A Mother's Heartbreaking Story of Parental Alienation Syndrome
By Pamela Richardson
Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Dundurn Press (May 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1550026240
ISBN-13: 978-1550026245
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
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.
Abraham Lincoln said, "Nearly all men can
stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him
power." Within weeks of his first court win, Peter, a lawyer, had
me removed from my volunteer work as Mother's Help in Dash's
kindergarten. I took the issue to court but lost: Peter had been named
custodial parent, by the barest of margins, and now he made the rules.
He banned me from contact with Dash's doctor or dentist. I couldn't
attend the twice-yearly parent-teacher nights, and because I didn't
receive any of Dash's report cards, I missed the ones that, within a
couple of years, began to spell trouble. I didn't know about Dash's
school sports days or soccer games unless another mom told me. When Dash
and I spoke on the phone our calls were monitored. Dash was rewarded if
they went badly - if he was sullen or, better still, rude or difficult.
Despite having an access order for 50% of Dash's time, I soon went
months without seeing him.
Dash put up what resistance he could, and when I drove over each week
to pick him up, if he was alone at home he would run outside to greet
me, jumping right in the car for a blissful couple of hours with me.
He'd sit close, not letting me out of his sight. He could be programmed
to reject me, but not to hate me. I was his mom.
It wasn't long before he slid, however. At first he was emotional and
aggressive but then he just shut down. He couldn't cope with anything.
His teachers saw it, his friends walled themselves off, parents who
didn't even know me asked, "Is your son OK?" I watched, listened and
triaged his pain whenever I saw him. I documented the missed access, the
blocked calls and the lies Dash had learned to repeat. Time and again I
went to the courts and showed them Dash's trauma - the eight-year-old
boy who cried, "I have a bad life", the nine-year-old boy who wanted to
jump out a three-storey window and the twelve-year-old boy who wore his
father's clothes to court. The provincial government appointed a child
advocate who said: "Dash's memories have been augmented." Still, my
ability to help Dash remained marginal. There was a sliver of hope, a
slice of help, but no support from the courts. The judges wouldn't
enforce the access order and none of them stood up to Peter.
I spent a quarter of a million dollars and twelve years in court, at
first trying just to see him and then trying to get him help, so I never
had the time to break down. I didn't even have time to get mad. From the
margins of Dash's life I roused those who were in a position to help
him. A Kidnapped Mind is the story of our struggle, the hope,
the missteps and all the agonizing drama along the way. I fought for
Dash every day of his life, knowing in my heart that I could still make
a difference.
I wrote this book as the last gift to my wonderful, brave, brown-eyed
son, Dash. All profits from this book go to The Dash Foundation, formed
by my husband and I to increase awareness of the damage done by this
insidious and oftentimes invisible form of child abuse.
...A Kidnapped Mind will provide important insights into the needs
of children of divorcing parents in a way that the theoretical or empirical
contributions of academics have not been able to achieve. For this reason, A
Kidnapped Mind should be required reading for all family court judges,
family-law practitioners, and anyone involved with divorcing families.
The world of divorce is scary for any child. But when a divorce becomes
especially toxic, children can become the target of an unrelenting crusade
by one parent to destroy the child's relationship with the other. Experts
call it parental alienation.
The New York Times, New York city, U.S.A. August 8, 2004
Not too long ago, Jacqueline Scott Sheid was a pretty typical Upper East
Side mother. Divorced and with a young daughter, she had quickly remarried,
borne a son, and interrupted her career to stay home with the children while
her husband, Xavier Sheid, worked on Wall Street.
Early last year, Mr. Sheid lost his job and saw his only career
opportunity in California. But Ms. Sheid's ex-husband, who shares joint
legal custody of their daughter, refused to allow the girl to move away. So
Ms. Sheid has spent much of the last year using JetBlue to shuttle between
her son and husband on the West Coast and her daughter (and ex) on the East.
The New York court system, which she hoped would help her family to
resolve the problem, has cost her tens of thousands of dollars in fees for
court-appointed experts, she said, and has helped to prolong the process by
objecting to her choice of lawyers.
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 ..
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.
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.
Some victims of parental alienation syndrome don't realize
until adulthood that one parent turned them against the other
The Globe and Mail March 24, 2009
After Joe Rabiega's parents divorced, when he was an adolescent,
his father repeatedly told him his mother had abandoned him. The boy had
to return any gifts that came from his mother's side of the family and,
twice daily, he had to pledge his allegiance to his father.
"I was never allowed to have anything to do with her," he says
from his home in Raleigh, N.C. "The consequences were dire if I did.
He said I would have nobody."
Even though Mr. Rabiega, now 33, had witnessed ugly behaviour by his
father toward his mother and knew his dad to be an erratic alcoholic, it
wasn't until he sought counselling for personal problems in his early
20s that his past snapped into focus: He had been the victim of parental
alienation syndrome - his father had systematically turned him against his
mother.
The phenomenon, coined by psychiatrist Richard A. Gardner in 1985, has
gained traction recently due to a number of recent high-profile divorce
cases in Canada - not to mention the very public case of movie star Alec
Baldwin, who accused his former wife, Kim Basinger, of parental alienation.
Read More ..
The Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is the systematic denigration by one parent by the other with the intent of alienating the child against the other parent. The purpose of alienation is usually to gain or retain custody without the involvement of the non-custodial parent (NCP) The alienation usually extends to the NCP's family and friends as well. Though this document is written with the father in mind, it must be clear that there are many cases of PAS where the NCP is the mother, and PAS from the non-custodial mothers' viewpoint will be discussed later.
Dr. Richard Gardner in his book 'The Parental Alienation Syndrome' states (p. 74) "Many of these children proudly state that their decision to reject their fathers is their own.";
They deny any contribution from their mothers. And the mothers often support this vehemently. In fact, the mothers will often state that they want the child to visit with the father and recognise the importance of such involvement, yet such a mothers every act indicates otherwise.
Such children appreciate that, by stating the decision is their own, they assuage mother's guilt and protect her from criticism. Such professions of independent thinking are supported by the mother who will often praise these children for being the kind of people who have minds of their own and are forthright and brave enough to express overtly their opinions.
Frequently, such mothers will exhort their children to tell them the truth regarding whether or not they really want to see their fathers. The child will usually appreciate that "the truth" is the profession that they hate the father and do not want to see him ever again. They thereby provide that answer - couched as "the truth" - which will protect them from their mother's anger if they were to state what they really wanted to do, which is to see their fathers.
It is important for the reader to appreciate that after a period of programming the child may not know what is the truth any Read More ..d come to actually believe that the father deserves the vilification being directed against him. The end point of the brainwashing process has then been achieved.
Read More ..
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
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.
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."
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Paperback: 312 pages
