Is Parental Alienation Junk Science or Real?–

Parental alienation has long been a debate in the family courts

There is a great divide on whether parental alienation syndrome is real or junk science, and whether parental alienation is used byabusers or protectors. Tamra Judge and Lita Ford both have experienced child rejection after going through divorce. Lilia Luciano ofABC10 news explores this highly charged topic.

Kathleen Russell of Kathleen Russell Consulting says parental alienation is junk science, “because the family courts are so unregulatedPA gets used as a weapon.” She is of the belief that because Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is not in the DSM that it does notexist. Just because something is not in the DSM does not mean it does not exist however, as I will explain.

“Identifying replicable patterns of intercorrelations between symptoms, course, and outcome” is how schizophrenia was classified intothe DSM, even though schizophrenia remains elusive and a hypothesis.[1]

Rather than abandon the idea of schizophrenia clinicians set out to discover what was causing the symptoms, course, and outcome. I amnot calling parental alienation schizophrenia, what I am correlating is that parental alienation has specific symptoms, course, andoutcome.

Practically every parent who has experienced parental alienation during a child custody battle can describe a similar experience as theone that Richard Warshak describes in his most recentFB post:

A boy wrote a letter to his mother telling her that she belonged in a mental institution, that she was nothing to him, that she wasnothing but a screw-up, that she was sick, selfish, that he wanted to have nothing to do with her or any of her relatives, and that hehoped she died a horrible, painful death. In other words, this boy disowned his mother with the most aggressive, vile, and hatefullanguage.

This is real. And this does not mean the parent did anything wrong at all. It does not mean that they have bipolar disorder either. Iknow, because it happened to me. My son told me that I was bipolar and needed help and that he wanted nothing to do with me, that I wasscrewing up his life, and to leave him alone. You can imagine how our telephone conversations went, they didn’t. The conversations Imean. We didn’t have conversations anymore. If he answered the phone it was only to tell me to F*** off and never call him again. He wasonly 10 years old at the time. His father had put him through a campaign to remove him from my life over several years and he hadfinally given in. The courts were not putting an end to his father’s campaign so my son did all he had the power to do. If he appeasedhis father, like the courts had been doing, then he hoped to put an end to the reminders of the pain of thinking about me, and an end tohis father’s constant pressure to cut me out.

It wasn't until I learned about parental alienation that I figured out how to frame my case in the family courts and get my childrenback. If you are going through this, do not ignore it. Learn how to frame your case in your child custody suit. The other parent isusing this tactic to defeat you and convince the court that they are the better parent. And in the process they are torturing thechildren. You can visit me at www.fixfamilycourts.com/contact/. Let me know what you are goingthrough so we can help you find solutions for how to get your child back after the courts buy into the other parent's alienatingtactics.

How you address attacks on your character and your relationship with your child, and how you react are going to make a difference inyour case. If you ever want to really be able to exercise your joint custody and protect your child from loss of the benefits of sharedparenting, you have to get started now.

Parental alienation is a long-term process of interacting events. Not being listed in theDSM-5 does notmake it an all or nothing. I get what you are trying to convey Bob Saunders, but those that want to deny that parental alienation exists completely discount that whether or not PA can be described as a manifestclinical syndrome does not invalidate that there is a complex network of interacting events that are leading to specific outcomes.

“…understanding of etiology is not an all or none issue that can be resolved once and forever – it is a long-term process, withknowledge emerging in stages as a complex network of interacting events is elucidated. The consequence of defining diagnostic validityfirst in terms of the presence (or absence) of continuities and discontinuities at the level of manifest clinical syndromes is that mostcontemporary psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia with a pedigree stretching back to the 19th century, cannot yet be describedas valid disease categories. This does not mean, however, that they are not valuable concepts, and it is crucial to maintain a cleardistinction between validity and utility. At present, these two terms are often used as if they were synonyms.”[2]

You can watch the interview that Lilia Luciano on ABC 10 and see my responses to this discussion below the video. Lilia aired thissegment the day before Parental Alienation Awareness Day, also calledBubbles of Love Day.

One particularly important issue that I come across frequently when attending court hearings when assisting attorneys and parents isopposing counsel tries to block experts. They may try to use theDaubert's testto prevent your expert from testifying. Kathleen brings this test up in the video to prevent someone from using parental alienation. Ifthe court is picking on you about the technicalities surrounding parental alienation syndrome (PAS), don't despair, re-frame your caseso that you are presenting the behaviors and just stay away from calling it a syndrome. You are not there to prove that PA is asyndrome, you are there to prove that the other parent's alienating behaviors are interfering with your parent-child relationship, orcall it “coercive control.” (Coercive control gets used against both sides by the way, they can try to use it against you fighting tokeep your children in your lives. If you want to learn more about what you might face and how you can counter their tactics to gainadvantage over you, we have a membership site where we write more about these topics, training videos, and books. You can become amember here today and get off that custody roller coaster. Go into your next hearing confident and prepared.)

The outcomes are not good when a parent embarks upon the better parent model when their attorney tells them that this is how to winchild custody when they are trying to win joint custody. The children and the parents are all stripped of their fundamental rights, theparent goes broke trying to afford all of the hoops the attorney says are required in order to get enough evidence to show how good theyare and how bad the other parent is. This requires extensive discovery, lots of allegations, and getting the child on your side. Thisharms the child and is a violation of civil rights. The family court process commits constitutional violations that you are not beingmade aware of which is allowing things like parental alienation to take root. If these pitfalls and fallacies were identified earlierand addressed properly fewer parents would be driven into divorce bankruptcy, more children would be protected, and much of thisirreparable harm would be prevented.

Kathleen Russell complains about the thousands of dollars being used to fight alienating parents tearing children away from fit andloving parents and complains that the AFCC isteaching about parental alienation. Later Kathleen says that Dr. Childress' work is not valid because the very industry that hechallenges does not like what he teaches. She also says that only 5% of the time are children found to be lying. It seems, from thisinterview, that Kathleen presumes that whatever the mother and child say should be believed. I wonder what her statistics would be onhow often false allegations are made. Any parent that has gone through a custody battle knows that people supporting the current familycourt practices use labels to discredit to protect the abusive practices that they support.

Joe Sweeney is correct that the alienating parent uses tools in the court like domestic violence allegations to gain leverage in thechild custody case, and that in family court the standards are lower than in criminal court, so they are able to gain advantage usingthis method. Most of them are ex parte and the other parent is rarely able to overcome this taint on their reputation and the impressionthat this made on the judge.

Shortly after this statement by Joe, one of the parents commenting on the sidebar asked what about parents who have 50/50 and the otherparent is embarking on poisoning the child against the other equal parent and interfering with their parenting time. My response isthis: The majority of the time when a parent is trying to turn a child on the other parent (poisoning their mind, brainwashing thechild), even in 50/50 situations, they are not happy that they didn't get the judge to cut the other parent out so they are usuallybuilding their case to take back to modify after they get the child on their side to use the child as their tool to get what they didn'tget the first time.

Dr. Richard A. Warshak has a wealth of information,books, and studies on parentalalienation, J Michael Bone, PhD – Parental Alienation has some easy to understand YouTube videos and is great with teaching yourattorney about parental alienation, andRyan Thomas who was a child of alienationnow teaches parents how to navigate their relationship through the parental alienation and have a relationship with their child again.Parents going through this need to try to minimize the harm while continuing to work to re-connect with their child. Regardless of whatanyone calls what is happening to you, you know that what is happening is damaging your child and your relationship with that child. Ihope that you all find the tools that you need to put an end to the destruction that these family courts are wreaking on you and yourfamily. Understanding what is happening is the first step in succeeding in this battle.

The discussion briefly turns to child support and how it is calculated. We have an equal protection argument on child support. If youare interested in learning more about this become a member to read more on that issue.

Lilia Luciano then makes a nice transition off of the child support issue, where she acknowledges that there are incentives for peopleto fight over children even if they are not interested in parenting. My response to her is that I think that a deeper investigation intowhy some parents walk away would frequently reveal an alienating parent in the mix. I believe that fewer parents would walk away fromtheir child if they were being protected from a parent frustrating their ability to have a relationship with their child and if theprocess didn't discriminate against them for choices they made during the marriage. Our book can answer a lot of your questions, it iscalled, NOT in the Child's Best Interest. If you are a member, you can read the entire book online here.

Kathleen Russell’s response to Lilia’s question of whether a parent can limit another parent after the other parent has not beeninvolved in the child’s life for two years is that “Anytime you step into the courts you open a Pandora’s box” and that usually theparent trying to limit the other parent’s time is usually punished. She talks about how a parent who has no relationship can swoop inand get 50/50 custody. What she doesn’t explain is the reason that this happens with the exception that the absent parent can show thatthe other parent intentionally cut them out and frustrated their attempts to have that relationship for no valid legal reasons, is thatbecause the courts are operating under lowered standards you get different results all over the board; what normally should be an easyabandonment case turns into a multi-year bankrupting, extremely devastating and stressful process that ultimately ends up harming thechild more than the child having both fit and loving parents involved in their lives even with disagreements and differences would havehad.

Lilia then asks what kinds of systems should we have in place to prevent a good parent from being removed form a child’s life, howlikely is that to happen, and also in the case of abuse, what should be in place to prevent them from ending up in the custody of anabuser when they cannot meet the standards set by the court?

Joe Sweeney says that we need highly trained experts to diagnose, more oversight, and electronic reporting so that data can be collectedto show what is happening in family courts.

If you know us, you know that we advocate for less expensive solutions for protecting parents and their children. The first step inprotecting children is for parents to learn their constitutional rights and to insist that their attorney protect those. Without those,you will continue to need expensive experts and the court will continue to be a Pandora’s box. You can limit the court to just abuse ora disagreement that the court has legitimate power to assist with, and thereby limit the courts from limiting you and how you parentyour child.

There needs to be more talk about keeping the courts out of each of these parent's lives and business. Diagnosing the parents is onlynecessary after there is damage. If the process was protective of rights from the beginning, there wouldn't be anything to fight overregarding the child, there would be no incentive to poison the child's mind, there wouldn't be any need to diagnose the parents. Thiswould also allow real abuse to surface and be taken seriously.

The most important thing all families need to receive proper protection is to protect rights. Hiring highly trained experts isexpensive. This process needs to be changed. The family court process is too expensive and is bankrupting families emotionally,physically, and financially.

Start building your parental alienation toolbox now with the following:

Divorce Poison

Parental Alienation book on Dealing with Hostile Aggressive Parenting by Joan Kloth Zanard

Not in the Child’s Best Interest (or save money and readonline here)

Erasing Family – Movie being produced by Ginger Gentile

Ryan Thomas video on How to Reconnect with Your Alienated Child

Alienated parents you will need tools to not only help you reconnect with your alienated child, but also to know how to ward off attacksfrom your children and others. AfterTamra Judge cameout and told the public that she had been alienated, the alienating parent and alienated child came out with the claims that arefrequently made in alienation.

I don't knowTamra Judge or the circumstancesin her case or anything about Tamra Judge's alienated child. I do know that when children are being alienated they can be taught that aparent not cooking meals for them is not feeding them, they can be taught that it was horrible and neglectful for a parent to feed themcereal for dinner, etc. I do not personally know Tamra Judd and cannot say what the details are behind this child’s belief. I can tellyou that my children would make the complaint that they had no food in my house when they compared me to their father’s massivebarbecues and the fact that he was a more traditional guy who liked to sit down at a dinner table at a set hour in the evening witheveryone there and eat formally at a table, whereas I was more informal. Celebrities tend to have crazy schedules and this makes it veryeasy to paint to a child that any deviation from what one parent chooses is abnormal or abusive.

[Sorry, this video has been taken down] Dr. Steve Miller on Why Courts Fail to Recognize Parental Alienation.

Patrick Glynn, and alienated father and advocate shares how Title IV-D impacts parental alienation and helps you to follow the moneythat incentivizes the courts to empower parental alienation.

Want to watch more about the corrupt family court process and how they use children and money to manipulate the results, watch the movieDivorce Corp.

Now you are ready to start learning about how the courts will bully you and try to get you to give in to them and concede your rights.Kristi Beck with Mommy Interrupted interviews Sherry Palmer with Fix Family Courts talks about their system of support and how theyempower parents in child custody battles. Hear about how your child loves you for who you are, and how the court's imposing their ideaof the perfect parent harms your child.

More from Kristi Beck on Spreaker with Mommy Interrupted.

Resources:

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181977/[2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181977/