A former Baptist pastor is seeking to overturn a Nebraska jury's $1.75 million award to his daughter by attacking the Harvard professor who backed up her claim that she had recovered memories of being sexually abused by her father.

Gordon Vella has appealed the verdict but, according to his new attorneys, “newly discovered” evidence shows his daughter's expert witness, Dr. Daniel Brown, made “numerous misrepresentations” which require the trial judge to grant him relief from the judgment.

“The Plaintiff’s case was built upon Dr. Daniel Brown’s testimony regarding the hypothesis of 'repressed memory' or 'dissociative amnesia,' in general, and the verifiability and general acceptance of that hypothesis,” the motion for relief says.

Among other things, Vella argues, Brown misused “studies addressing the 'accuracy' of recovered memories to provide an error rate for the hypothesis of dissociative amnesia or repressed memory.”

The plaintiff, identified only as “Anonymous” in court papers, has responded by describing the motion as “nothing more than Defendant’s last ditch effort to try to blame Plaintiff and one of her witnesses, Dr. Daniel Brown, for his own failure to thoroughly defend himself with prior counsel. The arguments are more directed to a malpractice case, than to this case.”

Vella allegedly began molesting his daughter when she was three and continued until she was 12. The jury found the statute of limitations did not bar her claims for sexual assault and emotional distress because she suffered from a “mental disorder” that prevented her from remembering her abuse until she was 29.

The theory of repressed memory is still a subject of heated scientific debate, with Dr. Brown, a Harvard psychology professor, among its leading proponents. Vella has now enlisted three critics of the theory to impeach Brown, in particular over his testimony relating to error rate.

Brown testified that about 14 percent to 16 percent of childhood sexual abuse victims “will completely forget the abuse and remember it years later.” On average, studies show five percent of “all the people who are abused who forget it” make false reports of abuse.

According to Vella's motion, however, “it is not possible to state with confidence that any of the people 'completely forgot the abuse.' In other words, the error rate for diagnosing 'dissociative amnesia' in the studies [cited by Brown] could effectively be as much as 100%.”

The accuracy of recovered memories, the motion says, does not address the threshold question of “whether Plaintiff had, in fact, completely forgotten the alleged memories and recovered them less than one year prior to the filing of the suit.”

In her opposition brief, the plaintiff says Vella had “every opportunity to ... make all of his current arguments” at the summary judgment and trial stages of the case. “His failure to do so was a strategic move by him and his counsel with which he must now live.”

It would certainly be a surprise if U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf did grant relief since, in denying summary judgment, he commented that Brown had presented an “extremely detailed affidavit” and conducted “extensive testing and examination” of Vella's daughter.

Vella is now represented by Krista L. Kester and Allen M. Tate of Woods & Aitken in Lincoln, who replaced Craig C. Cunningham of Sycamore, Ill.

By Matthew Heller
11/8/07