"parental alienation": junk science encourages court mandated abuse

[Larry of the Lawn]

Trigger warnings: sexual assault, child abuse, domestic violence

So there's this junk physiological theory (from my lay understanding) called parental alienation that looks at children alleging child abuse, posits that they must actually be making the claims based on manipulation from the non-abusive parent, and then seeks to put them into custody of the abusive parent with no contact with the normal parent:

Quote

 

Though most custody cases settle out of court, in a small fraction parents don't come to terms. In some of these contested cases, one parent accuses the other of alienating the children. The most intense disputes arise in cases where one parent alleges spousal or child abuse and the other responds with a claim of alienation.

But alienation claims are highly gendered. Men level the accusation against women nearly six times as often as women level it against men, one study suggests. That landmark study, published in 2020, found that in cases when mothers alleged abuse and fathers responded by claiming alienation, the mothers stood a startlingly high chance of losing custody.

This is happening right now to a very good friend of mine.  She has two children, and until last summer had joint custody of her children.  One of her children reported that she was being touched by her father in an unwanted manner to a teacher at school.  Child protective services investigated and found that while the touching was not sexual in nature it was unwanted.  They ordered some kind of therapy with the father and child to resolve the issue.  Fast forward a year and the child reports to her mother (my friend) that the touching hasn't stopped.  At this point my friend calls the police.

No charges were pressed due to lack of physical evidence, but the children's father then petitioned a family court judge for full legal and physical custody of the children.   In a closed emergency session the judge awarded physical custody to the father, on the recommendation of a court appointed psychologist.  This guy interviewed my friend and children's father separately, and concluded that my friend had brainwashed her children into reporting abuse.  There is zero evidence that this happened other than his word against hers.

He's also suing her for defamation of character.  There is documentation of him harassing her, surveiling her, and being verbally abusive in public while they were together going back ten years but the family court judge has been ruling most of it irrelevant.  

The family court trial is halfway through right now, my friend has a legal aid appointed public defender with a crazy case load, mea while her ex has some hotshot divorce lawyer and has spent nearly $100k on the suit already.  The public defender has been woefully unprepared and my friend is suffering for it.  

Anyway, here's an article outlining this phenomenon, her case is almost identical to two described in the article.  

https://www.insider.com/parental-alienation-syndrome-father-alleged-child-abuse-win-custody-case-2023-5

If anyone knows of any legal resources, maybe a nonprofit that would be look at the case, please don't hesitate to suggest anything.  My friend is going through absolute hell.  

Tldr: New York state took my friends children away from her, is preventing her from contacting them, and gave custody of them to their alleged abuser instead.  She's facing a major lawsuit on top of that.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

Ugh can't figure out how to edit op but that should say "psychological" not "physiological" in the second paragraph.  I need to proof read less shittily.

[mcbigski]

I have some experience with family courts but not exhaustive.

My experience was that the attorneys seemed to conspire against their clients in order to extract the maximum out of the less solvent party.

The Guardian ad Litem and the judge would impose therapy sessions from a very select list of providers.  (I'm sure there are non corrupted family judges and GALs, but when money is involved, there are going to be too many exceptions.)

I felt a whole lot stink from the whole thing.

Based on my experience, the whole Alienation idea is just a way to place at risk kids with the abusive parent because the other parent will be more willing to spend money, which enriches court officers and their affiliates.  IMO the non abusive parent is going to be way more wiling to spend money to change the situation, so if the court is corrupt, they have incentives to place the abused kids with the abuser.  It's fucking awful, but I can't think of another reason why placing abused kids with the alleged abusing parent should be the default.