6 year old boy represses memory of being raped by priest

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"Ex-Priest Questions Repressed Memories"

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/priest-challenges-repressed-memory-assault-victim/story?id=8552686&page=1

 (from abcnews.com) 

The article above is about a 27 year old man, who sues his ex-priest after coming into contact with a repressed memory from when he was 6. The memory was said to come about after the 27 year old say reports on the news of other men accusing the priest of sexually assaulting them. The main point of this article is in the question of this memory being real or not. That then leads to questioning if repressed memories in general are real.

I have somewhat of an interesting experience that I always thought may have fallen along the lines of a "repressed memory". When I was 7 I first tried waterskiing. I used beginner skies that were connected to the boat by a rope, because my arms weren't big enough to pull myself up. So basically I was attached to the boat. My mom was in the boat holding on to the rope connected to my feet. After I got up on the water, I wiped out. My mom, not realizing that I was connected to the boat, kept holding on to the rope and looking for me to pop up somewhere as my grandpa kept driving. I was drug under water for quite a while and when my mom finally realized they were dragging me underwater behind the boat, I was hardly breathing when they fished me out of the water. My mom tells me I was okay once they got me back to the lake house but I continued to bawl the rest of the day. She said she was worried how upset I was. It wasn't until I was 12 when my family took my brothers and I out to learn to water ski that I remembered anything about it. I was out on the water putting on my skies when I remembered being drug underwater behind a boat before. I asked my mom if I'd ever skiied before and she told me how she had nearly drowned me when I was 7. (I still give her crap about it today for being a "bad mom" haha). I feel like I was old enough to remember something like this happening, but still only remember faintly being dragged behind a boat. Nothing really about that whole day of getting ready to ski, or bawling afterwards. I might be way off in saying that I may have repressed that memory, but I feel like it makes me more of a believer that repressed memories are indeed real.

 

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