Alan Whyte was awoken abruptly at dawn by the sound of six police officers hammering at the door of his four-bedroom bungalow.

Confusion and shock were compounded by fear as, after letting them in, he was promptly arrested and hauled to the local police station. His home was searched, his computer seized and his wife Margaret left to watch in disbelief as her treasured photo albums were scrutinised.

After languishing in a police cell for 12 hours, this quietly spoken grandfather — a retired charity volunteer who had been happily married for decades — was finally told his alleged offence: he had been accused of raping his now middle-aged daughter, Josephine, when she was 11 years old.

A heinous crime, undoubtedly. But it is one Alan says he simply didn’t commit. Not only that, he insists, but the allegations have no basis in the happy reality of Josephine’s middle-class childhood, which was spent enjoying beach holidays and running around the garden playing catch.

Instead, he is convinced Josephine’s claim was prompted by decades of controversial ‘regression’ therapy, in which psychotherapists encourage patients to ‘regress’ to childhood to uncover past traumatic experiences.

Josephine had started therapy to quit smoking but became hooked. As the years passed, Alan had become accustomed to hearing her make ever more lurid and — he believes — fabricated claims against not just himself, but her former husband and maternal grandfather.

Nurse Carol Felstead (pictured) accused her father Joseph of impregnating her and running a satanic cult after decades of regression therapy

‘She was as convinced by these accusations as I was devastated,’ recalls Alan, who is in his 70s. ‘But they were so crazy, I was sure that they could easily be disproved.’

Nonetheless, it was six months before Alan was released from police bail in 2010.

‘Even now I’ve been cleared, I feel I’m carrying around a terrible secret,’ says Alan, whose wife died of cancer in 2015; her death, Alan is convinced, hastened by the stain on their character.

‘Margaret stood by me throughout. But she was shattered by the shame.’

Yet despite all this, he says he doesn’t wish his estranged daughter any harm: ‘It is her therapist I am angry with. It is a disgrace he has been allowed to destroy our family like this.’

Regression therapy has been brought into sharp focus this month following the trial of Susan Wynne-Willson, 69, the wife of Pink Floyd lighting engineer Peter Wynne-Willson.

Susan’s daughter, Rosa Angulo de Guero, 42, accused her mother of waging a campaign of cruelty against her during her childhood.

Accusations included Susan pouring cleaning products in Rosa’s face, stuffing underwear in her mouth and shoving her face in food.

Her dad Joseph, now 75, (pictured) was left reeling as the police quickly ascertained that his daughter's claims were untrue

But this month, after a jury at Blackfriars Crown Court heard Rosa had had regression therapy, her claims were cast into doubt and Susan was acquitted.

Since becoming popular in the U.S. in the Eighties, this therapy has been largely discredited because of its persistent association with what has been described as ‘false memory syndrome’, in which patients make untrue allegations — usually against their parents and involving sexual or physical abuse.

‘Sadly, some psychotherapists are still using these dangerous techniques,’ says Chris French, a psychology professor specialising in memory, at Goldsmiths, University of London.

‘Society finds it easy to accept the idea that a victim of abuse has repressed the memory and that a skilled therapist can bring it to the surface.

‘But there is little evidence to support the idea that a traumatic experience will be pushed into the unconscious mind. You are far more likely to remember a traumatic event than forget it.’

Alan, a retired computer programmer, says Josephine, now in her 50s and a mother of two, started seeing a psychotherapist in her 30s to stop smoking. She was able to quit, but soon started making worrying allegations.

‘She said her therapist had “regressed” her back to a previous life, in which she had been abused by the ex-husband she’d recently divorced,’ recalls Alan, who also has two sons and nine grandchildren. ‘The idea of him existing in a previous life was outlandish. Still, I tried to strike a balance between cynicism and support.’

Josephine showed no desire to stop seeing her therapist, whom she visited monthly — motivated, Alan believes, by feelings of inadequacy.

Joseph describes Carol, pictured here aged 11, as a happy girl until her early 20s, when she stopped returning her parents’ calls. He believes his daughter, who was found dead aged 41, would still be alive if she hadn't had therapy

‘Josephine felt we paid more attention to our other children,’ he says. ‘She was envious, and at times our relationship was tense. But not, I didn’t think, worryingly so.’

In 2005 Josephine called with an announcement she wanted to tell Alan in person.

‘She told me that she had discovered through therapy that Margaret’s father had run a paedophile ring and raped her as a child.

I held her hand as she shook and cried. I didn’t tell her I suspected it wasn’t true, but said she should be careful about repeating such serious allega-tions. Margaret was devastated and similarly disbelieving.’ The next day, the couple consulted their GP about their daughter’s allegations.

He helped explain the concept of Josephine’s regression therapy, which can be conducted by unregulated practitioners who can be accredited after paying to do a part-time therapy course in as little as two weeks.

‘If a patient can’t remember being abused, they might be encouraged to “think about what it would have been like if it had happened”,’ says Professor French. ‘They use hypnotherapy and techniques such as dream interpretation, in which a patient’s dream about being attacked sexually, for example, becomes an actual memory.’

One evening in 2007 Josephine called Margaret to ‘reveal’ that Alan had been involved in her father’s paedophile ring, and that he and his friends had raped Josephine.

Not only that, she said, but Alan had raped her brother in the family’s garage. ‘Margaret knew none of it was true,’ says Alan. ‘We’d been together since I was 19. I’d never slept with anyone else and we trusted each other implicitly. But she was terrified people would judge us.’

Maxine Berry, 45, (pictured) falsely accused her father of a catalogue of abuse following regression therapy

The couple — their relationship with their daughter now all but destroyed — confided in two close friends and their sons, who, Alan says, accepted their innocence without question.

Nonetheless, he admits: ‘Our sex life suffered — every time there was any contact, the image of my daughter came into my head.

‘I tried to confront Josephine as to why she was saying untrue things.

‘She’d retort: “Well, you would say they weren’t true, wouldn’t you?” She was convinced by her lies and refused to stop seeing her therapist.’

He says Margaret took his arrest at 6am in July 2009 worse than he did.

‘She was horrified at having our belongings searched, and mortified that a police car was outside our house all day. It destroyed her. She likened it to being raped.’

After Alan was released on bail he started second-guessing his every move.

‘I refused to play rough-and-tumble with the grandchildren. I was even too worried to tell them I loved them.

‘I felt paranoid people would find out and think there was no smoke without fire.’

Maxine, pictured at the age of eight, says it was only when she watched a documentary on false memory syndrome that she understood what had happened

After six months without contact, the police called to say there was insufficient evidence to press charges. ‘There was no apology,’ says Alan, who has seen Josephine once since his arrest. ‘Four years ago she called out of the blue to say she was sorry for what she had put Margaret and me through, and asked to meet up,’ recalls Alan.

Overcome with relief, the couple drove to a restaurant for an anticipated reunion, only for Josephine to attack Alan again.

‘She said I knew I’d “done it” and should apologise. I’m sure her therapist had told her to confront me.

‘I was furious with them — after the happiness of our expected reunion, it felt as if I’d been kicked in the teeth.’

The bitter experience of being accused of unimaginable crimes by your own child is one Joseph Felstead, too, went through after discovering his daughter Carol had accused him of impregnating her and running a satanic cult after decades of regression therapy.

Carol died in 2005, aged 41. Two inquests, in 2005 and 2015, both recorded an open verdict. Joseph, 75, and his family are seeking to quash that verdict in the hope of seeking answers about her suspect therapy.

‘If Carol hadn’t had therapy I feel sure she would be alive,’ says Joseph, a retired engineer from Stockport, Cheshire, whose wife, Joan, died of cancer in 2010, aged 69. ‘It turned her into a completely different person.’

He recalls Carol as a happy girl, who could do handstands and loved the Bay City Rollers, until her early 20s, when she stopped returning her parents’ calls.

‘We were hurt, but accepted she was an adult and wanted to make her own way in life,’ says Joseph.

Shortly afterwards, Carol moved from Stockport to London to study psychology and pursue a nursing career, and grew further apart from her parents and four brothers. ‘There were sporadic calls but she never left contact details,’ says Joseph.

In July 2005, police called Carol’s brother Richard to say she had been found dead in her London flat, surrounded by medication, two weeks earlier. Her death had been reported by a therapist who had declared herself Carol’s next of kin.

I’ve seen hundreds of families torn apart and their lives changed for ever. These therapists are harming, not healing

The therapist had handed over a ‘life-assessment’ document apparently written by Carol during therapy and claiming Joseph and Joan had run a satanic abuse cult; that Carol had been impregnated by her father; that her mother had murdered Carol’s sister and set fire to their home.

Joseph was left reeling as the police quickly ascertained that Carol’s claims were untrue. ‘I could only assume Carol had been brainwashed,’ says Joseph. ‘Joan and I were heartbroken.’ After four years of pressing for information, the Felsteads were finally given copies of Carol’s records in 2009 that revealed she had been seeing therapists, most of whom practised regression therapy, for nearly 20 years.

‘I was livid,’ says Joseph. ‘It was shameless quackery, but a police investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.’

That year, Joan, who had developed depression, was diagnosed with bile duct cancer.

‘We are convinced the shock killed our mother,’ says Carol’s brother, Dr Kevin Felstead, 57, a former university lecturer who quit to work for the British False Memory Society, a charity representing people wrongly accused as a result of regression therapy.

‘I’ve seen hundreds of families torn apart and their lives changed for ever. These therapists are harming, not healing.’

It is a fact of which Maxine Berry is all too aware, having falsely accused her father Gary of a catalogue of abuse following regression therapy.

‘I feel embarrassed and guilty,’ says Maxine, 45, a researcher from Leeds, married to her childhood sweetheart Brian, 52, a software consultant.

She started seeing a counsellor in her final year of school when, aged 18, she was daunted by impending adulthood. ‘I was worried about moving away from home,’ she says. ‘There was nothing seriously wrong, but I think the school counsellor felt out of their depth and referred me to a therapist at a private practice.’

The decision led to hundreds of weekly sessions of regression therapy over the following four years, which caused Maxine to rewrite her happy childhood.

‘I was given books on child abuse. As well as one-on-one sessions, I was put in group classes with women who said they had been abused. The therapists would holler at us, saying: “You know your father raped you.”

‘It was competitive. If one woman said she was raped, the rest of the group felt under pressure to come up with a worse allegation. The therapists kept asking me if my dad could have done something or saying: “You must remember this . . .” ’

Within weeks, Maxine began to allege she had been abused by her father Gary, 70, between the ages of two and ten — though Maxine’s mother had left him when Maxine was three and father and daughter had barely seen each other since.

‘It couldn’t have happened,’ says Maxine, who was also prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and sedatives. ‘But I was given so much encouragement by the therapists every time I made an accusation, and I was taking so much medication, that I believed what I was saying and thought the therapists were there to support me.’

Maxine’s mother, who remarried when her daughter was six, seems to have been unsure whether to believe her child when Maxine reported her father to the police.

‘I also accused him of murdering a boy. I was so convinced he’d done it, I drew a picture of the crime scene to show my therapist,’ says Maxine. ‘Fortunately, there was simply no evidence to back up my claims.’

But her therapists continued to provoke her. ‘When I was 23, they told me that because I’d been abused, I’d be more likely to abuse any children I had,’ she recalls. As a result, she was sterilised.

‘I told Maxine it was ludicrous, but her choice,’ recalls Brian, who admits his wife’s allegations placed an almost intolerable strain on their relationship.

‘They were so preposterous I knew they were false. She’d say her father had tied her up and held her in the basement for days without food. Were it true, she would have been dead. But I knew she was ill and still loved her.’

Maxine adds: ‘I wouldn’t be here today without Brian’s help and support.’

It was only when she was 24 and the couple watched a documentary on false memory syndrome that Maxine — by then weaned off her medication — understood what had happened. ‘I was horrified,’ she says.

In 1996, she took legal action against the private practice, which settled out of court in 1998. Around the same time she drove to see her father, who now lives in a Yorkshire village nearby.

‘It took all the courage I had to turn up on his doorstep and admit I was wrong. Fortunately, he gave me a hug and forgave me. He knew the drugs and therapy were to blame.’

Her road to recovery has been hard — and devoid of professional help: ‘I’d never have therapy again, and would advise anyone considering it to speak to a loved one instead.’

Names have been changed.