Personality Disordered Abusers in Psychological Evaluations
Written by: Rob
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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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DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disordered Abusers
DSM-IV is the guide used by mental health care professionals in 2010 to help understand and label (diagnose) mental illnesses. Many of the common types of abusers you find in a family law court suffer from DSM-IV Axis II personality disorders. The most problematic of these are often the cluster B personality disorders known as borderline, narcissistic, antisocial, and histrionic. This is largely because these people are often skilled at credibly portraying themselves as victims and building support networks of people who believe their lies when in fact they are abusers. While there are other types of personality disordered abusers such as those with dissociative identity disorder, dangerous abusers will almost always exhibit characteristics of the borderline, narcissistic, or antisocial personality disorders.
While the causes for people developing these personality disorders are not always entirely clear, often these people were abused as children by one or both parents. Some may be visibly scarred from years of physical and sexual abuse. Most, however, are not so easily identified because their scars lie inside. They may have little or no outwardly visible damage from physical abuse, but their personalities have been severely damaged from being subjected to nearly continuous insults, verbal attacks, emotional invalidation, exposure to adult violence, and other forms of emotional and verbal abuse from one or both of their parents.
The most dangerous personality disordered abusers are those from a subset of these Axis II Cluster B personality disorders. Of these, the “acting out” Borderlines and Narcissists and Antisocials have the most potential to harm others. They are both skilled at manipulating others and tend to have intent to harm others with little, if any, remorse for doing so.
The “acting in” Borderlines and Narcissists and Histrionics tend to hurt themselves more than others. While they can be abusive, it generally is mixed with a lot of self-harm and odd behaviors that are not intended to harm others.
Children and Divorce Tend to Intensify Personality Disorder Behaviors
Those with axis II Cluster B personality disorders often are deeply insecure. This insecurity drives many of their behaviors. They may fear abandonment by their children or spouse, yet view divorce as a way to take control by “owning” the children and “banishing” the spouse from the family home. Often false accusations of domestic violence and child abuse are made to bolster their goals of protecting themselves emotionally by any means possible.
While it is common experience for the vengeful wrath of a Borderline or Narcissist to explode during a divorce, these people nearly always have behaved somewhat similarly for the entire marriage. During a divorce, they may report false or severely distorted accusations of murder threats or even attempted murder, physical abuse, destroying property in displays of physical violence, and other serious accusations that could result in criminal prosecution of their target.
Many of these false accusations are projections. This means that the PDA does these things or is thinking about doing them, but rather than admit to having a problem and dealing with it, the PDA scapegoats the target with false accusations based upon the PDA’s own psychological issues. They are trying to cover up their guilt by making somebody else look bad and calling great attention to it. It is much like the expression “the pot calling the kettle black”, except in this case the pot is black but the kettle is not. The kettle may look black when viewed through a Borderline’s “black and white” television, but normal people with color televisions will realize it is not.
During the marriage, these same people may have been making false accusations of affairs, financial irresponsibility, and other less serious accusations. Often these accusations are based more upon the personality disorder victim’s own shortcomings than any element of truth about the target.
For instance, she herself may be having an affair about which her husband knows nothing or is engaging in drug abuse. She therefore distorts his expressed concerns about her emotional distance and unavailability and what he’s shared about trying to deal with the situation into false accusations of him having an affair or that she’s afraid of him because he’s a violent drug abuser. She will probably spread these lies to dozens of people over a period of months or years, building lie upon lie until the people she is manipulating generally think the husband is a promiscuous and violent drug abuser. Although they have no observations themselves to confirm this and it is not objectively true, they believe it anyway because the wife is so emotionally intense and effective at her manipulation.
Other times, the false accusations are based upon the abuses they suffered as a child. A woman who was sexually abused may accused her husband of sexually abusing their children because she knows it will severely damage him and it emotionally satisfies her to attack and control her husband. To some degree, it may be “retaliation” for sexual abuses committed against her as a child. But it is really more about attaining control via means the abuser knows are effective because she’s used them many times before and seen how well they work. These means usually include false accusations and other tactics that domestic violence activist Erin Pizzey has labeled family terrorism.
Recognizing Abuse Risks Early
If you see a pattern of exaggerations, blaming, and distortions in your marriage or relationship, you must realize for your own safety that your significant other is highly likely to vastly step up both the number and severity of these statements during the breakup of a relationship and especially during a divorce or child custody battle. Given the way American courts wrongly and habitually take away the rights of the accused without a trial or hearing, you and your children are in severe danger of being separated and badly damaged by false accusations coming from a personality disordered abuser.
If you do not yet have children and believe you may be in a relationship with an abusive Borderline or Narcissist or other PDA, get out of the relationship as soon as you can safely do so. In the meantime, stop engaging in sexual activities with the person. The risks of having children with such a partner are dire. Bringing children into such a relationship is like lighting off fireworks in a room full of explosives. PDAs are often triggered into much worse behaviors by having children. Not only will you be badly hurt, but your children and likely also your extended family will be, too.
Typical Harm to Victims of the PDA
If you are living with a PDA and get a divorce, you are likely to be subjected to very serious false accusations. You are likely to be kicked out of your home and banned from seeing your children. Your personal property and records will probably taken and withheld from you. You may have identity theft and other privacy and financial crimes committed against you, then the PDA may try to claim you signed documents that she or he altered or forged to break the law. You will likely be falsely accused of domestic violence.
You will probably be accused of child abuse if you have children. Even if you do not have children, you may find yourself falsely accused of child abuse if you spend time around children of people who are aligned with the PDA. Many of these cases escalate to false accusations of child sexual abuse and sexual assault.
You are likely to be detained or arrested by police, have your home invaded and property taken by CPS social workers or police investigating the false allegations.
This is hardly a complete list. What I can state from personal experience and that of friends who have endured similar disasters is that you probably can’t predict what will happen next because it may become truly bizarre. The certainty is that you will be living in fear of what the PDA will do next to your family and you.
Given that some or all of these things occur to you, you would understandably regard the PDA in your life as a danger to you and your family. Yet if you assert this, there are foolish incompetent judges who will disparage you for your belief, particularly if you believe this about a female PDA. They cannot comprehend the living nightmare these people make for their victims and think that it is perfectly acceptable and routine conduct for them to be making false accusations that result in the persecution of their targets.
Such judges believe that it is wholly unacceptable to publicly state what is happening and why and that the targets should let themselves be attacked and harassed repeatedly for years with no defense or recourse unless perhaps they are willing to spend profusely to litigate, keeping judges and lawyers fully employed. But even when a target parent or their extended family has the finances to litigate, the courts will not usually defend victims of a PDA.
If you are being attacked by a female PDA, you are in particularly dire straights as many people including these incompetent judges have trouble understanding that a female can be as or more violent and criminal than a male and that this is common in personality disordered abusive females. While typically it is males who bear the worst brunt of abuse from female PDAs, women can be targets, too. For instance, I recall reading accounts of an abused lesbian woman who was terrorized by her ex-partner who was a female PDA that she believed suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder.
The double standard that exists for knowingly making false criminal allegations versus alleging a personality disorder in good faith with reasonable evidence to support it is truly bizarre and a prime example of how distorted and destructive family law courts have become.
A personality disorder is not a crime and may be a treatable psychological condition. It does not result in the persecution of the person with the disorder. Unlike the people they have victimized with their false abuse and criminal allegations, they are not banned from their homes and contact with their children or put on domestic violence and child abuser black lists that stigmatize them, impair their ability to work, and leave them wondering if it is even safe to step foot in public.
By contrast, alleging that somebody has committed sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence, and many other false allegations made in family law cases potentially subjects the accused to criminal prosecution. Even when there is no criminal prosecution, the accused is still treated as a criminal simply by accusation because of the unjust behaviors of family law courts. Such serious false allegations usually result in the accused being treated as a criminal, being kicked out of the home, banned from seeing the children, having a restraining order placed upon them, and being put on law enforcement black lists as spousal beaters and child abusers. All of this continues for months or years without proof, hearing, or trial.
American courts today regard this unconstitutional abuse as acceptable and routine conduct. This may be because it protects the political reputations of judges who would rather persecute 1000 innocent people than fail to protect one person from a real abuser and have that disclosed during an election. However, it is well established that none of these measures constitutes any real protection against violence.
There are countless examples of people on whom a restraining order was slapped who then later attacked the protected party. Some of them did so because they were truly violent or believed they are above the law. Others may have never been violent but were so outraged by the endless abuses against them that they came to believe that they will always be treated as criminals unless they can make the abuser stop. They may have tried to make the abuse stop by publicly disclosing what the PDA is doing, writing some nasty emails, or leaving a voicemail complaining about the abuse and asking it to stop. Every one of these things is likely to result in the persecution, arrest, and possible prosecution of the victim who is once against victimzed by the PDA, this time with the government pulling the proverbial trigger to blast yet another hole in their lives.
Psychological Evaluations Often Flawed
Even those who have spent a small fortune, even $50,000 or more, on one or more psychological evaluations with top-rated psychologists are likely find that evident personality disorders were not labeled or addressed adequately. Often the mentally healthier parents, the target parents, are dinged for their reactions to unrelenting abuse as if they are the abusers. This sets the stage for the partner who is primarily the victim of abuse to be treated as if he or she is the abuser. This can even happen if they have disclosed their beliefs that the abusive parent is suffering from a personality disorder and backed it up with plentiful examples of behaviors and sources to obtain verification of the long-standing destructiveness of the suspected personality disordered abuser.
There are a wide variety of reasons why psychological evaluations fail at identifying personality disorders and putting in protections to help stop the abuse. I’ll discuss several of the reasons next.
Failure to Make and Appropriately Consider Investigative Contacts
Sometimes evaluators refuse to contact family members of the suspected personality disorder victim who could confirm the person’s pattern of abusive behaviors going back into childhood. Other times, they contact the personality disorder victim’s sources and are fed extensive misinformation including outright lies about matters small and large. The evaluators cannot determine the truth easily.
There is often no little to no objective evidence of what happened. What evidence does exist can be spun or altered by many means including modification of documents, recordings, videos, and photographs, forgeries, and staging.
Staging is common with personality disordered abusers. They will attack or provoke the target, then record what the target does in response, then spin this as a claim they are the victims of abuse. For example, the abuser may verbally berate, threaten, and intimidate the target then record the understandably upset response. Then this recorded response may be used to convince many other people the victim is the abuser and the abuser is the victim.
A common means of staging is to play passive/aggressive games with the target parent using actions that cannot be well documented. For instance, the PDA may jerk around the exchange schedule unpredictably, request alterations, then refuse to respond to communications about the request. She may then “change her mind” at the last possible minute and then blame the target parent for being uncooperative and not communicating.
The target parent may eventually respond with a hostile email, voicemail, or letter that when you consider what the PDA has been doing it seems actually tame. But the PDA will then take these written or recorded responses and spread them around to people she wishes to influence along with stories about the target parent being an abusive bully. People will believe her lies readily because she appears to be backing them up with evidence and has told so many similar stories for months or years. Yet there is no doubt somebody who knows the full scope of what she has done would consider her the abuser.
Spreading lies and distortions so that the target parent may hear of some of them but cannot prove anything easily is another technique to push the buttons of the target parent to make them appear irrationally hostile to people who do not understand what the abuser is doing. Basically anything that the abuser can do to solicit a hostile reaction from the target can be twisted into a means to falsely demonstrate that the target is the abuser and the abuser is the victim.
People often think that photographs do not lie, but abusers can use them to lie easily. Here I give a vastly simplified example of portions of a real family law dispute involving manipulated and misrepresented photographs while omitting any identifying details. Yet the abuser in this story is still likely to attack somebody over this factually accurate information being stated in public even though the only people who would be able to recognize this story are the people she has abused or manipulated. Even then, they would have no confidence that it is about her because these kinds of skillful manipulations and false allegations are typical of PDAs.
A parent portraying herself as a victim of a violent and dangerous husband shows you a picture of her husband standing taking photographs with a long telephoto lens. She claims he’s hiding in the bushes and stalking her and hides outside her home and does this, too. She spreads these pictures around to police, CPS, her psychologist, the children’s therapist, churches, and other places (possibly including teachers, doctors, friends, family, husband’s coworkers, etc.) to portray her husband, whom she is divorcing, as a stalker who hides in bushes to photograph and harass her. She convinces you that he’s a monster as this is about the fourth or fifth example of his hateful and bizarre behavior that she’s mentioned to you and now she has real photographs to demonstrate what he is doing. You’ve never discussed it with him and have never met him, but she’s been complaining about him for years so you believe her stories.
Reality in this case, however, was far different from what you were told to believe.
The husband was a target parent. The wife was a masterful manipulator with malicious intent.
The husband and his psychologist, after examining her writings, court declarations, testimony, and a psychological evaluation, to this day continue to believe she suffers from one or more axis II personality disorders. There are other mental health professionals who have worked with both the wife and husband who think similarly of her. Her childhood history of self-disclosed physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse is consistent with that of many personality disorder victims. There is plenty of sound objective reason to believe that she likely is a personality disordered abuser, yet the psychological evaluator on the case specifically denied that she suffers from the personality disorder considered most likely by the husband.
The wife’s psychologist is unable to see through her charade because she is very effective at controlling information flow and portraying herself as a victim. The wife’s psychologist has probably never seen the court reports and findings that she is not credible, that she falsely accused the father of domestic violence, falsely accused him of child sexual abuse, and coached their children to back up her stories. She is able to influence the psychological evaluator to deny her client has a personality disorder. She is probably unaware of the multiple other mental health professionals who think otherwise but cannot, given their professional conduct rules and concerns about subjecting themselves to the wife’s attacks, say much about their opinion of the wife.
In the pictures the wife spread to manipulate others to be sympathetic to her and to despise her husband, the husband was shooting pictures of a custody exchange in progress from about 100 yards away by using a high magnification lens on a digital SLR camera. These custody exchanges were very difficult because the wife violated restraining orders, entered his car without permission, acted aggressively hostile, caused the children to cry at exchanges because of her emotional problems, tried to delay and interfere with the husband’s time with the kids, and violated court orders repeatedly. The children’s therapist suggested that photographing the exchanges in this manner might both protect the parties being falsely accused and not be so intrusive as to unduly alarm the wife.
The wife’s most common violations at the time were to either refuse to leave the exchange site (a public park) after dropping the children off with a third party exchanger and to act as if she was leaving and then return before the husband and children left the park. Besides this being a violation of court instructions designed to make custody exchanges peaceful and easy for the children, this was a problem because she continually represented that the husband was dangerous and she was afraid of him and continued to file false police reports and make other false allegations against him. Several months earlier, she falsely accused the husband of domestic violence and duped the court into kicking him out of their home and banning him from seeing their children. Later, after she falsely accused him of child sexual abuse, he was repeatedly restricted to supervised visitations and no contact periods, sometimes for weeks and other times for periods of more than a year, because of her old and new false allegations against him.
The wife’s typical response to a court order she doesn’t like is to make yet another false allegation or to refuse to cooperate with the court orders and to do so in a way that attempts to incite a reaction from the husband. For instance, making last-minute changes to exchange locations and times to make it likely the husband would show up in the wrong place or at the wrong time was a frequent tactic she used to harass him.
The husband wanted her to go away after turning the children over to a “third party exchanger” before he arrived in the park to pick up the children like the court instructed her to do because he didn’t want to be anywhere near her as it could enable her to make more false accusations against him. He and his family were threatened with arrest because of her past false accusations that later turned out to be lies upon investigation. She insisted upon using a “third party exchanger” that was somebody who was a closely aligned friend of hers, contrary both to what she represented to the husband and also contrary to the intent of the court to keep the custody exchanger neutral and agreeable to both parents. Thus this person could not be trusted, either. Even though she had been given court guidelines on how to perform custody exchanges, she often ignored them.
The husband and his relatives believed that having him keep a distance from the exchanges would help keep him safe from false allegations and that they were much less likely to be successfully targeted by the wife using her false allegations. Thus they often participated in these exchanges by taking over the supervision of the kids from the “third party exchanger” to get the wife to leave before the husband would approach the site.
The husband believed that photographing the exchanges would help keep them all safe from the wife’s false accusations, not understanding how she would use what he was doing legally and in compliance with court orders to incite many people to dislike and distrust him and his relatives.
The wife had somebody hide in bushes at the park and secretly take pictures of her husband. She did not reveal to anybody that the court orders specifically authorized the husband’s photographs with intent of keeping the exchanges cooperative and in compliance with court orders.
The photos she spread around were very blurry due to poor photography, possibly including digital zoom that creates very blurry pictures, so people were likely to believe what she claimed because it was hard to interpret the photos due to their flaws.
However, somebody who knows the site, unlike the people to whom the wife showed the pictures, would recognize that the husband was standing along a public street beyond a fence surrounding the public park. In the photographs she spread around accompanied by her dishonest stories, vehicles and houses are directly behind him, as is the public road, making it easy for somebody familiar with the site to identify approximately where he was standing. He was in plain view from the street and from the park and was not hiding at all.
She did not reveal that the police department had examined the court orders and was aware of the husband taking these photographs and suggested to him good locations from which he could take them. Nor did she convey that such photographs of a public location are by their very nature not illegal, even without those court orders. Instead, she portrayed her husband as a stalker who was obsessed with her. Yet he was acting according to law and court orders and was in fear for his freedom, reputation, and safety because of her abusive behaviors.
The court years later made findings that the wife’s accusations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse were false, but gave her sole physical and legal custody because she was supposedly doing a good job as a parent, the husband was despised, maligned, and lied about by many people because of the wife’s successful manipulations of them and him, and he hadn’t seen the children much in years because of her false allegations and the court’s slow and incompetent handling of them.
The judge in the case also had a personal axe to grind with the husband. The judge didn’t like the husband’s public criticism of the judge’s own misconduct and police and CPS misconduct in the case including violations of federal and state laws. Thus the judge was further biased to side with the wife and disregarded nearly everything stated by the psychological evaluator. The judge appears to have attempted to hide the motivation for bias by ruling certain of the wife’s court submissions that disclosed the husband’s criticisms of the court as inadmissible. In the judge’s view, retaliation is thus possible without an appeals court being able to toss out the verdict because an appeals court cannot consider what the judge heard and saw that was declared inadmissible. Yet to an outside party aware of all of this, it is difficult to view the judge’s actions and decisions as anything but seriously biased and flawed.
You can see how this wife has lied by misportraying poor quality photographs, failing to mention pertinent information, and overall misrepresenting nearly everything about the situation. Yet she was very convincing and managed to gain or reinforce the errant beliefs of dozens of allies from this deceit alone. None of her allies know that the court later found her to have falsely accused the husband of domestic violence and child sexual abuse because she hides that information from them.
Personality disordered abusers are expert at convincing others of their versions of reality. They know how to plant the seeds of misinformation and water them with more lies over periods of years, even decades, to grow hatred for their targets and cultivate alliances with the dupes they target to gain support for their agenda of control via hate and terror.
There is no way a psychological evaluator can realistically conduct a psychological evaluation on each and every contact, so they are often left with uncertainty about the honest, alignment, and motivations of the contacts. They may decide to just go with the perceptions that seem most common. Obviously this risks aligning with a maliciously manipulative parent who has been spreading distortions about the other parent. Since they tend to be very good at this, there may be literally hundreds of people they have convinced to hate their targets via manipulation and far fewer people who have an objective and accurate view of what is occurring. It’s tyranny by majority vote, stamped and certified by a poor psychological evaluator and in many cases an even worse judge.
Evaluators Believe Diagnosing Axis II PDs Will Create More Animosity
This is likely to sound very strange, but I’ve heard it from multiple sources so believe it is common. An evaluator who believes that a parent suffers from an axis II personality disorder will seldom mention this. They believe such a label is stigmatizing and may create more animosity. So even when they know it is likely accurate, they will avoid applying such a label.
One experienced evaluator told me that in multiple decades of doing custody and psychological evaluations, the evaluator has only applied the label “Borderline Personality Disorder” once. Yet the evaluator believes that such axis II personality disorders are very common in family law disputes.
Some evaluators may even go so far as to deny the accuracy of a personality disorder label if it is applied by the target parent in an attempt to deal with the destruction caused by the PDA. They may deny it even when the evidence presented by the target parent supports it and the target parent has good-faith reasons to believe it, especially after being told that it is likely the case by other mental health professionals. This conduct by an evaluator is very problematic and in my view grossly irresponsible. Essentially, the evaluator perpetuates a deception in order to avoid angering the PDA, even though it will severely undermine the credibility of the target parent and is likely to result in further harm to the children and family.
It would be far more responsible for an evaluator to state that the target parent may be unintentionally worsening the conflict by applying a personality disorder label, but that trying to name something is a fundamental concept and that the name, although subjective, may be accurate. For this reason, the evaluator is not going to make a diagnosis but also will not deny there is basis for the target parent’s attempt at a diagnosis. Yes, that does sound like a lot of beating around the bush, but at least it doesn’t come off sounding to an incompetent judge like the target parent is not credible and the PDA is A-OK.
Diagnostic Labels Are Fuzzy, So Evaluators Won’t Apply Them
The precise labels for axis II personality disorders are very fuzzy. Whether a person has BPD or NPD can be a matter of great debate as many of the same behaviors satisfy both conditions. The same is true for Antisocial and Histrionic Personality Disorders, too.
Many evaluators take the easy way out and refuse to apply a label rather than listing multiple labels that may fit. Possibly some are not willing to admit how imprecise and subjective psychology is, but I think it has more to do with the realization that as many symptoms fit multiple DSM-IV disorders it is hard to apply a label with any certainty that it cannot be successfully challenged. If the label is challenged successfully, then the evaluator’s credibility may be called into question. Thus the evaluators have incentive to apply no labels whatsoever as it is difficult to challenge a lack of a diagnostic label.
The problem with failing to apply some diagnostic labels is that it makes it very hard to discuss what is going wrong and how to deal with it. It is like trying to discuss “cancer” in some generic sense and not being able to discuss what kind of cancer, where it is, whether it has metastasized, and so forth. Without that diagnostic information that is easily summed up into a phrase such as “stage 2 prostate cancer”, it is difficult to even start to discuss what kind of treatment to pursue.
Thus in my view, the failure to apply diagnostic labels for axis II personality disorders that is so common in psychological evaluations contributes to the inability to get effective treatments for parties who need it. It also directly contributes to the failure of courts to put in place protective measures to allow the personality disordered parent to maintain contact with the kids without turning their lives and the lives of other family members into a living hell.
Psychologists Often Fail to Tell the Whole Truth
The end result of a conflict with a PDA is often that the PDA looks credible and the victim looks like a nutcase. Psychologists who have worked with people subjected to years of abuse know that it has deep and lasting effects on the victims and can cause them to exhibit hostile emotional reactions to the abuser when they are subjected to continuing abusive conduct. They may point out to the victim that they are suffering from mood-influenced thinking and at the same time citing how virtually anybody attacked likewise would be having similar reactions. Such reactions may be called out as maladaptive as opposing a PDA tends to generate even more attacks. However, they also know that responding to the aggression defensively does not mean the victim is an abuser. They may be mentally ill, the same way that a soldier who witnesses his friends slaughtered mercilessly may experience mental illness in the form of anxiety, depression, and even PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Yet they did not cause this illness, the abuser did. The courts, CPS, and police may have also contributed significantly to psychologically traumatizing the target parent.
Yet these same psychologists are often unable or unwilling to help in a court setting. Many of them may fervently believe the PDA is suffering from an axis II personality disorder and the victim is unsurprisingly having difficulty dealing with the endless abuse. But when called to testify, they will often refuse to express their opinions because they believe that they cannot state their beliefs and appear professionally objective without repeatedly meeting with the PDA. This may be the case even if they have seen and read the PDA’s writings, court filings, and court testimony and it is clear to them the PDA is dishonest and manipulative. So the perceived rules of professional conduct for psychologists result in the PDA not being called on the carpet for evident abuses. The targets end up looking nutty to the many poorly trained or biased judges who do not understand how and why psychologists are behaving this way.
Such judges may even overrule the recommendations of psychological evaluators who understood the PDA is personality disordered and outlined methods to deal with the problem but refused to label the PDA as such because of a belief that it will simply make the PDA even more angry, potentially at them, too. Given the vindictiveness that PDAs tend to display towards those who don’t do as they say, a psychologist or evaluator may rightly be concerned about being draged into a lawsuit or license disciplinary action because of retaliation by a PDA if they label the PDA as having a personality disorder.
There is an inherent conflict of interest in that mental health professionals are at risk of retaliation if they state their professional beliefs about what is happening in a case involving a PDA. In one case of which I am aware, a mental health professional went on record with opinions of a problem parent’s behaviors including false accusations of attempted murder and other behaviors typical of a PDA. The PDA attacked the license of the mental health professional as retaliation, triggering a disciplinary investigation. Mental health professionals who have worked with PDAs know that they are potentially going to be targets if they say or do anything that displeases a PDA, even if it was legal and appropriate. The psychological and financial cost of defending oneself from such unjustified attack can be substantial, so they are hesitant to tell the truth because of the potential personal cost.
In the end, it is in many people’s interests to not attack the PDA’s deceptions and manipulations and reveal them for what they are. It is safer to side with the PDA against the target to at least some degree to avoid being drawn into the line of fire. Many psychologists, including those doing custody and psychological evaluations, will readily participate in this deceptive charade because they believe it is safer for them personally to do so.
Target Who Labels Abuser As Having A Personality Disorder Invites Ridicule
Shockingly, the very act of a target parent labeling the abuser as likely having a personality disorder will often be used as an excuse to subject the target to further mistreatment by the evaluator and family law court. For instance, the target may be ridiculed for having opinions on the abuser’s mental health without having a degree in psychology. This ridicule is often extended to question the target’s entire credibility about everything in the dispute. Even if the target can prove with evidence many of the statements he or she has made, many family law judges are bottom of the bucket in skills and experience and are readily duped by a masterful manipulator to such a degree that they may refuse to even examine evidence supporting the target’s assertions.
The judges who engage in this foolishness are grossly uninformed about the psychology of personality disorders. Even trained Ph.D. level psychologists can take years to reach an accurate diagnosis of a patient. This is in part because they lack objective and accurate information about the personality disorder patient who is likely to lack any real understanding of their role in starting and continuing conflicts. Personality disorder abusers often truly believe that they are victims, probably because most of them were once victims of abuse by one or both of their parents. Target parents often have very objective and accurate information on the abuser’s behaviors because they have lived with the abuser and know exactly how they behave.
While even target parents are often duped by the abusers into believing lies, it is much less likely they will have an inaccurate perception about how the abuser acts inside the family. While living with such an abuser is miserable, they are in very good position to assess the mental health of the abuser. Target parents who have spent some time in therapy with the abuser and learned about the mental health problems they appear to have may be far more capable of determining the nature of the abuser’s mental health problems than most psychologists who lack training in personality disorders and/or the direct observations of the abuser’s family behaviors.
Judges who ignore this and believe a mental health professional who does not diagnose a personality disorder is correct are grossly ignorant of the realities of the difficulty of diagnosing an abuser’s personality disorder and the many reasons why evaluators avoid applying such diagnostic labels even if they believe they are accurate. These mental health professionals have seriously impaired ability to determine what is really going on because they lack the personal insight into the abuser’s conduct over many years and the direct observation of the bizarre behaviors of a personality disordered abuser as they function inside the family, the situation in which the abuser is most likely to show her or his true colors. Personality disordered abusers are often adept at portraying themselves as innocent victims to people outside the family and they spend considerable energy doing so to build social support networks, “armies of minions” as I like to call them, which they can manipulate to achieve their goals of controlling the people around them and especially controlling and harming their targets.
Poor Evaluations and Poor Judges Lead to More Abuse
Not only is the court punishing the target of abuse unjust, it further increases the severity and duration of the disaster being experienced by the family. The refusal to deal appropriately with those afflicted by personality disorders and their abusive behaviors is part of the reason why psychological evaluations and custody evaluations as they are performed today are often highly destructive wastes of money that perpetuate and exacerbate conflict.
In many, perhaps most, cases involving PDAs, the courts reward the abusers for their abuse. The government sides with the abusers and becomes a participant in the abuse of children and target parents. Poor family law judges are among the worst child abusers. They frequently place children with the abusive parent, put wrongful and harmful restrictions on the contact with the target parent, and are directly responsible for abuses that continue to be inflicted upon the children and the target parent.
Judges may ridicule a target parent for believing he or she is a target of persecution. Even when judges acknowledges that the target parents were falsely accused of domestic violence, child abuse, or other crimes, they often disregard this and act as if false accusations are acceptable conduct for a family law case because they see so many of these false accusations in their courts. But if the target parent tried to defuse or respond to the attacks on them and did anything that looks odd or unusual to people who do not understand the level of abuse being inflicted, the target parent can expect a poorly educated family law judge to attack, denigrate, and punish them for their actions, even if those actions were legal.
Psychological evaluators who should be helping judges to understand that a person being repeatedly abused is eventually likely to fight back often fail to do their jobs in this area. This is a major flaw of many psychological evaluations. They portray the victim’s response as maladaptive and destructive when they also need to be pointing out how it is not unusual for an abused party who is being lied about and attacked to want to set the record straight and to defend themselves. They also need to be explaining to judges that it is very difficult for a person who has not experienced these types of abuses and false accusations to understand how much damage they cause.
Judges who cannot understand that victims of abuse who attempt to defend themselves are not inherently being abusive should not be serving in family law courts. They are responsible for causing a huge amount of damage to children and families. Despite this, they often continue to directly assist child abusers for years or decades. The public needs methods to remove these judges from office, but unfortunately this is far easier said than done. Voters who have not been through the nightmares caused by a personality disordered abuser generally cannot comprehend the complexity of the deceit, lies, and manipulations. They will often mistakenly think that a judge is being appropriately punitive when in fact the judge is being punitive to the wrong party. Correcting this may require a massive education and public awareness campaign to inform the average citizen of how personality disordered abusers function, how common they are, and why often the person they perceive as the abuser may in fact be the victim of abuse.
Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice
A take-no-prisoners condemnation of psychiatric experts being waved into the witness box, this account trashes psychiatry in general as a quack profession. Hagen (a psychology professor) assails most of the diagnostic tools of the field in her text, which roams among court cases whose outcome hinged on the testimony of mental-health experts. Her fundamental contention is that psychiatry is a junk science whose theories when extended to matters of legal culpability go against common sense. Indeed, Hagen assumes the posture of that legendary legalism, the “reasonable person,” and her prose is peppered with exclamations and rhetorical questions like “Who could believe that?” which might annoy as many readers as it might convince about whatever points are in question. Among them are such topically current items as battered-wife syndrome, recovered memory claims, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and urban psychosis claims. The average person could easily encounter in divorce and child custody litigation the situations Hagen vigorously complains of, so her energetic attack could gain considerable attention. Gilbert Taylor
Further Reading
Relationships and Divorces with Someone Who Suffers Borderline Personality Disorder
Personality Disordered Abusers in Family Law Courts
Borderline Mom: Emotional Self Defense for Children
Abusive Women “Acceptable” By Double Standards
An Online Personality Disorder Test
Recovering from Personality Disordered Abusive Relationships
Detecting Borderline Personality Disorder to Begin Treatment
Breaking Mental Illness, Violence, Divorce, and Murder Cycles
How to Spot a Girl with Borderline Personality Disorder
The Verdict on Child Custody Evaluations: Researchers Explain Why They’re Fraud
Custody Evaluations: The Overlooked Harm to Clients, Children, and Families
| BPD, Child Abuse, Child Custody, Children, Courts, CPS, Divorce, Domestic Violence, Family, Government Abuse, Marriage, NPD, Parental Alienation, Partner Violence, Psychology |
This is just about the most disturbing article I think I have read since my divorce process commenced, and that is saying a lot because there is so much out there that is so disturbing.
This is so disturbing, precisely because I could have written it, so close and perfect a description of my own experience is it. It is as if we had the same evaluator.
My children are suffering for this now. I can’t relax when they are with my ex-spouse. My ex-spouse gets worse, and more effective at being bad, and more effective at concealing it. My family is in such pain because of this. I have no idea what to do.
@ dc
DC,
First help yourself, then seek to help your kids. I say this because you need to address the baggage you brought with you out of the marriage first.
There is hope. My husband’s ex is woven through these articles even though the author has never met her. When my husband left her he was able to get 50/50 because he had proof of her affairs. Last year he won sole legal custody of his kid and his ex has very little time with the child.
It is a slow and tedious process to prevail in court. Go email only as soon as you can (she will fight it because it allows you to document). Don’t take her calls, let it go to VM and return calls that are necessary (emergency). Be BIFF in you communications (Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm) DO NOT stoop to her level … ever. Get in a 3rd-party-documentation mindset. Your documentation does not hold the same weight as a 3rd party. School records, doctor’s records, phone records, whatever you can get your hands on to establish the pattern of lies and manipulations. Record keeping is critical.
Find someone to help with reality checks. Sometimes when you read the abusive persons words over and over again YOU get skewed in your mind was truly is reasonable or not. You might overlook critical evidence or not notice contradictions.
DC, it can be done. My husband and I did it, but I will warn you that it is an all consuming task and that hell have no fury like a PDA scorned.
Best wishes.
This is the very reason I am going to school studying psychology. I am hoping that I may make a difference so this will happen less. I experienced this, it is wrong on so many levels! I am so happy I came across your article. It looks like you may have more articles on this subject. I look forward to reading them.
Question, Why don’t the doctors of psychology find a way to improve on psychological evaluations so they may be more accurate and catch the people in the wrong?
Good question. There are many reasons why this isn’t done.
For one, some of these psychologists are making money by causing conflict and engaging in abuse. Stephen Doyne of San Diego is one such psychologist. There are many others, too.
Another reason is that some of them may be afraid of the personality disordered person and gang up on the victim because it is safer for them to do so. Would you want a sociopath out to ruin you? Even if you have done absolutely nothing wrong, they can go after your license, reputation, and income and cause a huge amount of damage to you. So a psychologist who has zero ethics may easily side with a liar or abuser whom they know to be exactly that because they are simply too afraid to do otherwise.
Others are very biased and side with people who have done something wrong against a target parent because they are friends or associates of a liar or harasser. This may be especially the case if they derive some of their income from such people. For instance, a dishonest CPS social worker whose agency gives referrals to the psychologist can get the psychologist to take sides with him or her against a good parent in favor of an abusive personality disordered parent.
As to why all of this is so common, recall that many people with Cluster B personality disorders behave essentially as sociopaths who are highly skilled at manipulating other people via lies, distortions, threats, and other means.
Ultimately, psychological evaluations should have no place in child custody decisions except as a piece of evidence to be weighed by a jury that will set custody at 50/50 unless there is a unanimous vote otherwise. A jury is far more likely to be able to avoid bias and wronging the children and target parent than the so-called “professionals” involved in psychological and custody evaluations.
I have just had almost the same exact experience mentioned in this article. Is there anyway to help to stop this? This actually is ruining children’s lives….What is being done? If there are soooo many people that this has happened to, is there nothing to help stop this?@dc
The first social worker who evaluated my child custody case told me my ex was a master manipulator and she said don’t trust him. I took those words literally, he always pulled crap like that experience. My son, hopefully with my love and encouragement will make it through without to many scars from his fathers mental abuse. But the worse thing now is dealing with a sociopath daughter of a person I loved dearly who just passed away. She has done everything in her power to ruin my life, since the time he was first admitted in the hospital, til now 4 months of craziness. I am about to pull my hair and teeth out would feel much better then this. Is there anyway to get an evaluation report from a state socialworker? Or from a Hospital Social Worker? I need some help here so I can just give it to my lawyer and tell him to deal with it. My new life motto is: don’t help anyone, don’t be friends with anyone, don’t trust anyone, because everytime you do they come back and come back and try to ruin your life if you don’t agree with them.
I appreciate reading this article because right now my fiance and I are going through a custody type case where the mother had her 3 children removed (different fathers for each) and placed into Foster care. That was October of 2010 Beginning of Oct. She abused her 3 week old and also heard testimony from witnesses that she abused her other 2 children so they were awarded temporary wards of the state in dec. Now my fiance had smoked marijuanna occasionally, at that time we didnt have any children in our home we take his son every other weekend and i was at that time pregnant. Im very against marijuanna for my own personal reasons but do not condemn everyone who does it. Anyways basically he was told he could have his daughter in Oct but failed a drug test, only to pass the following week. We have both been tested 2x a month randomly and never failed a test, His ex (the mother of his daughter) ended up admitting to smoking herself when newborn was 2 weeks old. However its been a game of accusations toward my fiance and the judge keeps finding an excuse not to place her with us. We are both employeed full time. And we have a stable home, dont drink or do drugs and I take care of my 7month old son. Its now ALmost August and in June the judge said that the mother had been diagnosed with Axis 2 personality disorder I cannot remember which one specifically. It reads out exactly how she is. She got a domestic violence charge against my fiance in 2009, he on the advise of his counsel pled guilty. Now the judge is using this against him. He’s never come close to being violent with me and his sons mom has even stated that she witnessed his ex hitting him in the face and stomache. She is not a small woman either she is a “big” girl. Anyways she has hooked up with multiple drug users and criminals and its making us fall into that category. She has lied saying she works full time and goes to school full time however they never have gotten proof. Also She was never drug tested until after January 2011! And hair folicle wasnt done until end of May when the judge ordered them in Dec. 2010. She showed up at my fiance’s work, and his home last year and we called the police and they pretty much blew him off. She’s emailed me harassing me and even threatening me last year before this all happened and now she is trying to make herself out to be a victim. Shes accused her own brother (who she still communicates with) of rape, she claims I am a violent drunk (mind you I am 5’2 101lbs. And I mean she has lied constantly. When there was a NO CONTACT order after their domestic We have emails upon emails of her writing to him, claiming she is married and then again to another man and then one she even writes how she wants to get back together with him! His lawyer is horrible and doesn’t even know his name each time we see him. The children have been moved 4 times now to different fostercare homes. We are allowed unsupervised visits whereas no one else is. But the judge doesnt want to split the children up however I feel its unfair to make one child suffer for the sake of three. Especially when she has 2 other brothers not in fostercare. The mother walked out on her first psych exam, she then yelled at the judge, has cursed out employees at foster care and judges clerk and psych secretaries. All the families that have had the children have told us they hope we get her and even the attorney for the children and the foster care themself have attempted to get placement with us. The judge though does not seem to want that and even after telling the mother that for the love to god dont have any more children she is still giving her chance after chance. I cant even begin to tell you everything going on. She has moved 5 times since this last year. Hooked up with a new man since kids were removed. We have pictures an emails of her partying the day she got out of jail (2days after kids were removed) yet it doesnt matter. She is also slandering his name even telling people he has a domestic with me for hittting me while pregnant which is false. Nothing we do seems to matter and basically she is cookoo! I fear for these children and I know this is going to end bad but I am printing this article off and giving it along with my letter to the judge. Ive also never been put on the stand to explain anything they just assume things and say ok see you all in three months! By the way, we completed parenting classes, and he did substance abuse classes, and are done we have a review coming up and I pray for his daughter I however do not believe she will come with us. Its been a horrible year and we have done nothing but cooperate witht the court but they seem to be using her disorder as an excuse. The judge even made a comment about her “needing to find men who suite her personality”. All I know is this article is dead on! DO NOT HAVE A CHILD WITH SOMEONE WITH A PERSONALITY DISORDER THEY WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE. They spend years manipulating the system and still seem to get away with abuse. BTW she wasnt charged with child abuse just 2 traffic warrants! Doesn’t make any sense.
@[email protected]/* */
I need Advise too! These people are getting away with things while the good parents are being persecuted and made out to be villians! How can you sue someone for false report of abuse? We have emails of her claiming to his other ex that they hung out a few days after the incident and bragging about it?? Not right and guess what she got her kids taken away last October but was never even charged with abuse!
@TNM
Reading this was like reading my journal. My life for the past 2.5 years has been exhaustive and overwhelming. He never stops and now that he has remarried, she has taken on his cause. My poor children are caught in the middle and I fear there will never be peace in my life or my future spouses. No matter what I do or don’t do, say or don’t say, it’s never enough or too much. It is a lose/lose. I have recently gone to a low contact, taking as much advice as I can, researching as much as I can on this communication and it only seems to have gotten worse. And my kids are smack.in.the.middle. I feel like screaming. Is there a way to find a support group locally?
This is my exact story. Everything in this article fits perfectly. I am going to court in a few days. I am so scared. Isn’t there anyone who can help? Isn’t there anything that can be done? Does anyone know an evaluator in southern california who is experienced with this type of stuff? Please help me and my children. I have emails and text messages even video but it sounds like even those wont be enough if I don’t have the right evaluator and judge. If you don’t know how to help then please pray for me and my children. I feel that is all I have left.
These articles read like my life story. When I raised the issues of sham law suits, false insurance claims, malingering in a wheel chair with no medical reason, Rx shopping for narcotics, I was mentally, physically and spiritually raped by criminal, civil and business justice.
If you use my name I will be jailed because I can prove the truth no competent legal authority wants to hear.
I have be deprived of all of my clothes, papers , jewelry, musical instruments, most of my family pictures, my home has had a sham lawsuit filed by my wife in her name only claiming fraud after she decided to quit paying the mortgage even though I payed $1175 per month in support.
She claimed I sexually assaulted my adopted daughter and the info was used against me in criminal court in spite of a police investigation stating the sexual assault was not present, simple assault was not indicated and the whole thing was suspect due to the time of the allegation and the actual report- three years. My youngest adopted daughter was arrested for assulting mom and two sister with a handgun and her testimony resulted in a wrongful conviction of assault w/ SBI against me. I was arrested for violating a Pi after I proved by an attorneys testimony and a certified notice to the court time stamped that I was there and could not possibly been as sworn to- at my home.
Her story changed in the ER as she needed it to. She wrote terrible letters to all my family and work associates. She involved a family councilor and he is being investigated.
I live in a hotel, I have spent my retirement on legal fees and I still have not been able to get the records to file my 09 taxes. She filed a false return claiming single head of household. She has forged my name to questionares in a psychiatrists office to get a dx of BO disorder – she signed my name and the dated it underneath in her own writing. She forged my name to a noterized doc but the DA refused to charge. Her father broke my ribs in front if 4 witnesses and a canera- dismissed in the ibterest of justice – This is just the tip there’s a lot more. If your partner displays sociopathic tendencies – RUN – do not walk to the nearest exit. I am a paralegal now and can’t get work – felon. I lost a 25 year job and an elected union position. I was a member of the e- board of the county party, a delegate to the county and state presidential conventions. I was a catholic lay minister till I married her and she broke the promise to get the cows blessed. She buys pot & x from the kids and lies to everyone. Rumor has it she is engaged to her first husband she divorced – she says- because of crack and meth they abused together.
I need a forensic psych eval. To fight the mindless agreement to give up my appeal rights. I still am bot divorced and have my third divorce attorney and bay! This one actually reads the evidence. I am just barely alive and I keep getting scared. St. Jude and I are getting really fight. All I can say is help and very few have ears.
Does anyone know a therapist is educated in BPD and NPD who does custody evaluations in the Washington DC area?
This was a frightening read. It mirrors the life of my son and I to a “T.” These very same actions have been repeatedly used against me to insure that I could never get custody of my son; being accused of being the drug addict, the drunk, the cheater, the child abuser, the spouse abuser. And now that my son is old enough to decide his own custodial parent, the mother has turned these same tactics on him. Threatening to have him arrested and restraining orders being placed against me to keep us apart. The false reports to police, the community, and family and friends. Now if only the courts in Georgia would actually see the truth.
In a nutshell, I am nearing the end of a high conflict divorce, where my soon to be ex suffers from all cluster b and c disorders, prescription pill abuse, alcoholism, narcolepsy, adhd, ptsd….the psych eval was neverending. We have 2 young children together, ages 5 and 4. My 5 year old told her therapist her dad “wiped” her without a wipe (in her own words), her therapist called DSS, they sent us for a forensic interview where my child gave details of exactly where her father touched her and what his hands felt like. DSS met with my ex who manipulated the case worker and deemed the case unfounded category 2. We also have a guardian ad litem in place that has not spoken with my childs therapist nor met with any other parties pertinent to the case, she met with my Ted bundyeske ex and this past week in court, the GAL made recommendations of current supervised visitation…leading up to unsupervised. My childrens father is very unstable, I left him last new years day after he threatened to rape me. Unfortunately, none of his behaviors were documented while the children and I were living with him.
My concerns are for him ever getting unsupervised. He is currently being supervised by his father and stepmother whom have a total of 5 children between the two….4 of these adult children were sexually abused as children one even did a testimonial at her church about it and put it online, but did not divulge the source. My ex’s mother even submitted a document stating the father of my children abused his younger brother…..once again overlooked. My question is….what information could I look at to find some information on how to protect my kids from further abuse? Or who/where do I turn to educate the attorneys and Judges in South Carolina on the effects and behaviors of a cluster b?
My son has been the victim of a PDA girlfriend. My son won full legal and physical custody of their young son. The mother is only allowed supervised visits with the child, thru the courts. She continues to harass and try to cause problems.
This article sounds like it was written in regards to the abuse my son has endured from this woman, to a T.
I can’t stress how important documentation is! My advise is not to go to her level. It will be used against you if you do. This will be a tremendous test of your patience. You must keep control yourself! A PDA who is a woman, seems to be able to be allowed to manipulate the legal system to a greater degree than a male PDA. Everyone seems to feel sorry for her and believe her wild lies. Get a good attorney and a good psychological evaluator. It takes some time and a lots, a lots of patience and lots lots of documentation. The abuse will continue, but if you can get full legal control of the children, it will limit the degree of damage she can do.
@dc
My deepest apologies for your enduring pain. We went a yr and half without justice from a manipulative!!! PD (a sex addict, a liar and druggie) now for 20 months little girl only child has received justice and now he is trying to reverse the JUSTICE Safety and PRotection She deserves!!!!!!!
Does anyone have any recommendations for mediators and divorce attorneys in San Diego that specialize in personality disorders?
This article is wrong.
MOST domestic abuse and sexual violence occurred. That’s 98%
Either the author is pro-torture or pro-rape. Either or, this article is wrong.
So, if a woman is violently assaulted, sustains major injuries and then is sexually assaulted, say on video by her husband, it’s false?
WRONG.
Whoever wrote this should be ashamed.
The person above with whom calls herself “I call bullshit” obviously does not comprehend the article at all. She needs to re-read, and understand who is who. She`s mixed her characters.
So, what is one to do, when forced into a custody evaluation against a PDA? I’ve searched and searched and cannot find someone who comes highly recommended. If the evaluator gets it wrong, my kids will suffer. Any suggestions as to locating a hip evaluator in North Bay Area, Caifornia?
Wow this describes my ex-wife and what she is and has put me through so completely.
Wow. Great article
Whatsoever I’ve feared has come to light
Whatsoever I fought off became my life
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile
sunspots have faded now I’m doing time
Whosoever I’ve cured I’ve sickened now
Whosoever I’ve cradled I’ve put you down
I’m a searchlight soul they say but I can’t see it in the night
I’m only faking when I get it right How would I know that this could be my fate
What you wanted to see good has made you blind
What you wanted to be yours has made it mine
Don’t you lock up something that you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking not tying Sure don’t mind a change
I fell on black days
@cacolton!mindspring.com
I would get some solid video proof of the lies and abuse of many instances while careful the abuser dosent know among other things or kiss your kids
goodbye
I just want to reply that I am another target. I eloped with a NPD/BPD and very quickly learned all about personality disorders. We became pregnant on the wedding night. I’ve been in jail after she attacked me. She moved to another country while pregnant, and did drugs that led to our son having disabilities. She refuses to follow doctors orders for our son and he is suffering from it. She messes with my time sharing at every opportunity. Now she is suing me for more child support than I make in income.
Personality disorders combined with the pathetic excuse we call a family court is destroying our society. We need to stand together and force our governments to make drastic change. And we need to do it now!
Or she’s a personality disorder herself. Run fast run far.
Anyone interested in understanding this “syndrome” better should look up Dr. Craig Childress. He has some great videos and a blog. He understands what is happening.
@moonbeam
Bill Eddy, Shawn Skillin and Shawn Weber.