'Drop the knife,' girl, 9, ordered<
t was only plastic, family explains Oakville guard's actions questioned
Toronto Star, Emily Mathieu, Staff Reporter, Nov. 18, 2004
When Guillermo Mondragon heard the security guard scream, "Drop the knife!" his first instinct was to protect his 9-year-old granddaughter, Ariel.
Then he realized it was his granddaughter the guard was yelling at.
"She was stunned, she stood there frozen," said Mondragon, 55. "She was just pale and shaking."
The guard at Oakville Place Mall yelled at Ariel because she was playing with a plastic retractable knife, Mondragon said.
Mondragon ran over and wrapped his arms around his terrified granddaughter. The guard approached the girl shortly after, Mondragon said, and despite his presence, struck her hand to get her to drop the knife.
"The security guard believed the knife to be real and acted reasonably under the circumstances," said Sergeant Jeff Corey of Halton police.
Corey said the guard did strike the girl's hand but did not use excessive force.
The security office called police and officers arrived at the Mondragon home that evening.
Police "interviewed the mother and the 9-year-old and based on the investigation, no charges are going to be laid," said Corey.
Mondragon, Ariel, her mother Catherine Mondragon and her sister Sariah, 10, went to Oakville Place Mall on Tuesday just before 6 p.m. They were there to renew Catherine's driver's licence sticker at the mall kiosk.
Ariel brought a toy knife she had found at her grandfather's house and was playing with it, three metres away from her family.
That's when the guard approached and began shouting at her to drop the knife, the family said.
She held the knife out and "started crying," Catherine said.
After the girl dropped the knife, it was confiscated by the guard, the family said.
"Our mandate is to ensure the centre is a safe place," said Doug Peters, 48, manager of Oakville Place, who felt that the guard took appropriate action.
"This was a very unusual and isolated incident."
Parenting: Baldwin Speaks Up
NEWSWEEK, U.S.A.
May 7, 2007
Many celebrities would shrink from view after a PR nightmare like Alec Baldwin's leaked voice mail in which he calls his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland, a "rude, thoughtless little pig." But Baldwin wants to use the media scrutiny to give exposure to parental alienation, the controversial "syndrome" caused by one parent's systematically damaging a child's relationship with the other parent.
A Kidnapped Mind
What does Parental Alienation Syndrome mean? In my case, it meant losing a child. When Dash was 4 1/2 years old his father and I broke up. I dealt with the death of our marriage and moved on but Peter stayed angry, eventually turning it toward his own house, teaching our son, day by day, bit by bit, to reject me. Parental Alienation Syndrome typically means one parent's pathological hatred, the other's passivity and a child used as a weapon of war. When Dash's wonderful raw materials were taken and shaken and melted down, he was recast as a foot soldier in a war against me.
Psychiatric disorder may have led boy to fatally shoot father
Rick James Lohstroh, a doctor at UTMB, was fatally shot this summer, apparently by his 10-year-old son.
ABC13 Eyewitness News, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
Dec. 29, 2004
The 10-year-old Katy boy accused of murdering his father this summer is now the face of an unofficial psychiatric disorder that may have lead to his father's death.
Some psychiatrists call it Parental Alienation Syndrome and they say that's why the son killed Doctor Rick Lohstroh last summer. The syndrome is basically caused by a bitter parent who poisons a child against the other parent, usually in cases of divorce.
Parental alienation cases draining court resources
Study says such cases should be moved out of court system, handled by individual judges
The Globe and Mail
May 13, 2009
An escalation in parental alienation allegations is draining valuable courtroom resources, a major study of 145 alienation cases between 1989-2008 concludes.
"Access problems and alienation cases - especially those which are more severe - take up a disproportionate amount of judicial time and energy," said the study, conducted by Queen's University law professor Nicholas Bala, a respected family law expert.
"One can ask whether the courts should even be trying to deal with these very challenging cases." Read More ..
Custody judges rule on vengeance
Courts criticized for recognizing 'parental alienation'
National Post
March 27, 2009
Toronto -- The scope of the courts' reach into family affairs has long been contentious, but a recent trend in Canada's legal system has brought a new controversy that has some onlookers praising judges and others condemning them for accepting what they call "voodoo science."
More than ever before, Canada's judges are recognizing that some children of divorced and warring parents are not simply living an unfortunate predicament, but rather are victims of child abuse and suffering from Parental Alienation Syndrome. Read More ..
B.C. judge bars mother from seeing daughter
Court orders one-year ban after 'unfounded' abuse allegations made about teenager's father
THE CANADIAN PRESS
March 10, 2009
VANCOUVER - In a case of extreme parental alienation, a mother has been banned by a B.C. Supreme Court judge from seeing her teenage daughter for more than a year.
Because of the urgency of the matter, Justice Donna Martinson issued the terse, two-page ruling outlining 15 conditions the parents must follow, including that the mother, known only as Ms. A, not see her daughter until at least March 31, 2010.
The decision came after the mother alleged extreme emotional abuse by the father, which she claimed was putting the teenager's safety at risk.
"I am satisfied that Ms. A's allegations are unfounded," Martinson wrote.
"I am further satisfied that she has continued to undermine the relationship between M and her father and has acted in ways that are detrimental to M's psychological healing."
Names have been stripped from the court ruling to protect the girl's identity.
The judge has ordered that both the mother and maternal grandmother have no contact with the girl, which would be enforced by police if necessary.