Years ago a female acquaintance of mine was having some personal issues. Her relationship with her family had become strained which was odd since they had always been close. It may have been due in part to the fact she and her husband were unsuccessfully trying to start a family of their own. It reached the point where my acquaintance began seeing a counselor to help right her ship. At the beginning the counselor asked if there had ever been any sexual abuse in the past. My acquaintance said there had never been any such thing. Over the next couple sessions the counselor kept it up and asked if there was anyone in the past who "could" have abused her. Again the answer was no. The counselor eventually flat out told my acquaintance her problems were likely due to sexual abuse which she could no longer remember, again asking her who "could" have abused her. My acquaintance then mentioned the name of a close male family friend even though she had no recollection of the man mistreating her in any way. The counselor then tried to convince my acquaintance that her problems all stemmed from abuse at the hands of the old family friend. Fortunately my acquaintance never confronted the friend and came to realize the counselor was trying to convince her of something which never happened.To be clear, I think that recovered memories learned in repressed memory therapy are totally unreliable. The methods have been thoroughly debunked. I think it is imperative that Judge Cleland allows evidence of repressed/recovered memories to come into Sandusky's PCRA hearings including an in-camera review of therapy notes from therapist who saw accusers and used repressed/recovered memory techniques in their sessions with them.
Given the above example, it's easy to see how a therapist could potentially persuade someone of something which wasn't true. Some therapists believe most personal problems stem from long forgotten abuse which of course is ridiculous. Sigmund Freud convinced a generation of psychiatrists that behavior was the result of being traumatized in certain stages of development. According to Freud, an obsessive person was stuck in the anal stage due to bad toilet training. Freud's work has been largely discredited but to this day an obsessive person in still often said to be anal retentive.
As was Freud, repressed memory therapy will be viewed as voodoo science. There is simply too much potential bias which can be introduced by the therapist. This is proven by my acquaintance whose counselor had already drawn a conclusion and was trying to lead my acquaintance into believing it.