Memories of childhood trauma recovered in therapy cannot be taken at face value as testimony during a trial because the technique has not been scientifically verified, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.

In reversing a 1996 jury's decision that Kenton Ray Stevenson had sexually molested his cousin, Cherese Franklin, 33 years earlier, the court ruled that the methods Franklin used to recall the abuse were not reliable, and thus her testimony should never have been admitted.

Quoting an earlier opinion, Chief Justice Richard Howe wrote that the court was left with a "'dearth of empirical scientific evidence regarding ... the reliability' of the therapeutic techniques, with serious questions and doubts concerning the reliability of those selfsame techniques."

Franklin, then 36, testified that three decades went by before she knew of the attacks, which she said happened when she was 5 to 12 years old. The Riverton woman claimed to have remembered the abuse after using a journaling technique - writing personal questions with her right hand and allowing her "inner child" to answer with her left - described in a book.

She sued Stevenson, then 44, in early 1994, and two years later a jury awarded her $750,000 for physical and emotional damages.

But 3rd District Judge Kenneth Rigtrup immediately reversed the verdict. He agreed with Stevenson's motion arguing that Franklin's memory was enhanced by techniques similar to hypnosis and cited a 1989 state Supreme Court ruling that such testimony is inadmissible.

In Friday's ruling, the Supreme Court denied the connection between hypnosis and memory recovery, but agreed that the testimony should not have been used.

Stevenson's attorney, Walter Bugden, said the Supreme Court's ruling could keep others from falling prey to accusations the way his client did.

"The real haunting, frightening aspect of this case is that bad science and bad therapy can produce nightmares not just for the victim ... but also for the accused," he said.

But David Isom, Franklin's lawyer, said the court was wrong in focusing on the method for retrieving the memories.

"The court completely ignored the corroborating testimony that we had as evidence of similar acts that had nothing to do with the recovery of memories, " he said.

The justices addressed three points Franklin's lawyer raised in her appeal.

First, she contested Rigtrup's override of the jury, called a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, She argued that a trial judge has no right to ignore evidence he or she already admitted, even in error.

The Supreme Court agreed that Rigtrup made a mistake in allowing testimony from Franklin and her expert witnesses in the first place - and said that when the judge tried to remedy that mistake by overturning the guilty verdict, he actually compounded it by using an "abridged record" to make his decision.

"Because we now confront this issue for the first time, we adopt the rule first proposed by (Townsend v. United States Rubber Co.) ...," the court wrote, quoting: "The evidence must be taken as it existed at the close of trial, and evidence admitted over objection cannot be excluded."

Yet, the justices still overturned the case, even after overruling Rigtrup's judgment, because they said the recovered memories should not have been admitted - and should not be in Utah's courts unless they undergo the scrutiny needed for new scientific methods.

The Supreme Court also denied Franklin's contention that Stevenson did not file his objections to her testimony in a prompt manner.

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