Daughter in Memory Case Feels Betrayed : Law: The Irvine resident believes jury’s decision to side with her father against therapists ‘gave him ammunition to attempt to destroy me more.’

Four years after she summoned the courage to confront her father over what she claims were 11 years of repeated molestation, Holly Ramona says she is once again shattered and betrayed--this time by a jury’s decision to side with him against the therapists she believes helped her overcome her nightmarish childhood.

Though she wasn’t the target of the May 13 malpractice verdict that awarded her father, Gary Ramona, $500,000 in damages, Holly Ramona sees the decision as a personal affront that will also seriously undermine her own attempt to win acknowledgment in court that he had abused her.

“I was really hurt by the verdict,” Ramona said Friday evening in an interview at her Irvine apartment. “The jury, whether they meant to or not, gave him ammunition to attempt to destroy me more.”

The Napa Valley Superior Court jury concluded that Holly Ramona’s therapists “negligently reinforced” false memories of abuse and ordered them and a hospital to pay damages to Gary Ramona, who had filed suit in 1991.

The verdict told Holly Ramona “there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t understand abuse, especially incest,” Ramona said. “I think people are afraid to look at reality. I don’t think it makes sense to them.”

The 23-year-old Pepperdine University graduate student said she still has no doubts that her father repeatedly molested her when she was between the ages of 5 and 16--abuse she claims gave rise to terrifying memories that first began to emerge as flashbacks in 1990, when she was a student at UC Irvine.

Ramona originally sought therapy from Marche Isabella, a family therapist, for bulimia and depression, before undergoing an interview at Western Medical Center-Anaheim administered--at her request--under the influence of the hypnotic drug sodium amytal. The purpose of the session, Ramona contends, was to confirm that her memories of abuse were accurate.

Isabella and Dr. Richard Rose, formerly chairman of psychiatry at Western, helped her cope with the memories, which began before the therapy began, she said. Both were ordered to pay part of the damages in the jury verdict.

Holly Ramona said she emerged stronger from the therapy. “I have gotten my self-respect back and my right to speak,” she said.

She said she still suffers flashbacks and spontaneous anxiety attacks, often triggered by changes in the weather or the scent of after-shave lotion she associates with the abuse but can’t explain. She said she has always feared her father. She knew that when she took him to court “all hell would break loose and he would go after me. But I didn’t know how.”

And now she feels betrayed by the legal system as well.

“I always thought that all you had to do was just walk into court and just tell the truth and things would work out OK,” she said.

She believes the jury seemed less concerned about her suffering than the losses her father sustained from her accusation--his loss of a $400,000 job as a winery executive, his divorce and his estrangement from Holly and two other daughters.

Although jury foreman Thomas Dudum stressed after the verdict that jurors were still uncertain whether Holly was molested, Gary Ramona said he believed he had been vindicated.

Nevertheless, it may no longer be practical, Holly Ramona believes, to go to trial with her lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages. The suit is pending in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Joel Baruch, Holly Ramona’s lawyer, agreed that the jury verdict “has caused some major problems” but said he still hopes to persuade a judge that Ramona deserves her day in court. He added, however, that any jury hearing Ramona’s lawsuit would “know there has been a decision and it has been adverse to Holly. That is what they will remember.”

“It was a clever move,” Ramona said of her father’s lawsuit. “I think he knew exactly what he was doing. He doesn’t look bad. He looks like the victim.”

Gary Ramona and his attorney could not be reached for comment on Holly Ramona’s remarks.

Holly Ramona, who graduated from UC Irvine and expects to obtain a master’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine University in July, said she resents the implication that she could be made to believe abuse if it hadn’t occurred.

“If anyone should be held responsible for their memories, it should be me,” she protested. “They were good therapists and they helped me and this is what they get for it?”

On Friday, Ramona smiled easily as she moved about her sparsely furnished apartment, whose condition, she said, reflected that her father has cut her off from financial help.

Ramona said she works by day as an intake worker in an Orange County psychiatric hospital, which she declined to identify. Three nights a week, she attends Pepperdine classes at an office building in Newport Beach. Ramona said she relishes the newfound independence and assertiveness she gained through therapy, a confidence she said contrasts sharply with her demeanor as a quiet, obedient girl growing up in an economically privileged family in Napa Valley. Back then, she said, she was afraid to do or say anything that would cross her parents.

One of the beneficial side effects of the court battle, Ramona said, is that it has drawn her closer to her mother and sisters, who have stood by her. She said she also has received support from friends at school and work.

Despite all the trauma they have caused, Ramona says she is grateful that the painful memories resurfaced because they helped her explain the “strange relationship” she had with her father and gain control over eating binges and depression that had made her consider suicide.

She said she wants to work as a child therapist. “I know what it feels like to grow up in a family that is dysfunctional,” she said, “and I want to help.”

Ramona is concerned about the potential effect the verdict may have on mental health professionals. The verdict, which may be appealed, could set legal precedent, opening the door for non-patients to sue therapists on the grounds they were harmed by the outcome of therapy.

People in therapy, especially victims of child abuse, will be worried that anything they say to their therapists about parents, spouses and others could become part of a court record, she said.

“Patients want to feel safe, that they have privacy, and all of a sudden we are being told we can’t have it,” she said.

Ramona said she is “trying to make sense out of all this. . . .

“Maybe my role in this is just to speak out. My main goal now is to help other victims of child abuse. I want to get the message out it can happen in those ‘perfect’ families where everything appears fine.”