Anaheim Therapists Sued Over Sex Abuse Memories

A former winery executive is asking more than $8 million in damages from therapists he claims talked his adult daughter into accusing him of raping her when she was a child.

“I’ve been totally humiliated, all because of these quackery procedures,’ plaintiff Gary Ramona said. “This is an incredible story. . . . I pray that my life will return to normal and that I get my family back.”

The trial, which began Monday in Napa County, may break new legal ground in addressing the sticky issues of recovered memories, said Richard Shearer, one of the father’s attorneys.

It also will test whether a third party can sue psychiatric therapists for damages in California, the lawyer said.

The malpractice lawsuit by Ramona, a former Robert Mondavi Winery vice president, charges that a family therapist and a psychiatrist talked his daughter, Holly Ramona, into visualizing lurid images of herself and her father.

Holly Ramona, now 23, says he molested her, and is scheduled to testify in the therapists’ defense.

Since she initially accused Ramona in 1990 and filed her own suit against him, he has lost his $300,000-per-year job, his marriage and his friends, he said. Her suit is still pending.

The suit seeks at least $8 million in economic losses from Western Medical Center-Anaheim, psychiatrist Richard Rose and Marche Isabella, a marriage, family and child counselor.

Isabella’s attorney, Jeffrey Kurtock, said the suit give the impression that Holly “suffered from some sort of mental defect in which you just have to say something to her and she’ll believe it.”

The suit maintains that Isabella planted the idea of molestation in Holly Ramona’s mind while treating her for bulimia. At the time, Ramona was a student at UC Irvine.

That memory was then reinforced through improper use of sodium amytal, according Ramona’s expert witness, Dr. Martin Orne, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania.

“He lost his $300,000-a-year job, he lost his friends in and around St. Helena where he lived with his wife and three daughters,” Ramona’s trial attorney Richard Harrington said. “And he lost his marriage, and his children will no longer speak to him.”

The defense warns that Ramona’s suit opens up a legal can of worms.

“If a doctor has to be concerned about the feelings of someone who his patient accuses of doing something wrong, (it) has foreboding possibilities,” said defense lawyer Bruce Miroglio.