Is Oprah’s Book Club Pick Really a True Story?

Summary

Podcast: Infamous
Episode: Is Oprah’s Book Club Pick Really a True Story?
Date: June 11, 2026
Hosts: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Natalie Robehmed

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the controversy surrounding Amy Griffin’s memoir, The Tell, which was catapulted to prominence as an Oprah's Book Club pick. Griffin, emblematic of elite Manhattan society, claims to have uncovered memories of child abuse through MDMA (ecstasy) therapy. The hosts investigate the authenticity of her story, the nuances of recovered memory, issues of consent, and the far-reaching fallout—culminating in lawsuits and questions about the veracity of memoir as a genre.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Amy Griffin and What Is Her Story? (00:47–05:36)

• Amy Griffin is introduced as a quintessential New York socialite—VC investor (Goop, Spanx, Bumble), board member at the Met, regular at celebrity galas.
• Her memoir, The Tell, opens with a tantalizing line about buried secrets:

  "This is the story of a secret, a secret kept for decades, one that I had buried so deep I didn’t even know it was in there." — Amy Griffin, reading from The Tell (03:29)

• The memoir’s driving revelation: during illegal, unregulated MDMA therapy, she recovers a memory of sexual abuse by her middle school teacher.

Book Tour Frenzy (03:04–05:36)

• Griffin’s publicity tour is enormous (interviewed by Sheryl Sandberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, Reese Witherspoon, Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager, Oprah, Drew Barrymore, Martha Stewart).
• The book sells over 100,000 copies and touches a cultural nerve.
• Soon, doubts and scandal emerge about the book’s truthfulness.

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2. The Memoir’s Content: Trauma, Therapy, and Memory (05:36–13:40)

• Griffin describes a life of constant external achievement and internal repression.

• MDMA therapy (guided by “Olivia”) leads to vivid, previously unrecalled abuse memories, detailed in the memoir:

  “She uncovers a repressed memory of being sexually abused by this teacher for middle school. The abuse that she describes is very violent and very graphic...” — Natalie Robehmed (09:52)

• Session is described as transformative:

  “That 12 year old side of me met the Amy in her 40s, and it was as if we embraced and no longer did I have to keep the secret.” — Amy Griffin (as quoted) (10:43)

Aftermath:

• Griffin’s legal efforts to bring her abuser to justice are ultimately blocked by the statute of limitations.
• The memoir, believed to be ghostwritten by Sam Lans, is crafted as a gripping personal and investigative journey—though some dialogue and scenes strain plausibility.

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3. Media and Legal Fallout (15:57–25:45)

Investigative Reporting & Public Doubt

• New York Times exposes issues in “The Billionaire, the Psychedelics and the Best Selling Memoir”—noting huge media buy-in but raising key doubts about:

  • Reliability of recovered memories
  • Implausibility of undetected abuse in a public school
  • Lack of corroborating witnesses or subsequent accusations
  • Griffin’s close ties and financial investments in the psychedelic therapy industry

• Maureen Callahan (New York Post/Megyn Kelly) comments on media’s uncritical embrace:

  “This is a book that's been swallowed whole by the media industrial complex.” — Paraphrased by Vanessa (16:20)

The Lawsuit (22:06–25:45)

• “Claudia”—a classmate depicted in The Tell—sues, alleging Griffin used her trauma, not her own, as the basis for key memoir scenes.
• Claudia’s Account:
  • Claims her memories of a similar assault by a different teacher were elicited and misused via a possible ruse involving a production company.
  • Finds out about the memoir from a New York Times reporter; sues for misappropriation and invasion of privacy.
• Amy Griffin’s response: Lawsuit is “absurd and meritless;” defenders point to flawed reporting.
• The publisher, Penguin Random House, takes a hands-off approach: memoirs are not fact-checked, and authors are trusted to tell their truth.

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4. The Science and Ethics of Memory Retrieval (25:45–32:53)

• Therapists and psychedelic advocates (e.g., Rick Doblin) maintain that emotional impact of memory recalled in therapy can be “real,” regardless of factuality:

  “In the therapeutic setting, what Amy went through, whether it’s true or not, it has value because the emotion is real.” — Paraphrased, Natalie (26:18)

• However, memoirs cross into public and legal arenas, where accuracy is paramount—raising echoes of the “Satanic Panic” and the James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) memoir scandal.

Key Science Insight:

• The nature of recovered memories is highly contentious; minds can block—and also confabulate—trauma.

• Griffin’s absolute belief in her memories:

  “I knew that these memories were real. My body knew what had happened to me. ... the way my eyes welled up with tears at the mention of Texas.” — Amy Griffin, as quoted by the hosts (31:30)

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5. The Bigger Picture: Trauma, Privilege, and Memoir in the Present Moment (32:53–39:42)

• The episode explores why trauma memoirs hold such sway in our cultural climate; the "search for the secret" at the root of anxiety or repression.

• There is skepticism about whether every personal struggle must root back to a singular trauma.

  “Maybe it’s not that simple to identify that one thing.” — Vanessa (34:47)

• Material privilege can’t be ignored—this saga involves significant power disparities between Griffin and “Claudia.”
• The narrative also resonates with recent memoir controversies (Belle Burden, Lena Dunham) and public revulsion at fabrications—recalling the post-9/11, Iraq-WMD context of memoir debunkings.

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6. Lasting Questions & Reflections (39:42–End)

• Truth in memoir is more demanded and more contested than ever. Public scrutiny is intensified by social media and content creator culture.

  “The days when you could write a memoir and name names and sort of fudge the facts, that’s sort of over at this point.” — Vanessa (39:42)

• The story ends in ambiguity: lawsuits pending, no clear answers, and a wider reckoning with the messy boundaries between emotional truth and factual accuracy in stories that shape public opinion, ruin reputations, and frame discourses on trauma.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Book's Opening & Its Hook

  “Sometimes we keep secrets to survive. Then a moment arrives when the usefulness of the secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurts us. We have to tell.” — Amy Griffin, quoted by Vanessa (01:55 / 03:29)

• On MDMA Therapy’s Effects

  “As soon as she takes the pill... she says, ‘Why is my middle school teacher here?’” — Vanessa (09:22)

• On Memoir’s Liminal Truth

  “Books aren’t fact checked. Memoirs aren’t fact checked unless the author themselves does that.” — Natalie (25:45)

• On Trauma’s Cultural Centrality

  “Trauma is the lens by which we view the world now, where we’re... looking back at what happened to us to kind of figure out how that informs where we are now.” — Natalie (34:47)

• On the Scandal’s Social Resonance

  “It just may also be that in this day and age people are going to respond. We live in a content creator culture and a comic culture.” — Vanessa (39:42)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------| | 00:47 | Introduction to Amy Griffin and The Tell | | 03:04 | The publicity blitz and celeb endorsements | | 05:36 | Detailed discussion of Amy Griffin’s background and repression/anxiety | | 09:10 | Experience with MDMA therapy | | 13:40 | Memoir’s journey from therapy to legal efforts | | 15:57 | The New York Times investigation, media skepticism | | 22:06 | Claudia’s lawsuit and claim of stolen trauma | | 25:45 | Fact-checking in memoir/publisher responsibility | | 26:18 | Science of memory retrieval and therapy | | 32:53 | Deeper questions about denial, trauma, and the limits of self-understanding | | 34:47 | Trauma’s role in culture and memoir | | 38:08 | Financial privilege and motives | | 39:42 | The new reality for memoirists post–social media | | 40:20 | End of substantive content |

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Conclusion

This episode artfully unpacks a headline-grabbing memoir scandal, revealing complex intersections between memory, trauma, privilege, truth, and the expectations placed on contemporary memoirists. By following Amy Griffin’s controversial journey, the hosts shine a light on the messy reality of how private pain intertwines with public storytelling, and how easily lines can blur—sometimes with damaging consequences for everyone involved.

Transcript

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[Natalie Robomed]

And I'm Natalie Robomed.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

So this week we are telling a story about truth. In specific, it's about a book that you may have heard of, or maybe not, but we are about to tell you all about it by a woman named Amy Griffin. She is the platonic ideal of a New York socialite. She's tall, she's blonde. She's married to a former hedge fund manager. She herself is the founder of a venture capital firm which invested in Goop and Spanx and all these different brands that you've heard of. She not only goes to the Met gala and gets pictures taken on that gigantic staircase where they have, you know, the carpet where all the celebrities preened, she's actually on the board of the Metropolitan Museum. And this book that she wrote called the Tell begins this way. This is the story of a secret, a secret kept for decades, one that I had buried so deep I didn't even know it was in there.

[Natalie Robomed]

There.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Sometimes we keep secrets to survive. Then a moment arrives when the usefulness of the secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurts us. We have to tell. So, I mean, in terms of drawing you in, I don't think it gets better than that. I definitely want to know what she's talking about. Right, Natalie?

[Natalie Robomed]

I mean, what she's talking about is remembering through MDMA therapy, which is this not legal and not FDA approved practice of taking MDMA and seeing what it uncovers for you. I'm talking about the drug that in street terms is more commonly known as Molly or Ecstasy.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Depending on your age.

[Natalie Robomed]

Yeah, depending on your age. Exactly. And so when Amy Griffin did this MDMA therapy, she uncovered a memory, a memory that she hadn't previously been aware of. She says she learns that she was abused during the MDMA therapy and unearthed this recovered memory. And so she writes this book that we've just read a little bit from. And it's huge, in no small part because she goes on a really big publicity tour to support it, right?

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

She's interviewed by Sheryl Sandberg in Menlo Park, California. She's, like, traveling all over the country, right? She's with Hoda Khattab in New Canaan, Connecticut. She does an event with Reese Witherspoon in Nashville. She's with Jenna Hager in Austin, Texas. I mean, these people have book clubs, too, right? And, of course, Gwyneth Paltrow in California. You know, her book becomes a pick for Oprah's Book Club.

[Amy Griffin]

You start the book by saying, this is the story, you say, of a secret, a secret kept for decades, one I had buried so deep I didn't even know it was there. Many of us carry secrets, things that we were told not to reveal or things we simply couldn't for fear of judgment or reprisal or worst of all, for fear that if the people we love found out, they'd see us differently. Sometimes we keep secrets to survive. And then a moment arrives when the usefulness of the secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurts us. All we have to tell. So what is the secret you've come to tell?

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

You know, she somehow gets it to Gayle King, and Gayle King gives it to Oprah. Oprah loves it. It sells more than 100,000 copies. And she goes on Drew Barrymore's talk. She holds hands with Drew Barrymore. We are so afraid to tell our

[Natalie Robomed]

secrets, especially the traumas that have happened to us in a very unjust way, such as it has to you, how

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

taking that wall down, telling that truth is what has brought your family together in ways that are so powerful. I mean, this is really serious book tour, right? She even goes on Martha Stewart's podcast. But I have to tell you, when we did the research for this episode now, we couldn't find this podcast anymore. Now, we don't know. Martha Stewart might have just taken it down. But since the time that Amy Griffin did this massive media tour, there has been a really pretty major scandal about what she was saying in this book and what she was alleging. So it is a very tangled web. And that's what we're getting into this episode.

[Natalie Robomed]

So let's start from the beginning. What happened here and who is Amy Griffin?

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Well, as I said before, you know, she herself is a successful investor. She has a VC firm called G9 Venture, which is invests in startups founded by women, which is an amazing thing because women are in the minority when it comes to startups. So she's, you know, invested, as I said, in Spanx, athletic greens, Bumble, which is the female founder dating app that one of the founders of Tinder ended up splitting off and starting that. So she's got this, as she says, big life. She's a runner. She's got four kids and at the time that the kids are even little, she is running all the time, getting up 5:30 in the morning, running before she has to get ready for them in school. She's just running, running, running. And she says that at one point she was at a dinner party and she was eating a piece of chocolate cake and a friend of a friend says to her, do you run so you can eat the chocolate cake? No, I ran because I was afraid of what I would feel if I sat still. So I think a lot of people can maybe not relate to her life, but relate to that feeling of just never being able to stop the brain from processing. Right. Like living in this state. I feel like we used to call it depression, now people call it anxiety, where, where, you know, you feel like you're being pursued by these wild animals, but like all you're doing is trying to figure out what order you're going to pay your bills in today and I'll get all the work done that you need to do and then maybe do school pickup. But she's, it feels like she's lived like this for a really long time.

[Natalie Robomed]

Yeah, I mean, the running is the symbol for what she's repressing. But I think, you know, a lot of people, as you say, can relate to that sense of, okay, maybe you're just avoiding or pushing down something despite all these signs of external success. And this book essentially is her journey of trying to sit still or trying to uncover what she's been pushing down. And so it really begins when her husband, a former hedge fund manager, does MDMA therapy. And she sees that it really helps him to become more open and process some of the bad things that happened in his life.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

They both went to University of Virginia. Right. He is also a runner. She calls him compassionate and level headed, but he seems like he's a little closed off. I mean, she basically says, again, dinner party. Lots of talk about different parties they're at in this book. And when somebody asks him, you know, what his family's about, he says he doesn't have any sisters or brothers, but he goes and tries this MDMA therapy. And after that she feels like he really opens up. And now, you know, when somebody asks him if he has siblings, he sort of, you know, looks at them square in the face and says sadly, My sister was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and she died by suicide when I was 25. So she's sort of surprised by this and says, like, oh my God, there must be something to this if he's able to be so present and open, maybe I should try it. Right.

[Natalie Robomed]

And so then she decides to go and try MDMA therapy with a woman who in the book is called Olivia. And this is the same woman that her husband did MDMA therapy with.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Right. And she says, you know, that she's elegant, she has this long hair, she's got porcelain skin. She's not like a burning man person. She's very polished. And of course, this makes Amy feel very comfortable because Amy is also very polished. And she takes this pill with her. And as soon as she takes the pill, like, you know, it probably hasn't even kicked in or anything, she says, why is my middle school teacher here?

[Natalie Robomed]

Yes. And then in this session, essentially she says that she uncovers a repressed memory of being sexually abused by this teacher for middle school. And the abuse that she describes is very violent and very graphic. She talks about having been assaulted in the middle school bathroom and then later on in the locker room, in a classroom under the bleachers. It's really awful, really horrendous, really tough to read stuff.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Yes, I agree.

[Amy Griffin]

You were lying there on the sofa with their eyes covered and you're telling this story. Does it feel like you're back in the space? Does it feel like you're in danger? Or does it feel like you're the observer of this thing?

[Jay Shetty]

Well, the first time that I had a session, I was the observer and I did not feel like I was in any danger because I already knew. I knew this, I was watching it instead. I had complete compassion for myself, complete love for that little girl that experienced it. It was like two sides of me met. That 12 year old side of me met the amy in her 40s, and it was as if we embraced and no longer did I have to keep the secret.

[Natalie Robomed]

One of the instances of abuse takes place on the night of an eighth grade dance. And she says that this teacher assaulted her in his classroom. And according to Amy, he said to her, if you tell anyone, I'll rip your teeth out. So it's incredibly threatening, incredibly violent. And I mean, she also says that the teacher essentially picked on her because she was from this very successful family and very pretty big family in Amarillo, Texas, where she's from. And the teacher kind of said, you're from this, this nice family. Nobody would believe you.

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[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

So then the rest of the book is basically her quest to come to terms with which she's now discovered through this therapy session and to try to get justice.

[Natalie Robomed]

Yeah. And she goes about trying to bring a legal case against this teacher, which ultimately fails because the statute of limitations has expired. But this is a very internal journey, one of coming to terms with this awful thing that that she believes happened to her. But I mean, almost immediately she externalizes it and is going about hiring lawyers

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

and a private investigator, and she's suddenly hiring private investigators. She's trying to figure out if this has happened to other people. She's trying to decide if she should bring a civil case, should she bring a criminal case.

[Natalie Robomed]

And I mean, I think this is the time that we should say that this book is believed to have been ghostwritten by Sam Lans. He is an author who's probably best known for helping ghostwrite Britney Spears memoir,

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

the one that Michelle Williams read. If people have listened to that, definitely worth a listen.

[Natalie Robomed]

Yes. And so this is a memoir, but it is also still concerned with being a good story. And I think we all know when you read a memoir that there are conversations that have been changed or edited or condensed or moved up in the timeline to make the story flow better and function better. And we expect some of that from a memoir. Though, you know, I will say personally, there were a couple things that for me, stretch the limits of credulity. People say things that are very eloquent and very wise. There's this instance where her 10 year old says to her, quote, I don't know you, you're here, but you're not here. Who are you? Mom? And this is kind of a pivotal scene in the book that sort of sets Amy on a course of self reflection and self discovery. But at least to me, I was like, I don't know many 10 year olds that talk like that and have that level of internal reflection. And then there are a couple other things that seem incredibly cinematic. You know, there's this ending with a postcard that arrives that really feels just like the perfect button to the film adaptation version of this.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

So people start to have questions about it. There's a blockbuster story that comes out in the New York Times called the Billionaire, the Psychedelics and the best selling memoir. Let me just read you the beginning of it. Oprah Reese and Jenna Bush Hager are looking ecstatic as they stand on stage at the Ford foundation in Manhattan posing with this new book.

[Jay Shetty]

People have said to me, oh, be careful. A book, book tour is draining or this, that and the other. I have felt so the opposite. I cannot tell you that every conversation I've had has made me not feel alone, has made me feel connected. I wrote this book first for myself, never knowing that anyone would ever read it.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

This is the first ever joint promotion by three influential book club leaders. It also says that Amy was paid a million dollars for this story, which is pretty unbelievable in this day and age in publishing. And has Gwyneth describing her as this beautiful, incredibly positive, brilliant woman, and then sort of says, okay, but here's what Maureen Callahan, you know, who is a longtime New York Post columnist who's now part of the Megyn Kelly universe, has to say. And Maureen is saying, this is a book that's been swallowed whole by the media industrial complex.

[Natalie Robomed]

What the Times story really gets into are these two main doubts. Which is the first is the reliability of recovered memory and the veracity of Amy Griffin's claims how such abuse could take place in a public school without any adults picking up clues. The things that she described that he did to her. One woman Said you cannot picture him just being a one time offender. And this story really does a lot of reporting about the impact of this book in Amarillo, Texas, which is a very small city of 200,000 people. And even though, of course, Amy Griffin changed this teacher's name, there were, according to the Time, some readers in Amarillo who were able to figure out who this teacher was.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

They also note that Amarillo law enforcement was expecting after this book came out, and victim rights advocates as well were expecting all of these allegations from other students of this teacher because he worked in the school district for three, 30 years. And they find that, you know, no one filed a complaint against him. But also no one shows up since the book's publication to say anything. Additionally, she put the real name of the man she said sexually assaulted her in her book proposal. Right? So a lot of people had seen that. And she basically sort of stonewalls. The Times declines request for an interview, is not going to interact with this.

[Natalie Robomed]

The Times also brings up essentially what I would describe as a conflict of interest between Amy Griffin and her husband's business endeavors and this emerging form of therapy that is not FDA approved and not legal. I mean, in the book, Amy writes that her husband was, quote, funding research into psychedelic assisted therapy, and when actually the Times reports he donated a million dollars and through their foundation was invested in a for profit pharmaceutical company focused on mdma. The other thing that the New York Times article brings up is the introduction of the idea that there's a different victim who was victimized by a different teacher. So according to them, one classmate shared detailed accounts of being attacked by a different teacher in the very locations that Amy Griffin wrote about, including at the same middle school dance that I mentioned earlier. This other woman is presented as Claudia in the book.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

You know, that character in the book, I have to say, is a bit confusing. You know, the book is, as you said, structured very much like a quest. You know, it's very externalized. But there is this character that keeps popping in and she calls her Claudia, which I'm assuming is a pseudonym. And she essentially says there was this girl who was, you know, from the wrong side of the tracks who had to borrow a dress from her for the school dance, and she always remembered her. And she sort of pops in and out of the book. And Amy suspects that she was also assaulted at the school. So eventually she wants to talk to her. So she portrays that the two of them get together in Texas and, you know, Amy says to her, you know, I was assaulted by this teacher. And the Claudia character sort of reels back and she doesn't understand why she's suddenly turned so cold. And Amy thinks maybe she's embarrassed that she can't help me. Like, it seems like she. She's not saying I was also assaulted by this man. She seems to be reeling back because she wants to help me, but she can't. But soon after that, this postcard that we mentioned earlier arrives and it seems to confirm that Claudia indeed has been assaulted by this same man. Now, after the New York Times story comes out, there is suddenly a lawsuit that drops from Claudia. She's calling herself Jane Doe. And she says that everything basically that I just told you with a couple of exceptions, is not true. She says that she actually met Amy in California, which is where she at least recently has worked for $21 an hour as a homemade to an Alzheimer's patient. And she sort of portrays this relationship with Amy as very strange and maybe even not linked to what happened to her next.

[Natalie Robomed]

To be clear, this is the same person that the New York Times talked to who says she was attacked by a different teacher. And she alleges in this lawsuit that she had her identity, likeness, and private information unlawfully used in the Tell, and that the sexual assault that happened to her was converted and used by Amy Griffin in the Tell as Amy's own recovered memories.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

She says she gets this phone call at her house from a 774, which is linked to a California limited liability company in Marina Del Rey. And the person says his name is Dominique Price. And he says, oh my God, you've got a really interesting story to tell. I want to talk to you about your story. I mean, this is almost something you would feel like a scammer would say, like to reel you in. But in this case, Claudia tells him all about her life and he calls a bunch of different times and talks to her for multiple hours per day, a few times a week over a one month period. And, you know, she basically tells him everything with this understanding that maybe her life story is going to turn into a book or a movie. They're discussing like her intellectual property. And Dominique Price has a woman called her and the woman says, you know, you should come to LA and there'll be a meeting with these producers or these directors and we'll have a contract with you and blah, blah, blah. And so at this point, Claudia thinks to herself, oh my God, I should probably call a lawyer. And she calls a lawyer and her lawyer is like, this sounds incredibly weird. You have to do some due diligence and get them to send you the contract. So, you know, she says this to them, and they basically just stop calling her. And that's the last she hears of these people. She goes on with her life, and then, oh, my God, the New York Times calls her to interview her for this story, and suddenly she finds out that Amy has written this book.

[Natalie Robomed]

And we should say that an attorney for Amy Griffin has described this lawsuit as absurd and meritless and claimed that the lawsuit is the result of a false narrative and flawed reporting from the New York Times. But, you know, this case is still ongoing.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

I mean, basically, they're saying, you know, this was fraud. Right. That these people have sort of misrepresented them. This Claudia is also a private person. Now, we don't, you know, we don't have these transcripts of what Claudia said to the investigator. I don't see them linked in the complaint. But one assumes that, you know, there must be recordings involved. But the idea that this. When this book comes out, Claudia thinks that the assault scenes are very close to what had happened to her and what she had shared on the phone is really disturbing.

[Natalie Robomed]

Yeah. And I think the question is going to be if these allegations by Claudia are true, I mean, where the responsibility lies. Because I think people may not know. But books aren't fact checked. Memoirs aren't fact checked unless the author themselves does that. And so the publisher, the editor at the Penguin Random House imprint that published Amy's book said, you know, this is Amy's story. We trust her and all of our authors that they're recounting their memories truthfully. And so they're basically saying, you know, that's not on us. Book publishers are not investigators. It's not. It's not for us to figure out what's true and what's not.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Yeah. I mean, they basically need to believe this person. Right. They need to believe her story. What's really interesting is whether in the sessions when Amy did this, MDMA was there actually a leading her on to believe that the memories were real. Right. When she describes it in the book, she says she had said the woman who was leading the session is everything we see real. And the woman says, stay with it. But we don't really get a description of what happened from there.

[Natalie Robomed]

And that is a really interesting part of this story, which is that Rick Doblin, this guy who's a lead advocate for therapeutic use of mdma, who talked to the New York Times, said that in the therapeutic setting, what Amy went through, whether it's true or not, it's, it has value because the emotion is real. And he makes clear to the New York Times that he believes Amy. But what he's basically saying is that in therapy, and you know, I talked to other therapists who, who said the same thing, like it's not their job to interrogate whether what the client is saying is true or not. If it's emotionally true, then there's value there and it's worth exploring. But of course that falls apart when these instances get taken out of the therapeutic setting and into the legal one or into one where you are then profiting off of these stories. This is kind of the same thing that happened in the Satanic Panic, right? I mean, you and I, Vanessa did that story about this woman who was a nursery school teacher who was wrongly accused by these children who had recovered memories. And it's, it's a similar sort of thing where relying on memory, this very fluid, this very tricky and mutable thing becomes very difficult in the court of law. And, and also it gets very complicated when you're profiting off of it. So, I mean, you know that, that's not to say that something awful didn't happen to Amy Griffin. I mean, we all know that this very unfortunately happens to children and it is most often done by people they know. And According to Rain, 1 in 9 girls and 1 in 20 boys under 18 experience sexual abuse or assault. And you know, those figures are quite possibly underreported because a lot of people not report sexual assaults. And Amy Griffin herself talks about another sexual assault that she experienced by another person, this character James in the book that happened when she was older. And you know, I think we all know anecdotally, among our friends, among ourselves, that this is a very real thing. But the idea of what is true and what isn't in memoir is very sticky and complicated because we're buying this story for the truth of it. So if people start to have questions about the veracity of it, that kind of becomes the problem. Because the point is that it's a personal, truthful, inspirational story. That's why people are drawing on it. I mean, of course, I think of James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, right? Which was maybe the last huge memoir debacle.

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[Natalie Robomed]

You're listening to Infamous from Campside Media. This whole lawsuit from Claudia, this whole story really is very strange. And what's being alleged, it seems, is that people working for Amy Griffin wanted to take the memories of another girl from Amarillo, which is a horrible thing to do if it's true. Or at the very least wanted to make sure they had her life story to perhaps develop a film or TV show about Amarillo. But Amy Griffin herself had her own recovered memories from that time in Amarillo, so why would she have needed to take someone else's? But is it possible what Amy remembered during that MDMA therapy, the graphic ordeals with her teacher were false memories? Could it have been that she was sexually assaulted in some way? She talks about at least one other instance in the book, and her mind grafted the details of someone else's experience onto her own. Or that suggestive questioning led her brain to create a mangled amalgam of memories. Remember, Amy says that she did not recall any of this abuse that happened as far back as she was 12 until she did this MDMA therapy. Now, it is pretty well catalogued that our minds do sometimes block out traumatic memories, but the science of recovered memories is hotly debated. For her part, Amy writes in the book, I knew that these memories were real. My body knew what had happened to me. Me. The way I'd shake when I tell my story, the way my eyes welled up with tears at the mention of Texas. The other big issue is that the man who was accused by Amy has had his life ruined because everyone in Amarillo knows who he is. Basically, what's happening is Amy has been painted as a Karen who's running around creating a lot of havoc in her desire to prove that the memories she had while under the influence of drugs are real and they could have been drug induced hallucinations. Again, her lawyer has called the lawsuit against her absurd and to make matters even more complicated, has said that the classmate the New York Times interviewed was not the character referred to as Claudia in the book. It's all a big mess and we don't yet know the truth.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

It's so interesting because there are parts of the book, as I said, that I really do relate to. You know, when she talks about hiding something from yourself, and I think we all have that feeling when, you know, you've experienced some trauma and you're trying to arrange your life to not acknowledge it. Like, here's what she writes. Like, we talk about people being in denial as if it were a choice, a voluntary state. Like you can just snap your fingers and it's over, easy as waking up. But it's not like that. Denial is not a switch that can be turned off and on. Denial is a glass case that must be shattered before you realize you were trapped inside it in the first place. And so there is a part of me that thinks that, you know, here you have this person who's so controlled, right, with the four kids and the big life and the running and everything. And she's in such a denial, maybe even about the existential fear of life itself. Like, I have no idea. She's also been assaulted. She describes being assaulted by somebody else in this book. And she's looking for a reason why she is the way that she is. And our culture tells us that there has to be something in your past that has created this. There has to be this secret. And I guess part of what I'm question after all of this is whether that's really true, whether part of life is just, okay, you've lived this way for a really long time and there might not be one specific secret that you can identify, that if only you could look that thing in the face, you could figure out how to change your entire life, shatter this glass case. Maybe it's not that simple to identify that one thing.

[Natalie Robomed]

And that speaks to the larger time that we're in now, which I think is a very, for better or worse, trauma informed one. That's essentially what you're saying. And I would argue that trauma is the lens by which we view the world now, where we're sort of exactly as you said, looking back at what happened to us to kind of figure out how that informs where we are now. And I say that while also very much believing that trauma is real and understanding that it does inform what happens to us. But I think there are also limits to that being the only lens through which we view things. I mean, it's a very sad and very complicated story. I also think there's an element of this which is that the wealthier is impossible to ignore.

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Right.

[Natalie Robomed]

That is even brought up in the New York Times article. They're talking about how this Jane Doe, Claudia's life is so different to Amy Griffin's, you know, and it's impossible to look at this and not have some element of, I think, for a lot of people, like, couldn't this lady just be happy with what she had? Did she really need to go and make a best selling book with the ghostwriter of Britney Spears's biography and go on goop podcast and talk about it here, there and everywhere? Like, why couldn't she have just done this journey alone and kept it private?

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

Well, I think she thought that she was gonna help other people and it was gonna be this great victory, Right? And her life has been going from victory to victory, so she assumed it would work out. I mean, the reverse is too horrible to contemplate that this is all a lie and she foisted it upon the world because she wanted to get attention and wanted to go on a big book tour. People aren't that evil. At least I hope they aren'. So it just seems like a big tragedy of errors here. And this is assuming that Claudia is telling the truth, which Amy's attorney has been clear that they view Claudia as a fabulist and they're gonna fight this case. Now, whether that means that Claudia's attorney has demanded a number that is so outrageous that they couldn't have just paid her and kept this quiet, I don't know, but it's basically like the story has gone from here is this unbelievably successful woman, Amy Griffin, who is going to share her story of victimhood and help other victims to. Here's this person who made this gigantic error, who really hurt a very powerless woman and potentially also a man in Amarillo and who has been totally humiliated. And the thing that I felt very sad about is in the book she does say, you know, she's sharing this story, she wants to go after this man, and the only reason she wouldn't do it is because if it could potentially hurt her kids. And I do think, though I am sure her fancy friends have rallied around her and I'm sure she can still be on boards and everything else. Having the story out there about your mom has to be disruptive for her relationship with her kids going forward.

[Natalie Robomed]

I, I also think it's interesting that this isn't the only memoir that people are upset about for not telling the full truth right now. I mean, there's this other book by Belle Burden, this divorce memoir that, you know, people have been upset that she left out key financial details that made her seem less well off than she actually was. And I mean, Lena Dunham most recently had best selling memoir fame sick that she very explicitly names names in. And I'm sure some of those names disagree with what she said about them in a meta way. It makes me curious about who we demand truth from and when. I wonder personally, as a little pet theory, if we get angry over people lying or obfuscating the truth in memoirs, whether that correlates to times when we as a broader public are upset about having been lied to by politicians or our elected officials or people who were in power. I think about the James Frey the Million Little Pieces debacle. I mean, that book came out 2003, right around the weapons of mass destruction debate and debacle and the smoking gun article that laid the truth of that story bare, that exposed that a lot of what was in it wasn't actually accurate. That came out in 2006, which is kind of when there was a maybe a little bit before, but there was a turning of a tide around then about, oh, maybe we went to war over not entirely accurate statements or it

[Vanessa Gregoriadas]

just may also be that in this day and age people are going to respond. We live in a content creator culture and a comic culture. So the days when you could write a memoir and name names and sort of fudge the facts, that's sort of over at this point. If you're going to really make clear, you know, who these different people are to the point where they're recognizable, at least to themselves. You're most likely going to hear from them.

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