Dubious Memories

By Jill Smolowe

In the view of one psychiatric expert, Holly Ramona exhibited the telltale symptoms of sexual abuse. She dreamed repeatedly of a snake crawling up her vagina, refused gynecological examinations, and feared men with pointy canine teeth -- the kind of teeth that reminded her of her father, whom she had accused of sexually abusing her. She had an aversion to whole bananas, melted cheese and mayonnaise -- items, it was claimed, that reflected her trauma over having to perform oral sex on her father.

Last week, however, a jury in Napa, California, decided that the real culprit in Holly's trauma was not her father but two therapists who helped her "remember" the alleged abuse. The verdict came in an extraordinary malpractice suit filed by Holly's father Gary Ramona. He claimed that the therapists had planted ideas of abuse in an already unstable mind -- and in the process ruined his life. By agreeing with him, the jury struck a serious blow against the increasingly controversial technique of recovered-memory therapy.

Holly's therapy began in 1989, when she was suffering from bulimia. Her worried mother Stephanie consulted Marche Isabella, a family counselor, who told her -- inaccurately -- that up to 80% of all bulimia cases are caused by childhood sex abuse. After a few months of therapy with Isabella, Holly began having flashbacks of her father abusing her. Eventually she claimed to have remembered a dozen incidents of abuse and rape between the ages of five and eight. Later Holly asked to be treated with sodium amytal, which she hoped would elicit the truth. Isabella enlisted psychiatrist Dr. Richard Rose to help administer the drug. Rose wrote in his notes that the sodium amytal helped Holly "remember specific details of sexual molestation."

A day after the drug treatment, Gary Ramona came to the hospital for a meeting arranged by Holly. He claims he found a daughter still groggy from the sodium amytal. Holly sleepily accused him of raping her, he said, and then Isabella and his wife Stephanie urged him to "confess" for Holly's good. The next day, Stephanie served Gary with divorce papers. Rumors of abuse reached the Robert Mondavi winery, where Ramona was a $400,000-a-year vice president. He charges that as a direct result he was dismissed within the year.

Ramona's attorney, Richard Harrington, called on expert witnesses to discredit Isabella's and Rose's therapeutic techniques. Harvard bulimia expert Harrison Pope presented a paper stating that there is "no relationship" between childhood sexual abuse and the development of bulimia. Martin Orne, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist who pioneered research of hypnosis and sodium amytal, wrote in a court brief that the drug is "not useful in ascertaining 'truth' . . . The patient becomes sensitive and receptive to suggestions due to the context and to the comments of the interviewers." Dr. Lenore Terr, a prominent defender of recovered memories and a chief witness for the defense, admitted under questioning that at least one of Holly's "flashbacks" -- of being forced to perform oral sex on the family dog -- was dubious. That admission helped cast doubt on all of Holly's sex-abuse memories.

In finding against the therapists, 10 to 2 (a unanimous vote was not required in the civil case), the jury awarded Ramona only $500,000 of the $8 million in damages he had sought. Still, he hailed the verdict as a "tremendous victory." Said jury foreman Thomas Dudum: "We felt that there was nothing done ((by the therapists)) that was malicious. It was more a case of negligence." The ruling does not answer the question of what happened to Holly Ramona. (No criminal charges have been filed against her father.) But it will almost certainly make recovered-memory therapists more cautious about how they try to unravel such questions in the future.

With reporting by James Willwerth/Napa