Father Says Doctors Implanted Abuse Memory : Psychiatry: Plaintiff, who was accused of molesting his daughter, a former UCI student, is among first to legally challenge validity of ‘recovered memories.’

A father faced off in court Thursday against his daughter’s two therapists, contending they conned her into “remembering” childhood sexual abuse that never happened.

The lawsuit filed by former wine company executive Gary Ramona is among the first to challenge the validity of so-called “recovered memories.” Some national experts say the time is right.

“There are a certain number of therapists who see sexual abuse in every patient they see,” said Dr. Harrison Pope, a Harvard University psychiatrist who has helped Ramona. “And they can lead a patient by a thousand suggestions and implications, and by reinforcing what they do and don’t listen to.”

Ramona’s life was shattered in 1990 when daughter Holly, then a student at UC Irvine, confronted him over childhood sexual molestation she recalled during psychiatric treatment for the eating disorder bulimia. She later filed a lawsuit, which is pending.

Ramona, 49, denied abusing his daughter as a toddler. No criminal charges were filed.

But he soon lost his $300,000-a-year job as a vice president at the Robert Mondavi Winery. He was ostracized by friends, family and the Napa Valley community he called home for 20 years.

So he sued Western Medical Center-Anaheim and the therapists for $8 million, accusing them of implanting the molestation memories with improper suggestion and drug use. Holly Ramona, now 23, is scheduled to testify in her therapists’ defense.

Ramona’s attorney, Richard Harrington, opened his case Thursday by portraying a daughter who had been unhappy and overweight since childhood. He said she sought treatment as a UC Irvine college student while suffering from bulimia, only to be mishandled by a family counselor and a hospital psychiatrist.

The counselor, Marche Isabella, repeatedly insisted that bulimia was caused by childhood sexual abuse and that the subsequent use of the drug sodium amytal proved that Holly’s flashbacks were true, Harrington said. He said the accusations came despite repeated medical exams during childhood which showed no evidence of abuse.

Isabella finally confronted Ramona in an emotionally charged meeting.

“Confess that you raped your daughter,” Harrington quoted Isabella as saying. “We know because we gave her truth serum.”

As the defense prepared for its opening statements, Isabella flatly denied Harrington’s accounts of their confrontation in March 1990.

“I never accused him of raping his daughter,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with Gary Ramona. His daughter does.”

The trial is expected to take four to eight weeks.

Attorneys for the defendants, including Isabella and psychiatrist Dr. Richard Rose, say the pain was self-induced by Ramona’s actions with his daughter.

“We did not implant false memories,” said Rose. “The patient came to us with all the memories she reported to us.”

It’s “a creative attempt for a manipulative man to continue to manipulate,” Bruce Miroglio, Rose’s lawyer, told reporters. The therapists’ techniques were proper and professional, he said.

Another highly publicized California case supports the accuracy of some recovered memories. In 1991, a Redwood City, Calif., jury convicted George Franklin Sr. of the 1969 rape and murder of a childhood friend of his daughter Eileen. The conviction was based largely on the daughter’s sudden recall of the event as an adult.

Holly Ramona’s memories began surfacing in 1989, she said, when she was attending UC Irvine and seeking treatment for bulimia, the syndrome of repeated gorging and vomiting.

In the first weeks after Holly confronted him, Ramona called around the nation seeking advice from experts.

He talked to Pope, one of the nation’s leading experts on eating disorders.

“I became so angry at what had happened to him,” said Pope. “This was just so outrageous, I told him that we have to do something.” Pope’s partner, Dr. James Hudson, is due to testify for Ramona.

Other experts have joined with Ramona, including Dr. Martin Orne, a University of Pennsylvania Medical School psychiatrist who said in court documents that Holly’s sodium amytal treatment “can best be described as a form of ‘conning the patient.’ ”

Family counselors not involved in the case say “recovered memories” of childhood sexual abuse can be a minefield.

“I never suggest to clients that they are in denial and they are trying not to remember,” says Steven Gold, who practices in Santa Cruz County. “But there are some therapists who have hidden agendas.”

“I’m fighting for my daughter, first of all, but there are some 3,000 families that have similar problems with the false memory syndrome,” said Ramona outside court on Thursday. “She was told lies by this big hospital and the chief of psychiatrics and my loving word was suddenly gone.”