Verdict Heats Up Memory Debate : ‘I Was Really Hurt by the Verdict’ : Reaction: Holly Ramona says the jury’s decision will undermine her attempt to recover damages from her father, who she alleges molested her.

Holly Ramona, who alleges she was molested for 11 years by her father, says she once again feels 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.

Although she was not 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 attempt to recover damages from him.

“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.”

Ramona filed a civil lawsuit against her father in 1990 alleging that he molested her throughout her childhood. She said her memories of abuse only began to surface earlier that year.

Her father responded in 1991 by suing the therapists who treated her. 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.

Holly Ramona said the verdict told her “there are an awful lot of people out there who don’t understand abuse, especially incest. 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 from ages 5 to 16--abuse she says gave rise to terrifying memories that first began to emerge as flashbacks.

She sought treatment from Marche Isabella, a family therapist, and later Dr. Richard Rose, who at the time was chairman of psychiatry at Western Medical Center Anaheim.

Holly Ramona said she has always feared her father and knew that when she tried to take him to court “all hell would break loose and he would go after me. But I didn’t know how.”

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 from his wife and his estrangement from Holly and two other daughters.

And she feels betrayed by the legal system.

“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.

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.

It may no longer be practical, Holly Ramona believes, to go to trial with her civil lawsuit.

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

Holly Ramona said she resents the implication that she could be made to believe she was raped if that had not occurred.

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

Ramona works as an intake worker in an Orange County psychiatric hospital that she declined to identify. Three nights a week, she attends Pepperdine University classes at an office building in Newport Beach.

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

She expects to obtain a master’s degree in psychology from Pepperdine in July and 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.”

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.

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.”