Articles Posted in Parental Alienation

The State of Arizona considered recently an addition to its list of factors in determining the award of custody to a parent in a divorce case. This proposed addition addresses an issue that I have seen many times in my many years of managing high conflict custody cases: the false allegation of domestic violence in a contested custody case.

A false allegation of domestic violence in a custody case often takes the form of an initial filing for an Emergency Order of Protection prior to, or at the same time, that a divorce is being filed. The parent filing the falsely alleged OP believes that he/she will gain an advantage in the divorce case by having the other parent removed from the marital home and estranged from the children.

I see these false claims in OPs being made by parents actively committing Parental Alienation.

Notes from last week’s Forensic Forum in Chicago: A most excellent program; cutting edge information and illuminating insights into managing PA cases.

Dr. Warshak captured in two hours the important clinical and legal management issues with PA cases. Judge Michele Lowrance made an important observation: many “targeted” parents act out in court; they cry, are angry, and show disappointment with the court. The alienating parent learns to be charming and composed. The result: the targeted parent gets reprimanded by the court, empowers the alienator, and fuels the PA fires further. Good observation and a word to the targeted wise. Says Dr. Warshak: “alienated parents need to learn to have a thick skin.”

One observation that wasn’t made I will make here: the best GALs contribute heavily to the early phases of the case, and the ultimate outcomes. Much deserved attention was placed by the panel on the roles of clinicians and 604(b)s in PA cases, but in my view, a wise and experienced GAL can be influential in an initial intervention and a properly managed outcome.

The Impact of Parental Alienation on Children

Every child has a fundamental need for love and protection.

Published on April 25, 2013 by Edward Kruk, Ph.D. in Co-Parenting After Divorce

Actor Jason Patric discusses his custody case with the mother of his child, conceived through in vitro fertilization. Patric had an ongoing relationship with the child’s mother, and acted as a Dad to the child after it was born. Due to California’s current laws relating to custody and IVF, Patric apparently has all of the standing for custody as the anonymous IVF donor, who supplied his genetic material to a sperm bank for money. Patric has further complications as he alleges the mother is actively alienating him from the child.

Some states impose a duty of child support on a father that provides his sperm for an IVF procedure. Efforts are being made to modify the California statute, to allow Dads who intended to be Dads of an IVF child to have legal standing for custody and visitation rights.

Recent published articles in the New York Times from Dylan Farrow, and subsequently in rebuttal Woody Allen, have brought into the light allegations that have arisen from what appears to have been a highly dysfunctional family environment. My reading of the articles, some of the trial evidence, as well as third party accounts, does not lead me or others to any conclusions as to whether the then 7 year old Dylan Farrow was sexually abused by Woody Allen, as she alleges.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/mia-farrow-threatening-1992-valentine-day-woody-allen-article-1.1605686

What is clear is that the relationship between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen was toxic. There is a suggestion that whether Allen committed any acts of abuse, or not, his former partner was highly vindictive toward him, resulting in what appears to be a very toxic parental alienation campaign. The articles state:

No parent wants to imagine a day when your child would refuse to speak to you. But estrangements between parents and adult children may be more common than you think. One expert calls it a “silent epidemic.”

Click here to watch the video.

Parental Alienation – A Corrosive Legacy By Judge Michele Lowrance

I have been a judge on the divorce bench for 16 years, and have watched the wreckage of the corrosive legacy of parental alienation and visitation interference play out over decades. We have no statistics for measuring this group, because the victims are too vast. But the concentric circles include the children, their children and the extended family as well. The declaration of war by one parent on another creates radioactive fallout, which contaminates for generations.

The alienating parent treats the target parent like a disease in the child that must be removed. They make the child’s survival contingent upon such removal. So the child must extricate the parent without the privilege of grieving the loss. These are crippling circumstances.

According to Alan Kemp in his book Abuse in the Family, domestic violence is defined as “A form of maltreatment perpetrated by a person with whom the victim has or had a close personal relationship.”

Says Joan T. Kloth-Zanard, RSS, LC: “This book is just one of many textbooks used to teach students and professionals about psychological maltreatment and the categories that make it up. Whether one believes in the term parental alienation or not, the following criteria helps to show that certain behavior perpetrated by a parent can cause a child to withdraw their love from the other parent. For the sake of this article, we will term this abuse as aggressive parenting.

Nine Signs of Aggressive Parenting:

By Kimberly Nichols

It was a glorious Southern California day in the beachside Balboa Park in San Diego as I sat in a flowering position on a yoga mat with 1,000 other people in the grass to hear renowned Buddhist Thich Nat Han deliver a talk on peace. After his discussion, he invited members of the audience to the stage to discuss difficult issues in their lives. One man walked up with trepidation and proceeded to tell us, with pain in his voice, about his current struggles with his ex-wife.

“I only see my son once every two weeks,” he described. “He spends the first full day of our visits locked in his room away from me and finally comes out to engage with me on the second day, at which time he proceeds to interact with me the same way my ex-wife does. It is clear that in his mom’s home, he is constantly fed grief and anger towards me. My wife’s projections onto him about her disappointments in our own relationship are so strong that my son has begun to view me in the same way that she does. By the end of our visit, when he finally warms up to me enough to crack a smile, it’s time for him to go home. What do I do to ease this situation without feeding in to the drama my wife is creating?”

Parental alienation has been a hot-button topic since Richard Gardner’s theory and the subsequent debate occurred. While the American Psychological Association never recognized Parental Alienation as a diagnostic label, many Court relied on expert testimony in this area in adjudicating custody disputes. The fact is that children do sometimes experience distance in their relationship with a parent. Recent research (Kelly and Johnson, 2001) confirms that there are many reasons for this distance, ranging from realistic estrangement, where a child is distant or rejects a parent who has abused him, to pathological alienation, where a child is distant or rejects a parent due to the influence of the other parent. The middle ground between these extremes contains children who display an allegiance for one parent over the other – who have not been subject to any dynamics of alienation or abuse. The allegiance shown by these children is often age and developmentally appropriate. Alienation exists but it is not a “one size fits all” label and discerning which type of alienation is present is the basis for determining the relative responsibilities of the parents for causing this alienation and, more importantly, helps to identify the necessary treatments for remedying it. Alienated children suffer (Fidler and Bala, 2010) and the ill effects of the alienation persist into adulthood (Baker 2005a, 2005b, 2007) It is critical for their best interest and safety that the problem be accurately identified and treated.

Credit: Dr. David Finn, Rolling Meadows, Illinois