Reporter: Anna Hunter comes from a privileged family, her father from the Swan Hunter shipyard dynasty. She'd always had happy memories of her childhood, but all that changed when, after developing anorexia and then bulimia, her health deteriorated and she was admitted to a psychiatric ward in 1991 aged 22. It was a ward in a clinic at the Newcastle General Hospital, and a consultant psychiatrist in charge was Doctor Robin [? farkenson. ?] In their first session, he talked to Anna about her childhood and relations with her family.

Anna Hunter: He asked me about my parents, about my early life, whether I was happy as a child. And then he came round to ask me how I got on with each of my parents individually and what my relationship was with them. And then he asked me if I felt safe with my father, and I then— I think I can remember pausing for a while, and then I said, do you mean sexually? And he said, yes. And I answered that I felt fine. But I remember that was the question that stuck in my head when I came away. I thought, why did he ask me that?

Reporter: Newsnight has seen some of Anna's medical notes. During Anna's first session with Doctor [? farkenson, ?] it shows that not only did she feel completely safe with her father but that she denies any violence or sexual abuse by anyone. Anna was admitted to Doctor [? farkenson's ?] acute psychiatric ward. She was mixing with other patients ahead of her in treatment, some of whom were apparently recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse that they'd forgotten about. A few weeks later, she began working with an art therapist who encouraged her to draw pictures of her thoughts and feelings. And then a disturbing event led to a dream.

Anna Hunter: A male patient tried to climb into my bed at night. And it was after that I'd actually got I— that upset me a lot, and it was after that I told Doctor [? farkenson ?] about my dream, which it wasn't really a dream. I'd— it was just— it involved— I think I was trying to troll my mind for things that I could remember, but I couldn't because I couldn't really. Nothing seemed to make any sense. I told him about a duvet cover that I could remember, that my father had had in his flat in London. He said it was important and that I should keep dream diaries. And it just escalated from there.

Reporter: Anna believes that Doctor [? farkenson ?] saw the dream as a sign that she'd been sexually abused as a child and only then beginning to remember it many years later. Recovered memory is not a recognized therapy as such. Rather it's the theory that painful memories can be completely repressed, that a variety of symptoms and psychiatric problems will continue until the memories are recovered, and that this process can be helped by various techniques in therapy.

Female Expert: When someone is undergoing a traumatic experience, when they're very fearful and highly aroused, they have altered brain chemistry and that they may lose contact with conscious— with full consciousness, and so maybe that some particularly frightening aspects of the experience may be lost to conscious memory and may be only retrieved some years later, particularly if people are exposed to something which reminds them of that.

Reporter: Anna claims that after the dream, Doctor [? farkenson ?] gave her a copy of the book called The Courage to Heal. It's a self-help book written by lay people to help survivors recover memories of abuse.

What did he say when he gave it to you?

Anna Hunter: That it was a very important book, and that it would help me a lot, and that he recommended it to other patients.

Reporter: What did you make of it when you first started reading it?

Anna Hunter: I can remember being completely fascinated by it. And that I was also quite stunned because there were things in there that I remember reading, that stuck in my mind, that convinced me that what was happen— what I— what was happening to me at the time was the truth. And that— phrase that— phrases such as, it doesn't matter if you don't remember. If you think you've been abused, you probably were. I just thought, well, this is the answer to everything. This shows why I'm bulimic. This shows why I'm depressed.

Reporter: Anna says that after she read The Courage to Heal, she began to recover more vivid memories. At first, she accused her step-grandfather.

Anna Hunter: The catalog of things with my step-grandfather was a very bizarre range of things. And that was— that involved satanic abuse. I believed that he'd kept a cross, and I drew pictures of him— of a cross that I believed he kept in his garage— which is actually a very small garage and probably wouldn't have fitted in— I said that he tied me onto it and that he made me eat insects and kill animals.

Reporter: Originally, the abuse claims were kept from the rest of the family. But eventually she told her mother about the allegations against her step-grandfather.

ANNA'S MOTHER: She just literally blurted it out. I mean it was literally one moment we were just sitting here. I was bringing her things— that I'd brought her in. And I'd been sexually abused.

Reporter: What did you do? What did you say?

ANNA'S MOTHER: I think I literally said something silly. Well, surely not. And because I said, I can't believe this, or whatever, anything. I think I literally said, surely not.

Reporter: Anna's memories were flowing fast and soon involved accusations that her father had also abused her and made her abuse her younger brother.

Anna Hunter: I remember one night I was reading, flicking through a toy catalog that one of the nurses had left behind— it was Christmas time, I think, or for a child's birthday— and in it I saw a Fisher Price Tool Set, which was [? the same as ?] [? the ?] one that my brother had had as a child. I tore it out of the magazine— tore the picture out— and I went to see my nurse the next day and said that I had had this memory that my brother had had this tool set as a child and my father had made me abuse him with a toy drill when he was two.

Reporter: Her father says the allegations came as a terrifying bolt from the blue.

ANNA'S FATHER: I think it numbs you. It's just too much to cope for. I remember breaking down in the kitchen when it finally came out. It just seemed the world had stopped revolving. A couple of days, definitely, I was unable to think about anything in particular. I was just in a daze.

Reporter: Anna continued having memories of abuse for many months which she was encouraged to keep account of in her dream diaries. She frequently had doubts about whether her memories were true, but she was constantly reassured.

Did Doctor [? farkenson, ?] or any of the staff, ever say to you, well, hang on. What's the evidence for what you are saying? Are you really sure about this? Don't you think we should talk to your family about it?

Anna Hunter: Never.

Reporter: And how did that make you feel?

Anna Hunter: I'd go into a session and with things that I was going to say and plan— plan that things that I'd plan to say about— I thought I'd got it wrong— and I'd come out thinking, well, no. How? And because— e— because they say I haven 't. And I did entirely believe them when they'd say I was denying it, or that I didn't want to accept it, or— they didn't need proof. That was the thing. They didn't need proof.

Reporter: Anna's claim appears to be supported by the medical notes. "I try to remind her that she was believed and needed no proof to the members of the team." Anna and her parents believe Doctor [? farkenson ?] and his team never sought evidence to corroborate the sex abuse allegations. Doctor [? farkenson ?] wouldn't talk to us, so we have no way of knowing whether he did, but we do know that he did not seek it from her parents nor from the family GP who'd known the children since birth. He later said, in Doctor [? farkenson's ?] presence, that he did not believe any abuse occurred.

ANNA'S MOTHER: I said, look, I know there's no abuse. I'd be told the whole time, you must believe Anna. All I can think of is— looking back— is there is a total commitment to believing people who are alleging abuse. But also a belief that— with our first meeting with [? doctor farkenson, ?] we were told that things like anorexia and depression are consistencies of abuse.

Reporter: The basis of Anna Hunter's legal action is that Doctor [? farkenson ?] failed adequately to treat and care for her eating disorder and instead administered totally inappropriate treatment which she claims left her suicidal, abusing drugs and alcohol. Doctor [? farkenson ?] declined to be interviewed because of patient confidentiality, but a statement stressed the claim is denied and will be strenuously defended.

The controversy over recovered and false memories led the Royal College of Psychiatrists to set up a working party, which has just finished an inquiry after two years. So contentious is the issue that one member withdrew after disagreeing with the central conclusion that there's no evidence to support recovered memory theory. Because of a split behind the scenes, the Royal College has refused to endorse this report, but guidelines for best practice will be published later this year.

The recommendations should ensure that conflict and confusion over cases like Anna Hunter are less likely to occur in future. "Psychiatrists advised to avoid engaging in 'memory recovery techniques' which are intended to reveal evidence of past sexual abuse of which the patient has no memory. The psychiatrist should alert the patient to doubts about such recovered memories— should encourage a search for factual information and point out that the truth may never be known."

The man who led the inquiry goes even further than the guidelines. He dismisses the possibility of repression and recovery of memories of childhood sexual abuse out of hand.

Male Expert: Forgetting is a very complex area. Many people forget things. We all forget things, and if we don't recall an incident from time to time, we may forget it completely. That's normal forgetting. Suppression is when we have a memory of events which is uncomfortable or painful to us, and we don't want to think about it, so we push it to the back of our mind, and it sinks— if you like— into a subconscious area. What we cannot accept is massive repression in which large and painful areas where the individual's life can be forgotten over many years yet recovered by the so-called recovered memory techniques.

Female Expert: I think there's some evidence that a small proportion of people who've been abused may not be able to recover memories, may not have access to those memories very easily, and so therefore, it is theoretically possible that persons would be able to remember more details of abuse in therapy or in some sort of therapy type encounter. It is possible for those to be remembered better, and so I don't accept that if you've been abused you would always remember it, and you would always know it, and there is no such thing as a recovered memory.

Reporter: Anna is now certain she was never abused, and the Hunter family are trying to rebuild their lives. There's no doubt that Doctor [? farkenson ?] sincerely believed his treatment was in her best interests, but after a two year battle with him, the Hunters profoundly disagree. In the end, only the courts can decide whether his treatment was appropriate based on medical knowledge at the time. Meanwhile, the debate about false and recovered memories is unlikely to fade away.