30/06/2026
For years, Dr Katie Bird lived with intrusive memories and flashbacks from alleged sexual abuse she experienced as a teenager. They surfaced at the worst moments. She couldn't study. She couldn't socialise. She couldn't get on with her life.
Then she tried EMDR, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy. After the first session, something shifted.
Over the following months, she found she could finally think about what happened to her. Talk about it. Eventually, report it to police.
In 2023, she received an email from the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Her case would not proceed. The reason given: she had undergone EMDR therapy, and "the circumstance of a critical crown witness having undergone EMDR therapy can have significant effect on the admissibility of the evidence of that witness."
The therapy that gave Dr Katie Bird her voice back was used as the reason the system stopped listening to it.
๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐
EMDR is recommended by the World Health Organization and Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council as a treatment for PTSD. It sits alongside the UK's NICE guidelines and the US Department of Veterans Affairs as an evidence-based therapy, not an experimental one.
The treatment works by asking a person to briefly recall a distressing memory while their attention is split by a second task, usually eye movement. The leading theory: this reduces the emotional intensity of the memory by competing for limited working memory. What it does not do is direct the patient toward any particular content. There is no suggestion involved, no guiding the patient toward a version of events. As Dr Bird described it: "All EMDR was allowing me to do was recall the memories without the overwhelming emotions that had taken me to seek psychological therapy in the first place. I never had to change the memory during the process."
UNSW psychology professor Richard Bryant, director of a clinical traumatic stress research clinic, is direct about what the evidence shows: "If we look at the evidence, EMDR doesn't lend somebody to having false memories any more than any other kind of intervention." He has called for the guidelines to be updated, stating plainly that current decisions about EMDR are "not consistent with what we know."
๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฟ๐๐น๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ๐ ๐ณ๐ฟ๐ผ๐บ
In NSW, this isn't an informal habit among prosecutors. It is written into the ODPP Prosecution Guidelines: evidence obtained through EMDR "cannot be used in any case" unless separately approved by the Director or a Deputy Director. EMDR is bracketed with hypnosis, full stop, no clinical nuance, no other therapy carries the same restriction.
That rule traces back to a single case from 1995, when EMDR was new to Australia and barely understood. The judge in that case actually found EMDR and hypnosis were "probably different." But having found that, the judgment went on to apply the existing forensic hypnosis guidelines to EMDR anyway, guidelines that were written for a completely different practice, without consulting a single EMDR researcher or clinical body. Hypnosis bodies were properly consulted when their own guidelines were developed. EMDR clinicians never were.
It isn't even consistent within Australia. Courts in other states have not always treated these guidelines as binding. Most state and Commonwealth prosecution guidelines don't reference EMDR at all. NSW's written rule sits at one extreme. The Commonwealth's decision in Dr Bird's case used the same outdated logic without even having NSW's rule to point to.
Even NSW's own ODPP, when asked directly by the ABC about Dr Bird's case, said: "The fact a complainant has undertaken EMDR will not necessarily have any bearing on their reliability or the admissibility of their evidence." That is the official position. It is not what happened to her.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ผ๐๐น๐ฑ ๐๐๐ผ๐ฝ ๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฐ๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ฐ๐ฟ๐ผ๐น๐น๐ถ๐ป๐ด
Anthony Hurst, chair of the EMDR Association of Australia, told the ABC this isn't an isolated case. EMDR therapists across the country now have to warn clients, before treatment even begins, that seeking help may cost them their chance at legal justice.
Sit with that for a moment. Informed consent for a recommended PTSD treatment now includes a warning that recovery itself may be held against you in court.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ต๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐๐๐๐ฒ๐บ
Australian courts have spent years building trauma-informed frameworks. Judicial benchbooks instruct judges that a witness's memory may be affected by trauma, that gaps and inconsistencies in an account are not proof of dishonesty, and that a traumatised witness's evidence may understandably appear "discursive, episodic, unreliable and even mendacious" without that meaning anything about whether they are telling the truth.
So the same legal system that tells judges to expect imperfect memory from an untreated trauma survivor can treat a treated survivor's clear, coherent account as the suspicious one. A woman who never sought help and struggles to give a linear account is protected by trauma-informed principles. A woman who sought help and can now speak clearly about what happened to her risks having that clarity used against her.
๐ข๐ป๐ฒ ๐บ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ป๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐๐ต ๐๐ถ๐๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ถ๐๐ต
The Australian Government funds EMDR for veterans with PTSD as a recommended, evidence-based treatment, fully funded, no questions asked about whether their memory might be affected by it. The Department of Veterans' Affairs lists EMDR among the most effective treatments for service-related trauma.
The same government apparatus that funds EMDR for one trauma population treats it as a reason to disbelieve another.
There is no clinical basis for that distinction. Trauma is trauma. The biology of how a brain processes a threat does not check whether the threat was an enemy combatant or a partner in your own home. The science is the same for both. The system's response is not.
๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐๐ฉ'๐ ๐ฑ๐ผ๐ฐ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฒ
Our 750+ doctors see what happens when survivors are forced to choose between recovery and recourse. We see what it costs a person to disclose trauma at all. We know that the very thing that allows someone to speak, feeling safe enough to recall what happened without being overwhelmed by it, is being treated by parts of the legal system as a reason to doubt them.
The science does not support this. The clinicians who built and use this therapy have said so directly, on the record, by name. Three decades after a single 1995 ruling locked this assumption into NSW prosecution policy, the evidence has moved and the rule has not.
When the law makes recovery a liability, it isn't preserving the integrity of evidence. It is failing victim-survivors. Worse, it is retraumatising them.
Read the full story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-09/mental-health-emdr-therapy-may-have-cost-katie-justice/106425114
Sources: ABC News (Emily Baker, 9 Mar 2026); UNSW Newsroom (Mar 2026); Pursuit, Uni of Melbourne (Apr 2026); NSW ODPP Prosecution Guidelines Ch.14 (Mar 2021); NSW Judicial Commission Bench Book S.12; Dept of Veterans' Affairs (dva.gov.au)
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