"false memories"
damn now author's quoting real life child abuse trials isn't she
Not necessarily, false memories is a thing.
There have been multiple experiments regarding how easily malleable memory can be, in which with the help of edited photos and leading questions, researchers have managed to make people believe something really happened to them, and in some cases they were even able to make the subjects give detailed accounts of an entire event that didn't happen.
The most famous ones are the one in which they convinced 1/4 of the subjects that they got lost in a mall when they were a child. And another one in which they managed to convince about half of the subjects that they once had a hot air balloon ride when they were a child, simply by showing fabricated photos.
The child abuse trials were more about behavior and learning, rather than messing with memory.