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Two years ago, despite denials from all three siblings, no corroborating evidence and no criminal charges, Agnes convinced an Ontario Superior Court judge to grant her almost half a million dollars from Bryan, a ruinous amount in his retirement. She had no lawyer, and even cross-examined her own siblings in a trial she insisted on conducting in French to emotionally shield herself. Judge John McIsaac found her performance “masterful.”

Neither agreed to be interviewed for this story. As a cautionary tale in the legal use of recovered memories, their story seems a quarter century out of date, as if it belongs back in the era when repressed memories of child sex abuse, often recovered by adults in therapy, formed the basis of many prosecutions and lawsuits, almost to faddish proportions.

Skepticism grew in the years since, as many of those cases failed. As a result, recent jurisprudence on recovered memories is sparse. The Supreme Court last addressed the concept in 1994, ruling it is not inherently unreasonable for a jury to believe recovered memories, based on their own common sense and experience.

“You just don’t see it as much anymore. You don’t see prosecutions brought solely on the basis of supposedly recovered memories,” said Matthew Gourlay, Bryan’s lawyer. “This case was unusual because it was a private lawsuit; you didn’t need the police or Crown to sign off on it.”

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Cassis, France, marks the western terminus of the French Riviera. When Agnes arrived there in the late summer of 2001, she was in a bad place with her family back in Toronto, estranged from her three grown daughters, and divorced from their father, Stan Kirschbaum.