Repressed memory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory 

 

See also: Repression (psychoanalysis), Recovered-memory therapy, and Freud's seduction theory

Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited, psychiatric phenomenon which involves an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. The concept originated in psychoanalytic theory, where repression is understood as a defense mechanism that excludes painful experiences and unacceptable impulses from consciousness. Repressed memory is presently considered largely unsupported by research. Sigmund Freud initially claimed the memories of historical childhood trauma could be repressed, while unconsciously influencing present behavior and emotional responding; he later revised this belief.

While the concept of repressed memories persisted through much of the 1990s, insufficient support exists to conclude that memories can become inconspicuously hidden in a way that is distinct from forgetting. Historically, some psychoanalysts provided therapy based on the belief that alleged repressed memories could be recovered; however, rather than promoting the recovery of a real repressed memory, such attempts could result in the creation of entirely false memories. Subsequent accusations based on such "recovered memories" led to substantial harm of individuals implicated as perpetrators, sometimes resulting in false convictions and years' incarceration.

Out of lack of evidence for the concept of repressed and recovered memories, mainstream clinical psychologists have stopped using these terms. The clinical psychologist Richard McNally stated: "The notion that traumatic events can be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for 'recovered memory therapy'—the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era."

History

Sigmund Freud discussed repressed memory in his 1896 essay, The Aetiology of Hysteria. One of the studies published in his essay involved a young woman referred to as Anna O., who had been treated by Freud's friend and colleague Josef Breuer. Among her many ailments, Anna O. had stiff paralysis on the right side of her body. Freud hypothesized that her symptoms were attached to psychological traumas; the traumatic experiences had been repressed from her conscious mind, but reappeared as physical symptoms. Breuer used hypnosis to treat Anna O. She is reported to have gained slight mobility on her right side.

The concept received renewed interest in the 1970s in relation to child sexual abuse and incest. Coming to be labelled The Recovered Memory Movement and Memory Wars or The Memory War, it became a major issue in pop culture during the 1980s and 1990s, connected to Satanic panic, and spawned a myriad of legal cases, controversies, and media. Michelle Remembers (1980), a discredited book by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his wife/former patient Michelle Smith about Smith's fabricated experiences with repressed memories of childhood Satanic rituals and abuse, gained widespread popularity that persisted after debunking, influenced subsequent claims, and received promotion from media including Oprah, Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jesse Raphael, and 20/20. Starting in the 1980s, repressed memory legal cases increased rapidly. In 1989, a landmark legal case developed when George Franklin was charged and convicted in 1990 for the rape and murder of 8-year-old Susan Kay Nason on September 22, 1969, based on the account of his daughter, Eileen Franklin's recovered memories. Originally sentenced to life imprisonment, a district court judge overturned the conviction in 1995 based on several trial errors including the unreliability of hypnosis that was used. Eileen Franklin would further accuse her father of raping and murdering 18-year-old Veronica Cascio and 17-year-old Paula Baxter. George Franklin was released in July 1996 after prosecutors announced they would not retry him, and in 2018, the DNA evidence linked Rodney Lynn Halbower to the Cascio and Baxter murders. He was convicted of both murders and sentenced to life in prison. In 1991, People magazine featured Marilyn Van Derbur and Roseanne Barr's experiences with childhood abuse and repressed memory. Van Derbur's oldest sister Gwen verified her account, though Barr would later moderate her claims. Such cases and reactions led to the definition of false memory syndrome and establishment of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in 1992. The Ramona false memory case in 1994 was another landmark case, where father Gary Ramona successfully sued for malpractice against Western Medical Center in Anaheim, its chief of psychiatry Richard Rose, and therapist Marche Isabella, for implanting false memories of child abuse while treating his daughter Holly for depression and bulimia. It was also notable for being brought by a third party not involved in the doctor-patient relationship and contributed to continued evaluation of the phenomenon. Skepticism and criticism of repressed memory continued to mount through the 1990s, 2000s, and beyond, emphasizing unreliability, false claims, and lack of examples in historical records.

Issues

Case studies

Psychiatrist David Corwin has claimed that one of his cases provides evidence for the reality of repressed memories. This case involved a patient (the Jane Doe case) who, according to Corwin, had been seriously abused by her mother, had recalled the abuse at age six during therapy with Corwin, then eleven years later was unable to recall the abuse before memories of the abuse returned to her mind again during therapy. An investigation of the case by Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Guyer, however, raised serious questions about many of the central details of the case as reported by Corwin, including whether or not Jane Doe was abused by her mother at all, suggesting that this may be a case of false memory for childhood abuse with the memory "created" during suggestive therapy at the time that Doe was six. Loftus and Guyer also found evidence that, following her initial "recall" of the abuse during therapy at age six, Doe had talked about the abuse during the eleven years in between the sessions of therapy, indicating that even if abuse had really occurred, memory for the abuse had not been repressed. More generally, in addition to the problem of false memories, this case highlights the critical dependence of repression-claims cases on the ability of individuals to recall whether or not they had previously been able to recall a traumatic event; as McNally has noted, people are notoriously poor at making that kind of judgment.

An argument that has been made against the validity of the phenomenon of repressed memories is that there is little (if any) discussion in the historical literature prior to the 19th century of phenomena that would qualify as examples of memory repression or dissociative amnesia. In response to Harrison Pope's 2006 claim that no such examples exist, Ross Cheit, a political scientist at Brown University, cited the case of Nina, a 1786 opera by the French composer Nicolas Dalayrac, in which the heroine, having forgotten that she saw her lover apparently killed in a duel, waits for him daily. Pope claims that even this single fictional description does not clearly meet all criteria for evidence of memory repression, as opposed to other phenomena of normal memory.

Despite the claims by proponents of the reality of memory repression that any evidence of the forgetting of a seemingly traumatic event qualifies as evidence of repression, research indicates that memories of child sexual abuse and other traumatic incidents may sometimes be forgotten through normal mechanisms of memory. Evidence of the spontaneous recovery of traumatic memories has been shown, and recovered memories of traumatic childhood abuse have been corroborated; however, forgetting trauma does not necessarily imply that the trauma was repressed. One situation in which the seeming forgetting, and later recovery, of a "traumatic" experience is particularly likely to occur is when the experience was not interpreted as traumatic when it first occurred, but then, later in life, was reinterpreted as an instance of early trauma.

A review by Alan Sheflin and Daniel Brown in 1996 found 25 previous studies of the subject of amnesia of childhood sexual abuse. All 25 "demonstrated amnesia in a subpopulation", including more recent studies with random sampling and prospective designs. On the other hand, in a 1998 editorial in the British Medical Journal Harrison Pope wrote that "on critical examination, the scientific evidence for repression crumbles." He continued, "asking individuals if they 'remember whether they forgot' is of dubious validity. Furthermore, in most retrospective studies corroboration of the traumatic event was either absent or fell below reasonable scientific standards."

A meta-analysis was conducted by McNally in 2005 to disprove misconceptions about repression, trauma, and memory. The analysis found that a significant misunderstanding with repression is that many individuals who have experienced abuse or a traumatic event often fail to recall these events because they don't recognize the events as traumatic or as an instance of abuse. This issue could arise for several reasons, one being a lack of understanding of what abuse entails, particularly in cases where the individual is a child. Because many of these traumatic events occur during childhood, the victim may not have the emotional or cognitive development to process the event as abuse or trauma. In some cases, the person may not have the language or tools to understand that their experience was harmful. Consequently, the individual may not recognize the event as something to be distressed about at the time. This lack of recognition does not mean the event did not occur, but rather that the victim may not realize the event was abuse until later in life. As they mature and gain a better understanding of abusive characteristics or trauma, victims may eventually come to the realization that their past experience was indeed abuse, prompting them to come forward years later to speak out.

Furthermore, research done by Deferme et al. (2024) on repressed memories emphasized that another reason individuals who experience abuse or a traumatic event don't report their recollections of abuse is due to social stigma. According to Deferme et al. (2024), victims of abuse seldom forget their recollections of a traumatic event completely and they often delay telling others about the event due to shame or fear. They may fear the stigma of being a victim of abuse, whose reports are often denied or criticized, especially if they are accusing a high profile individual. Victims of abuse may also avoid coming forward due to threats from their abuser.

Authenticity

Memories can be accurate, but they are not always accurate. For example, eyewitness testimony even of relatively recent dramatic events is notoriously unreliable. Memories of events are a mix of fact overlaid with emotions, mingled with interpretation and "filled in" with imaginings. Skepticism regarding the validity of a memory as factual detail is warranted. For example, one study where victims of documented child abuse were reinterviewed many years later as adults, 38% of the women denied any memory of the abuse.

Various manipulations are considered to be able to implant false memories (sometimes called "pseudomemories"). Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has noted that some of the techniques that some therapists use in order to supposedly help the patients recover memories of early trauma (including such techniques as age regression, guided visualization, trance writing, dream work, body work, and hypnosis) are particularly likely to contribute to the creation of false or pseudo memories. Such therapy-created memories can be quite compelling for those who develop them, and can include details that make them seem credible to others. In a now classic experiment by Loftus (widely known as the "Lost in the Mall" study), participants were given a booklet containing three accounts of real childhood events written by family members and a fourth account of a wholly fictitious event of being lost in a shopping mall. A quarter of the subjects reported remembering the fictitious event, and elaborated on it with extensive circumstantial detail. This experiment inspired many others, and in one of these, Porter et al. convinced about half of the participants that they had survived a vicious animal attack in childhood.

Critics of these experimental studies have questioned whether their findings generalize to memories for real-world trauma or to what occurs in psychotherapeutic contexts. However, when memories are "recovered" after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, it is now widely (but not universally) accepted that the memories have a high likelihood of being false, i.e. "memories" of incidents that had not actually occurred. It is thus recognised by professional organizations that a risk of implanting false memories is associated with some similar types of therapy. The American Psychological Association advises: "...most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later; however, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred."

Not all therapists agree that false memories are a major risk of psychotherapy and they argue that this idea overstates the data and is untested. Several studies have reported high percentages of the corroboration of recovered memories, and some authors have claimed that among skeptics of idea of recovered memory there is a "tendency to conceal or omit evidence of corroboration" of recovered memories.

A difficult issue for the field is that there is no evidence that reliable discriminations can be made between true and false memories. Some believe that memories "recovered" under hypnosis are particularly likely to be false. According to The Council on Scientific Affairs for the American Medical Association, recollections obtained during hypnosis can involve confabulations and pseudomemories and appear to be less reliable than nonhypnotic recall. Brown et al. estimate that 3 to 5% of laboratory subjects are vulnerable to post-event misinformation suggestions. They state that 5–8% of the general population is the range of high-hypnotizability. Twenty-five percent of those in this range are vulnerable to suggestion of pseudomemories for peripheral details, which can rise to 80% with a combination of other social influence factors. They conclude that the rates of memory errors run 0–5% in adult studies, 3–5% in children's studies and that the rates of false allegations of child abuse allegations run 4–8% in the general population.

Mechanisms

Those who argue in favor of the validity of the phenomenon of repressed memory have identified three mechanisms of normal memory that may explain how memory repression may occur: retrieval inhibition, motivated forgetting, and state-dependent remembering.

Retrieval inhibition

Retrieval inhibition refers to a memory phenomenon where remembering some information causes forgetting of other information. Anderson and Green have argued that for a linkage between this phenomenon and memory repression; according to this view, the simple decision to not think about a traumatic event, coupled with active remembering of other related experiences (or less traumatic elements of the traumatic experience) may make memories for the traumatic experience itself less accessible to conscious awareness. However, two problems with this viewpoint have been raised: (1) the evidence for the basic phenomenon itself has not consistently replicated, and (2) the phenomenon does not meet all criteria that must be met to support memory repression theory, particularly the lack of evidence that this form of forgetting is particularly likely to occur in the case of traumatic experiences.

Motivated forgetting

The motivated forgetting phenomenon, which is also sometimes referred to as intentional or directed forgetting, refers to forgetting which is initiated by a conscious goal to forget particular information. In the classic intentional forgetting paradigm, participants are shown a list of words, but are instructed to remember certain words while forgetting others. Later, when tested on their memory for all of the words, recall and recognition is typically worse for the deliberately forgotten words. A problem for viewing motivated forgetting as a mechanism of memory repression is that there is no evidence that the intentionally forgotten information becomes, first, inaccessible and then, later, retrievable (as required by memory repression theory).

State-dependent remembering

The term state-dependent remembering refers to the evidence that memory retrieval is most efficient when an individual is in the same state of consciousness as they were when the memory was formed. Based upon her research with rats, Radulovic has argued that memories for highly stressful traumatic experiences may be stored in different neural networks than is the case with memories for non-stressful experiences, and that memories for the stressful experiences may then be inaccessible until the organism's brain is in a neurological state similar to the one that occurred when the stressful experience first occurred. At present, however, there is no evidence that what Radulovic found with rats occurs in the memory systems of humans, and it is not clear that human memories for traumatic experiences are typically "recovered" by placing the individual back in the mental state that was experienced during the original trauma.

Amnesia

Amnesia is partial or complete loss of memory that goes beyond mere forgetting. Often it is temporary and involves only part of a person's experience. Amnesia is often caused by an injury to the brain, for instance after a blow to the head, and sometimes by psychological trauma. Anterograde amnesia is a failure to remember new experiences that occur after damage to the brain; retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories of events that occurred before a trauma or injury. Dissociative amnesia is defined in the DSM-5 as the "inability to recall autobiographical information" that is (a) "traumatic or stressful in nature", (b) "inconsistent with ordinary forgetting", (c) "successfully stored", (d) involves a period of time when the patient is unable to recall the experience, (e) is not caused by a substance or neurological condition, and (f) is "always potentially reversible". McNally and others have noted that this definition is essentially the same as the defining characteristics of memory repression, and that all of the reasons for questioning the reality of memory repression apply equally well to claims regarding dissociative amnesia.

Effects of trauma on memory

The essence of the theory of memory repression is that it is memories for traumatic experiences that are particularly likely to become unavailable to conscious awareness, even while continuing to exist at an unconscious level. A prominent more specific theory of memory repression, "Betrayal Trauma Theory", proposes that memories for childhood abuse are the most likely to be repressed because of the intense emotional trauma produced by being abused by someone the child is dependent on for emotional and physical support; in such situations, according to this theory, dissociative amnesia is an adaptive response because it permits a relationship with the powerful abuser (whom the child is dependent upon) to continue in some form.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk divided the effects of traumas on memory functions into four sets:

• Traumatic amnesia; this involves the loss of memories of traumatic experiences. The younger the subject and the longer the traumatic event is, the greater the chance of significant amnesia. He stated that subsequent retrieval of memories after traumatic amnesia is well documented in the literature, with documented examples following natural disasters and accidents, in combat soldiers, in victims of kidnapping, torture and concentration camp experiences, in victims of physical and sexual abuse, and in people who have committed murder.
• Global memory impairment; this makes it difficult for subjects to construct an accurate account of their present and past history. "The combination of lack of autobiographical memory, continued dissociation and of meaning schemes that include victimization, helplessness and betrayal, is likely to make these individuals vulnerable to suggestion and to the construction of explanations for their trauma-related affects that may bear little relationship to the actual realities of their lives"
• Dissociative processes; this refers to memories being stored as fragments and not as unitary wholes.
• Traumatic memories' sensorimotor organization. Not being able to integrate traumatic memories seems to be linked to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to van der Kolk, memories of highly significant events are usually accurate and stable over time; aspects of traumatic experiences appear to get stuck in the mind, unaltered by time passing or experiences that may follow. The imprints of traumatic experiences appear to be different from those of nontraumatic events, perhaps because of alterations in attentional focusing or the fact that extreme emotional arousal interferes with memory. van der Kolk and Fisler's hypothesis is that under extreme stress, the memory categorization system based in the hippocampus fails, with these memories kept as emotional and sensory states. When these traces are remembered and put into a personal narrative, they are subject to being condensed, contaminated and embellished upon.

A significant problem for trauma theories of memory repression is the lack of evidence with humans that failures of recall of traumatic experiences result from anything other than normal processes of memory that apply equally well to memories for traumatic and non-traumatic events. In addition, it is clear that, rather than being pushed out of consciousness, the difficulty with traumatic memories for most people is their inability to forget the traumatic event and the tendency for memories of the traumatic experience to intrude upon consciousness in problematic ways.

Evidence from psychological research suggests that most traumatic memories are well remembered over long periods of time. Autobiographical memories appraised as highly negative are remembered with a high degree of accuracy and detail. This observation is in line with psychological understanding of human memory, which explains that highly salient and distinctive events—common characteristics of negative traumatic experiences—are remembered well. When experiencing highly emotional, stressful events, physiological and neurological responses, such as those involving the limbic system, specifically the amygdala and hippocampus, lead to more consolidated memories. Evidence shows that stress enhances memory for aspects and details directly related to the stressful event. Furthermore, behavioural and cognitive memory-enhancing responses, such as rehearsing or revisiting a memory in one's mind are also more likely when memories are highly emotional. When compared to positive events, memory for negative, traumatic experiences are more accurate, coherent, vivid, and detailed, and this trend persists over time. This sample of what is a vast body of evidence calls into question how it is possible that traumatic memories, which are typically remembered exceptionally well, might also be associated with patterns of extreme forgetting.

The high quality remembering for traumatic events is not just a lab-based finding but has also been observed in real-life experiences, such as among survivors of child sexual abuse and war-related atrocities. For example, researchers who studied memory accuracy in child sexual abuse survivors 12 to 21 years after the event(s) ended found that the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder was positively correlated with the degree of memory accuracy. Further, all persons who identified the child sexual abuse as the most traumatic event of their life, displayed highly accurate memory for the event. Similarly, in a study of World War II survivors, researchers found that participants who scored higher on posttraumatic stress reactions had war memories that were more coherent, personally consequential, and more rehearsed. The researchers concluded that highly distressing events can lead to subjectively clearer memories that are highly accessible.

Legal status

Serious issues arise when recovered but false memories result in public allegations; false complaints carry serious consequences for the accused. A special type of false allegation, false memory syndrome, arises typically within therapy, when people report the "recovery" of childhood memories of previously unknown abuse. The influence of practitioners' beliefs and practices in the eliciting of false "memories" and of false complaints has come under particular criticism.

Some criminal cases have been based on a witness's testimony of recovered repressed memories, often of alleged childhood sexual abuse. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for child abuse cases has been extended to accommodate the phenomena of repressed memories as well as other factors. The repressed memory concept came into wider public awareness in the 1980s and 1990s followed by a reduction of public attention after a series of scandals, lawsuits, and license revocations.

A U.S. District Court accepted repressed memories as admissible evidence in a specific case. Dalenberg argues that the evidence shows that recovered memory cases should be allowed to be prosecuted in court.

The apparent willingness of courts to credit the recovered memories of complainants but not the absence of memories by defendants has been commented on: "It seems apparent that the courts need better guidelines around the issue of dissociative amnesia in both populations."

In 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in Franklin v. Duncan and Franklin v. Fox, Murray et al. (312 F3d. 423, see also 884 FSupp 1435, N.D. Calif.), that repressed memory is not admissible as evidence in a legal action because of its unreliability, inconsistency, unscientific nature, tendency to be therapeutically induced evidence, and subject to influence by hearsay and suggestibility. The court overturned the conviction of a man accused of murdering a nine-year-old girl purely based upon the evidence of a 21-year-old repressed memory by a lone witness, who also held a complex personal grudge against the defendant.

In a 1996 ruling, a U.S. District Court allowed repressed memories entered into evidence in court cases. Jennifer Freyd writes that Ross E. Cheit's case of suddenly remembered sexual abuse is one of the most well-documented cases available for the public to see. Cheit prevailed in two lawsuits, located five additional victims and tape-recorded a confession.

On August 16, 2010, the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case reversed the conviction that relied on claimed victim memories of childhood abuse stating that "The record here suggests a "reasonable likelihood" that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted. The "new and material evidence" in this case is the post-conviction consensus within the social science community that suggestive memory recovery tactics can create false memories" (p. 27, Friedman v. Rehal Docket No. 08-0297). The ruling goes on to order all previous convictions and plea bargains relying in repressed memories using common memory recovered techniques be reviewed.

On December 16, 2005, the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal issued a certificate confirming a Miscarriage of Justice to a former nun, Nora Wall whose 1999 conviction for child rape was partly based on repressed-memory evidence. The judgement stated that:

There was no scientific evidence of any sort adduced to explain the phenomenon of "flashbacks" and/or "retrieved memory", nor was the applicant in any position to meet such a case in the absence of prior notification thereof.

Recovered memory therapy

Main article: Recovered memory therapy

The term "recovered memory therapy" refers to the use of a range of psychotherapy methods that involve guiding the patient's attempts to recall memories of abuse that had previously been forgotten. The term "recovered memory therapy" is not listed in DSM-5 nor is recovered memory therapy recommended by mainstream ethical and professional mental health associations. Critics of recovered memory therapy note that the therapy can create false memories through its use of powerful suggestion techniques. It has also been found that patients who retract their claims—after deciding their recovered memories are false—may have post-traumatic stress disorder due to the trauma of illusory memories.

Summary

The Working Group on Investigation of Memories of Child Abuse of the American Psychological Association reached five key conclusions:

1. Controversies regarding adult recollections should not be allowed to obscure the fact that child sexual abuse is a complex and pervasive problem in America that has historically gone unacknowledged;
2. Most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them;
3. It is possible for memories of abuse that have been forgotten for a long time to be remembered;
4. It is also possible to construct convincing pseudo-memories for events that never occurred; and
5. There are gaps in our knowledge about the processes that lead to accurate and inaccurate recollections of childhood abuse.

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria 

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

Causes

Anxiety

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, many more mothers were working outside of the home, resulting in the opening of large numbers of day-care facilities. Anxiety and guilt due to leaving young children with strangers may have created a climate of fear and readiness to believe false accusations.

Suggestibility of children

See also: Suggestibility § Children

Children are vulnerable to outside influences that can result in fabrication of testimony. Their testimony can be influenced in a variety of ways. In an article published by the American Psychological Association and titled Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children’s Testimony, by Maggie Bruck—a professor within the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine—wrote that children incorporate aspects of the interviewer's questions into their answers, as an attempt to tell the interviewer what the child believes is being sought. Studies also show that when adults ask children questions that do not make sense (such as: "is milk bigger than water?" or "is red heavier than yellow?"), most children will offer an answer, believing that there is an answer to be given, rather than understanding the absurdity of the question. Furthermore, repeated questioning of children causes them to change their answers. This is because the children perceive the repeated questioning as a sign that they did not give the "correct" answer previously. Children are also especially susceptible to leading and suggestive questions. Research has found that, in the absence of being prompted, it is uncommon for children to make fictitious reports of sexual abuse.

Interviewer bias also influences child testimony. When an interviewer has a preconceived notion as to the truth of the matter being investigated, the questioning is performed so as to extract statements that evidence these beliefs. As a result, evidence that could disprove the belief is never sought by the interviewer. Additionally, positive reinforcement by the interviewer can taint child testimony. Often, such reinforcement is given to encourage a spirit of cooperation by the child, but impartiality can quickly end as the interviewer nods, smiles, or offers verbal encouragement to "helpful" statements. Some studies show that when interviewers make reassuring statements to child witnesses, the children are more likely to fabricate stories of past events that never occurred.

Peer pressure also influences children to fabricate stories. Studies show that when a child witness is told that his or her friends have already testified that certain events occurred, the child witness is more likely to create a matching story. The status of the interviewer can also influence a child's testimony, because the more authority an interviewer has, such as a police officer, the more likely a child is to comply with that person's apparent agenda.

Finally, while there are endorsers of the use of anatomically correct dolls in questioning victims of sexual abuse/molestation, there are also critics of this practice. These critics say that because of the novelty of the dolls, children will act out sexually explicit acts with the dolls even if the child has not been sexually abused. Another criticism is that, due to conflicting claims about how children tend to play with these dolls (some studies suggest that children who have been sexually abused play with them in a more sexually explicit manner, while other studies have found no correlation), no meaningful conclusions can be drawn from how a particular child plays.

Timeline

• 1982 – Kern County child abuse cases.
• 1983 – McMartin preschool trial in California.
• 1984 – Fells Acres Day School in Massachusetts.
• 1984 – Bernard F. Baran Jr. convicted in 1985, exonerated 2009.
• 1984 – Georgian Hills Daycare Center, Memphis, Tennessee
• 1985 – Bronx Five case.
• 1985 – Wee Care Nursery School in New Jersey in April.
• 1986 – Child Development Center, Presidio of San Francisco in San Francisco.
• 1987 – Cleveland child abuse scandal in England.
• 1987 – Friedman cases begin.
• 1987 – The Army announces it will be closing and demolishing the Presidio Child Development Center.
• 1987 – Baptist minister and Presidio teacher, Gary Hambright, is charged with sexually abusing 10 boys and girls. Hambright was charged with molesting only 10 children because other victims were so young they would not be allowed to testify in court, according to an assistant United States attorney, Peter Robinson. At least 4 children were found to have Chlamydia during physical examinations.
• 1988 – Remaining charges against Gary Hambright are dropped at the request of parents and prosecutors. San Francisco prosecutors decline to bring charges against Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set, who was involved in the Presidio investigation.
• 1989 – Glendale Montessori sexual abuse case in Stuart, Florida.
• 1989 – Little Rascals Day Care Center scandal in Edenton, North Carolina.
• 1989 – Gary Hambright dies of AIDS on November 8. The previous year, Army officials recommended the children get tested due to a "rumor" circulating about Hambright having AIDS. Due to confidentiality laws, the results of those tests are unknown.
• 1990 – Acquittals in McMartin preschool trial; remaining charges dropped.
• 1991 – Dan and Fran Keller, Fran's Daycare Center, Oak Hill, Texas.
• 1991 – Christchurch Civic Creche, New Zealand, involving Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis.
• 1992 – Kaare Sortland is killed, in Tacoma, Washington, after being found not guilty of child abuse.
• 1992 – Martensville Scandal, Martensville, Saskatchewan, Canada.
• 1994 – Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions
• 1996 – Convictions in the Kern county child abuse case overturned.
• 1997 – "Day of Contrition" in Salem, Massachusetts
• 2013 – Dan and Fran Keller released from prison, four years before being ruled innocent of the charges against them.

Significant cases

Nearly all of those accused in these cases were eventually freed, but no U.S. Governor has pardoned a prisoner convicted falsely as a result of the hysteria. On January 14, 1997, many of those freed attended a "Day of Contrition" conference in Salem, Massachusetts.

McMartin Preschool

Main article: McMartin preschool trial

The McMartin Preschool case was the first daycare abuse case to receive major media attention in the United States. The case concerned the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, where seven teachers were accused of kidnapping children, flying them in an airplane to another location, and forcing them to engage in group sex, as well as forcing them to watch animals being tortured and killed. The case also involved accusations that children had been forced to participate in bizarre religious rituals, and being used to make child pornography. The case began with a single accusation, made by a mother—who was later found to be a paranoid schizophrenic—of one of the students, but grew rapidly when investigators informed parents of the accusation, and began interviewing other students. The case made headlines nationally during 1984, and seven teachers were arrested and charged that year. However, when a new district attorney took over the case in 1986, his office re-examined the evidence, and dismissed charges against all but two of the original defendants. Their trials became one of the longest and most expensive criminal trials in the history of the United States, but in 1990, all of these charges were also dismissed. The trial was met with disapproval by both its jurors and academic researchers, who criticized the interviewing techniques that investigators had used in their investigations of the school, alleging that interviewers had "coaxed" children into making unfounded accusations, repeatedly asking children the same questions, and offering various incentives until the children reported having been abused. Most scholars now agree that the accusations these interviews elicited from children were false. Sociologist Mary de Young and historian Philip Jenkins have both cited the McMartin case as the prototype for a wave of similar accusations and investigations between 1983 and 1995, which constituted a moral panic.

Country Walk

Main article: Country Walk case

Frank and Ileana Fuster owned the Country Walk Babysitting Service in the Country Walk suburb of Miami, Florida, United States. In 1985, Frank was found guilty of 14 counts of abuse. He was sentenced to prison with a minimum length of 165 years. Fuster's alleged victims testified that he led them in Satanic rituals, and terrorized them by forcing them to watch him mutilate birds—a lesson to children who might reveal the abuse. Fuster had been previously convicted for manslaughter and molesting a 9-year-old child. Testimony from children in the case was elicited by University of Miami child psychologists Laurie and Joseph Braga, who resorted to coercive questioning of the alleged victims when the desired answers were not forthcoming. Fuster's wife, Ileana, recanted her court testimony in an interview with the television program Frontline, saying that she had been kept naked in solitary confinement, and subjected to other forms of physical and psychological duress until she had agreed to testify against her husband.

The case was prosecuted by Dade County state's attorney Janet Reno, who also prosecuted day-care sex-abuse cases against Grant Snowden and Bobby Fijnje. Ileana said that Reno visited her in jail and pressured her to confess. The incident also inspired a 1986 book and a 1990 made-for-television movie named Unspeakable Acts. Fuster continues to serve a 165-year prison sentence, making him the last person imprisoned by the hysteria.

Fells Acres Day School

Main article: Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial

During April 1984, Gerald Amirault was arrested and charged with abusing children in his care at the Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts, United States. After Amirault changed the pants on a young boy who had wet himself, the boy's mother, uncle, and therapist questioned him over a period of months, until the boy alleged that Amirault had been sexually abusing him. The boy's mother then telephoned a child abuse hotline to report that her son had been abused sexually, and Amirault was arrested soon thereafter. As a result of the 1986 trial, Amirault was convicted of assaulting and raping nine children, and sentenced to 30 to 40 years in state prison. In a separate trial, his mother, Violet Amirault, and sister, Cheryl Amirault LeFave, were also convicted of similar charges, and sentenced to jail for 8 to 20 years. According to Richard Beck, the case developed "in the usual way" compared to other moral panic cases, with more and more children making increasingly bizarre allegations against the accused during the course of the investigation. The allegations included reports of "bad clowns," robots, "magic rooms," and animals being tortured. According to Beck, one of the prosecutors responsible for the case commented that coaxing allegations out of the children had been like “getting blood from a stone.”

During 1995, The Wall Street Journal journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz questioned testimony from the children that had been elicited with dubious interrogation techniques, and wrote: "no sane person reading the transcripts of these interrogations can doubt the wholesale fabrications of evidence on which this case was built." Rabinowitz was a finalist in 1996, and winner in 2001, of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her newspaper columns on the issue, and made the Amiraults’ case a centerpiece of her book No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times. Violet and Cheryl were granted a new trial in 1997, on the basis that they had been denied the right to face their accusers and had been represented inadequately at trial, but Violet died, and a judge reduced Cheryl's sentence to time served before the new trial could proceed. During 2001, the Massachusetts Board of Pardons recommended that Gerald's sentence be commuted, citing "substantial doubt" about his guilt. He was granted parole in 2003. Writing about the case at the time of Gerald's release, the magazine The Economist suggested in an editorial that while the Amiraults had long maintained their innocence, and had attracted a "string of prominent supporters" who believed that they had been convicted wrongly, "many others continue to believe that Mr. Amirault committed the crimes."

Bernard Baran

Main article: Bernard Baran

On October 4, 1984, a drug addicted couple acting as police informants telephoned their contact within the police department of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, United States and accused Bernard Baran of molesting their son. The child had been attending the government operated Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) where Baran, an openly homosexual 19-year-old, worked as a teacher's aide. The accusers had complained previously to the board of directors that they "didn't want no homo" around their son.

Within days of the first allegation, ECDC hosted a puppet show, and delivered letters to parents notifying them about a child at the day care who had gonorrhea. Five other allegations were made. Baran was tried in the Berkshire County courthouse 105 days after the first allegation, a swiftness noted in the later court rulings. The courtroom was closed during the children's testimony, which Baran claimed violated his right to a public trial. Baran's defense attorney was later ruled ineffective. Baran was convicted on January 30, 1985, of three counts of rape of a child, and five counts of indecent assault and battery. He was sentenced to three life terms, plus 8 to 20 years on each charge. Baran maintained his innocence throughout his case. In 1999, a new legal team accepted his case. In 2004, hearings began in a motion for a new trial. In 2006, Baran was granted a new trial, and released on $50,000 bail. In May 2009, the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the new trial ruling, setting aside the 1985 convictions. The Berkshire County District Attorney's office dismissed the original charges, and Baran's record was cleared.

The Bronx Five

Prosecutor Mario Merola brought prosecutions resulting in the conviction of five men, including Nathaniel Grady, a 47-year-old Methodist minister, of sexually abusing children in day care facilities throughout the Bronx. Grady spent ten years in prison before being released in 1996.

Three employees of another Bronx day-care center were arrested in August 1984, on the charges of abusing at least ten children in their care. Federal and city investigators then questioned dozens of children at the day care. They were reported as having used 'dolls, gentle words, and a quiet approach'. More children reported being abused sexually, increasing the total to 30. Three more day care facilities also were investigated for sexual abuse. On August 11, 1984, federal funds were ended to the Head Start preschool program at the Praca Day Care Center, and three employees had been arrested. In June 1985, the day care facility was reopened with new sponsorship.

In January 1986, Albert Algerin, employed at the Praca Day Care center, was sentenced to 50 years for rape and sexual abuse. In May, Praca employee Jesus Torres, a former teacher's aide was sentenced to 40 years. Praca employee Franklin Beauchamp had his case overturned by the New York Court of Appeals during May 1989.

All five convictions were ultimately reversed.

Wee Care Nursery School

Main article: Wee Care Nursery School

In Maplewood, New Jersey, during April 1985, Margaret Kelly Michaels was indicted for 299 offenses in connection with the sexual assault of 33 children. Michaels denied the charges. "The prosecution produced expert witnesses who said that almost all the children displayed symptoms of sexual abuse." Prosecution witnesses testified that the children "had regressed into such behavior as bed-wetting and defecating in their clothing. The witnesses said the children became afraid to be left alone or to stay in the dark." Some of the other teachers testified against her. "The defense argued that Michaels did not have the time or opportunity to go to a location where all the activities could have taken place without someone seeing her."

Michaels was sentenced to 47 years in the "sex case". Michaels "told the judge that she was confident her conviction would be overturned on appeal". After five years in prison, her appeal was successful, and her sentence was reversed by a New Jersey appeals court. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's decision, and declared, "the interviews of the children were highly improper and utilized coercive and unduly suggestive methods". A three judge panel ruled she had been denied a fair trial, because, "the prosecution of the case had relied on testimony that should have been excluded because it improperly used an expert's theory, called the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, to establish guilt". The original judge was also criticized "for the way in which he allowed the children to give televised testimony from his chambers".

Glendale Montessori

James Toward and Brenda Williams were accused of kidnapping and sexually abusing six boys who attended Glendale Montessori School in Stuart, Florida, as preschoolers during 1986 and 1987. Investigators claimed to know as many as 60 victims, mostly from the ages 2 to 5.

In 1988, Williams, an office manager, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She pleaded no contest to sexual abuse and attempted kidnapping charges involving five boys, and she was released from prison in 1993 after serving five years. In 1989, Toward, the owner of Glendale Montessori School, pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse charges and received a 27-year sentence. While technically maintaining his innocence, he allowed a guilty plea to be entered against him, convicting him of molesting or kidnapping six boys. Toward was placed in involuntary commitment due to the Jimmy Ryce Act. Although he maintained his innocence, Toward said he plea-bargained to avoid an almost certain life sentence.

Little Rascals

Main article: Little Rascals day care sexual abuse trial

In Edenton, North Carolina, in January 1989, a parent accused Bob Kelly of sexual abuse. During the next several months, investigations and therapy resulted in allegations against dozens of other adults in the town, culminating in the arrest of seven adults.

Despite the severity of some of the alleged acts, parents noticed no abnormal behaviour in their children until after initial accusations were made. Bob Kelly's trial lasted eight months, and on April 22, 1992, he was convicted of 99 out of 100 counts against him. In 1995, the North Carolina Court of Appeals granted new trials to two defendants, including Kelly. Charges were ultimately dismissed for both.

The remainder of the defendants received a variety of sentences.

Dale Akiki

Main article: Faith Chapel Church ritual abuse case

Dale Akiki, a developmentally-delayed man with Noonan syndrome, was accused of satanic ritual abuse during 1991. Akiki and his wife were volunteer babysitters at Faith Chapel in Spring Valley, California. The accusations started when a young girl told her mother that "[Akiki] showed me his penis," after which the mother contacted the police. After interviews, nine other children accused Akiki of killing animals, such as a giraffe and an elephant, and drinking their blood in front of the children. He was found not guilty of the 35 counts of child abuse and kidnapping in his 1993 trial.

In 1994, the San Diego County Grand Jury reviewed the Akiki cases, and concluded there was no reason to pursue the theory of ritual abuse. On August 25, 1994, he filed a suit against the County of San Diego, Faith Chapel Church, and many others, which was settled for $2 million. Akiki's public defenders received the Public Defender of the Year award for their work defending Akiki.

Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial

Main article: Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial

Frances Keller and her husband, Dan Keller, both of Austin, Texas, were convicted of sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl in their care, and sentenced to 48 years in prison. They spent 21 years in prison until their release in 2013.

The case began on August 15, 1991, when a 3-year-old girl told her mother that Dan Keller had spanked her. However, the “allegation quickly morphed into an allegation of sexual abuse.” The mother and daughter were on their way to a scheduled appointment with the girl's therapist, Donna David-Campbell, who elicited details that included Keller defecating on her head and sexually assaulting her with a pen. During the time leading up to the trial, two other children from the day care offered similar accusations. According to the children, the couple served blood-laced Kool-Aid, and forced them to have videotaped sex with adults and other children. The Kellers, they said, sometimes wore white robes and lit candles before hurting them. The children also accused the Kellers of forcing them to watch or participate with the killing and dismembering of cats, dogs, and a crying baby. Bodies were unearthed in cemeteries, and new holes were dug to hide freshly killed animals. At one point, an adult passer-by was shot and dismembered with a chainsaw. The children recalled several airplane flights, including one to Mexico, where they were sexually abused by soldiers, before returning to Austin in time to meet their parents at the day care.

The only physical evidence of abuse in the case was presented by Michael Mouw, a then-novice emergency room physician at Brackenridge Hospital, who examined the 3-year-old girl in 1991, on the night she first accused Dan Keller of abuse. Mouw testified at the Kellers' trial that he found “deformities—described as possible lacerations to the hymen and a tear of the fourchette,” and constituted what he considered possible “signs of sexual abuse.” Mouw's determination was confirmed by pediatrician Beth Nauert, who agreed at the time that the child had “deformities to her vaginal area that could be signs of sexual abuse.” However, Nauert would notably examine the child two weeks after Mouw, and “found no signs of any deformities.” Three years after the 1992 trial, Mouw attended a medical seminar hosted by Nauert that “detailed normal variations of female genitalia” in a slide presentation. Mouw stated that the presentation included a photo that was identical to what he had observed in the girl. In 2009, Mouw issued a reversal on his prior claims, after being contacted by The Austin Chronicle, as a part of their story titled “Believing the Children” that covered the Kellers' case. Mouw stated that his erroneous medical testimony was caused by his “little experience, if any formal education at all, in conducting sexual abuse examinations of children.”

On November 26, 2013, the Travis County district attorney's office announced that Fran Keller, now age 63, was being released on bond and her husband, Dan Keller, who was convicted at the same time, would be released within a week as a result of a deal with their lawyers. "There is a reasonable likelihood that (the medical expert's) false testimony affected the judgment of the jury and violated Frances Keller's right to a fair trial," said the district attorney.

On June 20, 2017, the Travis County district attorney's office announced that the case against the Kellers had been dismissed, citing actual innocence. They were awarded $3.4 million in compensation from the state of Texas for the 21 years they spent in prison.

Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions

Main article: Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions

In Wenatchee, Washington, during 1994 and 1995, police and state social workers performed what was then termed the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation. Forty-three adults were arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex abuse involving 60 children. Parents, Sunday school teachers, and a pastor were charged, and many were convicted of abusing their own children or the children of others in the community. However, prosecutors were unable to provide any physical evidence of the charges. The main witness was the 13-year-old foster daughter of police officer Robert Perez, who had investigated the cases. A jury found the city of Wenatchee and Douglas County, Washington, negligent in the 1994–1995 investigations. In 2001, $3 million was awarded to a couple who had been accused wrongly as a result of the inquiry.

Christchurch Civic Crèche

Main article: Peter Ellis (childcare worker)

Peter Ellis, a child-care worker at the Christchurch Civic Crèche in New Zealand, was found guilty of 16 counts of sexual abuse against children in 1992, and served seven years in jail. Four female co-workers were also arrested on 15 charges of abuse, but were released after these charges were dismissed. Ellis was accused, among other things, of suspending children in cages, taking them through tunnels, ceilings and trapdoors, forcing them into a hot oven, burying them in coffins; and one boy claimed he had his belly-button removed with pliers. One parent alleged a boy called Andrew had been sacrificed. No child was actually reported missing by anyone involved.

Peter Ellis consistently denied any abuse, and although he died in September 2019, on 7 October 2022 New Zealand's Supreme Court unanimously quashed Mr Ellis' convictions. The Court found major problems in the evidence of the prosecution's expert witness, ruling that it departed from appropriate standards and "lacked balance, suffered from problematic circular reasoning and had the overall effect of suggesting to the jury that “clusters” of behavior support a finding of sexual abuse...", and that although the risk of the complainants' evidence being contaminated was traversed at the 1993 trial, the jury was not fairly informed of the level of risk.

Martensville satanic sex scandal

Main article: Martensville satanic sex scandal

In 1992 a mother in the central Saskatchewan city of Martensville alleged that a local woman who had a babysitting service and day care facility in her home had sexually abused her child. Police began an investigation, resulting in a sudden increase of allegations. More than a dozen persons, including five police officers from two different forces, were ultimately charged with more than 100 charges associated with participating with a Satanic cult named The Brotherhood of The Ram, which allegedly practiced ritualized sexual abuse of numerous children at a "Devil Church".

The son of the day-care owner was tried and found guilty, then a Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force assumed control of the investigation. It concluded the original investigation was motivated by "emotional hysteria". During 2003, defendants sued for wrongful prosecution. In 2004, Richard and Kari Klassen received $100,000 each, out of the $1.5 million compensation awarded for the malicious prosecution.

Gmail

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail

Logo since May 2026
A screenshot of a Gmail inbox and compose box on Gmail's own webmail interface
Type of site	Webmail
Available in	133 languages
Owner	Google
Created by	Paul Buchheit
URL	workspace.google.com/products/gmail/
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Required
Users	1.8 billion
Launched	April 1, 2004; 22 years ago
Current status	Active
Content license	Proprietary
Written in	Java, C++ (back-end), JavaScript (UI)

Gmail is a mailbox provider by Google. It is the largest email service worldwide, with 1.8 billion users. It is accessible via a web browser (webmail), mobile app, or through third-party email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols. Users can also connect non-Gmail e-mail accounts to their Gmail inbox. The service was launched as a beta version in 2004. It came out of beta in 2009.

The service includes 15 gigabytes of storage for free for individual users, which includes any use by other Google services such as Google Drive and Google Photos; the limit can be increased via a paid subscription to Google One. Users can receive emails up to 50 megabytes in size, including attachments, and can send emails up to 25 megabytes in size. Gmail supports integration with Google Drive, allowing for larger attachments. The Gmail interface has a search engine and supports a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. The service is notable among website developers for its early adoption of Ajax.

Google's mail servers automatically scan emails to filter spam and malware.

Features

Storage

The Gmail webmail interface as it originally appeared

On April 1, 2004, Gmail was launched with one gigabyte (GB) of storage space, a significantly higher amount than competitors offered at the time. The limit was doubled to two gigabytes of storage on April 1, 2005, the first anniversary of Gmail. Georges Harik, the product management director for Gmail, stated that Google would "keep giving people more space forever."

In October 2007, Gmail increased storage to 4 gigabytes, after recent changes from competitors Yahoo and Microsoft. On April 24, 2012, Google announced the increase of storage included in Gmail from 7.5 to 10 gigabytes ("and counting") as part of the launch of Google Drive. On May 13, 2013, Google announced the overall merge of storage across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+ Photos, allowing users 15 gigabytes of included storage among three services. On August 15, 2018, Google launched Google One, a service where users can pay for additional storage, shared among Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, through a monthly subscription plan. As of 2021, storage of up to 15 gigabytes is included, and paid plans are available for up to 2 terabytes for personal use.

There are also storage limits to individual Gmail messages. Initially, one message, including all attachments, could not be larger than 25 megabytes. This was changed in March 2017 to allow receiving an email of up to 50 megabytes, while the limit for sending an email stayed at 25 megabytes. In order to send larger files, users can insert files from Google Drive into the message.

Interface

The Gmail user interface initially differed from other web-mail systems with its focus on search and conversation threading of emails, grouping several messages between two or more people onto a single page, an approach that was later copied by its competitors. Gmail's user interface designer, Kevin Fox, intended users to feel as if they were always on one page and just changing things on that page, rather than having to navigate to other places.

Gmail's interface also makes use of "labels" (tags) that replace conventional folders and provide a more flexible method of organizing emails; filters for automatically organizing, deleting or forwarding incoming emails to other addresses; and importance markers for automatically marking messages as 'important'.

In November 2011, Google began rolling out a redesign of its interface that "simplified" the look of Gmail into a more minimalist design to provide a more consistent look throughout its products and services as part of an overall Google design change. Substantially redesigned elements included a streamlined conversation view, configurable density of information, new higher-quality themes, a resizable navigation bar with always-visible labels and contacts, and better search. Users were able to preview the new interface design for months prior to the official release, as well as revert to the old interface, until March 2012, when Google discontinued the ability to revert and completed the transition to the new design for all users.

In May 2013, Google updated the Gmail inbox with tabs which allow the application to categorize the user's emails. The five tabs are: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. In addition to customization options, the entire update can be disabled, allowing users to return to the traditional inbox structure.

In April 2018, Google introduced a new web UI for Gmail. The new redesign follows Google's Material Design, and changes in the user interface include the use of Google's Product Sans font. Other updates include a Confidential mode, which allows the sender to set an expiration date for a sensitive message or to revoke it entirely, integrated rights management and two-factor authentication.

On 16 November 2020, Google announced new settings for smart features and personalization in Gmail. Under the new settings users were given control of their data in Gmail, Chat, and Meet, offering smart features like Smart Compose and Smart Reply.

On 6 April 2021, Google rolled out Google Chat and Room (early access) feature to all Gmail users.

On 28 July 2022, Google rolled out Material You to all Gmail users.

Spam filter

Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users.

Gmail Labs

The Gmail Labs feature, introduced on June 5, 2008, allows users to test new or experimental features of Gmail. Users can enable or disable Labs features selectively and provide feedback about each of them. This allows Gmail engineers to obtain user input about new features to improve them and also to assess their popularity. Popular features, like the "Undo Send" option, often "graduate" from Gmail Labs to become a formal setting in Gmail. All Labs features are experimental and are subject to termination at any time.

Search

Gmail incorporates a search bar for searching emails. The search bar can also search contacts, files stored in Google Drive, events from Google Calendar, and Google Sites.

In May 2012, Gmail improved the search functionality to include auto-complete predictions from the user's emails.

Gmail's search functionality does not support searching for word fragments (also known as 'substring search' or partial word search). Workarounds exist.

Language support

Gmail supports multiple languages, including the Japanese interface shown here.

As of March 2015, the Gmail interface supports 72 languages, including: Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian (Bokmål), Odia, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino), Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh and Zulu.

Automated error messages

If you encounter an email from Mail Delivery Subsystem, it indicates that you encountered an error when trying to email someone but it is unsuccessful. This can be because of an invalid email address, timed out email, full inbox or whatever reason.

An automated email error indicating that the email has timed out.

Language input styles

In October 2012, Google added over 100 virtual keyboards, transliterations, and input method editors to Gmail, enabling users different types of input styles for different languages in an effort to help users write in languages that are not "limited by the language of your keyboard."

In October 2013, Google added handwriting input support to Gmail.

In August 2014, Gmail became the first major email provider to let users send and receive emails from addresses with accent marks and letters from outside the Latin alphabet.

Platforms

Web browsers

The modern AJAX version is officially supported in the current and previous major releases of Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Safari web browsers on a rolling basis.

Gmail's "basic HTML" version works on almost all browsers. This version of Gmail has been discontinued from January 2024.

In August 2011, Google introduced Gmail Offline, an HTML5-powered app for providing access to the service while offline. Gmail Offline runs on the Google Chrome browser and can be downloaded from the Chrome Web Store.

In addition to the native apps on iOS and Android, users can access Gmail through the web browser on a mobile device.

Mobile

Screenshot
Developer	Google
Release	21 September 2010; 15 years ago
Stable release(s) [±]
Android 2026.06.01 (Build 929418315) / June 9, 2026; 9 days ago iOS 6.0 (Build 260601) / June 10, 2026; 8 days ago Wear OS 2026.06.01 (Build 924674534) / June 9, 2026; 9 days ago
Operating system	Android 6+ iOS 18+ Discontinued
Size	~10 MB
Type	Email client
Website	www.gmail.com

Gmail has native applications for iOS devices (including iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) and for Android devices.

In November 2014, Google introduced functionality in the Gmail Android app that enabled sending and receiving emails from non-Gmail addresses (such as Yahoo! Mail and Outlook.com) through POP or IMAP.

In November 2016, Google redesigned the Gmail app for the iOS platform, bringing the first complete visual overhaul in "nearly four years". The update added much more use of colors, sleeker transitions, and the addition of several "highly-requested" features, including Undo Send, faster search with instant results and spelling suggestions, and Swipe to Archive/Delete.

In May 2017, Google updated Gmail on Android to feature protection from phishing attacks. Media outlets noticed that the new protection was announced amid a widespread phishing attack on a combination of Gmail and Google's Docs document service that occurred on the same day.

Later in May, Google announced the addition of "Smart Reply" to Gmail on Android and iOS. "Smart Reply", a feature originally launched for Google's Inbox by Gmail service, scans a message for information and uses machine intelligence to offer three responses the user can optionally edit and send. The feature is limited to the English language at launch, with additional support for Spanish, followed by other languages arriving later.

Inbox by Gmail, another app from the Gmail team, was also available for iOS and Android devices. It was discontinued in April 2019.

Third-party programs can be used to access Gmail, using the POP or IMAP protocols. In 2019, Google rolled out dark mode for its mobile apps in Android and iOS.

Inbox by Gmail

Main article: Inbox by Gmail

In October 2014, Google introduced Inbox by Gmail on an invitation-only basis. Developed by the Gmail team, but serving as a "completely different type of inbox", the service is made to help users deal with the challenges of an active email. Citing issues such as distractions, difficulty in finding important information buried in messages, and receiving more emails than ever, Inbox by Gmail has several important differences from Gmail, including bundles that automatically sort emails of the same topic together, highlights that surface key information from messages, and reminders, assists, and snooze, that help the user in handling incoming emails at appropriate times.

Inbox by Gmail became publicly available in May 2015. In September 2018, Google announced it would end the service at the end of March 2019, most of its key features having been incorporated into the standard Gmail service. The service was discontinued on April 2, 2019.

Integration with Google products

In August 2010, Google released a plugin that provides integrated telephone service within Gmail's Google Chat interface. The feature initially lacked an official name, with Google referring to it as both "Google Voice in Gmail chat" and "Call Phones in Gmail". The service logged over one million calls in 24 hours. In March 2014, Google Voice was discontinued, and replaced with functionality from Google Hangouts, another communication platform from Google.

On February 9, 2010, Google commenced its new social networking tool, Google Buzz, which integrated with Gmail, allowing users to share links and media, as well as status updates. Google Buzz was discontinued in October 2011, replaced with new functionality in Google+, Google's then-new social networking platform.

Gmail was integrated with Google+ in December 2011, as part of an effort to have all Google information across one Google account, with a centralized Google+ user profile. Backlash from the move caused Google to step back and remove the requirement of a Google+ user account, keeping only a private Google account without a public-facing profile, starting in July 2015.

In May 2013, Google announced the integration between Google Wallet and Gmail, which would allow Gmail users to send money as email attachments. Although the sender must use a Gmail account, the recipient does not need to be using a Gmail address. The feature has no transaction fees, but there are limits to the amount of money that can be sent. Initially only available on the web, the feature was expanded to the Android app in March 2017, for people living in the United States.

In September 2016, Google released Google Trips, an app that, based on information from a user's Gmail messages, automatically generates travel cards. A travel card contains itinerary details, such as plane tickets and car rentals, and recommends activities, food and drinks, and attractions based on location, time, and interests. The app also has offline functionality. In April 2017, Google Trips received an update adding several significant features. The app now also scans Gmail for bus and train tickets, and allows users to manually input trip reservations. Users can send trip details to other users' email, and if the recipient also has Google Trips, the information will be automatically available in their apps as well.

Security

History

Gmail transport encryption by country

Google has supported the secure HTTPS since the day it launched. In the beginning, it was only default on the login page, a reason that Google engineer Ariel Rideout stated was because HTTPS made "your mail slower". However, users could manually switch to secure HTTPS mode inside the inbox after logging in. In July 2008, Google simplified the ability to manually enable secure mode, with a toggle in the settings menu.

In 2007, Google fixed a cross-site scripting security issue that could let attackers collect information from Gmail contact lists.

In January 2010, Google began rolling out HTTPS as the default for all users.

In June 2012, a new security feature was introduced to protect users from state-sponsored attacks. A banner will appear at the top of the page that warns users of an unauthorized account compromise.

In March 2014, Google announced that an encrypted HTTPS connection would be used for the sending and receiving of all Gmail emails, and "every single email message you send or receive —100% of them —is encrypted while moving internally" through the company's systems.

Whenever possible, Gmail uses transport layer security (TLS) to automatically encrypt emails sent and received. On the web and on Android devices, users can check if a message is encrypted by checking if the message has a closed or open red padlock.

Gmail automatically scans all incoming and outgoing e-mails for viruses in email attachments. For security reasons, some file types, including executables, are not allowed to be sent in emails.

At the end of May 2017, Google announced that it had applied machine learning technology to identify emails with phishing and spam, having a 99.9% detection accuracy. The company also announced that Gmail would selectively delay some messages, approximately 0.05% of all, to perform more detailed analysis and aggregate details to improve its algorithms.

In November 2020, Google started adding click-time link protection by redirecting clicked links to Google in official Gmail clients.

Third-party encryption in transit

In Google's Transparency Report under the Safer email section, it provides information on the percentage of emails encrypted in transit between Gmail and third-party email providers.

Two-step verification

A sign-in screen on a new device, requesting user's response to a push notification sent to the user's phone

Gmail supports two-step verification, an optional additional measure for users to protect their accounts when logging in.

Once 2-Step Verification (2SV) is enabled, logging in from a new device requires an additional verification method, even after the username and password have been entered. These methods, which verify the user's identity, can include responding to a push notification on the user's Android/iOS device, entering a code generated by the Google Authenticator smartphone app, or inserting a physical security key into the computer's USB port."

Using a security key for two-step verification was made available as an option in October 2014.

24-hour lockdowns

If an algorithm detects what Google calls "abnormal usage that may indicate that your account has been compromised", the account can be automatically locked down for between one minute and 24 hours, depending on the type of activity detected. Listed reasons for a lock-down include:

• Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail from POP/IMAP client within a short period of time.
• Sending a large number of messages which fail to deliver.
• Using software which automatically logs into one's account.
• Leaving multiple instances of Gmail open.

Anti-child pornography policy

Google combats child pornography through Gmail's servers in conjunction with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to find children suffering abuse around the world. In collaboration with the NCMEC, Google creates a database of child pornography pictures. Each one of the images is given a unique numerical number known as a hash. Google then scans Gmail looking for the unique hashes. When suspicious images are located, Google reports the incident to the appropriate national authorities.

History

Main article: History of Gmail

Gmail logo used until 2020

Gmail logo used until 2026

The idea for Gmail was developed by Paul Buchheit several years before it was announced to the public. The project was known by the code name Caribou. During early development, the project was kept secret from most of Google's own engineers. This changed once the project improved, and by early 2004, most employees were using it to access the company's internal email system.

Gmail was announced to the public by Google on April 1, 2004, as a limited beta release.

In November 2006, Google began offering a Java-based application of Gmail for mobile phones.

In October 2007, Google began a process of rewriting parts of the code that Gmail used, which would make the service faster and add new features, such as custom keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches. Gmail also added IMAP support in October 2007. An update around January 2008 changed elements of Gmail's use of JavaScript, and resulted in the failure of a third-party script some users had been using. Google acknowledged the issue and helped users with workarounds.

Gmail exited beta status on July 7, 2009.

Prior to December 2013, users had to approve to see images in emails, which acted as a security measure. This changed in December 2013, when Google, citing improved image handling, enabled images to be visible without user approval. Images are now routed through Google's secure proxy servers rather than the original external host servers. MarketingLand noted that the change to image handling means email marketers will no longer be able to track the recipient's IP address or information about what kind of device the recipient is using. However, Wired stated that the new change means senders can track the time when an email is first opened, as the initial loading of the images requires the system to make a "callback" to the original server.

Growth

In June 2012, Google announced that Gmail had 425 million active users globally. In May 2015, Google announced that Gmail had 900 million active users, 75% of whom were using the service on mobile devices. In February 2016, Google announced that Gmail had passed 1 billion active users. In July 2017, Google announced that Gmail had passed 1.2 billion active users.

In the business sector, Quartz reported in August 2014 that, among 150 companies checked in three major categories in the United States (Fortune 50 largest companies, mid-size tech and media companies, and startup companies from the last Y Combinator incubator class), only one Fortune 50 company used Gmail – Google itself – while 60% of mid-sized companies and 92% of startup companies were using Gmail.

In May 2014, Gmail became the first app on the Google Play Store to hit one billion installations on Android devices.

Gamil Design company and misspellings

Before the introduction of Gmail, the website of product and graphic design from Gamil Design in Raleigh, North Carolina, received 3,000 hits per month. In May 2004, a Google engineer who had accidentally gone to the Gamil site a number of times contacted the company and asked if the site had experienced an increase in traffic. In fact, the site's activity had doubled. Two years later, with 600,000 hits per month, the Internet service provider wanted to charge more, and Gamil posted the message on its site "You may have arrived here by misspelling Gmail. We understand. Typing fast is not our strongest skill. But since you've typed your way here, let's share."

Google Workspace

Main article: Google Workspace

As part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Google's business-focused offering, Gmail comes with additional features, including:

• Email addresses with the customer's domain name (@yourcompany.com)
• 99.9% guaranteed uptime with zero scheduled downtime for maintenance
• Either 30 GB or unlimited storage shared with Google Drive, depending on the plan
• 24/7 phone and email support
• Synchronization compatibility with Microsoft Outlook and other email providers
• Support for add-ons that integrate third-party apps purchased from the Google Workspace Marketplace with Gmail

Criticism

See also: Criticism of Google

Privacy

Main article: Privacy concerns with Google

Google has one privacy policy that covers all of its services. Google claims that they "will not target ads based on sensitive information, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, health, or sensitive financial categories."

Automated scanning of email content

Google's mail servers automatically scan emails for multiple purposes, including filtering spam and malware, and (until 2017) adding context-sensitive advertisements next to emails.

Privacy advocates raised concerns about this practice; concerns included that allowing email content to be read by a machine (as opposed to a person) can allow Google to keep unlimited amounts of information forever; the automated background scanning of data raises the risk that the expectation of privacy in email usage will be reduced or eroded; information collected from emails could be retained by Google for years after its current relevancy to build complete profiles on users; emails sent by users from other email providers get scanned despite never having agreed to Google's privacy policy or terms of service; Google can change its privacy policy unilaterally, and for minor changes to the policy it can do so without informing users; in court cases, governments and organizations can potentially find it easier to legally monitor email communications; at any time, Google can change its current company policies to allow combining information from emails with data gathered from use of its other services; and any internal security problem on Google's systems can potentially expose many – or all – of its users.

In 2004, thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations wrote a letter calling upon Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues were adequately addressed. The letter also called upon Google to clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units. The organizations also voiced their concerns about Google's plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third-party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider.

On June 23, 2017, Google announced that, later in 2017, it would phase out the scanning of email content to generate contextual advertising, relying on personal data collected through other Google services instead. The company stated that this change was meant to clarify its practices and quell concerns among enterprise G Suite (now Google Workspace) customers who felt an ambiguous distinction between the free consumer and paid professional variants, the latter being advertising-free.

Lawsuits

In March 2011, a former Gmail user in Texas sued Google, claiming that its Gmail service violates users' privacy by scanning e-mail messages to serve relevant ads.

In July 2012, some California residents filed two class action lawsuits against Google and Yahoo!, claiming that they illegally intercept emails sent by individual non-Gmail or non-Yahoo! email users to Gmail and Yahoo! recipients without the senders' knowledge, consent or permission. A motion filed by Google's attorneys in the case concedes that Gmail users have "no expectation of privacy".

A court filing uncovered by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog in August 2013 revealed that Google stated in a court filing that no "reasonable expectation" exists among Gmail users in regard to the assured confidentiality of their emails. In response to a lawsuit filed in May 2013, Google explained:

"All users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing. Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient's ECS [electronic communications service] provider in the course of delivery.

A Google spokesperson stated to the media on August 15, 2013, that the corporation takes the privacy and security concerns of Gmail users "very seriously".

April 2014 Terms of service update

Google updated its terms of service for Gmail in April 2014 to create full transparency for its users in regard to the scanning of email content. The relevant revision states: "Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored." A Google spokesperson explained that the corporation wishes for its policies "to be simple and easy for users to understand."

In response to the update, Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, stated: "The really dangerous things that Google is doing are things like the information held in Analytics, cookies in advertising and the profiling that it is able to do on individual accounts".

Microsoft ad campaign against Google

In 2013, Microsoft launched an advertising campaign to attack Google for scanning email messages, arguing that most consumers are not aware that Google monitors their personal messages to deliver targeted ads. Microsoft claims that its email service Outlook does not scan the contents of messages and a Microsoft spokesperson called the issue of privacy "Google's kryptonite". In response, Google stated; "We work hard to make sure that ads are safe, unobtrusive and relevant ... No humans read your e-mail or Google Account information in order to show you advertisements or related information. An automated algorithm — similar to that used for features like Priority Inbox or spam filtering — determines which ads are shown." The New York Times cites "Google supporters", who say that "Microsoft's ads are distasteful, the last resort of a company that has been unsuccessful at competing against Google on the more noble battleground of products".

Other privacy issues

2010 attack from China

In January 2010, Google detected a "highly sophisticated" cyberattack on its infrastructure that originated from China. The targets of the attack were Chinese human rights activists, but Google discovered that accounts belonging to European, American and Chinese activists for human rights in China had been "routinely accessed by third parties". Additionally, Google stated that their investigation revealed that "at least" 20 other large companies from a "wide range of businesses" - including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors – had been similarly targeted. Google was in the process of notifying those companies and it had also worked with relevant US authorities. In light of the attacks, Google enhanced the security and architecture of its infrastructure, and advised individual users to install anti-virus and anti-spyware on their computers, update their operating systems and web browsers, and be cautious when clicking on Internet links or when sharing personal information in instant messages and emails.

Social network integration

The February 2010 launch of Google Buzz, a now defunct social network linked to Gmail, immediately drew criticism for publicly sharing details of users' contacts unless the default settings were changed. A new Gmail feature was launched in January 2014, whereby users could email people with Google+ accounts even though they do not know the email address of the recipient. Marc Rotenberg, President of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the feature "troubling", and compared it to the initial privacy flaw of Google Buzz's launch.

Update to DoubleClick privacy policy

In June 2016, Julia Angwin of ProPublica wrote about Google's updated privacy policy, which deleted a clause that had stated Google would not combine DoubleClick web browsing cookie information with personally identifiable information from its other services. This change has allowed Google to merge users' personally identifiable information from different Google services to create one unified ad profile for each user. After publication of the article, Google reached out to ProPublica to say that the merge would not include Gmail keywords in ad targeting.

Outages

Gmail suffered at least seven outages in 2009, causing doubts about the reliability of its service. It suffered a new outage on February 28, 2011, in which a bug caused Gmail accounts to seem empty. Google stated in a blog post that "email was never lost" and restoration was in progress. Other outages occurred on April 17, 2012, September 24, 2013, January 24, 2014, January 29, 2019  and August 20, 2020.

Google has stated that "Gmail remains more than 99.9% available to all users, and we're committed to keeping events like [the 2009 outage] notable for their rarity."

"On behalf of" tag

In May 2009, Farhad Manjoo wrote on The New York Times blog about Gmail's "on behalf of" tag. Manjoo explained: "The problems [sic] is, when you try to send outbound mail from your Gmail universal inbox, Gmail adds a tag telling your recipients that you're actually using Gmail and not your office e-mail. If your recipient is using Microsoft Outlook, he'll see a message like, 'From youroffice@domain.com on behalf of yourgmail@gmail.com.'" Manjoo further wrote that "Google explains that it adds the tag in order to prevent your e-mail from being considered spam by your recipient; the theory is that if the e-mail is honest about its origins, it shouldn't arouse suspicion by spam checking software". The following July, Google announced a new option that would remove the "On behalf of" tag, by sending the email from the server of the other email address instead of using Gmail's servers.