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Kirkus Review | Detriot Free Press
Copyright 1997 The Washington Post The Washington Post September 07, 1997, Sunday, Final Edition Recalling An Elusive Past Ann Rule SPECTRAL EVIDENCE deals in depth with an increasingly common phenomenon: recovered memory. I think that most of us view memory as a precise entity, never-changing, infallible, set in stone as part of the human psyche. Indeed, it is not. Elizabeth Loftus, perhaps the pre-eminent memory expert in America today, whose testimony is vital to the denouement of Spectral Evidence, says, "We want to believe -- in fact we need to believe -- [in our memories] because it affirms that our own minds work in an orderly way . . . In a chaotic world, where so much is out of control, we need to believe that our minds, at least, are under our command." The destruction that can be wrought by skewed and false "recovered memory" is achingly obvious in this searing look at the meltdown of Gary and Stephanie Ramona's family. Their luxurious lifestyle in the Napa Valley wine community was destroyed, along with Gary's soaring career in the management of an elite wine company, when their oldest daughter cried "Incest!" In a remarkably well-researched book, Moira Johnston shows the first crack in what seemed a family's firm foundation and then moves on with an unflinching eye as the crack becomes a chasm that nothing and no one can repair. Stephanie Ramona was beautiful, blond and sleek in the manner of Ivana Trump; her daughter Holly was plain. Moreover, Holly suffered from bulimia. "Steph" Ramona sought treatment for Holly from a therapist who saw incest everywhere, particularly in bulimic teenagers. Mother and daughter seemed almost equally suggestible and eager to embrace the picture of Gary Ramona as a monstrous abuser. A witch hunt began, an investigation that had virtually no basis in fact but roared on, a juggernaut. Marathon legal proceedings lay ahead, and numerous experts on both sides of the recovered memory question were consulted. Holly Ramona was in her late teens when she recalled memories of abuse; could a grotesquely molested child have buried all memory of the incidents for so many years? Some experts said absolutely not; others cited studies insisting that memory was capable of repressing almost anything in an effort to protect a person's sanity. Spectral Evidence is packed with close-up views of both charlatans and true experts in the field of human memory; the Ramonas eventually talked to both, and everyone in between, as their tug-of-war over Holly's memory continued. In an era where another California daughter's "memory" caused her father to be convicted of murder, Spectral Evidence is an important work. Anyone fascinated with the detours that memory can take will read this book with dawning horror. Faced with the charges Holly Ramona lobbed at him, Gary Ramona's friends and business associates rapidly drifted away. His corporate career faltered and plummeted, and he was soon an outcast in the wine industry. The fortune Gary worked so hard to build, the fortune that had given Steph and their three daughters a plush home and the extras most families never dream of, went to lawyers and therapists. This reader occasionally felt like shaking Steph Ramona, whose frantic behavior resembles Chicken Little's ("The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"). In the end, one's impatience with the catalyst of her family's destruction doesn't matter. What matters is how vulnerable some families are to suggestion, to inept therapists and to psychiatric theories of the moment. The Ramonas are neither the first nor the last family to be ripped apart by therapists who either unknowingly -- or deliberately -- play God. The Ramona trial in the spring of 1994 will stand as a legal landmark in repressed memory. But it did not reunite the Ramonas, nor did it convince Steph Ramona that she may have been wrong. With her cry of "A mother knows," she continues to carry a banner for a war that is over. "It's always 'poor Gary,' " she says. "Why don't people see the damage done to these kids?. . . There'll never be proof -- there can't be with this. . . . There is repressed memory. It exists . . . I know." Some portions of Spectral Evidence are overly long, some repetitive, but this is a must for anyone interested in how our memories can betray us. Ann Rule is a former policewoman and the author of 13 books on true-crime cases. |
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