felt like I was always letting her down because

Speaker 32 I couldn't give her those answers.

Speaker 28 When Huey was a young girl, she and her family left London for Monaco.

Speaker 28 It's the tiny microstate on the French Riviera, with a reputation as a tax haven and a home to wealthy residents with luxurious lifestyles.

Speaker 28 But at four years old, Huey was oblivious to that. To her, it was a turbulent time.

Speaker 28 She'd She'd landed in a school where the staff and the other children only spoke French.

Speaker 28 And she never really knew why they had to move. In fact, by the time she was seeing Anne, she was still unclear.

Speaker 32 So, all these kind of conspiracy theories started coming out in my sessions with her, me trying to guess, and trying to guess why we really moved to Monaco.

Speaker 28 Huey could recall some memories from that time in her life that she knew to be true.

Speaker 28 And Anne told her that one particular memory was a sign.

Speaker 32 Four years old, I started at school in Monaco and it was a French school. Couldn't speak French, I didn't have any friends, I was being bullied, no one was picking up on it, so I was pretty like down.

Speaker 32 It was a very big school and so my way of trying to get people to like me is I would take toys from home and I'd give them to children at the school to try and get them to like me.

Speaker 32 And then one day, I obviously took it too far because we gave the teacher my mum's camera to try and be like, like me, please, like, love me.

Speaker 32 And obviously, my mum was like, where the hell's my camera?

Speaker 28 So, fair enough, Sarah went to the school to get her camera back.

Speaker 28 But Huey's teacher didn't have it.

Speaker 28 So, all of the kids in her class were made to stand up and bring any toys they had in their desks up to the front of the class until they found what they were looking for.

Speaker 28 Huey was mortified, and Sarah was upset with her daughter.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 32 Anne was like, Well, why was your mother so angry? What was she really angry about? What was on that camera?

Speaker 32 Was the first question she asked from just a normal memory,

Speaker 32 already a huge suggestion there's something on this camera that your mother didn't want the teacher to see.

Speaker 28 And this is where Huey says Anne took control of the narrative and suggested a new idea, the beginnings of a new false memory.

Speaker 32 My mother was taking pictures of children for the paedophile ring. And

Speaker 32 from that story came this other story that the teacher saw what was on the camera. My mother was being investigated by social services.

Speaker 32 We were maybe going to be taken away from her, but somehow the truth didn't come out.

Speaker 28 Sarah's always been religious and she got involved with the church when they moved to Monaco. In fact, she started running a Sunday school there.
That much is true.

Speaker 28 But Anne led Huey to believe that Sarah was taking pictures of children at the Sunday school and offering them up to this elite paedophile ring as a means of funding the family's life.

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Speaker 24 you've got to bear in mind in the therapeutic situation, you've got someone there, the client who is vulnerable.

Speaker 28 This is Chris French. He's a psychologist and emeritus professor at Goldsmiths University in London.
His special interests are the psychology of paranormal beliefs and of false memories.

Speaker 28 I went to him because I was finding it hard to get my head around how Huey was led to believe such extreme untruths about her own past.

Speaker 24 They've gone there with a problem that they want help with.

Speaker 24 They view the therapist, whether it's a therapist, a counselor, a clinical psychologist, whoever it may be, as an expert. They're given a very

Speaker 24 coherent and plausible rationale.

Speaker 24 You know, this idea that traumatic memories will be repressed or dissociated, however you want to put it, and that we've got to recover those memories because that's the only way you're going to get better.

Speaker 24 So they're very, very strongly motivated to find those memories that they weren't aware of, but they are now convinced must be there somewhere.

Speaker 24 And that is a very, very powerful cocktail for the production of false memories.

Speaker 24 And the techniques that they actually use, we now know from well-controlled experimental work, are precisely those which would actually tend to produce false memories for entire episodes of things that never actually happened at all.

Speaker 28 Chris explained to me how the phrase false memory syndrome grew out of a talking therapy boom in the 80s and 90s, primarily in the States, but also in the UK.

Speaker 24 At the beginning of of the therapy, they had no recollection at all of ever being the victim of childhood sexual abuse, but by the time the therapy was finished, they were convinced that they had been the victims, typically at the hands of their own parents.

Speaker 28 He explained to me that through experiments, psychologists have since figured out the techniques used to produce false memories.

Speaker 28 The most famous example is one that's become known as the lost in a shopping mall technique.

Speaker 24 They got a a teenage boy and they told the teenage boy that they were interested in his memory for childhood events and that they'd got a list of four things that had happened during his childhood and they wanted to just see how much he could remember about those events.

Speaker 28 The researchers had gathered three true facts about his childhood from his family members.

Speaker 24 Now three of the things on the list really had happened but one was made up.

Speaker 24 Getting lost in a shopping mall, I think it was about the age of five and being very upset and then being reunited with his parents.

Speaker 24 And what they did was to see, you know, ask him what he could remember about these events.

Speaker 24 Typically, people don't remember anything about the false event, but they say, well, go away and just think about it. And we'll interview you again in a week and we'll see if you can remember anymore.

Speaker 24 And you repeat this a couple of times. And typically, using techniques like that, you can implant false memories for entire episodes in not everybody, but a sizable minority.

Speaker 24 And again, for some of those people, it might not be a very clear memory.

Speaker 28 Whether she was doing it consciously or not, what Anne appeared to be doing with Huey matches up with Chris's knowledge of how implanting false memories works.

Speaker 28 You find out a number of things that actually did happen to someone, and onto those true memories, you tag your false one, your lie.

Speaker 28 Can this happen to anyone? Or is there a certain type of person

Speaker 28 who is more vulnerable to it than others?

Speaker 24 There has been a lot of research looking at whether there is a, yeah, certain people are more susceptible to false memories.

Speaker 24 We do have information on various kind of personality characteristics that seem to correlate in a very general sense.

Speaker 24 And it tends to be things that relate to imagination. If you are somebody with a very good imagination, there's a concept in psychology of what's called fantasy proneness.

Speaker 24 If you're a fantasy prone person, as the name suggests, you spend a lot lot of time daydreaming, you're in a little world of your own, often very, very creative people.

Speaker 28 That's really interesting with regards to this story because this particular group of young women are all very artistic and creative.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 28 How interesting.

Speaker 28 I think they'd be really interested to hear that as well.

Speaker 29 Some kind person gave me the number of a private detective.

Speaker 28 Huey's family had no idea about this mission that Huey had embarked on, but they were doing their best to find out. They were on their own mission.

Speaker 29 I was able to

Speaker 29 keep track of her through, you know, this lovely, lovely private detective.

Speaker 28 One of the first calls Sarah made after Huey cycled off into the distance was to a private detective.

Speaker 28 Huey hadn't told anyone where she'd gone. There were no leads to go on.
But this guy said he could find her.

Speaker 29 I remember being told that she was living in a house opposite the bush, the Shepherd's Bush Common.

Speaker 28 He tracked her down to where she was living with Lee. They'd found her.
Part of the mystery was solved. Now they could devise a plan to get her back.

Speaker 28 Get her to explain what was going on and come home.

Speaker 28 I think most parents would have the same reaction. Find out where your child is and do everything in your power to get them back as quickly as possible, without really stopping to think about how.

Speaker 28 And this decision of Sarah's would lead to a series of attempts to try and get Huey back.

Speaker 28 Because when we heard Sarah say she didn't see her daughter for six years, she hadn't quite finished.

Speaker 32 in six years,

Speaker 29 except for three times when we ambushed her.

Speaker 28 By now, Lee was watching Huey unfold in front of her.

Speaker 31 She was much more keeping herself to herself during this time. This was all, you know, very much going downhill.

Speaker 28 And one day, when Lee was alone at home, a woman knocked on the door and

Speaker 31 answered. And she said, Is Huey here?

Speaker 31 or does huey live here it was huey's aunt is huey here and i said she's not here and she said where is she and i said i honestly don't know i'm presuming she's at work i said she comes and goes as she pleases

Speaker 31 and and then she said do you know anne

Speaker 28 and i said who and she was like do you know anne craig The family had become suspicious about the only person Huey hadn't cut out of her life, Anne Craig.

Speaker 28 And their persistence paid off.

Speaker 28 Lee was intrigued, so she started to talk with Huey's aunt over a coffee. The aunt showed Lee photos of Huey when she was a younger, happier version of herself.

Speaker 31 And then she told me all the kind of things that

Speaker 31 they'd found out about Anne and

Speaker 31 all the kind of strange behaviours that they weren't allowed this and they weren't allowed that. And I don't know, just slowly everything was falling into place.

Speaker 28 Sarah, Huey's mum knew that the family had to be careful that approaching Huey uninvited might not end well but they kept trying hoping to drag her out of this world she was spiraling deeper into.

Speaker 28 Over time they tried again and again and a couple of times they managed to get Huey as she was leaving Lee's.

Speaker 32 So I would just start screaming at them and asking them to move aside and they'd move aside and I would just cycle off as fast as I could.

Speaker 28 Huey's brother also went to Lee's house. Sarah and Henry tried too, but it always ended in the same way.

Speaker 28 And so they thought to themselves, maybe they'd been confronting the wrong person.

Speaker 32 One morning I was going to Anne's house. for a session and suddenly I just see this woman standing in the middle of the pavement with her back to me and her hands on her hip with a phone.

Speaker 32 And I was like, that's my mother. Why is my mother outside Anne's house? And I went, she didn't see me, so I went around the back of the house.
I called Anne.

Speaker 30 I was like, Anne, my mum is outside your house.

Speaker 32 You know, what do we do?

Speaker 32 And as I was on the phone to her, I heard this knock, knock, knock, knock, really loud knocking on the door, which was my mum.

Speaker 32 And Anne just said, I'm calling the police.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 32 This is when it all starts to just get really crazy.

Speaker 28 Coming up on dangerous memories.

Speaker 32 He said, I just want to let you know that I am going to be investigating your family, but I'm also going to be investigating Anne. And it just suddenly felt like

Speaker 32 the world came crashing down. And she was like, Write it down, what is it?

Speaker 32 And what I got was, I want to destroy you, as in destroy Anne.

Speaker 28 In the past, Anne Craig has issued categorical denials of any wrongdoing. She has denied responsibility for mentally abusing or psychologically manipulating clients.

Speaker 28 She has said she is the victim of a campaign of harassment.

Speaker 28 If you're looking to speak to a reputable therapist or know someone who is, you can search the Therapist Directory compiled by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy or BACP.

Speaker 28 Only registered members accredited by the Professional Standards Authority are listed, which ensures they meet high professional and ethical standards and are fully trained and qualified.

Speaker 28 Just go to bacp.co.uk.

Speaker 28 If you'd like to get in touch touch with us about your own experience, you can send us an email. It's dangerousmemories at tortoesmedia.com

Speaker 28 Thank you for listening to Dangerous Memories.

Speaker 28 If you're enjoying this podcast, you can listen to all episodes today by subscribing to Tortoise Plus on Apple Podcasts or by downloading the Tortoise app.

Speaker 28 And you can listen to our previous investigations right here on Tortoise Investigates.

Speaker 28 Or to hear more podcasts from our award-winning newsroom, search for Tortoise wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 28 Dangerous Memories was written and reported by me, Grace Hughes Hallett, and by Gary Marshall. The producer is Gary Marshall.
Additional reporting and production from Imogen Harper.

Speaker 28 Additional editing from Claudia Williams. Fact checking was by Xavia Greenwood.
Sound design and original composition from Tom Kinsella. The theme music is Far Gone, Don't Leave by Pictish Trail.

Speaker 28 Podcast artwork by Lola Williams.

Speaker 28 The commissioning editor was Basha Cummings.

Speaker 28 The executive producer was Kerry Thomas.

Speaker 28 Tortoise.

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