The Toronto Star, NICHOLAS KEUNG, STAFF REPORTER, March 3, 2004
To many, he's known simply as Charlie.
By day, 60-year-old Charlie is a Bay Street banker — an
executive vice-president with RBC Financial Group, his
employer for 41 years./p>
But Charlie is also a champion for women's and children's
rights and aboriginal communities, who challenges executives
to be good corporate citizens./p>
Charlie is Charles Coffey, the recipient of Yorktown Family
Services' 2004 Humanitarian Award for Community Service./p>
"Women contribute to our society and children represent the
next generation of leaders, a group that needs constant
nurturing, caring and feeding," said Coffey, who received the
award last night at a gala dinner at The Old Mill Inn./p>
"I am humbled by the award. It means tonight we will have 300
people who will better understand (the issues) and I will
continue to act as a disciple on behalf of Yorktown by telling
their story wherever I go."/p>
Founded in 1949 as part of the York Public Health Department,
the agency, near St. Clair Ave. W. and Dufferin St., became a
community organization in 1993, offering a full range of
services for children, youth, women and families./p>
"I'm so pleased to be here tonight to honour this very
gracious, modest and quietly dedicated man who has done so
much for so many," executive director Karen Engel said.
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 Mother's Heartbreaking Story of Parental Alienation
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.
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.
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 ..
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 ..
Parental Alienation
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.
