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The Current Transcript for October 14, 2016

Host: Piya Chattopadhyay

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel and the truth is: it hurts.

PIYA CHATTOPADHYAY: When they go low, we go high, so say the Democrats. And First Lady Michelle Obama's speech yesterday seemed to be a high watermark in what's becoming an increasingly dark and polarized American presidential campaign. As allegations of sexual assault against the Republican candidate continue to drive the media cycle, we bring together a trio of Americans: women political actors and observers to share their thoughts on the state of the race and what it says about the state of democracy in the United States today. That in just a moment. Then remember this?

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I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft.

PC: That was Brian Williams back when his memory apparently played a trick on him. His exaggerated memory of his time in war-torn Iraq bruised his professional reputation. But how often do we all succumb to warped, exaggerated or outright false memories in our own lives? A Canadian criminal psychologist and author of a book called The Memory Illusion joins me in half an hour and she may just change the way you think about your own past. And after that…

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Although you say we understand more about ADHD, there is still this misconception by a lot of people: “Oh, it's just hyperactive little boys who haven't been disciplined.”

PC: Diagnosing and treating ADHD in Canadian prisons. You may be surprised just how little it is treated now when you hear how prevalent it is and how much treating ADHD could help keep people out of the system. Hi, I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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Sexual assault allegations against Trump reveal gender divide in U.S.

Guests: Sally Kohn, Mica Mosbacher, Tara Dowdell

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ANDERSON COOPER: You bragged that you've sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk.

ANDERSON COOPER: Are you saying that what she said on that bus 11 years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or groped women without consent?

DONALD TRUMP: So I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. But I have tremendous respect for women.

ANDERSON COOPER: Have you ever done those things?

[Crosstalk]

DONALD TRUMP: And women have respect for me.

ANDERSON COOPER: Have you ever done those things?

DONALD TRUMP: And I will tell you no, I have not.

PC: “No, I have not.” That's how Donald Trump, the US Republican presidential candidate responded when confronted with his own words at last Sunday's debate. And now a notorious 2005 recording of Mr. Trump released late last week shows him bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent. “When you're a star,” he says on the tape, “they let you do it.” Those were just words he seemed to say on Sunday night but soon after, women started coming forward with their own stories of Mr. Trump's misdeeds and alleged sexual assaults. The New York Times published accounts of two women who say Mr. Trump assaulted them and a People magazine writer said she was allegedly assaulted at his home while interviewing him and his then pregnant wife. And as the stories surfacing from the past get uglier and uglier, so does the face of this campaign. After a new poll suggested that Mr. Trump could win if only men's votes were counted, a hashtag took off online saying “repeal the 19^th,” as in the amendment that gives women the vote. We have three guests standing by to talk about how we got here and where it all may be going. Sally Kohn is a CNN political commentator. She's in Dallas, Texas. Mica Mosbacher is the former Republican National Convention finance co-chair and she's a Fox News commentator. She's in Washington, DC. And Tara Dowdell is the president of the Tara Dowdell group. It’s a marketing firm. She's also a former contestant on The Apprentice and she is in New York. Hello to all of you.

MANY VOICES: Hello. Good morning.

PC: Good morning. Sally Kohn, let me begin with you. What has been the most shocking thing that you have learned in the past week about Donald Trump's relationship with women?

SALLY KOHN: The most? I’m supposed to rank them? You know… look. He bragged on a microphone. There's no denying it. It’s not [unintelligible]. He bragged about sexual assault. What he was talking about—forcing himself on women—is sexual assault. So first of all, even if he had never actually done it, it is more than just locker room talk. No man I know—they can talk about some disgusting things in locker rooms, no doubt—but no man I know brags, boasts and defends sexual assault in a locker room. That would be disturbing enough, were it not for now six—I just woke up, maybe there's another who's come out—women who have said that no, contrary to what Trump said, it’s not just talk, that he has done these things, that he has forced himself on them, assaulted them. And that's in addition to the already disturbing pattern of misogynistic comments before and during this campaign. A certain point, it's the last straw and it should have been a long time ago, but here we are.

PC: Alright. Mica Mosbacher, what do you make of these allegations? There have been six now, allegations by various women. What do you make of them?

MICA MOSBACHER: First of all, they're allegations. And I do—and I will tell you this, that I have been a long-time advocate of women who have been sexually assaulted. I have helped enact legislation in the US to help further rape prevention programs. Having said that, I encourage any woman who has been assaulted—and one in three in this country in the US have certainly, for example—that they go to the not-for-profits in their communities rather than go to the media, especially during a political campaign which sensationalizes this issue, first of all. Secondly, Donald Trump made comments, absolutely has owned those comments, has apologized for those comments, is trying to be a better man. I know him. I work with him in the campaign and I can tell you that he has treated me and other women only with the utmost respect. As a Christian and as a mom, I certainly believe that the heart of Christianity is forgiveness. And I think that he deserves the benefit of the doubt because he has given his heart and soul to the United States and spent most of his own resources, many of his resources, in this campaign and is beholden to no one, unlike Hillary Clinton with the special interest groups. I think this country has bigger problems. We have bigger problems.

PC: Why does he get the benefit of the doubt and the women that are making these allegations don't in your mind?

MICA MOSBACHER: Because they have come out so much later. Why didn’t they come out 10 or 15 years ago and why are they coming out the media?

[Crosstalk]

PC: But Mica, you know as someone who has been an opponent of helping women who have been sexually assaulted, that women often take a long time to come forward and there are very valid reasons for why that happens in society.

MICA MOSBACHER: I understand that but I think that when you come forward during a political election, it is sensationalizing the issue and it does lower your credibility. I'm not saying that these allegations are true or not true, but I'm saying this country has bigger issues. We have economic issues. We have women who are working two and three jobs, working mothers who can't keep their head above water. We have bigger issues in national security in this country, not vetting individuals who are coming in. I wish this campaign and both campaigns would get back on substantive issues. And what I see trending on Twitter is that that is what women want to hear about. This is an unwelcome distraction from what is really wrong with this country.

PC: Alright. Tara Dowdell, let me bring you in. You were on The Apprentice. A number of contestants on the show have come forward to say they were subjected to humiliating behaviour by Donald Trump. Did you ever experience that yourself or see any of it while you were on that show?

TARA DOWDELL: I did not personally and I want to be completely honest, I've did not personally experience that kind of behaviour or witness it firsthand. However, I had women on this show come back and tell me and other contestants about the things that Donald Trump said to them. And they came back, they were shocked because this is someone at the time that we looked to as a successful businessman. We now know that he’s certainly not as successful as he’s playing be, particularly during the filming of The Apprentice. We know that now but at the time, he was positioned as this successful businessman, for whom a lot of other entrepreneurs or folks who wanted to be entrepreneurs wanted to model themselves after.

PC: Okay. So why didn't you at the time or the women that came and told you this go tell anyone?

TARA DOWDELL: I'm not sure. I'm not sure they did not go tell anyone. So I don't want to mischaracterize. When I was told about the allegations, it was after the filming. So let me just give you a bit of background and context. Once you've been on the show, once you are fired, you are then sequestered by the show. And so it was when they came back, after being sequestered, when we still could not go home and we were all together, that they disclosed what he had said them. And he said it to them in the boardroom, which is what many of the women spoken off the record have said. So once you’re in the boardroom and then you're fired, you’re immediately sequestered.

PC: What did they tell you that he did to them? What did they allege he did to them?

TARA DOWDELL: They alleged that he referred to his genitalia, it’s size, that he referred to their body parts, among other things. So those were the main allegations. But let me say this: everything that every accuser has said about Donald Trump, lines up directly with what Donald Trump has said that he had done on tape. So these things are all consistent and completely aligned with Donald Trump’s own words. If he were to go to court, he would be the star witness against himself. So I think that's an important component here. Donald Trump has a history of taking advantage of people, women in particular but people generally. All kinds of small business owners and entrepreneurs in this country have also come forward on the record and talked about Donald Trump has taken advantage of them, not paid them. So when Mica says that he's given his heart and soul to the country, I find that appalling, given the fact that there are small business owners who have gone out of business because Donald Trump refused to pay them.

PC: Okay, I want to stay on topic.

MICA MOSBACHER: Well, these are all allegations. Let’s go back to the fact that this is hearsay. These are allegations that have been sensationalized in the media and these are not facts. And I caution listeners to recognize this. Look at Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. That's a fact. He was impeached over his inappropriate contact with an intern.

PC: Okay, hold on, hold on. We're not going to hear any of you if you all talk at the same time. It's just how it works over here. I want to play two specific pieces of tape and they have to do the two allegations—they are allegations—that came out this week. One’s by Natasha Stoynoff, who alleged that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she went to his Florida estate to interview him for People magazine. Yesterday Mr. Trump said her allegation was fabricated. This morning we spoke with Ms. Stoynoff’s former journalism professor. His name is Paul McLaughlin. And I want you to listen to what he said. He says she phoned him shortly after the alleged assault and told him what happened.

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She was really rattled, as you can understand. She didn't know what to do. She was very conflicted. She was angry. She was really confused about how to deal with this because she was writing for People magazine and Donald Trump was a cover story person. And what we talked about was that it was basically, there's going to be a he said she said. I felt certain—I mean it was her ultimate decision—but I felt certain that he would just come at her with guns ablazing.

PC: Mica Mosbacher, what do you think of what you just heard there?

MICA MOSBACHER: Again, it's hearsay. It is one individual, one person whose credibility I don't know. This is not a courtroom. We're playing this out in public media and I don't think that that's fair. And I also don't think it's fair the fact that we have not heard one tape or one comment about Bill Clinton and what he has done and the women that are coming forward alleging rape, alleging actual assault on the record versus this kind of hearsay with Donald Trump.

PC: Okay. Sally Kohn, come on in.

SALLY KOHN: Yeah. Well, let's go there, shall we? First of all, you know it’s because of frankly conversations like these that women don't report assault. And let's be clear, I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly have things that powerful men have said to me that I didn't report. There were all kinds of reasons for not doing so, including that nothing would change. Why would it matter? Who would believe me over them? So this is unfortunately the way it goes. And I really, you know we don't have to treat every allegation as fact to nonetheless respect women and respect what they're saying and why they might be saying it now, number one. And number two, the great irony in all of this is that Donald Trump himself had the audacity to try and make a political issue—the alleged and it remains alleged behaviour of Hillary Clinton's husband who's not even running for president—that he has trotted out over and over and over again, including a full on press conference with four women, three of whom who had only made allegations that have been in fact thoroughly investigated for years and unfounded. But he wants us, the voters in the United States, to believe the allegations but to dismiss these allegations despite the fact that as Tara brilliantly pointed out: he is on tape boasting about them, literally telegraphing what he does.

[Crosstalk]

MICA MOSBACHER: I want to say one thing. I agree with you. I will tell you that I felt that by bringing women forward, they were building sympathy for Hillary Clinton because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I wish we would get back on substantive issues. I think that women in this country are not single issue women. And I think that this is—there's a movement in this country, establishment versus anti-establishment. It is emotional, not logical. And we have bigger problems in this country, national security issues for example. And I go back to that it is difficult to report assault. I am an assault victim. FYI. But I didn't go to the media to report it. I reported it in an appropriate place where I received help.

PC: Mica though, is your contention with the media or with Donald Trump and the allegations made against him?

MICA MOSBACHER: I think that they are hearsay and I believe in this country you have to give someone the benefit of the doubt and I am also extremely upset with NBC for example, for becoming what looks like sort of a Clinton strategic [cut out] rather than being an unbiased media outlet. And I do have a problem with left wing media in this country who are biased. I have that problem. And I think others do too and so there is corruption within the media. There’s corruption in all levels. But I think that this is an unwelcome distraction to what women in this country really care about.

PC: Alright. I want to broaden this out because I'm not trying to be smug as a Canadian sitting up here looking at what's going on during your election campaign. But you know it surprises us a little and we're trying to understand what this all says about the state of the United States and gender relations. So Tara Dowdell, what is this saying about your country and where you're at at this point?

TARA DOWELL: Well, it doesn't bode well for our country. I want to make a point to the—[cutting out]

PC: Tara, I'm going to have to get your Skype line re-established here. You're cutting out there. I'm sorry for that. We will do that. Sally Kohn, let me go to you. What does this say about the state of US democracy?

SALLY KOHN: Well, you know look, this is where I would agree. It is an unfortunate thing that we're focusing on this instead of talking about issues. And yet at the same time, let's be clear about two things: one, sexual assault and how we treat and respect women in our country and in our world is still an issue and if we didn't believe it before, we can sure believe it now. And second, the reason we're talking about these things is Donald Trump. It's not for him and his camp to complain that this is what we're focusing on. We're focusing on this because of him, because of his behaviour. I think you know look, if only good thing could come out of this—and it's hard to find a silver lining—but hopefully we start to realize how far we've yet to come in talking about misogyny and respect for women and you know understanding the line between locker room talk and sexual assault. That would be, I suppose a positive to come out of this, but it is a sad reminder of the reality of the everyday misogyny and rape culture in our society that we still face.

PC: Tara Dowdell is back with us. Tara, what does this election reveal about the state of gender relations in the United States?

TARA DOWDELL: It reveals that we have a lot of work to do. And what I wanted to point out though, with respect to policy, is that there are policy implications for how a candidate running for the president of the United States of America views women. Women are half the population. So he has the ability to veto legislation. He has the ability to get to work with Congress, to move an agenda, forward a policy, agenda forward. And there are issues that are specific to women since we are child bearers, since we are women and that there are implications with that from a biological standpoint. So there are implications how we treat rape as a crime in this country, how policing is done around the issue, how the justice system treats it. So there are a ton of policy implications that will result from Donald Trump and how he treats women and how he views women. So to dismiss this as simply just talk, I think it is not accurate and it's not fair at all. And we do have a lot of work to do and I am, unfortunately as an American, I'm embarrassed that the campaign has devolved into this. I hear people from around the world. I travel a lot around the world to various countries—Asia, Africa, Europe—and people are so disappointed in the United States of America, saying that they thought better of this country. They thought that we were at a higher level when it came to how both sexes are treated. And Donald Trump's rhetoric is one of the things that they point to that shows that we're not very different from the countries that we criticize.

PC: Alright. Mica Mosbacher, what do you think this election, this debate about the state of gender relations reveals about your country?

MICA MOSBACHER: Well, for one thing we're having this dialogue and it's respectful. And while we agree to disagree on certain political issues, I think as a woman, I agree that we do need more work in terms of helping and supporting women who are assault—and men—who are assault survivors. We had untested rape kits. Bills have been introduced because we discovered that rape kits have been sitting in closets and in storage in police stations throughout the United States. That is abhorrent. I do think that men are unaware of where the line is. I think those things have evolved culturally. I've talked to a number of men, both young and in their late fifties and early sixties, who've all said look, we feel if we were on a date that it was okay to try to kiss a woman. How do we know what to do? So I think that there are also some gender concerns among men. What is appropriate? What is it? I mean they understand what rape is. But where do you draw the line? So I think this is a healthy conversation. And while I feel at times I want to go take a shower after a day of listening to this and within the campaign [laughs], I think that this is a good reflection of United States because maybe change will come out of it.

PC: We will have to leave it there. I want to thank all three of you for joining us this morning. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

MANY VOICES: Thank you.

PC: Sally Kohn is a CNN political commentator. She's in Dallas, Texas. Mica Mosbacher is a former RNC finance co-chair and Fox News commentator. She's in Washington, DC. And Tara Dowdell is the president of the Tara Dowdell group. It's a marketing and PR firm. She's also a former contestant on The Apprentice. She's in New York City. We want to hear from you on this. Get in touch with us about what you make of the latest allegations against Donald Trump. You can find all the ways to get in touch with The Current: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. The news is next, then The Memory Illusion is a provocative new book and it will have you questioning everything you think you know about yourself. That conversation is coming up. I’m Piya Chattopadhyay. You're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Chances are your memories are untrue and unreliable, says criminal psychologist

Guests: Julia Shaw

PC: Hello. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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PC: Still to come—it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the mental health of Canada's prison population: a new study argues not only that ADHD is hugely prevalent in prisons but that screening and treating for it could do a lot to help people get out and stay out of the criminal justice system. More on that in half an hour. But first, forget everything you think you know about memory. Take a moment to think back to some of your fondest memories. Maybe it's a memory from your childhood riding a horse on an ocean shoreline or on a family holiday. Or maybe it's a memory you have of your own child saying his or her first words. Memories are, in a sense, the very foundation of who we are, a sense of ourselves. And when we bring memories to mind, they usually seem solid and unshakable. But the more science studies our memories, the less stable they appear. Increasingly, the evidence points to our memories being not just highly complex but malleable and quite often plain wrong. Julia Shaw is a Canadian criminal psychologist at London South Bank University. Her area of interest is so-called false memories and as part of her research, she convinces people that they've committed crimes, crimes that never actually happened. She's written a new book. It's called The Memory Illusion: Why You Might Not Be Who You Think You Are. Julia Shaw joins us from London, England. Hello.

JULIA SHAW: Hi.

PC: Wowza. What is our most common misconception about our memories?

JULIA SHAW: Oh, that we can rely on it. I mean the biggest thing is definitely that we assume that when we recall something in a lot of complexity and emotionality and detail, that it must be right. But that's simply not necessarily the case.

PC: And when you say that, are you talking about all kinds of memories—short term ones, long term ones, or do these fit into certain categories?

JULIA SHAW: Yeah. So the kinds of memories I focus on are called autobiographical memories. So they’re memories of our lives, they’re memories that make us who we are, they’re memories of, as you sort of said, you know maybe a childhood event or remembering—yeah, I mean the people we love and the things we've done with them. So autobiographical memory certainly is unreliable. Other types of memory, like short term memory, which just to make it clear—short term memory is really short term. So often we sort of think about short term memory lasting a day or a couple of hours, but really in research land, what a short term memory is, is that it's about 30 seconds. So it's something that you sort of keep in an internal sort of dashboard and that dashboard gets changed pretty quickly and either makes it into long term memory or doesn't.

PC: Okay. But my short term memory says to me that you were talking about autobiographical memories about 30 seconds ago, so let's—that's really like our life story as you said. So let's talk about how memory really works starting at the beginning because you know many people say they remember things from a young age, like I don’t know, a favourite teddy bear when they were two. When do our memories as human beings first begin?

JULIA SHAW: They first begin—so people even claim to remember being born or being pre, sort of in the womb, sort of you know, “I remember it being dark and warm.” Well, obviously you could assume that it's probably dark and warm inside a womb. And that's—if you have a memory of it, that's probably what's happening, is that you're creatively weaving a story that makes sense based on information you have now. So yeah, I mean in terms of when your brain is capable of storing autobiographical memories into adulthood, the age generally that researchers agree on is three and a half. Some go as young as two. But nobody I've seen ever has—well, who I think does memory research that I consider empirically sound, so sort of evidence-based, would suggest that before the age of two we can form memory. So anything before the age of two, some would say three and a half, is necessarily a false memory if you think you can remember it.

PC: So I got two kids who are three and a half. So the vacations that I've taken them on in the last three and a half years, the memories I have tried to create for them—those lasting memories—they're not going to remember a thing.

JULIA SHAW: They're not going to remember a thing. I mean that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

PC: What a waste of my time.

JULIA SHAW: It’s not a waste of your time. I mean it still forms them as human beings. So this is something that's really important to realize is that obviously before the age of two, before the age of three and a half, we're learning loads of things about our environment, we're learning language, we’re learning how the world works, we're learning how sort of different countries maybe fit together if you're going on vacations, that there's different kinds of people who do different kinds of things than we do at home. So those things are critical to the development of a child. But yeah, they're not going to remember the actual trip.

PC: Okay. That’s fine. I'm glad the kids went on a vacation.

JULIA SHAW: It’s still good for them. You’re still being a good parent.

PC: Fair enough. Thank you for saying that. [laughs]

JULIA SHAW: You’re welcome.

PC: How do we form our lasting memories, post age three and half? What's happening in our brains?

JULIA SHAW: So in my book, I do talk a little bit about the neuroscience, but I'm not a neuroscientist so I try to keep it short. But I think it's really important for people to understand as you said sort of how it actually works. So how do we—what's called stamp—a memory? So how do we make a memory in the brain? And because once you understand that, you can sort of understand a lot more about how it goes wrong. And so the biggest thing you need to understand with memory is that well, for one, in order to turn from a short term, the sort of 30 second memory, into something that's longer term, it needs to pass through part of the brain called the hippocampus. And essentially that's a part of the brain that filters and says store or not store. And then what you end up having is if the hippocampus has decided to say I'm going to keep this, it ends up making a network of brain cells that represent a memory. And the reason that we can have multi-sensory components to memory so that we can—you know when we think back, we can remember what it sounded like, what it smelled like, what it tasted like, what it looked like—that's called having multi-sensory details. And the reason we can recall those when we recall a memory is because this network is all throughout the brain. And so it's not that they're stored in one specific spot. They're actually started as a network that's quite complex and goes all the way around different parts of the brain.

PC: And as we store these lasting memories in our brain, our hippocampus, I mean how reliable are those memories we have from oh-so-long ago?

JULIA SHAW: Good. So once you understand that memory is a network of brain cells, what you can also understand is that networks can be broken and changed. So kind of like, I don't know, should I use a Facebook analogy? Why not? Let's say you have a social network of friends. Now, sometimes new friends come and get added. So let's say through a friend, you've met a friend of a friend and you've decided to add them on Facebook. Now they're part of your social network. Let's say your social network is a memory. So you've added a piece in and maybe that piece wasn't originally there so maybe it's an addition later on that is maybe false. So it's a false piece. And of course you can delete friends on Facebook as well. So you can lose pieces on social media and equally in a network in your brain. So that's called forgetting. So the idea here is that again that network can change quite organically, quite naturally and it's never stable. I mean the cells in your brain, the neurons in your brain, it's like having a universe, a cosmos up there that's never really stable. I mean from the beginning of a sentence to the end of a sentence, your brain looks different. And so what's sometimes referred to as neural plasticity, sort of the ability of the brain to change, that's happening all the time. And the same thing is true for our memories.

PC: And so is a faulty memory—you know I can hear the listeners now saying yeah, no, that's for everyone else but my memory is solid as rock, right? But is a faulty memory more the norm than the exception?

JULIA SHAW: Every memory you've ever had, I argue is false. Now, and by that I mean it's at least slightly false. So if you close your eyes right now, you're in a room, you're talking to someone, you're listening to a wonderful radio show. You close your eyes, you close your ears and you try to recall back what happened or what you were just looking at in the last minute. You're going to make mistakes. And that's something that just happened. You're going to forget stuff, you’re going to leave stuff out. You're going to add things that made sense, that sort of fit within what's normally in that kind of room or that kind of conversation. And in the process, you're changing your perception of reality. And that’s as good as it's ever going to get, right? So I mean that's now, never mind trying to recall it later.

PC: And so I want to just pick up on something that you said. It's not about what happened a minute ago or four years ago, it's also about what didn't happen, that adding of things. So why do we believe something if it never really happened?

JULIA SHAW: So I study this. My specialty is studying what are called false memories. So when we think things happened that didn't. And this is something that happens all the time. It's something that I actually quite like, with my book as well, is that people will—on the one hand, some have a bit of an existential crisis and go okay, well you're saying that our memories are unreliable, that everything is perception and that the only reality is my own. I don't like that because I like my childhood memories and they want them to be accurate. But on the other hand, I have people who go, you know that's tremendously comforting because I thought it was just me who sometimes thought you know I was sure I left the keys by the door, I go back and they're not there. I was sure this guy was called Ed, but his name was actually Steve. So these kinds of mistakes are incredibly common. And yeah, they're definitely the norm not the exception.

PC: Okay. I want to talk about a specific thing. When I read this in your book, I honestly have to say that at first I was like give me a break, Julia Shaw. Here’s the example. This is NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who last year in 2015 on David Letterman, recounted being shot down in a helicopter while covering the Iraq war. And as it turns out, that wasn't true. Brian Williams was publicly shamed and demoted from his job for lying. Now I think a lot of people just said you're making junk up there, Brian Williams. So let's stop doing that. You aren't as quick to lay blame. Why not?

JULIA SHAW: No. I think—so from what I've seen in the literature and what I understand about the science of memory, we often make mistakes as I sort of just explained, about benign things, about little things. But we can also make mistakes and think we did things or experienced things in very sort of severe or extreme ways that never happened. So I work often as an expert for the courts and there I look at very extreme accusations where—sometimes things like murder or rape—where there's questions of we're not sure that this actually happened. And of course it's hard to say just—it's impossible to say—just by looking at an account. But what the literature clearly shows from things like DNA exonerations, so you know getting people out of prison who are demonstratively innocent, is that sometimes people think that terrible, terrible things happened to them or they experienced terrible things, and in vivid and colourful detail even though those things didn't take place or they didn't happen to them. And so with him, with Brian Williams, what we're seeing potentially is that yeah, it's possible that he's lying but I think it's more a story of how often our memories change. Except that unlike Brian Williams, most of us don't have a record of every version of an account that we've told. And so we don't see that change. And so with him, it's sort of a beautiful illustration of how over time and over retelling stories and over social influences and hearing other people's stories, those stories can be integrated into our own and even replace our own in a way that's actually, well, potentially self-aggrandizing so it makes us look good. But it doesn't have to be.

PC: Okay. I want to ask you more about the prison stuff in a moment, but let me stick with the sort of the rest of us and not to pick on Brian Williams. But you know how common is it for so many of us to embellish our memories, to make us be seen in a more positive light?

JULIA SHAW: Memories can be false in any direction, so they can be good for you or bad for you, the way that you've misremembered them. So you can remember, misremember positively that your partner did something great or you can misremember and say remember that terrible thing you did? And that doesn't have to be good for sort of identity or a sense of self. But overall, there are things called the reminiscence bias and the idea that generally we do, rosy reminiscence. When we look back on our lives especially after the age of 40 but even before, we find that people generally remember the good more than the bad. And they also might switch things that were once interpreted as bad into better versions. So false memory often does have a positive spin sort of in the whole sort of life span perspective, which is probably good because actually depressed people sometimes have more accurate memories of certainly negative things that happened in their lives. So maybe it's sort of adaptive.

PC: Is false memory though, like a form of lying or at least lying to ourselves?

JULIA SHAW: No. No. So that's really important to me to me to actually—thank you for pulling that out. It's really important for me to get that across is that it's not a lie. So a false memory is something that happens naturally because of social processes, because of the network in the brain that's ever changing. It has nothing to do or very little to do with intentionally making stuff up. So you're not—when you actually have a false memory, you don't know that it's not the truth. That's sort of the point. That's what differentiates it from a lie. So with people like Brian Williams, he might have been lying but he might have also had a false memory, equally likely to me. And this makes you sort of more empathetic when you know you're at the dinner table and Aunt Sue is talking about something. You’re going, I don't think that happened. Or your sister is talking about something and you're going, I think that was my story.

PC: Yeah. [Unintelligible] That didn’t happen. I said that to my sister, yeah.

JULIA SHAW: Yeah, it didn't happen or that didn't happen to you, like you stole my story, essentially. You stole my memory. It's called being a memory thief. I love that term and it makes you empathetic because you're like well, you know why are you lying about this, Sue? And instead you can go, oh, maybe Sue is actually misremembering.

PC: Okay. You said at the beginning of our conversation that you’ve thrown a lot of people into you know sort of an existential crisis. I think that's what's happening to me currently. Because what implications does that have on us personally? If our memories are wrong, does that make me a different person than who I thought I was or think I was?

JULIA SHAW: Well, you could argue that the subtitle of my book is a bit of a misnomer because the only thing you think—obviously the only thing that matters is who you think you are. The highlights sort of with that is that well, maybe though it's not what one might consider in line with an objective reality. So if you went back and either wrote down your memory at the time or took a picture of something and then looked at your version of it now, if that's not the same, you could argue that it's false, right? So if you look back and describe a beach in a totally different way than you actually experienced it, well, your memory is probably wrong. But ultimately the only reality that matters is your own.

PC: Okay. Thank you.

JULIA SHAW: [laughs] I think it's a good thing that we look at sort of an existential perspective because I mean what makes you, you? It's a big question and memories are an important part of that. But ultimately, I mean it's a beautiful thing to be able to let go of the past and to accept that this is happening anyways. A lot of my past is fiction anyways. I may as well except that and sort of move on.

PC: Hmm. Now what you been talking about, it is grounded in research. You have worked in the lab doing this and I want to play a bit of tape from you. But first, just set it up for us. If you tell me about your lab work, it involved Canadian university students where you implant false memories in them.

JULIA SHAW: Yeah. So this is research I did at UBC, in actually Kelowna, UBC Okanagan, with Stephen Porter who was my supervisor at the time. So this was part of my PhD. And this study, I ended up essentially taking three real pieces. So I contacted parents ahead of time for participants who I wanted to have participate in my study and the parents had to fill out a questionnaire. And in this questionnaire they told me the name of the best friend of this person at the time, where they were living at the age of the time I wanted to implant the offense, and I had to make sure that they'd never actually experienced any of the events that I wanted to implant. So once I had that and once I had them tell me about a true emotional thing that happened to their sons and daughters, I then invited the participants in and said okay, here's what your parents reported happening. There's two events. They knew it was a childhood emotional memory study. There's two events. The first one is always real, and so they talked about it for 20 minutes and told me about whatever, some emotional event between the ages of 11 and 14. And then I said and then there's this other event which your parents reported happening. And that other event was either a criminal event or another kind of highly emotional event.

PC: Okay, I'm going to hold you up there. Let's listen to a bit of tape of you doing this research.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIA SHAW: Does a mental image go with the memory?

PARTICIPANT: Yes.

JULIA SHAW: Can you see yourself in the memory? Is it from your perspective or both?

PARTICIPANT: My perspective.

JULIA SHAW: Indicate how vivid and clear your memory is of the event, from one not at all, to seven completely.

PARTICIPANT: And vivid means how well you see and remember things in the memory?

JULIA SHAW: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: I’d say about five then.

JULIA SHAW: About five?

PARTICIPANT: Because I can remember things in the memory much better than the actual memory itself.

PC: Alright, Julia. What are we hearing? How do you actually convince these participants that they actually committed a crime—because that's what you did—that they hadn't?

JULIA SHAW: Yeah. So I suggest to them, remember that time, essentially—remember that time you committed a crime, by saying so your parents reported that when you were—and then I randomly assigned an age—when you were 14 years old, you assaulted someone with a weapon and the police called your parents. You were with your best friend—insert name of best friend—in your home town— insert name of hometown. What do you remember? And so it was these little pieces of reality that ended up being spun creatively by the participants into for some of them, a false narrative, sort of why they committed this crime, who was involved, what was going on, what the repercussions were. And so it was three interviews overall, and 70 per cent of the participants ended up confessing to crimes that never happened.

PC: Wait a minute. Seventy per cent of people would admit to committing a crime that they didn't actually commit?

JULIA SHAW: Not just that they didn't commit—that never happened ever. [chuckles] And this is really important for the criminal justice system. And these people were, you know when you look at these videotapes, when you listen to the audio, they’re incredibly compelling accounts and by all means, if I was a police officer or if I was someone who you know heard this, I go well, that obviously happened. That must be true because this person themself seems to believe it's true and they're telling me all these details.

PC: The police part of this, the criminal justice part of the research you've done, is super interesting because you work with the British police to advise on historical sexual and physical abuse cases. We hear all the time you know sexual assault cases in our courts where people, you know they lean, the judges, the lawyers lean on memory. So what do you do when you advise the British police?

JULIA SHAW: Well, I advise the British police but I also advise court cases specifically. So I work with lawyers as well and with courts. And what I do when I do this kind of work is on the one hand obviously you can do preventative stuff. So you can say don't ask these kinds of questions, don't ask leading or suggestive questions. Don't suggest things to participants that they haven't suggested to you. So don't say remember that time? And give a detail because that's easy for a participant or a witness to take and the next time they're talking about it say oh yeah, I remember this detail, forgetting that maybe you gave it to them. So be careful in the way we question suspects and witnesses and victims because it's really easy to get them to potentially misremember, even to confess to things that never happened.

PC: Give us an example of a case where your perspective on memory made a difference.

JULIA SHAW: So right now, I'm working on a case that I can't get too specific about, but it's a murder case. And essentially what I can do as an expert is I can go in and say look there's a questionable therapy. So sometimes therapy is involved, which mimics the kind of techniques that I use in my studies. So some therapy is very suggestive. Essentially, they have you sit on a couch and go digging in your childhood. And as soon as you're digging into your childhood, as you now know, before the age of two there's nothing to be dug out. And yet some therapists will go in there and say ooh, I found something. I found this traumatic event. That explains why you're now depressed as an adult or whatever. And so that's really, really problematic therapy. And when that ends up in the justice system and someone goes I remember when I was one and a half and you murdered other girls and you did terrible things, sometimes with satanic sort of connotations. Then I can come in and say well, at least the memory of that is if not highly questionable, arguably even impossible.

PC: The implications are provocative when it comes to our criminal justice system. I mean can it be misused to discredit people who are truly victims of crime?

JULIA SHAW: That's a huge question always. So of course it can, is the answer yes. But I think that still understanding that memory is flexible and that trying to—I mean a lot of court cases you'll have like a minute of behaviour, so a crime, picked apart for days or weeks. I mean you're implying that people can remember an enormous amount of detail about something that happened sometimes in seconds, sometimes in a minute which—that's just not how memory works.

PC: Well, we see it over and over again. The most obvious example is sexual assault cases where women victims, mostly women, are just broken down by trying to have to recall micro-seconds of an assault. It's used to discredit the most often.

JULIA SHAW: It can be, yeah, absolutely. So it's a delicate space because on the one hand, of course we need to make sure that there is a space for victims’ voices and it’s critical that especially in things like sexual assault cases where it's often my memory versus yours or your account versus mine and there isn't much else in the way of sort of details or evidence. We need to make sure that we're not just disregarding that. But on the other hand, we also need to be aware that sometimes people do think things happened that didn't. And so we need to protect the innocent as well. So it is a bit finicky in terms of how we approach that and how we make sure both the safe spaces you know created, but at the same time we're not putting innocent people in jail. But I think that the biggest weapon is education.

PC: And what are—so let's go outside of the criminal justice system. I mean what are the implications of this in other areas of life? I'm thinking politics, a realm where we often accuse people of lying, not telling the truth, having false memories.

JULIA SHAW: Yeah. Politics. I mean politics is a place rife with nostalgia, which inherently is almost always a false memory I would argue. So the good old days, sort of the idea that, remember the good old days and how amazing everything used to be? I mean there are certain political candidates right now who are certainly hitting that hard. [chuckles] But what we find is that people then go oh yeah, I remember that, even though maybe the good old days never existed and maybe things are better now than they used to be. But it's easy to use that as a political platform to convince people of a version of reality that you want them to remember or you even want them to misremember. And that can swing your vote.

PC: How much you trust your own memory?

JULIA SHAW: I don't.

PC: You don't.

JULIA SHAW: I don't. No, I don't trust my memories at all. You could even suggest anything to me and I'd be like yeah, I don't remember it that way but it could have happened.

PC: Julia, good to talk to you. Thank you.

JULIA SHAW: Fantastic. Thank you for having me.

PC: Bye-bye.

JULIA SHAW: Bye.

PC: Julia Shaw is a Canadian criminal psychologist at London South Bank University. Her new book is called The Memory Illusion: Why You Might Not Be Who You Think You Are. She joined us from our studio in London, England. Alright. If you want to get in touch with us what you've heard so far today on The Current or on any other day that you listen to The Current, please do you can get in touch with us many ways: www.cbc.ca/thecurrent is the place to find out how to get in touch with us. We’re on Twitter @thecurrentCBC. I'm on Twitter as well @piya. That is P-I-Y-A. Coming up next, if they were in school and suffering from ADHD, they'd likely be diagnosed and treated. But prisoners—youths and adults—usually go without. We'll talk about that when The Current is back. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and you are listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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Lack of treatment for prisoners with ADHD leads to recidivism, says advocate

Guests: Sam, Heidi Bernhard, Kathryn Wells

PC: Hi. I'm Piya Chattopadhyay and this is the Friday edition of The Current. When we think of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, the context that usually comes to mind is kids in school, whether it's elementary, high school, or post-secondary institutions. But a new study from the Centre for ADHD Awareness Canada would like to draw our attention to our prisoners, because according to this research, inmates in Canada are five times more likely to have ADHD than the rest of the population. And when it comes to juvenile detention centres, the figure shoots up to ten times more likely. Having ADHD makes a person more prone to poor decision making, impulse behaviour and emotional outbursts, all of which do make it more likely for someone to end up in the criminal justice system. And once in provincial jails or juvenile facilities, people with ADHD often go undiagnosed and untreated, which can have some big consequences. Sam was a youth in juvenile detention who was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 17. We're not disclosing his real name for privacy reasons. He is 26 and he joins me on the line. Hi, Sam.

SAM: Hi, how are you?

PC: Let's go back to your teenage years. Can you tell me about the kind of trouble you were getting into?

SAM: Well, when I was about 13, I started smoking marijuana and that led to other drugs like alcohol and even cocaine when I was 15 and I was doing a lot of stealing at the time. So I got stabbed when I was 15 years old in a fight and they charged me with assault because I hit the guy first. And yeah, I was just getting in quite a bit of trouble by actions, like impulses, right?

PC: And you went to a juvenile detention centre for some of those things—

SAM: Yes. I went about five times to juvy.

PC: Mhm. For how long?

SAM: It wasn’t for very long. Maybe a month at a time.

PC: And what was happening in the in-between time, Sam? I mean what was happening when it came to your schooling?

SAM: I just dropped out of school. I wasn't able to keep up with any of it at the time anyway.

PC: Can you explain that to me when you say I wasn't able to keep up with it?

SAM: I had a lot of difficulty keeping up with the school work. I could never literally listen to the teacher. My attention span is so short that keeping up with the teacher is very difficult for me or someone talking for too long of a period.

PC: So in your teenage years, you go to juvy, you serve several sentences in juvenile detention centres, I think said about a handful of times. At the time, did you know what was going on? I mean were you aware that you might have a condition like ADHD?

SAM: I figured and I think my friends used to make fun of me about it, call me a space cadet and stuff like that. So I think I knew that there was something going on. But no one really knew because I was always very shy and quiet and mellow and people think that ADHD is just all about being hyper and stuff. So I think that's why it took so long for me to get diagnosed. But the signs were there for sure.

PC: The signs were there. And you knew something was wrong, you just didn't know what it was.

SAM: For sure. I didn't know what it was.

PC: And so when you're 17, again you've been sort of in and out of juvy the previous years, you get diagnosed with ADHD. Tell us about that. What were the circumstances of your diagnosis? How did it happen?

SAM: Yeah, I went to the Kingston Hospital due to, I think another problem, I think it was depression. And they gave me a test. It was a week of testing and they found that I had it pretty bad.

PC: That you had ADHD pretty bad.

SAM: Yeah. And they put me on Ritalin at the time.

PC: And how long were you on Ritalin for?

SAM: I was on it for about four years.

PC: And what did it do for you? How did it—did it help?

SAM: Oh, it helped quite a bit. As long as it's being taken properly, it does help quite a bit. I immediately started going back to school and I got back into music production.

PC: So most of this is a good news story, so having the sense that Ritalin helped your behaviour. It got you to get back to school, you could concentrate. You were feeling better. Do you believe that it is because of the Ritalin, because the treatment you're receiving, that your behaviour changed?

SAM: I think there was a combination of things maybe, at the time, but I think the Ritalin did have a lot to do with it.

PC: And how long did you use Ritalin for? Because you're not on it anymore, right?

SAM: No, I was on it—I stopped in 2011 so when I was about 21.

PC: Okay. So you’re on Ritalin for about four years. Why did you stop?

SAM: Eventually, like I started to misuse it, which when you have a problem with it, it no longer helps, right? With what it needs to help with. But yeah, just recently I got put on the Vyvanse, another stimulant medication and it's less addictive. It's going really well.

PC: And when you look back, what do you want us to know about being in juvy and having an undiagnosed condition as ADHD?

SAM: Yeah, I think it's something that they need to look into more about ADHD, because it is very misdiagnosed, like a lot of people need it diagnosed and don't have it. And some people have it diagnosed who don't really have it.

PC: And so when you think of yourself, do you think if you had an earlier diagnosis that would have kept you out of trouble, so to speak, with the law?

SAM: I think I might have done better in school, like I think I might have got different help in school. Things might've went better there in my state with that. I blame a lot of my decisions on myself too though.

PC: How are you doing today?

SAM: Oh, I'm doing good. I'm not in any trouble anymore with the law. I have no record.

PC: You're focused on your music career?

SAM: Yeah, I do produce a lot of my music at home. I do have a home studio and I do put a lot of work and effort into that.

PC: Well, I'm glad you're doing much better and I just want to thank you for talking to us.

SAM: Oh, thank you.

PC: Bye Sam.

SAM: Bye. Thank you. Bye.

PC: Sam is a 26-year-old man who was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 17. Prior to that, he had several sentences in juvenile detention centres. We did not disclose his real name for privacy reasons. Our next guest says screening and treatment of Canadian inmates for ADHD should be the norm. Heidi Bernhard is president and executive director of the Center for ADHD Awareness Canada. She's in our Toronto studio. Hello.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Good morning, Piya.

PC: So what did you think of what you just heard from Sam, our last guest?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Well, in a lot of ways his story is quite typical, except that Sam probably has the type of ADHD that does not have hyperactivity and impulsivity as a symptom. So he would have had less impulsive aggression probably.

PC: So other people with ADHD, diagnosed or not at that point in juvy, when they have the more hyperactivity part of ADHD, how do they present?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Well, it's the impulsivity as well as the hyperactivity. So part of ADHD is difficulty with self-regulation, emotional regulations, difficulty with frustration, being told no. And you could imagine juvy or a prison system is not the best, so you get a lot of reactive impulsive behaviour, a lot of fighting, you know a lot of issues with the people in charge and what we know from studies, is people with ADHD who are incarcerated end up with a lot more time tacked on to their sentences.

PC: And I read some stats at the beginning, but just lay this out for us. What can you tell us about the prevalence of ADHD in our jails and prisons, in Canadian jails and prisons?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Okay. So worldwide for adults, it's five times the presentation that is out in the community and for youth with ADHD, it's 10 times the prevalence. And the stats worldwide were about 26 per cent of inmates have ADHD. The actual Canadian study said 33 per cent.

PC: Thirty-three per cent.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Yeah.

PC: Okay. And you say that among youth in the criminal justice system that ADHD rates are even higher than for adults.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Yes.

PC: So why is that?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Well, one, they offend earlier. As kids with ADHD age, their impulsivity, mostly their hyper activity will decrease somewhat. So we know that those symptoms are worse in adolescence than they are in adulthood and probably as Sam says, you know we catch some of them along the way and deter their path in another way.

PC: And there's a whole bunch of other things going on when you're teenager as well.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Well, exactly.

PC: So if you're in a Canadian prison or juvenile detention centre, what resources do we have in place to diagnose and treat inmates?

HEIDI BERNHARD: There are small pockets but generally in most jail systems and psychiatrists that deal with inmates don't have much knowledge about ADHD. They don't understand it. They're more focused on looking at substance abuse and suicidality. But the interesting thing is we know when we don't diagnose the underlying ADHD, trying to treat those two disorders, we're just spinning our wheels. And when you have ADHD, other type of mental health disorders go up hugely, as what we call a co-existing disorder.

PC: So why don't we screen if the numbers are so high? ADHD, you know we talk about this more now I think collectively, we understand it somewhat more than we have even you know from 10 years ago. Why don't we screen and treat for ADHD in our correctional facilities?

HEIDI BERNHARD: That’s a really good question and it's really been, I'd say the last 15 years or so, that we've gotten a good understanding of adult ADHD. Before that we used to think adolescence outgrew it. We know that's not true for the majority of children with ADHD. They don't. They still have impairing symptoms. Also this topic is not hugely discussed in the ADHD community, right? It's something that people aren't comfortable with. So that's one of the reasons we wrote this paper. The other thing is a lot of things have come together now. We've got studies out of Europe that show when we treat ADHD, recidivism goes down hugely. We now have new medications, like Sam was talking about Vyvanse, which are extremely hard if not impossible to abuse. They’re time release. They only work in the gut. They only become active when they work with an enzyme in the gut. You can't crush them, snort them. We almost never prescribe Ritalin any more, especially in those type of situations. Prison systems are an environment of high abuse medication, right? So but we now have the medication that works. Vyvanse, you can also put in water, dissolves in water so the inmate takes it right in front of the nurse and you can't hide the pill or that type of thing.

PC: Under your tongue and then sell it or whatever.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Exactly, right.

PC: Is that one of the reasons why prisons haven't offered treatment, like those traditional drugs like the Ritalin, because of fear of being used?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Yes, exactly. So what we call the immediate release medications, like Ritalin and Dexedrine, we're easy to abuse—crush, snort, dissolve in water, inject—these new medications aren't. But that fear still exists, right? So we haven't got that knowledge and education level in the systems yet.

PC: So if prisoners could be given treatments for ADHD, those diagnosed with it, how do you think things might change inside juvenile detention centres, prisons?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Well, there's a lot of ways. So one, the behaviour of the inmates when they're in there would be better, right? So less time tacked on their sentences, less aggression, all that type of thing. We know recidivism in offending goes down hugely when we treat. We know that they can also take better advantage of whatever programs or education systems were there. You heard Sam say he had great difficulty in school and this is standard for kids with ADHD. When they're treated, they can access all those resources. So actually, we have reduced costs for society at large if we can reduce recidivism, you know and have the people not go back. Also catching these kids early, we can probably change their whole path right along the criminal system.

PC: So when you go and talk with, when ADHD Awareness Canada goes and talks—your group—goes and talks with politicians, people who you know represent the correctional system and you say you know what, we need screening, we need treatment in our jails and prisons, what do you hear back?

HEIDI BERNHARD: We've spoken to three provincial ministries up to date, and they nod and they say this is really interesting and they say well, we will talk to you know sort of the people who are in charge of this. But then there's a lot of sort of verbal well, you know we need permission to screen and we need—and we said well, you're already screening for some things and really you can screen for ADHD in less than five minutes. So at least we would know if there's a possibility and then we'd know to do full assessment.

PC: So what do you think the hang up is?

HEIDI BERNHARD: Lack of knowledge is a big one. What we found is ADHD causes cost in a lot of ministries: child and youth, social services, health, education. But when you go to talk to the ministries, they go ADHD, huh? Well, you know what, although you say we understand more about ADHD, there is still this misconception by a lot of people: oh, it's just hyperactive little boys running around, you know who haven't been disciplined. And you know there is still that misinformation because we know when we treat, we get far better results. It's a win-win for everybody rather than punishment.

PC: What are the doctors saying the protocol should be in our jail systems?

HEIDI BERNHARD: They're basically saying that there should be assessment done. It should—a psychiatric assessment—should occur a month after the inmate is settled in the jail system because they need feedback right, on behaviours within the system. So they need that adjustment time. Then they need to do a full assessment looking at all psychiatric disorders that may be happening. If that is put in place, treatment should be what we call cognitive behavioural therapy or therapies around ADHD in combination with medication treatment. And they do say yes, that you have to put in protocol so this medication is just given in one dose and you know monitored and all that type of stuff. That is a given. But then we're also saying inmates should be [unintelligible]. They should be set up so their treatment is easy to access once they leave prison because that's the whole point, right? We don't want them re-offending when they get out.

PC: Heidi, thank you for coming and nice to talk to you.

HEIDI BERNHARD: Thank you very much.

PC: Heidi Bernhard is president and executive director of the Center for ADHD Awareness Canada. She was here in Toronto. Now we requested an interview with David Orazietti, Ontario's minister of community safety and correctional services. He was unavailable. His office, however, did send us a statement. And it reads, in part: “There's no doubt that many of the inmates in the provincial correctional system have complex social, medical, and behavioural considerations at the time of admission. Our correctional institutions provide access to a variety of services and supports including health care, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, regardless of a diagnosis of a specific mental illness.” Correctional Services Canada oversees federal prisons, which house inmates sentenced two years or more. CSC sent the following statement as well. It reads, in part: “ADHD is one of the mental health diagnoses that CSC specifically targets for screening. CSC uses the World Health Organization's Adult ADHD Self-Report Symptom Checklist as our screening tool. Offenders identified through the screening process are referred for a follow-up by the mental health team.” Well, as a defense lawyer, Kathryn Wells says many of her clients have ADHD and she says the biggest challenge is trying to get the rest of the criminal justice system to take a diagnosis like that seriously. Kathryn Wells is a partner with the law firm Wells Frost Litigation Group in the greater Toronto area. She is on the phone. Hi, Kathryn.

KATHRYN WELLS: Hi, good morning.

PC: In your experience, how does the criminal justice system view ADHD?

KATHRYN WELLS: I guess to sort of put it bluntly, my experience is it's kind of viewed as no big deal, in the sense that when you look at all of the myriad of other kinds of diagnoses people who come in conflict with the law have, I think ADHD doesn't really sort of get the recognition as being as serious as it really is. And as we just heard from the young man Sam, you can see the tremendous impact it can have on someone but I don't think that's really recognized at this stage.

PC: And what gives you that impression as a lawyer who represents clients with ADHD in a courtroom?

KATHRYN WELLS: Certainly there's you know, there's a number of stages along the way in the case. And you know the first thing is police charge someone, the accused is before the court and the first step is to sort of look at the case and then speak to a Crown or deal with a Crown attorney, as far as what direction is this matter going to go? And when you see someone who has say schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, some of the more—considered more—severe mental health diagnoses, there's a willingness to say okay, your client is sick. Maybe we can divert this matter or maybe we can you know resolve it in a way that gets them some treatment and whatnot. So at that very early stage, my experience is you know if someone—and I use the term sort of “just” in quotations—if someone “just” has ADHD, you're not going to get sort of the same consideration as someone who has one of those other diagnoses. And you know they just get sort of shuffled right into the regular stream of things with very little consideration for the impact that ADHD or ADD may have had on their behaviour.

PC: And how do you view ADHD as a criminal defense lawyer?

KATHRYN WELLS: It's kind of tragic. I mean just listening to Sam there earlier, I mean I see that day in and day out and these are generally speaking, you know people who've committed minor offenses. And now you know certainly there are some, there are people who have a number of diagnoses that commit a number of very serious crimes and of course they're not eligible to be diverted or given the benefit of the doubt as far as streamlining the case out of the justice system, but for kids like Sam who, I mean he talked about theft and whatnot, what I see is these behaviours are reactionary and impulsive and they're generally speaking from what I see young men, who engage in these behaviours, who are otherwise good people and make mistakes and realize very quickly what they have done. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle at that stage. So I mean it's sad to see because I think—and your second guess there was saying that it does go undiagnosed a lot of times, and the impact it would have on these young people if they were being treated in advance would probably be really significant and change their entire lives.

PC: You know you talk about mental health problems, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, that are sometimes recognized by the courts as mitigating factors.

KATHRYN WELLS: Yeah.

PC: Why isn’t ADHD?

KATHRYN WELLS: I wish I knew the answer to that. And again, I think it goes back to this perception that ADD and ADHD is something that little kids have and you give them some Ritalin and there you go. And that cannot possibly affect their criminally offending conduct. I see it as I said, all the time. A lot of times ADD and ADHD stem from or are connected to other disorders such as depression, anxiety. I have a case where my client suffers from ADD and ADHD as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome. So I don't know the answer as far as why it's not as mitigating as some of these other diagnoses, but it just seems it's not and it's probably due to a lack of education. I’m not expert on ADD and ADHD, but I certainly have seen time and time again the impact of it.

PC: And so do you have a current client with ADHD that you’re representing right now?

KATHRYN WELLS: I mean I have a number of cases where my clients have that as a diagnosis. One in particular, where it is the quintessential sort of reactionary behaviour, out of impulse sent a Facebook message or Facebook post that was a threat and it's certainly illegal. But in the background, there is this overriding disorder in his brain that is the underlying basis for not being able to cope with things that say, you or I can. And nowadays it's so easy to fire something off, whether it be in a text or a tweet or a Facebook message. It's out there. You can't take it back. And that's sort of what I'm dealing with now. But it happens all the time.

PC: And so Kathryn, when you tell the Crown my client has ADHD and impulsive behaviour is one of those things that may be why he sent the Facebook, what view did the Crown take?

KATHRYN WELLS: [chuckles] I wish I could tell you that it was treated with empathy and that was a factor in the Crown taking a certain position, but it kind of falls on deaf ears.

PC: What needs to be done?

KATHRYN WELLS: Well, I think that that's a really complex answer. It may start way back with how children are educated and assessed when they're younger, how the children's aid system functions because a lot of these people who get into trouble as young adults were once in the foster care system or in care of children's aid.

PC: And once they get to the criminal justice point of this, then what needs to be done? You’re a criminal lawyer.

KATHRYN WELLS: Yeah. Well, I think more education as far as the impact of what ADD and ADHD does and what the impact is on the brain and how it can affect behaviour, and also a way of dealing with people in these situations who've committed relatively minor crimes that gives them a second chance, provided they you know maybe get treatment and get assessed.

PC: Kathryn, good to talk to you. Thank you.

KATHRYN WELLS: Thank you. My pleasure.

PC: Bye-bye.

KATHRYN WELLS: Bye.

PC: Kathryn Wells is a partner with the law firm Wells Frost Litigation Group in the greater Toronto area. That is The Current for this Friday. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Actor Alan Cumming discusses his latest memoir. It's called You Got to Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures and it documents Alan’s life, travels and celebrity encounters. Last night, Anna Maria Tremonti hosted a public forum in Prince George, BC about missing and murdered Indigenous women. In northern BC, locals say more than 50 women have disappeared on the stretch of road now known as the Highway of Tears. The Current has produced a virtual reality documentary about a mother’s search for answers after her teenage daughter was murdered 22 years ago. On Monday, we are going to make that documentary available for you to download. The details on how you can view it will be on the website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Also on Monday, you can hear the entire town hall on this program. The Current will be hosting events such as these across our country over the next few months. Rena Zatorski was one of the guests last night. Ten years ago, she organized the first big meeting about missing women in Prince George. At that time she had just given birth to a girl and decided something needed to be done about the violence she was seeing. Anna Maria asked her if enough had changed since that meeting a decade ago, and we’re going to leave you with that exchange today. Anna Maria is back with you on Monday. My name’s Piya Chattopadhyay. Thank you so very much for lending us your ear here on the Friday edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Do you think enough has changed for her? What do you worry about? What do you want?

RENA ZATORSKI: [clears throat]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It’s okay, Rena. It’s an emotional question because you care so much.

RENA ZATORSKI: [sighs] It's a worry that I have every day, every morning: the exploitation and abuse, the systemic racism. I know that during my entire life, you're fighting every day. You're not treated equal. So every day you're spending countless hours out of your day essentially trying to defend your existence, your life, really. And not defend in terms of just abuse, but my very existence of being here and alive, for some reason it really throws the Canadian society for a loop because I think that what we represent to the Canadian society is that it's okay to abuse and we're not all equal and we can brush things under the carpet and we don't need to talk about it. So with my daughter at every morning, I'm shaken because you hear a lot on the news—all over social media or on TV or the radio—about systemic violence. And she is going to probably most likely, and same as my son, grow up potentially being victimized and always having to—the onus is always going to be put upon them—to legitimize their very existence. And I think it’s abhorrent that people in this day and age essentially live that type of life, that they have to defend their very life.

[Music: Ending theme]

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October 14, 2016 full episode transcript

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