John Cattle trial: Memory expert testifies for alleged Canberra child molester
A former Canberra tennis coach has fronted court denying he molested two young girls in the 1980s.
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A psychologist giving expert evidence at the trial of alleged child molester John Walter Cattle has told his jury people can believe in “false memories” that never happened.
Cattle, 83, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of indecency and indecent assault stemming from his alleged molestation of two girls at the Forrest Tennis Club in Canberra in the 1980s.
Expert witness Dr Melanie Takarangi — the only witness to give evidence in Cattle’s defence — told the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday human memories were “not stored like files on a smart phone”.
Dr Takarangi is an associate professor of psychology at Flinders University in South Australia who specialises in human memory.
She said retrieving a memory was a “reconstructive process of putting together different information”.
She said people could have “false memories” based on a real event combined with “current knowledge or speculation”.
“Your memories are not a faithful recording of the past, but rather an account of how we think the past must have been,” Dr Takarangi said.
Two women — now in their 40s — allege Cattle interfered with them in the 1980s, the first with repeated instances of tongue kissing and groping, and the second in a single incident in which Cattle allegedly put his hand up her skirt.
Cattle, who has no criminal record, coached both of the girls at the club in the 1980s.
The prosecution case alleges Cattle at that time had “a number of tendencies” including a sexual interest in young girls and a willingness to act on that interest.
Under cross-examination, Dr Takarangi agreed it was often not possible to tell which part of a person’s memory of an event was true and which part might be false.
“It doesn’t necessarily make the given memory false but every act of retrieval is an act of reconstruction of some kind,” she said.
Crown prosecutor Keegan Lee and Cattle’s barrister Craig Smith SC are both expected to deliver closing arguments to the jury on Wednesday.
The trial continues.