                        Chicago Tribune
                           5/15/94
                 New York Times News Service

            Dad accused of incest wins memory suit

    NAPA, Calif.--In a landmark legal decision, a Napa County jury has awarded
$500,000 to a father who had accused psychotherapists of conning his adult
daughter into remembering childhood incidents of incest he said never occurred.
    The case, tried over two months, was the first in which a non-patient
challenged therapists who treat patients with the much-debated technique known
as recovered memory.
    The technique is said to involve the use of leading questions and other
agressive memory-enhancing procedures to prod patients into remembering events
that were so traumatic their minds repressed them.
    Mental health experts said that, as a result of Friday's jury decision, the
technique, as well as those who practice it, probably will come under closer
scrutiny.
    The plaintiff in Friday's case, Gary Ramona, a 50-year-old former winery
executive, had asked for $8 million in damages from two therapists, Marche
Isabella, a social worker, and Richard Rose, a psychiatrist.
    Ramona charged that, through their questioning of his daughter, Holly, now
23, they had planted in her mind the notion that he sexually molested her as a
child, a charge the therapists rejected.
    In a statement issued immediately after the verdict was announced, Ramona
said: "This is a tremendous victory.  This verdict means that he jury saw what
I've always known: that Holly's supposed memories are the result of the
defendants' drugs and quackery, not anything I did."
    Some therapists who specialize in treating victims of incest and rape rely
heavily on recovered memory.
    But Friday's decision, in which the alleged attacker emerged victorious,
provides new ammunition for critics of recovered memory, who are expected to
contend with renewed vigor that the technique skews the give-and-take between
therapist and patient, borders on quackery and underscores a need for closer
monitoring of the ways in which therapists are trained and regulated.

