Figure 1, from Dallam’s paper, “displays reported membership figures in relation to reported contacts. This graph demonstrates that while both contacts and membership figures appear to rise rapidly, actual membership levels remained relatively flat.” [1]

 

The inflated membership figures reported to the public were conflated with the FMSF’s received phone contacts inquiring about false memory syndrome:

Dallam reports that a FMSF newsletter issue in March of 1994 “featured a bar graph titled: "Number of Cases Documented." The graph shows 11,000 documented cases of false memory during the preceding two years. However, a close examination of the accompanying text revealed that the FMSF had been contacted by 11,000 people. Thus, "documented cases" were actually phone calls asking for information… The same issue of the FMSF newsletter included a letter written by an anonymous FMSF volunteer. The volunteer wrote:  "Can you conceive of an organization that grew from 250 families in March 1992, to 11,000 in February 1994?" (p. 8). This letter implied that contacts (phone calls and letters with questions and concerns, along with 4,000 cases of "family problems" of which the organization has no details) were now members of the foundation.” This was cemented shortly after when the Sacramento Bee published an article claiming that the FMSF had 11,000 members. [1]

 

The FMSF continued to report inflated membership despite Moving Forward contacting Pamela Freyd about membership discrepancies after Peter Freyd had posted to an online email listserv ‘Witchunt’ that the FMSF had at least 2,500 members. In response, Pamela Freyd stated in September 1995 that the FMSF had around 4,000 members – still nearly twice the number reported to the IRS. [2]

 

After their contact with Peter and Pamela Freyd on the subject, Moving Forward exposed the FMSF’s inflated membership and lack of investigation into ‘documented cases’ in September 1995, publishing an article titled “False Memory Syndrome Foundation's Membership Exaggerated: Organization has Only About 4,000 Members”:

“Other questions are being raised over how FMSF calculates its membership. The organization has apparently adopted the practice of labeling many of its members and contacts a “family...” According to Pamela Freyd, this method of categorizing members and contacts extends to every inquiry about a situation that FMSF receives "in which the person indicates that they know someone who had no memories of abuse before therapy." In other words, Those who merely claim that they have a family member who has recovered memories of abuse are automatically categorized as representing entire families [by the FMSF]... in Clohessy's view. "Under the current way in which the organization tallies its members and contacts," he says, "child molesters who have confessed to their crimes and have been convicted of child abuse could join or call up and be counted as a 'family'." [2]

 

In response, Pamela Freyd announced in the October 1995 FMSF newsletter that despite how “numbers always seem to fascinate people,” the foundation had stopped recording the number of ‘documented cases’ of ‘false memory syndrome’ as they believed they had sufficiently proved that ‘FMS’ existed:

“The FMS Foundation is frequently asked to provide the "number" of individuals in various categories that we have described, such as affected family contacts, retractors or lawsuits… We [the FMSF] stopped reporting numbers a few months after we announced that 10,000 people had told us that an adult… in some sort of therapy setting had claimed to have "recovered repressed memories" that she had never known about before, made accusations and cut off all contact with anyone who would not validate the new beliefs. We stopped reporting numbers because we believed that we had documented the existence of a problem.” [3]

 

Despite the Moving Forward expose and Pamela’s subsequent retraction of numerical data, the FMSF’s membership continued to be inflated. In 1997, “a member of the FMSF reported in testimony before a Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that the organization had 18,000 members.” Later that year, Pamela Freyd stated that the FMSF only had “some 3,000 dues-paying members.” [1]