Gary Ramona

The Ramona false memory case concerns a California man, Gary Ramona, who successfully sued psychiatrists who supposedly implanted false memories of abuse into his daughter. This was the first instance of a lawsuit against a therapist over implanted memories. It was also the first instance of a person who was not a patient bringing a malpractice suit in this field.

Background Gary Ramona, married to Stephanie Ramona, was a vice president for worldwide marketing of Robert Mondavi Winery and made an annual salary of $400,000. Daughter Holly Ramona, a student at the University of California, Irvine, had experienced bulimia and depression and sought treatment in the beginning of 1990. Isabella stated that sexual abuse affected 60–70% of her patients experiencing eating disorders. Isabella had not received much training in the eating disorder realm although initial reports stated that this was her specialty. Western Medical chief of psychiatry Richard Rose also treated Holly Ramona. administered by Rose, which was meant to recover memories.

Lawsuit In Napa County Superior Court,

Terr was cross-examined on whether Holly Ramona's flashbacks of abuse were accurate, and she stated that the one in which Holly gave a dog oral sex was not accurate. During the trial, Harrison Pope, a Harvard University physician and expert on bulimia, stated that bulimia was not influenced by one being sexually assaulted as a child.

B. Drummond Ayres Jr. of The New York Times stated that the decision bolstered critics against the repressed memory theory.

In the Harvard Law Review, Bowman and Mertz published an analysis of the Ramona case in the context of California courts’ history of third-party tort liability. They reported that the Ramona case was “atypical” and a “major diversion from the current state of tort law.” No adequate precedent for the third-party responsibility imposed in Ramona was found, and the authors concluded that the legal system should not hear future lawsuits imposing similar third-party liability upon therapists.

Legacy Author Moira Johnston wrote the 1997 book Spectral Evidence: The Ramona Case: Incest, Memory, and Truth on Trial in Napa Valley.