Word: ramona
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...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...
...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...
Other characters include Benicia, the narrator's lover, whose most important characteristic seems to be her "nipples like sweet chestnuts;" Moucho Carroupo and his family, who all bear pockmarks on their foreheads which mark them as out-of-towners; the wealthy, eccentric old Miss Ramona and her mute Portuguese servant; Catuxa Bainte, an apparently retarded woman who prefers to go around topless; Robin Lebozan, who is writing a novel; and various local priests, each of whom have their favorite prostitutes...
BROUGHT TO THE STATES AS A TEENAGER FROM HIS native Puerto Rico, Domingo Arroyo quickly learned that America is not always the promised land. With his mother Ramona and younger brother Ramon, he grew up in a grim housing project in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and struggled with studies in high school. He saw military service as the path to a better life and seemed well on his way to achieving it. Six months short of completing a four-year tour in the Marine Corps, Private First Class Arroyo, 21 -- who had won a combat-action ribbon during Desert Storm -- pulled...