LYLE MENENDEZ ca. 1976
âI think his discussion of the stuffed animals uh⌠was really quite amazing⌠umâŚâ
âWell let me stop you here, it goes to a larger issue and is that his overall credibility in terms of the psychological abuse and the physical abuse and the description of the family setting?â
âYes.â
âWhat was the significance of the stuffed animals in that context?â
âWell, ya know⌠many survivors have stuffed animals, I believe Dr. Briere⌠I read his testimony about that and he said that and that is true I think many survivors do. Although Iâve never actually seen that described in the literature, itâs something that people who work with survivors tend to know, may be in the literature Iâm just not aware of it. But what was phenomenal about Lyleâs use of the stuffed animals is that he really⌠first of all he had large numbers of them and he gave them personalities and he acted out scenarios uh⌠with those stuffed animals, kind of issues in his life and he had personalities in the animals or gave personalities that sort of represented issues in his life⌠he had nasty stuffed animals and he had weaker ones and he had stronger ones and he had sort of a judge who made decisions uh, about what was going on among the stuffed animals and in a sense that Iâve never⌠in a way that Iâve never heard from another victim he in a way was doing play therapy. When we see traumatized kids we often ask them to act out with animals uh⌠with puppets sometimes, sometimes with a dollhouse, sometimes in sand play, their bad experiences. The difference between Lyleâs acting out his issues with his stuffed animals and play therapy is that there was no therapist there to help guide the process and so there was no therapist there to help talk about the feelings the stuffed animals had or to maybe figure out ways that the stuffed animals could work out the scenario in a different way. So his description of how important the animals were and what he did with the animals, ya know he took them when he buried the rabbit for example, some of them were there and his collecting other animals that were kind of orphaned by his brother, this is a⌠sort of an over involvement or an excessive use of animals for a therapeutic need. He told me for example one point that his mom had thrown a stuffed animal out and the dogs had gotten it and ripped it up and he told me that he had been able to save the hat, theyâre still important to him in a way. This was a very significant thing to him. He told me that he took âem to high school and it was okay because he was a popular kid, although I read elsewhere, I think in the school notes that he really was kind of teased about it but they were so important to him because they had this therapeutic coping purpose to him⌠that description was wholly believable to me and I donât think a non victim would of known that therapeutic use and I talked to Stacy Feldman, his first girlfriend on my trip to New Jersey and she described, âoh yeah the animals.â So thereâs confirmation just about how important these were in his life. So thatâs one of a number of factors I think that I found to be important in sort of assessing his overall credibility.â
â Dr. John Conte, Lyleâs therapist describing the significance of his use of stuffed animals as a child to cope with the trauma in his family













