#dr conte

[lyle-and-erik-menendez]

Dr Conte talking about the psychology of abuse that Lyle Menendez suffered at the hands of his mother, Kitty Menendez.

[petiteclover]

LYLE MENENDEZ ca. 1976

“I think his discussion of the stuffed animals uh… was really quite amazing… um…”

“Well let me stop you here, it goes to a larger issue and is that his overall credibility in terms of the psychological abuse and the physical abuse and the description of the family setting?”

“Yes.”

“What was the significance of the stuffed animals in that context?”

“Well, ya know… many survivors have stuffed animals, I believe Dr. Briere… I read his testimony about that and he said that and that is true I think many survivors do. Although I’ve never actually seen that described in the literature, it’s something that people who work with survivors tend to know, may be in the literature I’m just not aware of it. But what was phenomenal about Lyle’s use of the stuffed animals is that he really… first of all he had large numbers of them and he gave them personalities and he acted out scenarios uh… with those stuffed animals, kind of issues in his life and he had personalities in the animals or gave personalities that sort of represented issues in his life… he had nasty stuffed animals and he had weaker ones and he had stronger ones and he had sort of a judge who made decisions uh, about what was going on among the stuffed animals and in a sense that I’ve never… in a way that I’ve never heard from another victim he in a way was doing play therapy. When we see traumatized kids we often ask them to act out with animals uh… with puppets sometimes, sometimes with a dollhouse, sometimes in sand play, their bad experiences. The difference between Lyle’s acting out his issues with his stuffed animals and play therapy is that there was no therapist there to help guide the process and so there was no therapist there to help talk about the feelings the stuffed animals had or to maybe figure out ways that the stuffed animals could work out the scenario in a different way. So his description of how important the animals were and what he did with the animals, ya know he took them when he buried the rabbit for example, some of them were there and his collecting other animals that were kind of orphaned by his brother, this is a… sort of an over involvement or an excessive use of animals for a therapeutic need. He told me for example one point that his mom had thrown a stuffed animal out and the dogs had gotten it and ripped it up and he told me that he had been able to save the hat, they’re still important to him in a way. This was a very significant thing to him. He told me that he took ‘em to high school and it was okay because he was a popular kid, although I read elsewhere, I think in the school notes that he really was kind of teased about it but they were so important to him because they had this therapeutic coping purpose to him… that description was wholly believable to me and I don’t think a non victim would of known that therapeutic use and I talked to Stacy Feldman, his first girlfriend on my trip to New Jersey and she described, “oh yeah the animals.” So there’s confirmation just about how important these were in his life. So that’s one of a number of factors I think that I found to be important in sort of assessing his overall credibility.”

— Dr. John Conte, Lyle’s therapist describing the significance of his use of stuffed animals as a child to cope with the trauma in his family

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“Battered women are afraid of being in confined spaces with their husbands and you related that testimony in regards to the boat, the fishing trip on Saturday night, do you remember your testimony in that regard?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, when a woman is alone in a confined space such as her home with a husband, she’s alone with him correct?”

“Yes.”

“They’re not two shipmates and a girlfriend present, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And in most cases that home is the site of prior batterings?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, a ship where you’ve never been before certainly cannot be construed as the site of prior beatings.”

“No, but if your entire life experience has given you the belief that your parents are all powerful, that they can kill you, that they can arrange with others to kill you, then being on a boat where you think that the crew and the captain may be in league with your father that hardly a secure place to be.”

“Well that’s assuming you were told the truth by Lyle Menendez about what he thought about the boat, correct?”

“Well of course it is. But I… in every way that is possible to me, over all the time that I have been with this young man I believe that he is essentially truthful in the critical factors. Now no human being can report every event that they ever had and he is an untreated victim and so he may in some ways behave as an untreated victim, but I find nothing that suggests that he was dishonest with me and was not trying to tell me as the best he could about his life experiences and about the week before his parents died.”

••••

“But in evaluating Lyle Menendez in terms of his credibility you looked at certain symptoms to see if they were corroborative of a pattern of abuse.”

“That’s correct.”

“So symptomatology was important?”

“Well not symptomatology as is used in that study which I think tended to be quite gross symptoms such as psychosis…”

“People reported they were hearing things, correct?”

“Right, right.”

“Alright, and the study seemed to show that people could be trained to make those reports in order to gain admission into psychiatric institutions.”

“Right, on very gross symptoms such as hearing voices but I’m talking about in my interaction with Lyle over all the hours and all the months are much more subtle kinds of processies, which I number one, don’t think you could train another person to do, um, and uh… two I don’t think you could train someone to do it in a believable way.”

“Have you ever diagnosed anyone as malingering?”

“Um… I’ve never given the diagnosis of malingering, I have suggested that victims have exaggerated the level of trauma and the level of symptomatology resulting from abuse, but those I think are exaggerations…”

“Versus total outright fabrications?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve never decided that someone was outright lying to you and fabricating things…”

“Oh I have sure. I’ve done evaluations of children and adults who claim abuse where I think abuse did not take place.”

“Now in your evaluation of Lyle Menendez did you consider the 911 tape recording that he made, did you listen to it?”

“Yes.”

“And you were aware of the fact that on that tape he was lying to the police?”

“Yes.”

“And you were aware on that tape he was conveying information to the police to mislead?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, you’re aware of the fact that shortly after being taken to the Beverly Hills police department on the morning of the 21st of august he again lied to the police?”

“Yes.”

“Now, it is not uncommon for someone caught in a crime to lie about their participation in the crime, is it?”

“I don’t think it’s uncommon for people who are caught in a crime and I don’t think its uncommon for people who are in a highly emotional state to be inaccurate in the information that they provide. I think that you really in this case have two different events that you’re trying to understand, you have the events leading up to Lyle’s parents deaths and then you have the post event activities. I don’t find that… what you’re calling the lies and the misstatements that I think take place largely in a state of great fear and confusion and anxiety in which the individual understandable might be trying to save themselves, I don’t think those are all that helpful in understanding pre-death events.”

“What about the fact that he lied to reporters who interviewed him? Did you consider that at all interesting in your evaluation of him?”

“Well again it is post event behavior.”

“But it’s behavior that occurred some period of time after the events which he says caused him to kill his parents.”

“Yes.”

“Ok and in talking to the reporters a month after the crime, he’s not acting under the same emotional state as he would have been during the 911 call.”

“No but I think he may well have been acting, in fact I think he was acting in a sense out of grief, out of confusion try to figure out how to live post this time, I think uh.. perhaps trying to get some kind of a life after the end of his life that he had known it.”

— Dr. John Conte, psychologist for Lyle Menendez, during cross examination by the prosecution describing his belief in Lyle’s statements to him

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“You indicated that you think Lyle Menendez needs therapy, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he needs therapy because he killed his parents?”

“I think he needs therapy for his entire life.”

“Do you think there’s anyone who wouldn’t benefit from psychological therapy?”

“Yes.”

“There’s some people who won’t, correct?”

“Well, there’s some people who won’t benefit from it and there are some people who don’t need it. Those are two different issues.”

“Alright for those who need it do you think there’s anyone who wouldn’t benefit from it?”

“Yes.”

“That would be someone who’s what, a total sociopath or something like that?”

“Well someone who doesn’t want it, is not willing to look inward who doesn’t have the tolerance for the anxiety and the process, there’s lots of reasons that people don’t benefit or can’t benefit from therapy.”

— Dr. John Conte during recross examination with the prosecution, explaining that Lyle needs extensive therapy for his traumatic past

[petiteclover]

DR. CONTE’S OPINION ABOUT THE SEXUAL ABUSE BETWEEN LYLE AND HIS FATHER JOSE

“Now, in addition to all of the other people you interviewed you indicated that you discussed the topic of his molestation with Lyle Menendez himself, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And… did you form some opinions with regard to the validity of the information you were receiving?”

“Of specifically about the molestations?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“And what was that opinion?”

“I think that he.. Lyle was essentially describing a real experience that he had had with his father or a set of experiences.”

“What do you mean, essentially describing?”

“Well, this is a little bit complicated. I don’t think that any human being necessarily has the capacity to be one hundred percent accurate about everything over a lifetime. I think when there are traumatic events people often keep pieces of those traumatic… in fact the things that may be the worst to them, they may keep them protected they may defend against them, they may bury them deep. I think that Lyle’s description of that experience with his father was uh… very painful and I believe that he told me what he was able to tell me, um… and what he told me is believable… I don’t, I wonder I guess whether there was more to tell, um… but I believe essentially what he told me made sense, it was consistent, he told it the same way, his description and affect when he was telling it to me um… were I think credible.”

“What do you mean by his affect, was this something he was eager to talk about?”

“He wasn’t eager, he wasn’t overly dramatic about it but it was quite painful, he had a lot of shame, he was talking the way I’ve heard many young men his age and men older talk about an experience in which they’re sexually abused by a father.”

“Based on the interviews you had with him over this period of time, did you form any opinion with regard to Lyle Menendez’s willingness to reveal negative things about his father?”

“Yes.”

“You said the affect, how it is people tell you information is important, why is that?”

“Um… well again it’s one of those factors that you have to be very careful how you think about it. Often when a person talks about a traumatic event or experience they will be re-experiencing someway that past traumatic event, they may also be experiencing emotions that take place in the context or around the time, so there may be shame, there may be pain, there may be guilt, there may be sadness that they were being hurt. Umm.. now at the same time I’ve said that, some victims will talk about incredibly horrible experiences but because they have separated from the physical or emotional pain, they will tell it in a very matter of fact way, so the absence of emotion that appears consistent with a description of a traumatic event doesn’t mean that the persons making it up, it just means that the person has separated from or somehow tried to cope with the feeling of pain that goes with it. So lots of these factors I’ve talked about, when they’re present they are helpful but when they’re absent you don’t know for sure what to make of the absence of it. So Lyle’s description of the sexual abuse by his father um… had affect, it had shame, it had reluctance to talk about it, it had some level of embarrassment I think, it wasn’t overly dramatic but we were doing it in a very slow way too, I mean we were doing it in as supportive way as I knew how to get that information.”

“What were the factors that you relied on in making your determinations that this information was accurate?”

“You mean the information about… specifically about the sexual molestation or…?”

“Yes, the sexual molestation.”

“Well I think he described behaviors that other victims have described, he talked about the experience and what it felt like at the time and I think one of the most compelling things for example was talking about how much he wanted his dad to love him and how much he wanted to do… he knew this was important to his dad and his dad liked it and he wanted to make his dad feel good, I mean those are the kinds of thinking and affects that a victim who has a relationship with the offender will in fact engage in, that kind of mental process, so ya know he was saying… I didn’t like it.. I didn’t like it at all but I wanted him to like me and I wanted to be close and I wanted to do what pleased him. So I felt that that was um… credible.”

“He told us here on the stand that he had also done the same type of thing to his own brother.”

“Yes.”

“Did that have any meaning for you, in terms of evaluating this?”

“Yes.”

“And what was the significance of that?”

“Well, again it’s not… not all victims but many victims will engage other children, often younger children in the same things that are happening to them, there are different labels or different ideas about why victims do that, one of the reasons is that it’s a way of gaining mastery over the experience, so you do it again but you do it as the doer in the hope that it’ll feel different, uh.. some people talk about trauma play or traumatic play, it’s acting out with others or in play the traumatic event you were exposed to. His description of what he was doing to his little brother, both when I talked to him about it and when I saw the video tape of him describing that, were consistent and they… those two times were consistent and it was also consistent with how victims have talked about victimizing other people, especially I think significant is that he was engaging his brother in that aspect of the abuse that he experienced with his father that I think was the most adverse, the sex with objects. When he talked about that that was clearly the most uncomfortable, the most traumatic part of that traumatic experience and that was the part he was engaging with his brother.”

“Were there other factors that you considered in arriving at your conclusion as to the validity of the information he provided you?”

“Well ya know, it’s a little bit hard to take one piece out like let’s just talk about the sexual abuse, an assessment of credibility you don’t make it on just one piece of information, you make it over the course of an entire evaluation. As I said I… there are some things about the molestation by his dad that I have trouble with, I’m not sure that I know everything that there is to know about what happened but what he told me is essentially uh… credible and I take what he told me over the course of my time with him to be essentially credible, applying the highest standard that I must in making that assessment.”

“Now when you say essentially credible, are you suggesting the information he gave you was false or that he didn’t give you all of it?”

“I’m not sure that he gave it all, I think what he gave me was accurate to the extent that any human being can describe that kind of experience accurate but when you’re with someone you develop hypotheses or areas which if you had another sixty hours you might explore or if he was a therapeutic client, I would explore with him much more whether the abuse with his dad had gone on longer then he now remembers or longer then he’s willing to say. But i didn’t have another hundred hours and even more significantly he’s not a therapy client and so what he told me, what he was able to tell me was plausible. It doesn’t mean… I do have suspicions about maybe it went on longer, that’s a suspicion or tentative hypothesis that I’ve made if I were seeing him more time or in a different setting I would of explored with him. You do that with clients all the time, they tell you so much and then you say, I think there’s probably more here.. the advantage of a therapy client is you know that you can in six months or in a year that issue may come back.”

— Dr. John Conte’s direct examination with Lyle’s attorney Jill Lansing, regarding the sexual abuse by his father Jose and Dr. Conte’s opinion that it went on longer than Lyle was willing to admit