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(Note: This article was published together with Personality Disordered Abusers in Psychological Evaluations. That article focuses on problems encountered when psychological evaluations are used in an attempt to deal with a personality disordered abuser in a family law dispute.)

William Eddy is an attorney and licensed clinical social worker who has written many excellent books on personality disorders and how they manifest in family law battles. In his recent books, he has taken to calling people with personality disorders who engage in extensive and unreasonable litigation as High Conflict Personalities (HCP). He’s stated that a large part, possibly as much as 40%, of the litigation in family courts involves HCPs.

Yet despite the prevalence of these psychological problems in family law courts, judges often fail to understand the problems and are prone to reward the abusers for their conduct. This is likely to intensify the abuses because they have been positively reinforced with rewards such as sole physical and/or legal custody, financial awards, or simply emotional satisfaction of seeing the hated target being berated by a judge the abuser manipulated.
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(Note: This article was published together with Personality Disordered Abusers in Family Law Courts. That article focuses on the more general problems encountered in family law disputes involving personality disordered abusers.)

A common opinion of many people suffering harm due to a current or former partner who is a personality disordered abuser is that a psychological evaluation performed for a family law case will describe and label the personality disorder and help protect the victims, including the children and spouse, from the abuser. Disturbingly, this seldom occurs. Instead, what often happens is that the evaluation leads to more conflict and poor outcomes in family law courts that put children and the target parent and their extended family at increased risk of continuing abuse at the hands of the personality disordered abuser and her or his associates.
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In February 2010, the United States federal government cranked up the pressure on Japan to start cooperating with resolving international parental child abduction cases involving Japanese parents taking kids back to Japan and preventing them from seeing their non-Japanese parents. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell issued a warning to Japan to revise its family law system to permit non-Japanese parents to have contact with their children.
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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.
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Update on March 31, 2010:
Eric Moelter has started to speak up a bit about what has happened in the false sexual abuse and child custody abduction case of Cindy Dumas v. Eric Moelter. He believes Cindy Dumas suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder and has been waging a distortion campaign against him for years. Please see our update in Eric Moelter Speaks Against Cindy Dumas Distortion Campaign.

Cindy Dumas
2004

On January 15, 2010, there will be yet another hearing in the long-running and highly destructive San Diego family law case of Cindy Dumas v. Eric Moelter that started in 2003. In this case, Dumas has alleged for years that Moelter sexually abused their children. The children corroborated some of these claims, but were viewed as potentially repeating misinformation and opinions programmed into them by their mother. Despite investigations that don’t agree with Dumas, she would not change her opinion or reach some resolution that would allow the children safe contact with both of their parents.

This article lays out many of the reported facts and statements and observable events and artifacts such as flyers and websites. Later I’ll be writing about my interpretation of the case and some of the problems with the manner in which the courts and law enforcement are handling this case and others like it.
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Parental alienation expert Dr. Richard Warshak will be featured on United States ABC Network’s 20/20 program on Friday, December 18, 2009, at 8pm CST or 9pm EST/PST. See 20/20’s schedule for more information, to read related stories, or to view the program after it has been broadcast.

Stories on 20/20 during this special 2-hour episode related to child custody battles and parental alienation include:

Bringing Pietro Home: One Dad’s Epic Custody Fight
Brandon Henry Was Told His Child Was Dead. To Get the Truth He Headed to Italy.

Fighting for Liam: Michael McCarty Journeys to Italy in Hopes of Regaining Custody of Son: Abducted by His Mother, Liam Remains in Orphanage Due to Legal Delays
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Newsweek writer Sharon Begley’s recent piece An Evolutionary Edge: How grandmas may play favorites touched off some debate about the merits of her understanding of genetics. While complaints about oversimplified explanations of genetics may or may not be accurate, what’s more important to me is that Begley points out that grandchildren can benefit from the involvement of their grandparents in their lives in a measurable and quantifiable way, even if the exact causes are controversial.

Parental Alienation Leads to Severing Grandchild/Grandparent Bonds

If grandchildren can benefit from grandparental involvement in their lives, this implies that these relationships should be preserved despite parental separation and divorce. It is not just a “social nicety” to do so, it is fundamental to the well-being of the grandchildren.

Unfortunately, some research shows that 1/4 of children of divorce suffer from parental alienation syndrome. Children alienated from a parent not only suffer the loss or impairment of that parental relationship, but also tend to suffer the loss or impairment of all family relationships on that parent’s side. This means grandparent/grandchild relationships are also negatively impacted. Government policies in many locations fail to recognize the importance of preserving these relationships and often wrongly help alienating parents cut some or all of their children’s grandparents out of their lives, usually to the children’s detriment.
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Eileen Lasher, San Diego Mother

I’m having a surreal feeling at the moment — almost like I’m an assistant scriptwriter. Let me explain. I just watched a video interview of Eileen Lasher, a mother whose children suffered at the hands of San Diego County’s CPS, family court, police, and DA “organized crime” syndicate for 15 years until her youngest child turned 18. The interviewer, Fred Sottile, used my article San Diego County Grand Jury Cites Further CPS Misconduct as the outline for his interview. I had no idea this was going to be the case when I started watching. It was truly odd to hear him reading the first paragraph of the story and thinking that sounds just like a story I wrote a few months ago. So I looked up the story and compared the words — it’s the same. That’s fine with me, I’m glad my article helped him with his interview.
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Borderline Mom: A Quick & Dirty Manual of Emotional Self Defense for Children is a new title by Georgiana Wright for people dealing with a mother suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), whether formally diagnosed or simply suspected. One of the key decisions children of Borderlines eventually must make is whether the destructive relationship with their mother can be fixed by setting boundaries or whether it is better to cut off all ties and write their mother off. Author Georgianna Wright explores both choices in her new book.

Recognizing Borderline Women

Borderline women are generally abusive to those around them, particularly to their husbands, boyfriends, partners (including women partners — lesbians and bisexuals can be Borderlines just as heterosexuals can), and children. It is important to realize that many Borderlines were abused as children, some have genetic tendencies for extreme emotional behavior, and some have both characteristics. Recognizing a Borderline often depends upon noticing how they affect the people who are their close family and friends. These people often are afraid of the Borderline and can spend years being manipulated and controlled via abusive tactics, rages, and false blaming. The Borderline will often have endless complains about all of these people, seemingly justifiable unless you have actually met and seen them and therefore know that they are not the source of the problems.
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Although they may seem strange bedfellows, former Governor of Alaska and US VP candidate Sarah Palin (Republican) and smallfry pandering child abuse proponent Jim Beall (Democrat – California Legislature) may have more in common than meets the eye. Both appear to have attitudes towards fathers that suggests they regard denying them contact with their children via access blocking and false accusations. They believe these should be tactics vicious women can legally use without regard for their children. Both think that this form of emotional child abuse known as parental alienation should be ignored and not considered in child custody decisions. Yet child psychologists consider parental alienation of great harm to children.

Palin Family: Serial Parental Alienators?

Sarah Palin and her family have been accused of alienating her daughter Bristol’s child Tripp Johnston from his father, Levi Johnston. Levi Johnston and his sister Mercede claim that the Palin family blocks his attempts to see Tripp. He is contemplating legal action against them to regain time with his son. While detractors point to Johnston being a high-school dropout with a variety of family and personal problems, it looks very likely that the Palin family really does have a problem with parental alienation against ex-relatives they want kicked out of the family and are willing to go so far as using defamation campaigns and frivolous restraining orders to accomplish their despicable goals.

(from Bristol Palin’s Bitter Split!)

“Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible. She tells him he can’t take the baby to our house because she doesn’t want him around ‘white trash’!” Bristol won’t even allow him to watch the baby for a few hours — unless he’s babysitting!

The worst part, Mercede continues, is that the former vice presidential candidate supports Bristol’s treatment of Levi, 19. “I used to love Sarah,” Mercede says sadly. “But I’ve lost lots of respect for her.”

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