Outside influences and current mindset of the surrounding community definitely had a big role in producing the details of these memories. All of these current findings seemed to spur on new memories from new victims.
The effects were obvious as explained in the article that repressed memories can be drastically inaccurate or worst - fabricated. These suppressed memories actually hurt both the so-called victims and the falsified criminals. The victims ended up believing their stories for years which would affect them in more ways than expected. Then the innocent people, made to be the criminals, had their livelihood taken from them. The gain may have been for law enforcement to get answers for said crimes. Or for the psychologists to prove their worth in such a problematic scenario.
My personal belief is that we consciously suppress bad memories. Most would want those bad memories to just go away. When a memory is really painful and we constantly try to stop recalling them, then eventually our minds may suppress them. So there is some truth to it