So far, more than 50 family-practice residents have completed the program and rated it as one of their most valuable clinical experiences, Lundberg-Love said. The two-year training program Lundberg-Love designed for family-practice residents studying behavioral science at the University of Texas-Tyler consists of the following modules:

•  four monthly lectures during which Lundberg-Love

• gives a detailed overview of child sexual abuse, presents case examples, shows how to document abuse and gives tips on testifying on a child's behalf in court cases involving sexual abuse;

• training from the university's pediatric faculty on diagnosing physical signs of abuse; and

• practicum experience during which Lundberg-Love and a family-practice resident interview child patients as well as suspected child-abuse victims.

Physical clues include abrasions and bruises on external genitalia, certain sexually transmitted diseases, and, in girls, pregnancy or a distortion of the hymen or other aspects of the female genitalia.

Lundberg-Love teaches residents about the behavioral clues of abuse: provocative sexual behavior, compulsive masturbation, sexual acting out, running away, clinical depression, distortion of body image, phobias and regressive behavior.


BIG problem!, falseallegations.com believes. Each one of those so-called clues has a differential diagnosis . . . meaning that each of those so-called clues can be caused by events other than sexual abuse. Therein lies the danger of Lundberg-Love's program.

"After a series of lectures on child abuse" -- the content of which is not revealed -- "family-practice residents are able to participate in interviewing children who are suspected of being sexual abuse victims" -- which means suspected child victims are used as guinea pigs. Apparently the best interests of the children, to be interviewed by experienced persons, are expendable. It makes one wonder where the animal rights' people are!


Initially, Lundberg-Love conducts the interview, while the resident observes her technique.

When a child comes in, Lundberg-Love introduces herself and the resident, and sits in a way that allows them to talk at eye-level. For the first 15 to 20 minutes of the session, Lundberg-Love and the resident talk informally with the child to establish a trusting rapport. She then explains the purpose of the interview in appropriate developmental language.

SUGGESTION:  Lundberg-Love should introduce interviewing by having herself and  and the medical residents do considerable role-playing first, before letting the student doctors experiment with their undeveloped skills and perhaps no talent whatsoever on the children.   To do otherwise is abusing the children.  Further, to balance biases as well as knowledge and experiences, a prosecutor AND a defense attorney should be present a few times to point out the REAL rules of evidence to the students.   This is where psychology and the law intersect and MUST be considered.   To be familiar with only one of them is dangerous.  Doctors MUST understand hearsay if they are to practice in this field.  Particularly where they are given immunity for liability for reporting false allegations.


For example, she says 'I am going to ask you lots of questions, some of which you may know the answers to, and some of which you may not know the answers. Sometimes you may not even understand my question. If that happens, just tell me and I'll do a better job of asking my questions. We're going to ask you about the things you like and the things you don't like.'

When asking the children questions in this sensitive and liberty-threatening area, Lundberg-Love has the responsibility NOT to ask them questions they do NOT understand.  She herself is likely to be the source of information which the child has learned and which an overzealous DA uses as evidence of the accused having been sexually intimate with the child.  Yes, indeed, the the child might become a victim, not of the accused, but of Lundberg-Love and her protégés.  


Lundberg-Love then describes what will happen in the physical exam and asks the child if he or she has any questions. 'You have to answer the questions honestly and use the child's own words to answer them and to document what is being said,' said Lundberg-Love.

A Freudian slip! a slip of the tongue?  In the APA magazine! Doctors are NOT to answer the questions, the children are.


To be most effective, psychologists and physicians should never press a child who is reluctant to speak, Lundberg-Love emphasized. Health professionals should also be sure they don't criticize or suggest blame or guilt; they need to keep a matter-of-fact demeanor about what the child says at all times, no matter what he or she reveals.

That is true.


And, to be sure that the interview stands up in court--if that should prove necessary--practitioners must not offer verbal reinforcement, such as 'You're doing great,' or offer a child food or soda. Such rewards can be misconstrued in court as coercing false statements from the child, Lundberg-Love noted.

Wrong again!  Such rewards are PROPERLY CONSTRUED -- not MISconstrued -- in court as coercing false statements from the child.  


 At the end of the interview, the resident practices intervening techniques by asking the child some review and summary questions, enabling them to practice their intervention techniques. Lundberg-Love observes and, once the child has left, gives the resident feedback on the interview.

Before going to court, family physicians should have a pretrial meeting with the attorney who represents the child, Lundberg-Love said. At that meeting, they should let the attorney know what evidence they will present and suggest questions that the attorney should ask.

Wrong again!  The physicians should also meet and cooperate with the attorney for the accused.  The physician is supposed to be neutral and unbiased!  And again the interview continued in the same vein, ending with:
 
When testifying, . . . 'We need to be assertive enough to correct them even when attorneys behave in an adversarial, aggressive manner.'

Since you are a group who appears to be deeply invested in ACCURACY, one would think you would be equally compulsive about your requirements for accuracy....ie. quoting correctly in an appropriate context, contacting sources before you derive erroneuos conclusions, asking authors for their sources, etc.

Please enlighten me.

I've copied the entire article and inserted it at the end of this email. My other comments are interspersed below.

> Paula Lundberg-Love wrote:
>
> I sure would appreciate seeing the entire article from the APA Monitor
> (1995?) that you quote.

See the bottom of this email. [http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct95/violentc.html]

> Also, did you ever contact Dr. Lundberg-Love

No.

> or the APA Monitor author

Tried. No luck.

> re: the accuracy of the article OR the
> accuracy of your rather "loose" interpretation of the presentation

Assumed the APA legal counsel passes on these articles when they deem it necessary.

I am as entitled to my opinions as you are to yours.

> Since you are a group who appears to be deeply invested in ACCURACY,

Thee is no "group." I happen to be one little old lady who is a sole practitioner.

> one would think you would be equally compulsive about your
> requirements for accuracy....ie. quoting correctly in an appropriate
> context, contacting sources before you derive erroneuos conclusions,
> asking authors for their sources, etc.

I formed a reasonable belief that the American Psychological Association was only publishing information which it believed to be true. In fact, the APA called you a psychologist because that is evidently what you were holding yourself out as, when in fact you are not a psychologist but a psychopharmacologist.

I have not alerted the APA of what appears to be your misrepresentation of your professional standing. I believe that it would be reasonable for YOU to correct their misapprehension! You should also inform the various publishing companies for which you have written reviews of books they were publishing.

> Please enlighten me.

I have so enlightened you, as per your request.

Now would you enlighten me! Also please scour Sara Martin's article and point out to me where Martin has been inaccurate, if, indeed, she has been inaccurate.

Also, most importantly, please identify those statements in my webpage which are inaccurate about you in any way. If you provide me documentary proof -- that is written sources which did not originate with you -- that I am wrong, I will indeed either change my statement, apologize, or make comment on our correspondence and difference of opinion. In other words, I shall do whatever is appropriate when I hear from you again.

Sincerely,

Barbara C. Johnson
Attorney at Law, Andover, Massachusetts
False Allegations: http://falseallegations.com
Forever Fascinating: http://falseallegations.com/scstore/indexstr.html
Participating Attorney:
http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs2/user/browse.shtml
Expert: http://www.ExpertCentral.com

Thank you for responding Ms. Johnson,
I must admit, I was surprised that you did. I had no knowledge about your web page or any other information about you until a former Psychology student from the University of Texas at Tyler emailed me about it and said that there were distinct inaccuracies in it. So, I went to false allegations.com and tried to search for where it might be. Finally I just searched my name and your article came up.

Ok, let's see if I can help. If my recollection serves me correctly, this article was in the September? or October? APA Monitor. In August of 1995 I was one presenter in a small symposium chaired by Dr. Kevin Hamberger of the Univeristy of Wisconsin. The goal of the symposium was to discuss with other psychologists the importance of teaching family practice residents about issues surrounding family violence. My task was to discuss the types of information to which that Family Practice Residents should be exposed. Dr. Hamberger discussed the issue of domestic violence and I discussed the issue of child sexual abuse.

First my background/credentails. I AM a psychologist. My M.A. is in Psychology and my Ph. D. is in Psychology, specifically physiological psychology with an emphasis in psycholpharmacology. I also completed a scientist/practitioner three year Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in Preventive Medicine. In that capacity I conitnued my basic biological research and received training in the behavioral modification of lifestyle/preventive medicine issues and worked with patients to reduce their weight, stop smoking, change their lifestyles etc.

I came to the University of Texas at Tyler as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Because the Dept. of Psychology graduate program is an applied clinical one (M.A./ M.S.), the undergraduate program is a traditional program, I applied to the State of Texas for licensure after completing my required hours of supervision. I have had the license of Psychological Associate since on or about 1986. In the State of Texas LPAs are able to provide testing and intervention with clients under the Supervision of a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. My provision of therapeutic services is NOT conducted at UT-Tyler. I have been a part-time clinician with a private practice group. At UT-Tyler I teach graduate and undergraduate students both physiological classes and courses related to issues of Family Violence. Currently, I am a Full Professor of Psychology. Over 14 years I have done extensive continuing education in the areas of child maltreatment and domestic violence. I have even done research concerning the long term psychological consequences of childhood incestuous victimization that has been published in a refereed journal. Additionally, I completed a 300 hour formal practicum course and 2,000 hours of clinically supervised experience so that I could be eligible to take the exam for Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas. I also hold that License.

In addition, since 1989 I have served as the Behavior Science Preceptor for family practice residents at the Univeristy of Texas at Tyler HEALTH CENTER, a UT institution that is completely separate from UT-Tyler. UTT Health Center is not a medical school. It just happens to have a 3 year Family Practice Residency program. The American Academy of Family Practice Physicians has mandated that Family Practice Residents receive education in the areas of Domestic Violence, Child Sexual Abuse and Child Physical Abuse. One of my tasks as preceptor is to make sure that the residents are taught information about all of these types of family violence consistent with the policies of the AMA. I also teach them about psychological things to help them be more effective with their patients. For a number of years for two -four mornings per month I would sit in with the residents as they saw their medical patients, adults and children, and at the end of the morning provide them with feedback

I have no idea who Sara Martin is. Evidently she attended my presentation. sometime later she called me, said she had attended my talk and wanted to do an article for the Monitor and would that be OK? I agreed. She did not show me the article prior to publication due to publishing deadline as I recall. However, I barely remember the discussion. The next thing I knew there was a small blurb in the Monitor. I read it and it seemed as if she had not totally understood exactly what I had said, and did not understand that I had discussed info from all three of my positions. Family Practice Residents NEVER "practiced" children who may have been sexually abused. There were times when that issue spontaneously arose, and times when I helped them via modeling. I also used some videotapes of me performing interviews. BUt the program that gets explained in the article is a combination of things I did with grad students and things I did with Family Practice Residents, and my personal protocol for interviewing child victims. With respect to the physical exam, I have NEVER taught that. However, there is a pediatrician on staff who exposed the Residents to appropriate techniques,but never had them do such exams. Indeed, the concept was just to expose the Residents so that some might be interested in seeking more training. Also, my goal was to teach them the principles of good interviewing so that they DID NOT make mistakes that would contaminate a case. Hopefully, you noticed, although you DID NOT mention, that I was careful to make sure that they were familiar with some of the errors identified by Ceci and Bruck.

Re: my resources. There is a small document published by the American Medical Association, March, 1992 entitled Diagnostic and Treatment Guidelines on Child Sexual Abuse. That document was the primary source of my information for the Residents. I merely taught them what the AMA suggested they should know. With respect to the prevalence data,I quoted Diana Russell's landmark epidemiological study, with which I am certain you are familiar on all types of sexual victimization experienced by women as children and/or adults. Actually, her numbers re: adult women in San Francisco sexually victimized as children are a bit higher than 33%. I did not even quote Gail Wyatt's epidemiological study which obtained somewhat higher numbers. Indeed, here is a direct quote from the AMA document which I provided to the audience, "Recent studies suggest that approximately 20% of children will be sexually abused in some way before they reach adulthood, with this figure cumulating at a rate of 1% each year." (pg.5). While I realize that in the year 2000, a 1992 document sounds old, in 1995 it was quite timely.

For the record, I did not and have not,misrepresented my qualifications as a pychologist. Indeed, in the practice arena I have even worked on custody cases wherein I have detected false allegations of child sexual abuse. Also before going to school in Psychology,I was a chemist and worked as a junior research chemist doing basic organic chemicl research for a pharmaceutical company. I only add this because I value science. I value research and view myself as a scientist/practitioner.

Thank you for responding to my inquiry.

Hello, again,

If you would like, I can upload your response and place it below my piece on the same webpage. I would preface both of them -- at the top of the page -- with a notice to the audience that both pieces exist below: mine and yours.

I suggest this way of handling it, (1) because its quick and my time for rewriting AND writing is limited these days, (2) because it would be an accurate correction -- in YOUR words rather than mine, and (3) since other than the psychopharmacologist statement, you did not specifically identify any particular statment which was in error -- although you do correct items in a general manner.

If this is agreeable to you, let me know.

Thank you.

Barbara C. Johnson
Attorney at Law, Andover, Massachusetts
False Allegations: http://falseallegations.com
Forever Fascinating: http://falseallegations.com/scstore/indexstr.html
Participating Attorney:
http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs2/user/browse.shtml
Expert: http://www.ExpertCentral.com

I was pleased that she acknowledged that Ceci and Bruck are to be followed.

I think, boiled down she is saying the following. If I am wrong, I'd appreciate hearing from visitors to the site whether they believe I have misinterpreted Ms. Lundberg-Love's letter and credentials.

She has a master's and doctoral degree in Psychology, specifically physiological psychology with an emphasis in psychopharmacology . . . the effects of pharmaceuticals on the body.

*** Folks: Psychology means, literally, the "study of the psyche" or, poetically, the study of the soul, something you talk to over a bottle of good wine, a loaf of bread, some cheese, and thou. ***

After she got her Ph.D., she took a 3-year course in preventive medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. As a postdoctoral student, she continued researching and training by working with patients to reduce their weight, stop smoking, change their lifestyles, etc.

She went to University of Texas at Tyler as an Assistant Professor of Psychology. She applied for a state licensure after she was supervised for a certain number of hours. She became a licensed Psychological Associate on or about 1986. At some later date -- she does not say "when" -- she became a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas.

In Texas, LPAs cannot test or have clients UNLESS the LPAs work under the Supervision of a Licensed Clinical Psychologist.

At UT-Tyler, she teaches graduate and undergraduate students both physiological classes and courses related to issues of Family Violence.

She is currently a Full Professor of Psychology.

For over 14 years she has taken continuing education courses about child maltreatment and domestic violence. She has researched the subject of long-term psychological consequences of childhood incestuous victimization . . . and that research was published in a journal after it was approved by some "referees."

I cannot determine whether her research appeared in a journal, for she forgot to give me the name of her study, the name of the journal, and the date of publication.

Since 1989, she has been a Behavior Science Preceptor at a HEALTH CENTER which has a name which makes it sound as if it is connected to University of Texas at Tyler, but it isn't connected to the university. It just sounds as if it is. That Health Center is not a medical school. It just happens to have a 3-year Family Practice Residency program.

Dear Ms. Johnson,

I request that you post my earlier response to the erroneous information about me that you are disseminating on your website. Also, because I am a Ph. D. psychologist, and a licensed clinician, I suggest that you retract your statements that contradict those facts. Indeed, I maintain, that as an honorable individual, you should apologize for your unfounded, erroneous allegations, and post this brief note.

I appreciate your understanding and your willingness to rectify your potentially libelous situation.

Thank you,

Paula Lundberg-Love, Ph. D.
Professor of Psychology

Hello,

I will post your previous letter and this letter on the same page as the article I wrote. In that way, the visitors to the site will see both sides. No problem.

Frankly, I think it would have been better if you had taken statement by statement in my file and debated that, but I'll do it your way if that is, indeed, what you prefer.

I'll not be uploading it tonight, but likely sometime tomorrow or the next day. My schedule is already tight, but I'll try to do the "HTML-ing" over the next two days.

Barbara C. Johnson
Attorney at Law, Andover, Massachusetts
False Allegations: http://falseallegations.com
Forever Fascinating: http://falseallegations.com/scstore/indexstr.html
Participating Attorney:
http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs2/user/browse.shtml
Expert: http://www.ExpertCentral.com