Falsely Accused of Parental Alienation

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July 21, 2007

Falsely Accused of Parental Alienation: Links * Info
Posted by evanlee21 under Parental Alienation Syndrome Tags: Court, custody, domestic abuse, Parental Alienation Syndrome

How “Parental Alienation Syndrome” is Used Against Mothers And Children Who Allege Child Sexual Abuse by Trish Wilson

PAS is set up in such a way that regardless of what the child or mother may do or say, all behavior and statements will not be believed. Either the children and mother are delusional or they are lying. Karen stated that the court appointed evaluator for the children believed that the children’s therapists — those not appoint ed by the court — were “abusing them by believing them,” which fits in beautifully with treatment for PAS. http://www.feminista.com/archives/v1n2/wilson.html

The Truth About Parental Alienation Syndrome And The American Psychological Association compiled by Trish WilsonWhen children reject their abusive fathers, it is common for the batterer and others to blame the mother for alienating the children. They often do not understand the legitimate fears of the child. http://members.aol.com/asherah/meier1.html

Parental Alienation Syndrome: A Paradigm for Child Abuse in Australian Family Law by Dr. Elspeth McInnes I want to begin by drawing attention to the public acknowledgement at the highest levels of Family Law reform and administration in Australia of a continuing systemic failure to protect children from serious abuse. Both the Family Law Council (2002) report titled ‘Family Law and Child Protection’ and the Family Court’s Magellan Project (Brown et al. 1999, 2001) have recognised that children who are subject to serious abuse are not protected from continuing abuse in the current Family Court system. Interim orders are made without reference to histories of domestic violence and allegations of abuse, which are treated as untested and therefore unreliable (Altobelli 2001). The trivialisation, disbelief and dismissal of child abuse allegations is underpinned by a presumptive paradigm that allegations of child abuse in divorce proceedings are the product of vengeful and vindictive mothers. http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/hpw/documents/mcinnes-parental.doc

Expert Dr. Robert Geffner: Courts Under the Thrall of Dangerous “Parental Alienation Syndrome” Myth Award Custody to Violent, Abusive ParentsChild abuse experts Dr. Robert Geffner warns that “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) is junk science – a psychiatric “disorder” that isn’t recognized by any mental health or medical association, isn’t supported by research, and hasn’t even been published in established peer-reviewed professional journals. But PAS has been used by the courts to award sole custody of hundreds of children to the parents accused of sexually or physically abusing them.Worse is a process that turns justice on its head by demonizing the parent who is trying to protect their child and has made statements about them being abused. “Many professionals connected with the courts are operating under the influence of and acting on a dangerous myth. PAS is fictitious, but the life-long damage it has inflicted on countless children is only too real,” Geffner says. Both children who are exposed to intimate partner violence and those who are physically or sexually abused often are affected throughout their life span if the abuse is not recognized and treated. Many adults experience symptoms ranging from anxiety, sleeplessness, and panic attacks to a recurrent inability to trust other adults and form stable relationships but don’t connect those problems to their childhood history of abuse. http://www.alliant.edu/wps/wcm/connect/website/News+and+Events/News+Center/News+Releases/June+2006+-+Expert+Dr.+Robert+Geffner:+Courts+under+thrall+of+dangerous+%22Parental+Alienation+Syndrome%22+Myth+Award+Custody+to+Violent,+Abusive+Parents

Parental Alienation Syndrome: When is ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’ a False Allegation?
There is no protection, under the PAS theory for children who have actually sufferred physical, sexual or emotional abuse, due to such abuse being virtually impossible to ‘prove’, due to the childs age and general legal disbelief of children’s disclosures…We are aware of situations where protective fathers have been denied contact for many convoluted and unjust reasons, and where residential fathers have systematically alienated children from the non residential mother. However,parental alientation SYNDROME has not been an issue in those situations. http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060627_ctgrant.184a360.html

Fighting Over the Kids: Battered spouses take aim at a controversial custody strategy.
…according to one 2004 survey in Massachusetts by Harvard’s Jay Silverman, 54 percent of custody cases involving documented spousal abuse were decided in favor of the alleged batterers. Parental alienation was used as an argument in nearly every case.
This year the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges denounced the theory as “junk science,” and at least four states have passed legislation to curtail its use in custody cases involving allegations of domestic violence. “It’s really been a cancer in the family courts,” says Richard Ducote, an attorney in Pittsburgh who has represented abuse victims in custody cases for 22 years.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870310/site/newsweek/

The Truth About Parental Alienation
This past year (2006) the American Bar Association’s Children’s Legal Rights Journal published an article that undertook a comprehensive analysis of the scientific, legal and policy issues involved in the evidentiary admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome, and found that there was no support for its use. Also this past year, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges published a judges bench book that also found no scientific or legal basis for admission of parental alienation. Further, it cautioned:And the 1996 Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential“PAS’s twenty-year run in American courts is an embarrassing chapter in the history of evidentiary law. It reflects the wholesale failure of legal professionals entrusted with evidentiary gatekeeping intended to guard legal processes from the taint of pseudo-science…. As a matter of science, law, and policy PAS should remain inadmissible in American courts.” http://harfordmedlegal.typepad.com/forensics_talk/2007/07/the-truth-about.html

Rev. Anne Grant: The discredited ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’
Abusers with money or other forms of influence, skilled at terrorizing their families, easily gain the upper hand. Their children, suffering nightmares and stomach ailments, refuse to visit them. The abusive parent charges the protective parent with “brainwashing” the children, and wins sole custody…The so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome, touted by many in the Rhode Island Family Court, has been discredited by the American Psychological Association and, recently, by both the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the Children’s Legal Rights Journal. For more than a decade, I have witnessed the devastating effects of this strategy in Rhode Island courtrooms and families.Abusers often pride themselves on a no-nonsense parenting style that may appeal to judges. They typically show little concern for their children. Some pursue the children to torment their ex-partner or to avoid paying child support. Some force the children to deliver intelligence on the ex-partner, for protracted litigation against the protective parent. Threatened by a brutal, angry, demanding parent, the children frequently suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and worse.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060627_ctgrant.184a360.html

Family court ‘is an ex’s revenge’: BBC News (January 18, 2005).
They say they law isn’t biased and in the way the law is worded it isn’t, but the way it is operated it is. Bias really does exist.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4184411.stm

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