Parental Alienation Can Happen to Adults and In Marriages
Written by: Rob
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Parental alienation is a form of emotional abuse in which a normal positive parent/child relationship is damaged or destroyed by another party using emotional manipulation, threats, false accusations, and other means. It involves at least two basic elements. The first is an alienator engaging in access blocking to keep a child from seeing a parent. The second is a pattern of denigration and destruction of reputation to make the child dislike the parent. When parental alienation becomes severe and/or extended in duration, the child may start to avoid seeing the target parent, repeat the statements of the alienator as if they were the child’s own, and even make up new “reasons” to dislike having contact with the target parent. Often these “reasons” are complete nonsense and have little to no accuracy.
If you’re suffering as a target parent and are aware of parental alienation, probably none of this is news to you. However, what may be news to you is that parental alienation isn’t limited to the most commonly discussed situation of parents involved in divorce or child custody battles. For starters, you may be alienated from your children by your spouse while married.
Moreover, if you step back and take a look at the the changes in your family relationships that happened after marrying an alienator, you may also realize that you are a victim of parental alienation committed against and you and your own parents. The same spouse or former spouse who is trying to alienate you from your children may have already badly damaged the good relationship you had with your parents using similar tactics of emotional manipulation.
Dr. Amy Baker’s Book: Adult Children of Parental Alienation
Recently I read a book written by Dr. Amy Baker entitled Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind
Some of these adult children have managed to repair the relationships with their target parents. Many of them only managed to do so after a major interruption of their relationships with their alienating parent, such as by a falling out or by the death of that parent. All have suffered greatly due to the parental alienation, particularly from mental health and emotional problems. It’s helpful to see both how this happened to them and what the target parents tried to do to continue the relationship.
Dr. Baker describes both common strategies alienators use to keep children from having good relationships with target parents and the attempts many of these target parents made to try to continue the relationships with their children. Alarmingly, even target parents who went to a great deal of effort often could not preserve the relationships because of the continuous animosity by the alienator who was intent on destroying those relationships by any means.
Review by Monika Logan
The Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome, Breaking the Ties that Bind, is a thought provoking series of interviews. After reading the book, one can no longer deny the existence of parental alienation. It also becomes futile to question the claims of PAS as a “credible disorder”. The interviewees shed light on the disturbing outcome of Parental Alienation when it is left untreated. Amy Baker’s research reveals the ramifications of a disorder that leads to devastation, despair, and desertion. Due to venomous words by the alienating parent, the adult children look back on their lives with sorrow. They are distraught by their actions and their words, to a parent that did not deserve such hatred. The regrets for most will last a lifetime.
Sadly, one interviewee recalled, “I tortured her so much when I was there for the three days that she could not handle it” (p.243). This excerpt shows how the actions of children that are enmeshed with an alienating parent are not a depiction of optimal mental health. While many children have adjustment difficulties post divorce, most do not “torture a parent for three days.” Indeed this book exemplifies Breaking the Ties that Bind; the ties are an enmeshment between a child and a parent, the alienating parent. As noted by Baker, “When children feel that their parents are more like friends than parents, it may indicate that the alienating parent is sharing too much personal information with the child, is relying on the child for support and comfort, and may not be setting appropriate limits” (p.244). Most would agree that adult conversations are not meant for innocent ears, and will lead to poor mental health.
This book is not only educational, but it also offers a unique perspective due to the adults’ looking back over a life of regret. In addition, the book shows the long-term results of parental alienation syndrome. After reading the book, debates over terminology are useless. One will realize the magnitude of parental alienation and recognize it for the problem that it is. Many of the interviews cannot see forward for looking behind. They are bewildered and perplexed at how their innocent minds were unjustly poisoned. They suffer from guilt and sleepless nights. While some relationships are troubled, others are permanently severed. This book provides an understanding to this disorder for both the every day reader and professional.
Misleading Debate Over “Scientific Proof” of Parental Alienation
After reading this book, no intelligent, honest, and objective person could claim that parental alienation is not a real phenomenon. Honest people might still continue to debate whether “syndrome” (as in parental alienation syndrome) is appropriate or whether parental alienation should be included in DSM-V, the next version of the widely used mental health professional’s diagnostic guide due to be released in 2012. But these debates really amount to arguing over word choices and technicalities.
You may hear or read the drivel put out by activists and alienators denying that parental alienation is “not a scientifically proven fact.” This is often stated in the pursuit of an agenda that is totally lacking in objectivity such as that of alienating parents who refuse to admit and correct their behaviors. Such statements are nothing but lies using convincingly misleading words, the sort of thing alienators and emotional manipulators are excellent at doing.
To use a very crude analogy likening parental alienation to physical child abuse, that your own child doesn’t like being intentionally hit in the face with a baseball bat swung hard isn’t a scientifically proven fact, either. It appears that nobody has studied it and nobody has experimented on children hitting them in the face with baseball bats to determine what kind of hit is liked and what kind is not liked. But this lack of “scientific proof” doesn’t at all mean that such an act is not child abuse and is not harmful. Similarly, the claims of a “lack of scientific proof” regarding parental alienation don’t make it any less true that alienators are harming children.
As another analogy, these dishonest people are little different from those in an earlier day and age who dismissed the theories of Copernicus and violated the human rights of Galileo for suggesting the heresy that the Earth is not the center of the universe and that the Earth orbits the sun. Certainly Copernicus and Galileo were not right about the sun being the center of the universe, but that was more accurate than the common view of the Earth being the center of the universe. Likewise, whatever misunderstandings there are about parental alienation today doesn’t mean there is no value to what has been learned so far.
Most Alienators Fall Into Three Groups
Dr. Baker explains how her research shows there are three common groups of parental alienators:
- Narcissistic mothers in divorced families (14 families)
- Narcissistic mothers in intact families (8 families)
- Rejecting / Abusive alienating parent (16 families)
Of the 40 families, there were two which showed a mixture of these patterns. Of these families, it is typical that the alienating parent is the custodial parent. Although the alienating parents from this study group were generally the mothers, it is clear that fathers can be alienators, also. While it appears that most of the alienating fathers fit the third pattern, there was one family in which the alienating father fit the second pattern of “narcissistic parent in intact family”.
In general, Baker found that many alienating parents have narcissistic thinking. Such parents resort to charm and persuasion. Often they talk about inappropriate topics with their children, treating them as confidants to personal information which isn’t suitable for children. Common topics include discussing false accusations of supposed misconduct by the target parent, for instance claiming that he or she has had many affairs or tickets for driving while intoxicated when that isn’t true.
Other common topics include misleading statements about child support payments and divorce battles to denigrate the target parent and make the children feel “honored” to be privy to such information. For instance, an alienating mother may tell a child to go to the mailbox to check for the child support payment. When it isn’t there, she complains about the father being a good-for-nothing bum. She’ll never mention that she already picked up the payment from the mailbox before asking the child to do so because that was the only way she could be sure the child would get a negative impression of the father from such a stunt. Alienators, like many emotional manipulators, are skilled at using tricks like these.
Such alienating parents often appear to have a “close” relationship with the children they are hurting. But that closeness may only last as long as the narcissistic parent is getting what they want out of the relationship. When he or she is not, then they may push the child away in a rejecting fashion. Such parents withdraw their love in response for the children not satisfying their emotional needs. For instance, when a child makes a positive remark about the target parent, the alienating parent may ignore or even berate the child in retaliation.
The children who did not have “close” relationships with the alienating parent generally pointed to that parent using fear, intimidation, and terror tactics on them and/or the target parent. Physical abuse and sexual abuse were among these tactics, too. Both mothers and fathers were involved in committing these kinds of abuses to terrorize the children into submission. Many, but not all, of these alienating and abusive parents had substance abuse problems.
Parental Alienation May Start During Marriage
While reading the book, I realized that my ex and her behaviors today fall into the first category of “narcissistic mothers in divorced families”. However, that’s not how her alienating behaviors started. Surprisingly, we didn’t even have children when she started to use emotional manipulation to damage parent/child relationships. That’s because her alienating started with her behaviors designed to alienate me, a grown adult, from my own parents during the marriage. This doesn’t even fall into the typical three groups of alienators, yet is motivated by similar reasons and uses similar tactics to the narcissistic patterns #1 and #2.
I suspect that a spouse or partner starting to show parental alienation style behaviors even before the arrival of children is far more common than people realize. That’s because it may be commonly confused with normal relationship problems with the in-laws. Part of why I suspect this derives from having the benefit of observing relationships in which the potential for partners having conflict with the other partner’s parents seems they should have been higher yet there was nothing but the occasional minor disagreement.
What’s particularly strange to me is that I hadn’t even considered that I was alienated from my parents for years. I simply became used to keeping a distance and minimizing communications to keep my ex at bay.
Today, after the divorce, my parents and I are closer and we get along well. But during the marriage, my ex regarded my parents as a threat to her. She seems to believe at some innate level that if I love my parents and communicate with them that this is somehow bad for her. Her behaviors against my parents became worse over the years. But the worst of it didn’t occur until after the arrival of our own children.
Children Trigger Fear of Abandonment
After we had children, relations with my parents become very strained. It wasn’t their fault. They were far more helpful and supportive than many grandparents are with new grandchildren. But that helpfulness and supportiveness was viewed by my ex as a threat to her. She wants the children to love only her and cannot accept that children are better off having many good relationships with adults who love them. It is as if she is afraid of being abandoned by the children if they love others. These kinds of deep-seated fears in alienators are often tied to personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). They may develop during troubled childhoods in which the alienator of today was the abused children of yesterday.
My ex moved on from trying to damage my relationships with my birth family to attempting to alienate our first child from me starting years before divorce. As Dr. Baker discovered, parental alienation in marriages is common. However, it is not as well known as the most frequently discussed cases which involve divorced alienating parents. I believe from my own personal experience and experiences of friends and acquaintances that this scenario is far more common than is realized. Often children are not aware of the access blocking and denigration being abnormal behaviors for parents. They grow up in these toxic environments from birth. Only when the toxicity grows far worse, such as more extreme behaviors triggered by a divorce, may they start to understand that something is amiss.
I didn’t understand how powerful my ex was at alienating me from my own parents, but could see exactly what she was trying to do with our child. She would involve our child in fights and encourage taking her side by using badmouthing and denigration. She would start fights over the most inconsequential things simply so she could use these tactics to sow hatred. Given that my own parents never did anything like this, I could not understand why she was doing it. But it seemed very wrong, even though I didn’t have a name for it.
She also engaged in systematic access blocking, doing everything she could to shift schedules to minimize my time with our child. While it is normal for parents to adjust schedules to ensure that there’s adequate childcare, that’s not what was happening in this case. She behaved oddly, insisting that relatives and childcare providers keep the baby out of the house while I was home and racing to put the baby to sleep before I arrived home from work.
She used a newfound interest in church, something that had never interested her previously, as an excuse to take our children away from home on Sunday and keep them out all day, even though by this time our oldest child wanted to spend time with me and said so. Having been emotionally pummeled by her for years, I was not of the mind to put up much of a fight about this as I knew there would be a huge price to pay for disagreeing with her.
About the only times she seemed content with having me around the children was when it was for her own benefit. She could go pursue some personal activity to which it was not suitable to take a child by having the kids spend time with me. I was happy to take care of them. Meanwhile, she complained to all of her friends that I was an absent father, was violent, abusive, and a threat to the children. That this is completely nonsensical in the context of her leaving the children with me while she pursued her personal activities doesn’t seem to cross anybody’s minds. After all, she is very convincing with her emotional intensity and lies. Years of feeding these lies to other people seems to sap them of any ability to be objective or to question what she claims. It’s much like how alienators brainwash children. Say the same lie over and over again with convincing intensity and even most adults will eventually believe it.
Insults From Kids May Not Be Their Own
The result of the frequent denigration and emotional abuse was disturbing. After many months of being exposed to this, our two year old child greeted me with exclamations such as “bad Daddy!” when I walked into a room, despite there being not only no good reason for these words but also no recent conflict or any other evident reason to say this.
When such negative words are combined with a smile from the child saying them, it’s clear that there is a significant incoherence. The child is repeating programming from the alienating parent, but does not understand the meaning of the programming and has not internalized or accepted its meaning even though the words have become part of the child’s vocabulary.
I became increasingly disenchanted with the relationship as I knew it was very wrong to be doing this to a child. But I, like far too many, did not yet know anything about parental alienation even though it was happening to me in two different ways — as a target parent and as a target child — at the same time.
Alienators Are Like Cult Leaders
Dr. Baker also explains how alienators are like cult leaders. This was a particularly interesting analogy to me. Years earlier, my ex was involved in group reputed to be a cult. I now wonder if she learned some of her control and alienation tactics from her time in the cult.
Isolation is a key technique used by cults. Cult leaders assert control over people by cutting them off from others who don’t believe the same as the cult. In my case, my “cult leader” was my ex-wife and her cult was based around her being the all-powerful center of the family around whom everything must revolve. Obey her and worship her or else I’ll suffer.
Looking back, it’s clear she liked to isolate me from my family in order to control me. It is something she tried to do even after filing for divorce. She attempted to use false accusations to obtain restraining orders to get rid of my parents. While she ultimately didn’t succeed at getting the orders she sought, she caused massive emotional and financial damages in the process. Given her pattern of conduct, it’s clear that she intends to harm other people to control and punish them.
She’s very able to use the courts, police, CPS, and many other naive parties to harm her targets. The courts in particular reward these behaviors. At the very least, false accusers and alienators like her typically get temporary restraining orders out of their attacks and cause the people they are attacking to be financially damaged by having to hire attorneys to defend themselves. Then the courts typically do nothing about holding aggressors like her responsible for their actions.
While the government should be prosecuting people like these for perjury, false police reports, and other crimes, they typically do nothing. This just encourages these people to do it again and again. They learn quickly that they are rewarded consistently and seldom pay any price for their aggressive manipulations.
This is a large part of the reason why family law judges frequently contribute to and enable parental alienation. A judge who looks the other way while these abuses are being committed is an accessory to child abuse. They fail to protect the children and target parent from the alienating parent until the damage is so severe that the children suffer from long-term psychological damage that will last into their adulthoods and the target parent has been severely emotionally and financially harmed, also.
While it may be reassuring to read stories like Alienating Mother Ordered to Pay $286,641.75 in Fines and Fees which feature courts finally holding an alienator responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and banning him or her from seeing the children, this is not the right way to be handling these cases. It needlessly destructive and cruel. It is like letting a known serial rapist to be on the lose for years, choosing only to do something about stopping the problem after the 10th victim is attacked.
Judges who are committed to protecting children from emotional abusers (which is exactly what these alienators are) should seek methods to block the effects of their alienation tactics early, before they can do a lot of damage. Some methods to do this include mandatory therapy, ensuring that the target parent has at least 50% time with the children, and banning the alienating parent from filing police reports, CPS reports, and other attacks against the target parent without first going through some gatekeeper to ensure that there is justification for the reports.
Afraid To Talk With My Parents
My ex would “allow” contact with my family if she could get a benefit out of it. That benefit might be money, a vacation, gifts, or help with childcare. What mattered is how it would benefit her, not whether the contact was reasonable or healthy for anybody else.
If she didn’t control or permit the contact, she would punish me for it in the form of aggressively insulting my parents and me for weeks. She would complain so vociferously and for so long that I became afraid to even talk with my parents or mention them to her as it would likely mean weeks of her multiple-times-per-day tirades about how my parent are horrible and that I’m horrible for having anything to do with them. A fifteen minute phone call could result in two or more weeks of retribution. I finally decided to just stay away from my parents because the price to be paid was too high.
It’s this kind of behavior that affects many children attacked by an alienator. As Dr. Baker relates in her book, some of the alienated children were so afraid what the alienating parent would do to them in the form of emotional abuse after contact with the target parent that they would avoid having anything to do with the target parent. Although I was an adult, this is exactly the kind of psychological torture my ex inflicted upon me to make it so emotionally expensive to be involved with my parents that I would accede to her control, further isolating myself from people who cared about me and making it possible for her to control me even more.
Although she seldom used physical violence as a means of control, she routinely used emotional and verbal violence. Having read many books about people with personality disorders as I’ve tried to understand why she is the way she is and how prevent her from victimizing our children, my parents, and me further, I’ve come to believe she shows behaviors consistent with more than one personality disorder. She’s very narcissistic, doesn’t have a sense of ethics or morality apart from what she thinks is best for her, and thinks nothing of hurting innocent others if it will help her achieve her goals.
It it is common for people like her to become like this from a history of child abuse. But knowing that your abuser is a former victim turned victimizer doesn’t make it any easier on those of us who are suffering. The incompetent manner in which the courts and government typically deal with such people prolongs the suffering and increases the damage.
Estimating Your Risk for Becoming A Parental Alienation Target
Interestingly, Dr. Baker found that many of the adult children of parental alienation become target parents for parental alienation. The cause/effect relationship is unclear here. On the one hand, it could be that being alienated from their own children helped them recognize the relationship between their target parent and themselves was similarly destroyed. On the other hand, it could be that they developed a psychological model for an appropriate choice of partner or spouse based upon their alienating parent and therefore were prone to pick a person with behaviors that are manipulative and controlling. Another aspect may involve an abused child learns to submit to control to avoid more pain and therefore grows up to be more easily dominated by an abusive partner or spouse. From what Dr. Baker found, it is difficult to make cause and effect generalizations in this area.
After observing the huge difference in interactions with my parents during committed partner relationships I’ve had, I believe that one of the best means to determine if parental alienation may become a problem with your own children is the ability of you and your partner or spouse to get along with and accept each other’s families. If there’s a relationship problem yet it doesn’t appear there is a reasonably objective source for the problem, you should be seriously asking yourself if this is a safe relationship in which to have children.
I also strongly believe that the risk for being targeted for parental alienation is much higher in relationships with a person who was abused by a parent for many years. My observation is that such abuse significantly increases the risks for a person to suffer from a personality disorder that involves a fear of abandonment and an insecurity about relationships. Such people are also more prone to use emotionally manipulative tactics to control people around them. This means they may have both the motivation to be alienators and the skills to do so successfully.
There are certainly some former abused children who will never become parental alienators, so please don’t take the above cautions as hard and fast rules. If you do suspect your partner or spouse may have been abused as a child, I’d highly recommend working through these issues extensively with a qualified mental health professional long before you decide to have children and preferably even before you marry.
Help Your Family and Friends
If you see family or friends going through such dismal experiences as I’ve described above, you should pass along to them information about parental alienation, personality disorders, and emotional child abuse. They likely know little to nothing about these topics, even though they are probably living them firsthand. Our schools are seriously deficient at educating children and young adults in these areas except for a subset of those who delve into psychology or related fields in college. You informing them of your concerns about possible parental alienation may be the only chance they have to get a handle on the problem before it permanently destroys family relationships.
One of the best ways to convey the true destruction that parental alienation causes and how alienators engage in their brainwashing is by passing along a good book on the topic. This helps establish that it is a legitimate problem recognized by experts, it hurts childly badly, and it can grow far worse than what is likely evident in your situation to date. Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind
Kate’s angry divorcing mother alienates her from her father, making her question everything he does and believing that he must not love her. Over time Kate figures out her mother is a hateful emotional manipulator and eventually moves in with her father who she appreciates for how he has always loved her and refused to engage in ugly brainwashing.
Larissa’s story involves her alienating mother who remains married to her father despite teaching Larissa to hate him. Like Kate, she eventually figures it out and reduces contact with her mother but maintains contact with her father.
In case you mistakenly believe that only mothers are alienators, Jonah’s case shows otherwise. His divorced alcoholic father teaches him to hate his mother and spy on and verbally and physically abuse her. He ends up totally enmeshed with his abusive father and suffers from having no relationship with his mother.
Amazon Kindle for the Web
A tip for using the Amazon Kindle for the Web
Use the arrow buttons to flip pages left or right, or you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. The viewer may start on the first page of regular content in the book. If so, you can view the publishing credits and table of contents by flipping backwards several pages.
If you’re interested enough to buy it and money is a concern (as it is for many parents suffering the onslaught of alienators who often also financially assault their targets) note that the Kindle edition of the book costs less and you can read it on your computer or phone if you don’t have a dedicated Kindle reader.
Further Reading
Dr. Amy Baker On Parental Alienation, PAS, and Helping Your Kids Resist Both
Alienating Grandparents Hurts Grandchildren
Borderline Mom: Emotional Self Defense for Children
The Gregory Mantell Show: Parental Alienation Syndrome
Kids’ Parental Alienation Book: “I Don’t Want to Choose!”
Alienating Mother Ordered to Pay $286,641.75 in Fines and Fees
MMPI-2 Can Reveal Parental Alienators
Richard Smulczewski Parental Alienation Case
Jayne Major: Common Questions About Parental Alienation
Loads of Info on Parental Alienation
Overcoming Parental Alienation
Monika Logan: Social Worker Discusses Parental Alienation On Get Your Justice Live
| Books, BPD, Child Abuse, Child Custody, Children, Courts, Divorce, Domestic Violence, Family, Marriage, NPD, Parental Alienation, Partner Violence, Psychology |
The following injustice is happening right now, in Montgomery County, Texas, under our laws & in our courts.
In July, 2009, I was massacred in a 3½ year custody battle for my 6½ year old daughter.
Convicted child molesters have more access to their children than I do.
Calls, letters, & gifts are intercepted, & I have no visitation.
The mother also secreted her 2 month & 14 month old babies 1200 miles from their father & for 15½ years, her family prevented all contact.
The mother’s history & pattern of hostility, aggression, alienation, & medical mistreatment was well known to psychologist Dr Edward G Silverman, therapist Theresa Burbank, ad litem Lynn Coleman, the attorneys, et.al.
http://www.courthouseforum.com
Honorable Judge Suzanne Stovall continued the case for years because the mother’s discovery was incomplete, but contradictorily refused to compel the mother to produce discovery.
Judge Suzanne Stovall inconsistently ruled on motions, laws, or rules to favor the mother.
Judge Suzanne Stovall ignored the overwhelming certified/certifiable evidence of violence, hostility, aggression, & abuse by the mother, her family & her friends.
My lawyers complained that Judge Suzanne Stovall favored the mother.
Judge Suzanne Stovall punished me with over 20% plus an additional $100, monthly child support.
For 3 years, I pleaded for a trial or in some way, to present a case.
Despite 3 years of Hearings, Rule 11’s, hundreds of emails, letters, & conversations, Judge Suzanne Stovall refused to compel the mother to produce discovery, yet granted the mother years of continuances because her discovery was incomplete; including continuing a preferentially set trial.
The mother & lawyers knew how devastating her discovery would be, but Judge Suzanne Stovall refused to compel production.
Judge Suzanne Stovall disregarded over 3 years & over 300 exhibited provable charges of Contempt against the mother, including failure to pay child support, interfering with child custody, & worse.
It has required the written threat of a Writ of Habeas Corpus for the mother to surrender my daughter to me.
I paid the jury fee & adamantly insisted on a trial, but without a trial, Judge Suzanne Stovall signed a Final Decree that was written to remove me from my daughter’s life.
Aggravated perjury, forged letters, falsified evidence, unsupported, inconsistent, & unchallenged false accusations, by the mother, CPS, et al., outweighed exhaustive undisputed facts, certified evidence, sworn statements, & objective/testable/verifiable documentation, disproving the accusations, & proving neglect & abuse by the mother.
For years, the mother has secreted our daughter to doctors, & medically mistreated her.
For at least 15 months, the mother yo-yoed my daughter on steroids.
But when pediatricians & specialists examined, x-rayed, diagnosed, & ordered treatment for a real & progressing condition, the mother rejected the doctors and was supported by Judge Stovall, CPS, Theresa Burbank , Edward G Silverman, & Lynn Coleman.
Ad litem, Lynn Coleman, and the mother refused to attend any doctor’s appointments, but I kept them updated.
Elaine Baggerley of CPS began diagnosing my daughter as ADHD, and more, on their first meeting.
Even with the mother’s sworn statements of medically abusing/neglecting my daughter & with the doctors corroborating records of her mistreatment, Judge Suzanne Stovall took my daughter from me & placed her into the mother’s sole custody.
The mother continues to deliberately, medically mistreat my daughter, neglects her dental care, & the high risk lifestyles exposes my daughter to diseases.
The mother also medicated her other children with steroids, psychiatric drugs, numerous prescriptions OTC medicines, etc.
Depositions, CISD records, Sworn statements, & other Certified & Certifiable evidence revealed a home with an AGGRAVATED SEXUAL ASSAULT FELON, wrist CUTTING, daily VIOLENCE, runaway teen, destruction, criminals, drug abuse (METH, COCAINE, XANAX, OXYCOTIN, etc), frequent police visits & a SEARCH WARRANT confiscated drug paraphernalia, multiple sex partners, multiple suspensions for drugs & violence, burglary, vandalism, shootings, disease, fighting, screaming, profanity, pornography (incl BEASTIALITY), boys & men sleeping over, my daughter sleeping at men’s homes, being taught obscene language & gestures, & so much more.
With the knowledge &/or support of Dr Edward G Silverman, Lynn T Coleman, Theresa Burbank, & Elaine Baggereley, the mother has so thwarted my daughter’s education that at 6½ years old she is below District Guidelines, in Kindergarten.
At 4 years old she had her own computer, and could count to 29, count to 100 by tens, write her name, recognize most letters, could tie her shoes, play checkers, play computer & card games, & much more.
At 6+ years old, she could do none of those, & now she requires special attention, & is a behavioral problem.
The mother provided & reared her young children on GRAPHICALLY SEXUALLY VIOLENT entertainment and since infancy has repeatedly exposed my daughter to the same.
Her children became violent, drug abusing criminals, who attended alternative high schools.
20 months of Theresa Burbank’s therapy and the mother’s sole parenting have resulted in my daughter being referred to a psychiatrist & probably on psychiatric drugs.
http://local.yahoo.com/info-19096883-teresa-burbank-pc-conroe
The mother’s family & friends have threatened me at my home and away, & my property has been vandalized.
I have received harassing, obscene, & middle of the night phone calls.
The well paid, well insured mother has lived rent & utilities free for 3½ years, but claims to be deep in debt from undisclosed medical expenses.
The mother has committed tax, CHIPs, Medicaid, & insurance fraud at least since 2003.
I have neither a history of, nor is there any evidence that I have ever been violent, destructive, abusive, hostile, etc.
My debt exceeds twice my gross annual income & is increasing.
Fees & expenses have exceeded 4 times my gross annual income & are increasing.
I have recorded nearly every contact with the mother, CPS, ad litem, & many others.
I will be appealing to the Texas: Bar, Judicial Review, Attorneys General, Appellate Courts, Supreme Court, Board of Examiners of Psychologists, TDFPS, etc. and will include:
medical & doctors records of years of mistreatment
CPS reports of violence, drugs, medical mistreatment, etc
psychological evaluations include lying, abuse, etc
depositions of lying, violence, drug abuse, sex, etc
CISD records of violence, drugs, sex, etc
police reports of violence, drugs, shootings, etc
myspace of violence, drug abuse, sex, pornography, etc
emails to/from the: ad litem, psychologist, therapist
I have always loved & wanted my daughter & will never, ever, ever give up trying to rescue her.
Thank you for a very thoughtful overview of Parental Alienation and Dr. Baker’s book. If you are interested in reviewing another book on the subject, we would be happy to have you review our book, A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation. You can check out some of the reviews we’ve already received at our website, http://www.afamilysheartbreak.com.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
mike jeffries
Author, A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation
I am living through this right now in Montgomery County, Texas and the courts are just letting her get away with it!
It all started since our first born. Now divorced with two little boys who have both been physically and emotionally abused (not to mention being the target parent of PAS), they have turned this in to a custody battle in which I cannot afford!
It’s a David versus Goliath thing… between my ex, her mother, her 4th husband (one she had the affair with throughout our 10 year marriage) they make close to 2 million dollars a year.
My ex told me the day she said she wanted a divorce that if I fight for my kids she would take me for everything and I would be lucky to have supervised visits. For the first four months I had day visits only on the weekends. Now over a year after the divorce was finalized, my boys cried out to a lady from church about the abuse.
The judge signed an ex-parte’ order, only to lose my boys back to her four days later at a hearing due to her attorney and money I’m sure! I now have to come up with 2k for a court appointed therapist and it’s now a full blown custody battle I can’t afford! I went to pick up my boys this Friday evening as it was my weekend. But she picked them up from the daycare and would not bring them back. To no surprise, after hours of phone calls and emails that lasted to 11 AM the following morning, law enforcement would do nothing and said I needed to take it up with my attorney! At one point Saturday morning they said they would assist me in getting my boys for this holiday weekend and I drove from the Woodlands to downtown Houston to get my decree and back to Montgomery, Texas for them to say they talked to the DA and could not go get the boys and neither could I because when they called her she told them I refused to pick up during the designated time and I forfeited my weekend!
I need help from some experts or from somewhere! If you were to read the hearing and trial notes and review everything my ex has gotten away with, you would be stunned. It is of my opinion the courts of Montgomery County, Texas are corrupt and certain Judges give preferential treatment to certain lawyers to say the least!
Bill,
I’m really sorry to hear of your troubles. Be strong for your kids and keep up the effort to stay in their lives. As much as there is a temptation to counter-alienate against their abusive mother, don’t do it. You can correct the misperceptions you hear coming from your kids, but don’t go on the attack in retaliation and especially not using the kids.
One thing you should try very hard to do in court is to show with solid evidence that your ex-wife lied to the police. Your ex-wife, if she’s like many sociopathic parents, probably relentlessly slimes your reputation and is making progress at causing others to believe her lies about you including that you are some sort of dishonest monster. This perception can stick, even when it is entirely false, and create a huge amount of damage for you and your children.
You should be able to get attendance records, including pick-up and drop-off times, from the preschool to show that she picked up the kids on the day you were to pick them up. If you show this to the police officers involved, they may be willing to write a declaration that she told them you refused to pick up the children and this is why they didn’t help you get them for the weekend. They may be willing to briefly talk to the preschool, also, to confirm the records, and then write a report on their findings and then you could obtain a copy of it. You could also subpoena them as witnesses in court.
You may also want to file a complaint with the police and DA about your ex-wife lying to the police to deprive your children of contact with their father. If they are anything like most law enforcement agencies, it likely won’t get them to do a thing. But if she continues to do this and escalates to the typical abusive pattern of lying to obtain restraining orders and lying to cause you to be prosecuted for violating them, the DA might eventually prosecute for this.
Please see this story about a Lancaster, Pennsylvania man named Ben Vonderheide who was falsely reported for violating a restraining order because his ex-wife Wendy Flanders and her new boyfriend Theodore Yoder lied to the police and DA. They even manipulated Calvary Church to participate in the attacks on Ben and aid in the parental alienation child abuse against their son Quinta. The DA prosecuted them for their crimes when it became clear through evidence available that they had lied. Flanders was sentenced to 2 years and a $250 fine, Yoder to 1 year and a $250 fine.
While it is uncommon for the government to do the right thing and punish the actual criminals rather than the falsely accused victim, in this case they did get it right. Perhaps you and others in your situation can learn from this case.
The involvement of churches in child abuse, particularly parental alienation and wrongfully assisting an abusive woman to terrorize the father of her children, is not all that unusual. Religion can be abused for evil purposes by sociopathic criminals like Wendy Flanders, just as they abuse many other tools. Church people make very easy targets because far too many of them are gullible do-gooders who have a us vs. them mentality, are quick to believes lie and bad things about another person (even though if they truly understood their religion they would not be so susceptible to this), and then become willing to lie, harass, and terrorize on behalf of a convincing sociopath who falsely portrays herself as a victim.
In the Vonderheide case, if reports of the involvement of Calvary Church of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are accurate then the DA probably should have filed criminal charges against many officials and members of the church including Pastor George May, Pastor Johnny Miller, Pastor Todd Nathan, Kathy Yoder, and others. Allegations are that they involved themselves in harassment and parental alienation child abuse not only against Vonderheide but against another of Flanders’ past husbands and the children she had with him. Unfortunately, the same church officials and members who make powerful allies for sociopaths also make poor targets for prosecution given that far too many like-minded church people will “stand up” for them regardless of the evidence. Prosecutors who are cowards may not want to risk the wrath of such people and let them get away with their crimes.
Rob
Thanks Rob,
I had my appointment with the child therapist (neurological therapist) and he was playing head games and drilling me! They also mentioned how the other side already paid in full and I had to give them four checks with post-a-notes attached when they could deposit to move forward.
I told them I hope they do not take a child abuse case and turn it into a money thing. (ironically they bill like attorneys..z go figure).
The only thing I found positive in that meeting was he said he would listen to what I was not allowed to say in court including hearsay from the children. Not sure if I trust anyone at this point but what do you do? My children are now telling me they do not want to see or sleep with me since I filed the abuse claims! My thoughts are they are being brain washed as they would never say that and typically come running to me!
I do not believe in hitting my children as there is a more positive approach to discipline than hitting. He is not the father of my children and has no right to touch my children! I have sold everything I have just to survive and meet the financial costs but am losing ground quickly. My ex and her attorney purposely drag things out and do stuff to cause me financial hardship to gain legal advantage. Right now, it’s all in God’s hands and I will continue to do whatever I can to fight for my children.
Bill
@ Rob
Rob, thanks for pointing out the Vonderheide case. While they did convict Wendy Flanders and her accomplice for maliciously lying to the police, the government has continued to persecute Ben Vonderheide and contribute to the alienation of his son Quinta.
I wrote more about what happened to Vonderheide and how he is trying to push for changes in courts and laws to stop violating the Constitution and human rights in Pennsylvania. Please see my article Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket for more details.
have been visiting your site for three days. really love your posts. btw i will be doing a study concerning this issue. do you know any other great blogs or maybe online forums where I can get more? many thanks.
Parents of Alienated Children are hosting a conference in LA with Dr. Amy J L Baker as the keynote speaker November 13, 2010. For more information visit the website parentalalienationsupportgroup.com.
[Editor's note: You can also find information on the event on our site at Southern California Parental Alienation Conference on November 13, 2010.]
It seems the focus of your paper is your ex-wife, but I can tell you that ex-husbands are just as capable of this hateful behaviour, as are the spouses of children who don’t want the baggage of pesky in-laws. You make many fine points and there are lots of us out there who have been victimized by these psychopaths. My only point is please do not make this a ‘woman’ thing when it is plain that psychopaths come in all shapes and sizes.
Cherie,
All of us writing for this site, and we think most of our readers also, are very clear that parental alienation, domestic violence, personality disorders, and sociopathic behaviors are not exclusive to one gender. They affect both. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
I thought this was made clear by this text in the article:
From Dr. Amy Baker’s findings, parental alienation usually is executed by the custodial parent and usually the custodial parent is the mother. These findings mirror findings from basically everybody else who has studied dozens or more cases selected without factors that would cause bias. (In other words, you might be able to find some study that shows noncustodial fathers are horrible parental alienators, but the study would have to be designed to focus on that group in the first place.)
Even if a noncustodial parent wanted to alienate the children (which would still be wrong and still be child abuse), it is very difficult for somebody with zero hours to a day or so per week of contact to wrongly influence a child in this way. For it to effect brainwashing of the child, the custodial parent would probably need to have some serious problems himself or herself or to so completely fail to counter the badmouthing and lies that he or she is virtually doing nothing to counter the distortions and negativity being spread by the alienator.
Noncustodial parents who see their kids more than a day or so per week are more likely to have opportunity to alienate, but even so the custodial parents still have far more opportunities to alienate and to do it for long periods without opposition, corrections, and experiences that would help the children maintain objectivity.
The one case Baker did find in her interviews discussed in the book in which the noncustodial parent managed to alienate the child involved an adult child “Felicity” who was alienated from her custodial parent by her noncustodial father. I’ll quote a bit from the book on page 114:
The discussion goes on to cover how the alienation involved bad-mouthing, creating false beliefs that her mother was violent and had thrown furniture at the father and “proved” this with scars (using false “evidence” is common for alienators), and so forth. Felicity eventually found out her father was lying about some of these incidents from other family members who mentioned how he had actually gotten scars as a teenager that he was attributing to her mother’s alleged violence. He was also convicted of child abuse against her younger brother and went to prison. Incidents like these are what helped her to figure out her father is a parental alienator. But in the end, he did himself in when he turned on her. Alienators are often personality disordered or otherwise abusive people, so it is common for them to abuse the children directly in many ways beyond the parental alienation.
I get the sense that Felicity’s mother may have done some things that weren’t so great in Felicity’s eyes, leaving her open to being influenced about things that may have actually happened, and also was not effective at correcting her father’s lies and attacks.
This is just a brief glimpse of one of 40 cases discussed in Baker’s book. I’d highly recommend this book to anybody struggling to understand how alienators operate, how much damage they do to their children and the target parent, and getting some ideas on how to counteract the alienation.
Every one of the other cases discussed in the book involved an alienating parent who was the custodial parent or was heavily involved in a shared custody situation.
36 out of the 40 alienating parents were the mothers. So this is the common case and it is exactly why you see so many more reports of alienating mothers than alienating fathers. But it doesn’t mean that mothers are intrinsically alienators at all. This is more a commentary on the sexist family law system than on the basic nature of mothers and fathers.
Shared custody should be the default with a goal of children spending around half their time with each parent in nearly all circumstances in which there are no criminal convictions for crimes that would endanger the children. We generally agree that a jury voting unanimously should be required to shift away from this arrangement as it is clear that judges routinely abuse the law, children, and parents, often for their own personal motives (rewarding or punishing an attorney is a common one) or because they are so biased, lazy, bigoted, or sexist. My opinion is that juries would be less likely to engage in such abuses and such a system would make it so much harder to game the outcome with lies and distortions that fewer people would try to do so. If the public is thoroughly educated on parental alienation, I suspect juries would be far more effective at preventing gross injustices than judges.
While our dream is that parental alienation, government abuse, cluster B personality disorders, sociopathy, and other topics we cover on this site would simply stop being problems, it’s certainly not going to happen any time soon. Therefore we would really like to find more cases of moms on the receiving end of these kinds of abuse, particularly parental alienation and government persecution, who would be willing to discuss it openly. It would be a great aid to other moms in similar situation and also help drive home the point that the gender-biased groups out there are doing a great disservice to us all by making it harder to push for reform of the broken family law courts around the world by making moms and dads waste way too much time fighting and vilifying each other when the real enemy is more often the government and its allies who benefit from abusing families, children, and parents.
It is my understanding we will soon be reposting some writings from a mother who has experienced years of parental alienation, access blocking, legal abuse, and persecution by the government.
If you’d like to write about your case, we’d be happy to help you edit and publish it on our site to share with others. Generally we advise people to stick to substantive details that do not identify the parties involved in their cases unless the level of abuse is extremely high. In that case, we generally advise going after the government officials and other “professionals” involved on not naming the ex or anybody in the family. As malicious as an ex may be, he or she can’t do the damage so many of these people do without the assistance of the government. If a judge is ignoring parental alienation or other abuses in one case, then he or she is probably ignoring them in dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other cases. Such people deserve to be named, held accountable for their crimes, and eliminated from their jobs to stop the harm they are causing.
Rob
The author’s story could have been mine….except I stayed with him for 28 years. After our divorce…..I basically lost my adult kids. They don’t respect me, talk to me like I am garbage, ignore me for months on end…….my sweet babies that I sang to sleep, played with, read to, raised with love……..I thank God their grandparents (my folks) are gone, this would kill them. They were so close to their grandparents which my ex tried to ruin also…he has ruined every person that ever cared for him……he is lonely broken cruel old man….I forgive him …..I miss my babies……I pray for strength…..
My daughter married a guy who has alienated us from her. It started out slowly, but has escalated to the point where it is such a chore to even talk to her on the phone once a week without his constant childish interruptions. They live approximately 5 1/2 hours from us. I just recently stopped speaking to her because she is bringing up what a “horrible childhood” she had. I asked her why this is coming up now, when she has not even lived at home for the past 15 years? This guy has poisoned her against me, but then again, I am on to his BS. I am accused of being a “negative person” by her. It is because I point out his crap to her and he does not like it. I guess I will just be there when she finally figures out that she married a big fat, pompous jerk! He thinks that he is an authority on every subject. His mother is also heavily invested in their marriage (she bought their baby a $2,000 nursery). She is a teacher and he is an engineer, so I think that they are fully capable of buying their own things. Also, she is always buying, buying, buying them things. I could go on and on, but I am going to just write her off for now until she comes to her senses.
Good Dad from Texas:
There are cases where the parent was deprived of the children, who had been secreted away by the offending parent and the grandparents. In a $53 MILLION dollar jury verdict, upheld on appeal, the appellate court further awarded guardian ad litem fees ($150,000) and costs for appeal ($25,000). Smith v. Smith, 720 S.W.2d 586 (TexCtApp 1986).
Large jury verdicts continue to be rendered against family members who assist in child snatching with the snatching parent. A San Antonio, Texas jury awarded almost $6 MILLION dollars. The jury award was for negligent interference with custody & family relationship and for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Weirich v. Weirich, No. 53-M-1985 (Tex. Dec. 5, 1988), reported in 9 Law Alert 18 (Dec. 1989).
Dadzrites can be contacted at [email protected], or 973-616-9558 (M-F, 10-5 EST).
@Katie
Dear Katie,
your story could be mine. I was married for 34 years and after a year of marriage counc. I was told to leave that my husband had a narcissistic personality disorder. I left, but in the process lost 2 of my 3 children and 5 grandchildren. My exfather-in-law and ex-husband have completely alienated my children by saying that I am a liar and other terrible things. It worked as I have not seen them for 3 years. I could just clip and paste your message here and that would be me, I rocked and sang to my children, they were my number 1 priority, They are gone. I have been in therapy and was told to go on, but all I have ever wanted to be was a mother and grandmother. How do you go on? How do I get my children back?