1. With regard to Ms. Aptheker's case, each of these cases is highly fact intensive and we don't know the facts -- not even enough to decide whether there's reasonable grounds to think that she might be right in any sense and to any degree at all. She might have clear and precise veridical memories -- but you and I are unlikely to ever be in a position to have even a half-baked opinion on the matter.
2. Childhood sexual abuse is widespread in many societies, including our own, possible in all cultures. Whoever pointed out that most of intra-familial -- not just bad Dad, but uncles, cousins, older brothers, close friends of the family, clergymen -- seems to be well-supported by the evidence so far as one can evaluate it. Although less prevalent than sexual abuse of girls, sexual abuse of boys seems to be far more common than one might have thought.
3. The hysteria over stranger/daycare abuse of the McMartin type has, as a lot of people pointed out at the time, a lot in common with the witch-craze, given the incredibility (in some cases physical impossibility) of the charges; its' not that it doesn't occur, but kids are in far more danger from their families than strangers or paid caregivers.
4. Memory is quite unreliable. There is a lot of work on this in the law, where there is the curious commonsense belief of many people that direct, eyewitness testimony is more reliable than circumstantial evidence, despite boatloads of solid cognitive psychological research showing the contrary. However, while memory is selective and people are suggestible, there is some good research that indicates that what happens when memories get twisted is less that things are made up of whole cloth than details are lost, others are exaggerated, and elements of a factual situation are embroidered.
(The story Yoshie, I believe, told about the Italian worker's confusion about when the worker was shot is an example -- he guy was shot all right; it was just that memory relocated the shooting to a different context that had more lasting significance.) This means nothing about Ms A's particular case.
5. Trauma, and childhood sexual abuse is highly traumatic, leaves lasting scars and symptoms, which, combined with memories, however distorted, can provide circumstantial support for claims of something like recovered memory, if the memories are understood to refer to basic facts ("I was abused") rather than details, and details can include who did did.
6. The tie to feminism is complex. It's just dumb to say that a woman's honest belief about childhood sexual abuse should (must?) be credited merely because she she has it. Given the very serious nature of the charge, any individual case has to considered individually -- and sometimes, and Ms. A's may be such a case -- reasonable people will have to say they just don't know if they don't have the evidence.
At the same time in general the apparently disturbingly high incidence of childhood sexual abuse, focused mainly on girls, and the very traumatic effect that it leaves, are real feminist issues -- which, however, do not offer an easy solution, given that reducing the strength of patriarchal power is a slow and long term task.
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