The Ignored Epidemic, Kids have a Right to an Equal Relationship with Both Parent's #StopErasingParents

I have stood powerless, forced to stand idol as my child’s legitimate need for help was undermined by his mother’s campaign to undermine her son’s previously daily relationship with his father. Professionals trained to identify child abuse have made decisions or simply ignored situations based on personal prejudices, sympathy, apathy, malice, or some other personal bias. Even if these underlying assumptions of “mom is acting in the child’s best interest” and “dad is abusive and trying manipulate the situation” existed, these mandatory reporters have the responsibility to report, investigate and validate their assumptions. This position in our case has made these professionals responsible for our son’s mental health complicit in a parent’s actions resulting in the abuse of her child. 

By psychiatric standards, parental alienation is a relationship dysfunction between a child and a parent. Alienation takes place when one parent tries to “brainwash” children into thinking the other parent is bad and that they should not want to spend time with them anymore. The set of abusive behaviors involved can be very harmful to children’s emotional health and often include psychological manipulation and/or bullying of a child to choose between their two parents. According to the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, parental alienation is domestic violence via psychological maltreatment.

Career mental health professionals have borne witness to and documented a child’s unwarranted disrespect, hostility, or and fear from where it had not previously existed.  The patterns extensively documented by professionals in the initial six months of our case match that of psychological abuse.  The most notable example being the psychological evaluation completed at the request of Maine Behavioral Healthcare on our son and was largely excluded from subsequent proceedings. In the resulting reports, Dr. Daniel Hamilton documented seven widely accepted signs and symptoms of psychological abuse including extreme behavioral changes over the two months completing his examination of our son. One extreme reaction has been used to justify the next reaction without proof or one professional inquiring as to the nature of a child’s escalating responses even as contact was further diminished following each incident. It has been easier for career professionals to attribute a sons extreme rejection of his father to some elusive abuse committed by a father largely excluded from his child’s life rather than acknowledge a mothers desire to create distance and gain advantage during her active ongoing custody case. It is seemingly more logical for trained professionals to assume in a case without a history of abuse, it is in a child’s best interest to have a parent completely excluded despite being a daily presence in the previous eleven years. Most investigative process would have the investigator asking, “who benefits more from this situation?” in determining who the likely perpetrator is. Not one professional within a system able to prevent these abuses have been unwilling to ask this question despite countless letters, meetings, appeals, and hearings asking that very question. 

The negligence in my case has now irreparably harmed a child’s relationship with a parent and is sure to have a lasting emotional impact into adulthood his future relationships. Acknowledging efforts to undermine a child’s relationship with a parent appears to be taboo and has become a slippery slope on which the family law process now sits. This failing legitimizes the abuse of children, often justifying the very professionals neglecting their responsibilities in favor of their prolonged involvement in the case. Can allowing the psychological abuse of a child be a means to maintain job security?

What Is Parental Alienation? - By psychiatric standards, parental alienation is a relationship dysfunction between a child and a parent. Alienation takes place when one parent tries to “brainwash” children into thinking the other parent is bad and that they should not want to spend time with them anymore. The set of abusive behaviors involved can be very harmful to children’s emotional health and often include psychological manipulation and/or bullying of a child to choose between their two parents. According to the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, parental alienation is domestic violence via psychological maltreatment.

A parent being alienated may notice signs of unwarranted disrespect, hostility, or even fear from their child. Parental alienation is subtle and slow. Children often are not even aware they are being mistreated, and parent being alienated may not realize what is occurring before the relationship with your children is severely damaged.

There are many tactics or techniques a parent might use when trying to alienate their child’s other parent. This could include:

• Not allowing children to talk about you or even mention your name
• Encouraging children to pretend you no longer exist
• Trying to replace you with another man she insists they call “dad”
• Attacking your character or lifestyle
• Emphasizing your flaws
• Encouraging your children to spy on you to gather more ammunition
• Suggesting you never really cared for your children

In extreme cases, they may make their children believe there is a reason to fear the other parent or even lie about how their other parent treats their children with false accusations of child abuse.

Early Warning Signs - Parents who engage in alienation tactics often get away with it, because nobody realizes alienation is occurring. Plus, it does not always stop with the person seeking to alienate. It can extend to stepparents, grandparents, other family members, and family friends who contribute to the alienation. In court during a custody hearing, this alienation may just look like the child’s passionate preference to be with one parent, which is often the main purpose of the alienation. If the parent being alienated previously had a good relationship with their child and now, the child is rejecting the relationship, they could be suffering from parental alienation abuse. Severe alienation includes behavioral, emotional, and cognitive impairments and early signs of alienation could include:

• Aloofness
• Changes in personality
• Signs of hostility, disobedience, defiance, and withdrawal
• Resistance or refusal of contact
• Weak, flimsy, or untruthful excuses to not see you
• Antisocial behavior
• Undermining authority
• New, unaccustomed behavioral problems

Effects of Parental Alienation Abuse - When parents use their children as pawns against each, the effects can be devastating for the kids. Parental alienation is an emotional abuse that not only damages the child’s self-esteem, it can also cause life-long damage. Psychological maltreatment of children during parental alienation can include degrading, rejecting, terrorizing, ignoring, neglecting, isolating, exploiting, and corrupting the child. These forms of abuse can cause psychological distress, especially in younger children, that might make them moody and regress in learning or social situations. This distress can manifest later in your child’s life as psychological damage that follows them throughout adulthood. Low self-esteem and guilt over their “betrayal” of their parent, along with the emotional abuse can cause long-term effects, such as:

• Trust issues
• Lower levels of achievement
• Diminished self-sufficiency
• Identity problems or personality disorders
• Elevated risks of depression and substance abuse
• A cycle of alienation with their kids when they become parents

Fundraiser to Restore my Son’s Right to his Father: https://www.gofundme.com/justice-in-family-law-system

Sign the Petition Demanding Lawmakers #EndParentalAlienation: https://change.org/EndParentalAlienation

Sincerely,

Patrick Leary, Committed Father & Parental Rights Advocate

DAD equality, Inc, 225 Main St 146, Saco ME 04072-7005

207-228-1871 | [email protected] | https://DADequality.org

OUR MISSION TO END PARENTAL ALIENATION

Focus people’s attention on deficiencies in current law allowing, according to psychologists’, roughly 1% or 25,000 of our children here in Maine to be subjected to parental alienation. I witnessed this travesty first hand as a father forced to sit with tied hands as his son’s mother weaponized allegations of abuse, supported by the current system of divorce to undermine our son’s 11-year relationship with his father, am appalled by the professional negligence of a system obligated to protect our children from abuse. Without question, the experience of undermining a parent child relationship is a form of emotional child abuse and family violence. Politicians are required to act if deficiencies in current law allow instances of abuse to occur. Laws, administrative guidelines, and social policy must be reviewed to identify changes or loopholes allowing emotion or professional bias to circumvent our legal processes to address this devastating impact on our children’s long-term emotional wellbeing.

Parental alienation is currently handled through civil proceedings and is not an arrestable offense. Changing state laws to make parental alienation a criminal offence, equal to other forms of domestic violence, reflecting the long-term emotional damage it inflicts is a great first step. We have a goal in making parental alienation a central issue for all elected / re-elected politicians regardless of party.

I welcome your ideas and involvement to create a broad working group of concerned parties to identify loopholes, propose revisions, identify any negative impacts to proposals in current laws, administrative guidelines, and social policy.  The main goal of the working group would be to integrate that work into strong legislation with bipartisan support. 

A fundamental change to the system of divorce is needed. I am proposing the following points as a starting point:

1. Recognize parental alienation as a form of emotional child abuse:

  a. Cases meeting the standard for parental alienation shall be investigated and prosecuted as child abuse.

2. Establish a child’s best interest as being best served by the active involvement, love, and support of both parents;

3. Update policies to include fathering support programs to support fathers undergoing a family break-up with resources and tools to maintain a healthy relationship with their child or children.

4. Establish shared parenting as the foundation of family law:

  a. Children have the fundamental right to the active involvement of both parents;

  b. Shifting the focus child custody to a child centered approach by where there is an assumption of equal shared parenting as parents draft a co-parenting agreement required of custody proceedings;

  c. Due process or mutual agreement between parties is the only way to limit a parent’s involvement in their child’s life;

  d. Any limitation of parental rights should be narrow in scope, duration and tailored to protect the child;

5. Define clear enforcement guidance to enforce shared parenting orders effectively.

6. A determination of parental alienation must meet the minimum standard according to the four‐factor model of parental alienation, for alienation to be present there must be:

  a. a prior positive relationship between the child and the now rejected parent;

  b. absence of maltreatment by the rejected parent;

  c. use of alienating behaviors by the favored parent; and

  d. presence of behavioral manifestations of alienation in the child.

7. Establish guidance to therapists in working with children of parental alienation:

  a. Therapists can learn the characteristics of an alienated child, such as constantly denigrating the target parent and imitating the alienating parent’s stories, and the degree to which alienation has occurred;

  b. Treatment can involve transferring the child to the target parent’s home, prohibiting contact with the alienator, and taking legal action.

8. Establish reunification programs to aid children in rebuilding a relationship with an alienated parent;

9. Training for professionals within the divorce system covering:

  a. Understand how parental alienation affects children:

    i. Children may struggle with self-esteem, guilt, and self-hatred, as they can internalize hatred toward the targeted parent and are led to believe, incorrectly, that the parent did not love or want them;

    ii. Depression and substance use are also pathways by which parental alienation can impact children.

  b. Helping children heal from parental alienation:

    i. Spending more time with the alienated parent can help repair the relationship.

    ii. One valuable exercise is to open a dialogue about similarities and differences between family members.

    iii. Discussing neutral topics such as favorite food or color, and later moving on to feelings, can help the child individuate his or her parent’s experiences from their own.

  b. Recommended ways to help a child repair the relationship with parent targeted by parental alienation:

    i. The best course of action is to limit the child’s time with the alienating parent and increase time with the targeted parent;

    ii. The child’s biased view of the parent will gradually clear and even severely damaged relationships can be repaired, research shows; and

    iii. The targeted parent can help by not denigrating the alienating parent or dismissing the child’s feelings during this time.

#EndParentalAlienation #KidsDeserveBetterLaws #KidsDeserveEqualParents #SupportSharedParenting #FamilyLawReform

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