Just before Christmas 1989, Judy Norris and her estranged husband, Albert, were notified that their eldest daughter Anne, then 24, had accused them of incest and satanic ritual abuse and was suing them for $20 million.
Anne Norris, through her therapist, psychologist Douglas Bruce Sawin, 53, alleges that her mother, father and paternal grandparents subjected her to sexual and ritual torture from infancy until she was about 16.
Until she began seeing Sawin, patient and therapist claim, all memories of these years of alleged abuse were buried, or repressed, in her subconscious.
Anne Norris' two grown sisters and brother, as well as her parents and grandparents, say the allegations are preposterous. Like thousands of other families in North America, the Norrises think they and their daughter are the victims of a "cultural hysteria" caused by a psychotherapy theory and process - recovered memory therapy - gone out of control.
Somewhere in therapy or a support group, these families are convinced, their once-loving but troubled adult children were led to embrace a false diagnosis for all their problems: repressed memories of childhood sexual or ritual abuse that never happened.
More than 3,000 families have documented remarkably similar stories with a year-old national parents' group, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation of Philadelphia. Some 450 of these families have been sued or threatened with suits by their children.
Judy and Al Norris have been unable to talk to or visit their daughter since autumn 1988, when she severed communication. They now depend on insurance forms and legal documents to tell them what is happening to her.
Through those papers the Norrises have learned of self-mutilation incidents - one requiring some 80 stitches in Anne Norris' arm - and a relationship with Sawin that has produced more than 400 personal letters from Anne Norris to her therapist.
To read and listen to Anne Norris' account of her childhood and to hear her family's account is to experience two stories at polar opposites.
The family's account, supported by medical and school records, is of an imperfect but normal upbringing in Stockton and Orinda, Calif., and of a bright young woman who graduated with honors from Miramonte High School and the University of California-Irvine's music school.
The other account - Anne Norris' and Sawin's - is a litany of unspeakable crimes: violent rape and sodomy, beatings, physical torture with electrodes and brooms and forced cannibalism at the hands of unidentified cult members.
Many of the incidents alleged by Anne Norris - relayed to Sawin - involve physical abuses so severe that most medical experts say they would involve a string of hospitalizations, scars and suspected battery reports from school officials.
But there are none.
Anne Norris was asked how an elementary school-age child could function, attend class and make good grades while enduring such crippling abuse.
"I was just a high achiever," she said. "Part of my denial was keeping up a facade to be a good student, going out - I was driven. I spent a lot of my school years totally dissociating."
Dissociation is a psychiatric term for a process of marked emotional detachment that can occur during trauma.
In a sworn deposition, Sawin said his client was able to function despite the abuse because "they used drugs so she could stay awake in school." He also said she lacked scars because "they did things in orifices, and usually in the soft tissue. They heal very quickly."
For Judy and Al Norris, Sawin and his theories are the source of an escalating nightmare that began in the summer of 1988.
They knew their daughter had begun therapy but gathered from her phone calls it was because of stress related to academic life.
But Judy Norris especially was concerned when her daughter stopped telephoning in August 1988. She finally tracked down Anne Norris by phone and was stunned to hear her daughter call herself an alcoholic.
"I was shocked, but the robotic quality of her voice gave me a worse feeling," Judy Norris said. "Her voice had an odd, different sound. Very clear and calm but detached."
Then, on Oct. 14, Sawin phoned to see if the Norrises' insurance would cover hospitalization for their daughter. Anne Norris had been admitted to a hospital.
Judy Norris called the hospital and was told her daughter wanted no contact with anyone.
The next day, the nightmare exploded. Sawin phoned the Norrises and told Al Norris, "You know what caused this problem. It's because you incested your daughter."
Al Norris breaks into tears as he relates this.
On Oct. 30, 1988, said Judy Norris, her daughter called from the hospital, read a long, jargon-laden letter about separating from her mother and said she did not want Judy Norris to try to contact her.
"I was dying inside and struggling to say something that would break through," Judy Norris said.
The next time Judy Norris was able to see her daughter was three years later at the first of four depositions.
"I've gone to all of them just to be able to see her," the mother said.
In a deposition, Sawin said that he has diagnosed about 30 to 40 clients with multiple personality disorder and that half his patients were sexually abused by parents or caretakers.
Said Marnie Norris: "I've let go of a lot of my anger, but one thing that still makes me bitter is, I've had to watch my sister get worse and worse and worse, and I can't get her away from this man."
Anne Norris' charges include alleged incidents of ritual torture by both of her parents and other adults, involving knives, wires and fish hooks.
The sexual abuse claims include rape and sodomy with such objects as carrots, chicken parts and hoses. One particularly graphic scene, related by Sawin in deposition, involves 6-year-old Anne Norris being hung, nude, from a bannister by her mother, a broomstick in the child's vagina, as her siblings are exhorted to beat her.
Yet as recently as June 9, 1992, Anne Norris apparently had doubts about whether the incest happened. In a letter to Sawin, subpoenaed by the Norrises' attorney, she wrote: "Riding on the bus I was afraid my memories weren't real. . . . I feel less and less able to do this trial. Why don't I feel anger at Judy or Al? All I feel is how I'm hurting them and they are so sad. Then I remember how hard it is to leave a session with you, how strong the replacement and abandonment is."
Twice postponed at Anne Norris' request, a trial is set for May. Acting as her own legal representative, Anne Norris told The Examiner she had "given up any expectation of having any kind of settlement or award."
"My hope is for them to be held responsible," she said of her mother and father. Also, she said, "I would really, really like to have my therapy paid for."