Protect Children from Alienation
Few family law cases are as heartbreaking as those involving Parental Alienation Syndrome. In PAS cases one parent has turned his or her children against the other parent, destroying the loving bonds the children and the target parent once enjoyed. Unfortunately, women’s advocate Rev. Anne Grant misunderstands PAS, portraying it as a nonexistent fraud in her June 27 column “The discredited ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome.’†Grant claims that judicial recognition of PAS has had “devastating effects†on families, and cites a few cases where abusive or allegedly abusive fathers have used PAS to win shared or sole custody.
Grant is correct that there are fathers who have alienated their own children through their abuse or personality defects, and who attempt to shift the blame to their children’s mothers by falsely claiming PAS. Yet parental alienation is a common, well-documented phenomenon. For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 “high conflict” divorce cases over a 12 year period and found that elements of PAS were present in the vast majority of the cases studied.
In family law cases, false accusations of any and all types of maltreatment, including PAS, are used to gain advantage. Since false accusations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse are common, should we then conclude that battering and molestation don’t exist?
The pain and heartache PAS causes children would be hard to overstate. One prominent example is the LaMusga case decided by the California Supreme Court in 2004. In that case, Gary LaMusga’s son’s kindergarten teacher testified that the kindergarten boy told her “my dad lies in court,” and said that his mother had told him this. The teacher explained:
“I finally sat down with him and told him that it was OK for him to love his daddy. I basically gave him permission to love his father. And he seemed brightened by that…I’m not sure that he was aware that he could do that.”
Family law mediators J. Michael Bone, Ph.D. and Michael R. Walsh explain that in PAS situations children “live in a state of chronic upset and threat of reprisal†and fear abandonment. Bone and Walsh note that when children “express positive approval of the absent parent, the consequences can be very serious…The child is continually being put through various loyalty tests…the alienating parent thus forces the child to choose [between] parents…in direct opposition to a child’s emotional well being.â€
Grant claims that in PAS cases abusers “easily gain the upper hand…The abusive parent charges the protective parent with ‘brainwashing’ the children, and wins sole custody.†Yet such custody transfers are rare. Courts lean heavily towards mothers as custodial parents, and are hesitant to undo existing custody arrangements. Even in the high-profile cases publicized by critics of PAS, the courts usually had good reason to transfer custody from the mothers to the fathers.
In one case highlighted by PBS in Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories, their 2005 documentary on PAS, the filmmakers claimed that the mother had unjustly lost custody of her daughter to her ex-husband. Yet it was subsequently revealed that a California Juvenile Court had found the mother culpable of multiple acts of child abuse and the court transferred custody to the father to protect the girl.
The two most famous PAS cases of recent times are the Bridget Marks and Amy Neustein cases. In both instances mothers lost custody of their daughters after making false allegations of sexual abuse. Marks garnered widespread media sympathy from Bill O’Reilly, Dr. Phil, Larry King and others, yet all five judges ruling on the case concluded that Marks had coached her girls to believe they had been sexually molested by their father.
Neustein’s now adult daughter, Sherry Orbach, publicly refuted her mother’s claims last year, writing that when she was a child her mother “would begin by telling me a sordid–and false–story about my father…She then instructed me to repeat the story word for word until she was satisfied with my rendition.†According to Orbach:
“My father never sexually abused me…I…owe my existence as a normal young adult to the family judges…who helped me reunite with my father in the face of considerable opposition in the media.â€
Grant claims that PAS “has been discredited by the American Psychological Association.†In reality, the APA has given mixed messages on PAS, which is reflective of the larger controversy over it.
This controversy is largely political. Children are vulnerable and impressionable, and parents in emotionally-charged divorces are quite capable of using them as tools of their anger. It is true that family courts must weed out false claims of PAS made by abusive or manipulative parents. It is also true that courts must act decisively to protect children from the emotional abuse inflicted by alienating ones.
This column first appeared in the Providence Journal (7/7/06).Providence Journal
Jeffery M. Leving is the Chairman of the Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood. He is the author of the book Fathers’ Rights: Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father Involved in a Custody Dispute. His website is www.dadsrights.com.Glenn Sacks’ columns on men’s and fathers’ issues have appeared in dozens of America’s largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at www.GlennSacks.com or via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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July 13th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
This reply to Grant’s claims is excellent and timely. However, how are we to compare this common sense understanding of the very real phenomenon of parental alienation, “syndrome” or not, with this press release from The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence? Check out who the Leadership Council are. These are not insignificant people in the field.
The press release links to two things, one is the 2006 edition of “Navigating Custody and Visitation Evaluations in Cases with Domestic Violence: A Judge’s Guide,†published by The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (1700 family court judges are members). The Leadership Council provide an excerpt which claims the APA have said that “… there are no data to support the phenomenon called parental alienation syndrome …â€. The APA’s web site has a verson of the statement which reads “An APA 1996 Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family noted the lack of data to support so-called “parental alienation syndrome”, and raised concern about the term’s use. However, we have no official position on the purported syndrome.” (Their emphasis).
The one relevant survey cited is ten years old, the APA say there is a lack of data to support the syndrome, not that there is no data, nor that studies have shown it to be nonexistent, and they have no official position on the matter. Nevertheless, the Judge’s guide deems this to mean that the APA have “discredited” the syndrome and while it recognizes that children can be manipulated into criticism of a parent it also says “Any testimony that a party to a custody case suffers from the syndrome or “parental alienation†should therefore be ruled inadmissible and/or stricken from the evaluation report”. That is, the alienation of a parent cannot be described as such and a psychologist who does so risks worsening the situation of the alienated parent.
The other link from the Leadership Council’s press release is to a new paper by Jennifer Hoult (look her up, really) which systematically attacks the use of PAS as a defense in court both from its record in the courts and with claims that it derives from theories intended to excuse pedophilia and is thus used by pedophiliacs as a means to remain in contact with their victims. The paper is problematic in many ways, much of the reasoning is distinctly suspect. I sincerely hope that someone with some authority is able to examine some of its problems because it looks alarmingly like hysteria mongering and patriphobia dressed up in formal, academic terms.
Check out, in particular, the last paragraph of section V. The word “patriarchy” is liberally spread around and PAS is explicitly described in gender specific terms, which it is not. The effort to demonize proponents of PAS is clear.
Some of the science behind PAS so far may have its problems, and PAS may have been used inappropriately in court, but that does not mean the phenomenon of parental alienation does not exist nor that it should be rejected out of hand. To do so is to betray good parents and leave children in the hands of abusers. It is frightening that such heavyweights have come out against it.
July 13th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
A `SYNDROME’ IN PSYCHOLOGY IS SIMPLY AN
ARTICULATED SET OF _SYMPTOMS_ WHICH COLECTIVELY
ARE HELD TO INDICATE A LIKELY CONDITION OR
DISORDER.
DESCRIBING SOMETHING AS A `SYNDROME’ IS NOT TO
DIGNIFY IT WITH ANY OFFICIAL STATUS OR CONFER
SCIENTIFIC OR OTHER RECOGNITION OR ACCECPTANCE.
IN PAS THE SYNDROME IS A _CHILD_ SHOWING AVERSION
TO ONE PARENT AND A CERTAIN UNUSUAL PATTERN OF
SOLICITUDE TOWARD THE OTHER. A _PARTY_ TO A
CUSTODY CASE IS NOT IN ANY EVENT—ESSENTIALLY `BY
DEFINITION’—GOING TO `HAVE’ OR EXHIBIT THE
SYNDROME!
IN MOST INSTANCES LEVING AND SACKS SHOULD SAY
`PARENTAL ALIENATION’ RATHER THAN `PARENTAL
ALIENATION SYNDROME’ AS A MATTER OF PROPER USE OF
THE LANGUAGE—WITHOUT ANY NORMATIVE IMPLICATIONS.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
[...] Protect Children from AlienationMen’s News Daily, CA - 8 hours ago… For example, a longitudinal study published by the American Bar Association in 2003 followed 700 high conflict divorce cases over a 12 year period and … [...]
July 14th, 2006 at 6:20 am
Yes PA/PAS is harmful to children, but since its mostly women who do it we have to ignore it for political reasons. Besides, eliminating this conflict just for the sake of children having a decent life with both parents would eliminate a lot of money for sleazy lawyers, and we can’t have that!