Myriam Bedard arrested in Maryland
Canadian Press, various news media throughout Canada, December 23, 2006
JESSUP , Md. Canadian Olympic champion Myriam Bedard is facing Christmas in a stark detention centre after U.S. marshals tracked down the missing mother and her 12-year-old daughter at an upscale hotel in Maryland.
Authorities caught up with Bedard late Friday night at the Homewood Suites hotel in Columbia, Md. The hotel, part of the Hilton chain, is in a huge complex of restaurants just off the major expressway linking Washington and BaltiRead More ../p>
Bedard, Canada's sweetheart after winning two Olympic gold medals in 1994, was wanted on charges of abducting her daughter. An arrest warrant was issued against her in Canada Dec. 8 after her former husband the girl's father alleged she had taken their daughter away from Quebec City without his permission, violating a joint custody agreement.
"We tracked her down at her hotel," Michael Kulstad, spokesman for the U.S. Marshal's Service, said Saturday. "She was taken into custody without incident."
Until her scheduled court appearance Tuesday, Bedard is being held at the Howard County Detention Center, a bleak low-slung building of grey and red bricks surrounded by an immense fenced topped with barbed wire.
The facility in Jessup, Md., about three kilometres from the hotel where Bedard was arrested, holds more than 300 detainees awaiting hearings on charges ranging from misdemeanours to felonies. No armed guards were visible outside the detention centre, which is adjacent to a large prison.
Tuesday's court hearing is related to proceedings to extradite Bedard back to Canada.
Jeanette Cross, manager of the Homewood Suites, was on duty when Bedard was arrested. She refused to provide details or say how long Bedard had been staying at the hotel.
"We just rented a room and that's all we know," she said.
U.S. marshals say the RCMP first contacted them for help locating Bedard on Dec. 15. Once authorities determined she was in the United States, they obtained a provisional arrest warrant last Wednesday.
At their home in Quebec City, Bedard's parents expressed relief that she was found.
"We were worried," her father, Pierre, told CBC's French service. "I'm happy. It's good for the family. It's a big relief."
"We'll have a nice holiday," added his wife Francine.
Officials would say only that Bedard's daughter was in the protective custody of U.S. social services.
"I cannot tell you where she is for security reasons," Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Catherine Gagnier said in Ottawa. "She is provided with consular help."
Quebec City police spokeswoman Sandra Dion told The Canadian Press she didn't immediately know when the girl would be reunited with her father, Jean Paquet, but she believed it would be soon.
"She's doing fine and the U.S. social service is taking care of the child until she finds her father again," Dion said.
She said Quebec City police had received information on Bedard's whereabouts and passed it on to the RCMP, which acts as liaison with foreign police forces. The Mounties then alerted the U.S. marshals, which is the United States' primary fugitive-hunting agency.
Dion did not have any information about Bedard's current husband, Nima Mazhari, who was reportedly travelling with her. Dion said the Canada-wide arrest warrant only applied to Bedard. There was no indication of any charges or warrants against Mazhari.
Police have so far refused to divulge any details of their investigation, which started in October after an initial complaint from Paquet.
Bedard and Mazhari went to the United States in October. They alerted the president of the International Olympic Committee, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, to the fact they were making the trip.
Bedard's family said they had brief telephone conversations with Bedard, who said she was living in a hotel.
Bedard, a native of Loretteville, near Quebec City, is no stranger to controversy despite winning the hearts of Canadians with her gold-medal wins in the biathlon at the Lillehammer, Norway, Winter Olympics in 1994, and a bronze medal at the 1992 games in Albertville, France.
She sued, and settled out of court, when Wrigley Canada Inc. ran an ad featuring an altered photo of her that she said made her look masculine.
Bedard tussled with Biathlon Canada over training and endorsements. But she started really raising eyebrows with charges during the federal sponsorship scandal. She said she was forced from her Via Rail job because of questions she raised about inflated payments to Quebec ad firms.
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.
THE CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATION
L'ASSOCIATION DU BARREAU CANADIEN
Parental Alienation Syndrome: A 'Hidden' Facet of Custody Disputes
Parental Alienation - Myths, Realities & Uncertainties:
A Canadian Study,
1989-2008
May 12, 2009
By Nicholas Bala, Suzanne Hunt & Carrie McCarney
Faculty of Law
Queens University
Kingston, ON Canada
Alienation cases have been receiving a great deal of public and professional attention in the past few months in Canada. As with so many issues in family law, there are two competing, gendered narratives offered to explain these cases. Men's rights activists claim that mothers alienate children from their fathers as a way of seeking revenge for separation, and argue that judges are gender-biased against fathers in these cases. Feminists tend to dismiss alienation as a fabrication of abusive fathers who are trying to force contact with children who are frightened of them and to control the lives of their abused former partners. While there is some validity to both of these narratives, each also has significant mythical elements. The reality of these cases is often highly complex, with both fathers and mothers bearing significant responsibility for the situation.
Two of the many findings are:
Mothers are twice as likely as fathers to alienate children from the other parent, but this reflects the fact that mothers are more likely to have custody or primary care of their children; in only 2 out of 89 cases was a parent with only access able to alienate a child from the other parent.
Fathers made more than three times as many unsubstantiated claims of parental alienation as mothers, but this too reflects the fact that claims of alienation (substantiated and unsubstantiated) are usually made by access parents, who are usually fathers.
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 ..
Parental Alienation Syndrome
A Developmental Analysis of a Vulnerable Population
The American family is changing, and divorce is no small part of the pattern. In the United States, there are nearly a million and a half divorces and annulments annually. It is estimated that 40% to 50% of adults will eventually divorce . Including the indirect effects on family and friends, the impact of divorce has ripple effects not only for those directly involved, but also for society and clinical nursing.
Many children involved in divorce and custody litigation undergo thought reform or mild brainwashing by their parents. This disturbing fact is a product of the nature of divorce and the disintegration of the spousal relationship in our culture. Inevitably, children receive subtly transmitted messages that both parents have serious criticisms of each other. Read More .. ..
The Fathers Guide: Coping with Parental Alienation
Non-custodial parents often face a continuing dilemma, knowing how to respond to certain mind-programming propaganda that the children receive from the custodial parent. Every reference to the non-custodial parent is couched in negative words: "lazy, irresponsible, un-loving, and cheapskate," to name a few.
The childrens emotions and behavior patterns that result from this negative programming have been officially dubbed by the psychological community as the Parental Alienation Syndrome , and when the parent doing the alienation has full-time access to the children, the consequences can be devastating to the relationship between the child and the other parent. It is also devastating to the child as the child comes to realize that half of who they are, is a product of that "low life" other parent.
Parental Alienation Syndrome
A Developmental Analysis of a Vulnerable Population
The American family is changing, and divorce is no small part of the pattern. In the United States, there are nearly a million and a half divorces and annulments annually. It is estimated that 40% to 50% of adults will eventually divorce . Including the indirect effects on family and friends, the impact of divorce has ripple effects not only for those directly involved, but also for society and clinical nursing.
Many children involved in divorce and custody litigation undergo thought reform or mild brainwashing by their parents. This disturbing fact is a product of the nature of divorce and the disintegration of the spousal relationship in our culture. Inevitably, children receive subtly transmitted messages that both parents have serious criticisms of each other.