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Jenks didn't appear to suffer from the trauma. She graduated from high school in the top 10 percent of her class, worked on the newspaper and played on the bowling team. She finished high school with dreams of being a journalist. But at 17 she became pregnant. "I had a misconception of what love and marriage and sex were supposed to be like," she says now. "I had no other sexual experiences besides being raped."

She married and had a baby boy. Her husband, seven years her senior, worked construction and was often out of town. Jenks worked part-time as a waitress but money was tight. That was when things got bad. "Right after I had the baby I had a hard time," she says. "All my friends went off to college, I had no support, I was 19 and I had weight problems." Around this time, Valerie decided to enter therapy.

Before she did, she sought advice from other women. They recommended Dr. Mark Stephenson, then affiliated with the Eastern Idaho Medical Treatment Center. Jenks, 20 at the time, went to her first session with her first husband. Her original reasons for going were a weight problem and alcohol abuse. "He asked if I knew anything about hypnosis and gave a brief description of what it would entail," Jenks says. "I never went under hypnosis before, but my husband was there and, after all, this was a doctor who was supposed to be helping me."

By the end of the first hypnotherapy session, Jenks came to believe that she'd been sexually abused not only by her family but also by friends and strangers. Jenks says she answered "yes" to many of Stephenson's questions by tapping the index finger of her left hand.

"I had no belief I was molested by anyone. But it wasn't a dream," she says about being under hypnosis, during which time the doctor took notes or recorded what she was saying. "I was conscious and awake and knew what I was saying. When I'd ask how can I believe it, he would say, 'Our memories are true.'

"I already suffered abuse, so I made myself vulnerable," she says now. "I was searching for answers and he offered the right ones. He made everything fit. I wanted to believe there were reasons for my weight problems, alcohol problems and depression."

Over the course of six months, Jenks was led through a series of so-called repressed childhood memories that included specific details of being sexually molested. Meanwhile, her marriage began to crumble. Already an introverted person, she cut off family and friends and frequently considered suicide. She had nightmares of the sexual abuse; she recounted them to her therapist. The doctor then drew out further memories, including one of her being a member of her grandparents' satanic cult. She was led to believe she had helped torture and kill babies and children. After six sessions, Jenks' entire perception of her memory had been altered. Jenks claims that by asking repeated questions and coaxing "yes" or "no" answers from her, Stephenson was able to create pictures in her mind of events that haunt her to this day.

"His leading and guiding questions brought me to the conclusion that I had been molested and raped by several family members," she says.

Later that summer, Stephenson concluded that Jenks was having an affair with her father and diagnosed her with multiple personality disorder (MPD). Jenks claims this was an incorrect diagnosis spawned from the memories he was planting in her mind. But that wasn't enough to get Jenks out of Stephenson's office. The sessions reached a finale when Stephenson asked Jenks to participate in a three-hour hypnosis session to unearth the object implanted in her mind that originally made her a satanic cult member.

Sound wacky enough for you? It was for Jenks. She stopped seeing Stephenson in August 1993. In the fall, she visited the doctor's employer, the Eastern Idaho Medical Treatment Center, and made her complaint.

There, Jenks found out that several other patients of Stephenson had the same stories. Shortly after, Stephenson was fired, although he was then rehired by the hospital due to a contract dispute. It wasn't until Jenks and two other former Stephenson clients filed a complaint with Idaho's state licensing board that Stephenson's activities came to light.

In November 1998 Jenks reached a modest out-of-court settlement with Stephenson, who, she says, changed her perception of her childhood forever. She was ruled the victim of false memory syndrome (FMS), a sister epidemic to the widely publicized MPD. In FMS, using mostly hypnotherapy, mental-health practitioners recover so-called repressed memories from patients they believe are suffering from traumatic events they've blocked from their memories.

According to a new book by Joan Acocella, "Creating Hysteria: Women and the Myth of Multiple Personality Disorder," 40,000 cases of MPD were reported between 1985 and 1995. According to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, 92 percent of the people who have it are female; 74 percent are between the ages of 31 and 50; 31 percent have education beyond college; and 60 percent report memory of abuse prior to age 4.

In the past five years the number of reported cases has declined, but malpractice suits continue to fill courtrooms and women like Valerie Jenks are now telling their stories and seeking compensation. Sums of $11 million and more are being paid to victims and, most recently, mental-health practitioners are being prosecuted. In September of this year, a Wisconsin jury awarded $862,000 to a victim of a psychiatrist's incorrect recovered-memory and MPD diagnosis.

Next page | Repressed memory syndrome is based on the belief that sexual abuse affects one-third of all girls