Lorne MacLean BC Child Custody Lawyer Celebrates Julie's 25th Anniversary at his Firm
All professionals involved in child custody cases agree it is important to involve a lawyer familiar with parental alienation syndrome, one judge to manage the case and a psychological expert with specialized knowledge as early in the process of a suspected case of Parental Alienation Syndrome as is possible. We handle a number of these cases and are familiar with the warning signs and the types of alienators that may exist whether it be a naive alienator or an active alienator and whether the PAS is mild moderate or severe and what other hypotheses need to be explored such as estrangement or enmeshment.
One thing you will learn very rapidly is that there are a variety of opinions on this contentious issue from one side who says PAS does not exist to the other end of the spectrum where experts say it exists in the majority of cases!
Call Lorne MacLean at 1-877-602-9900 to get an objective opinion on whether your case involves Parental Alienation Syndrome.
CURRENT CONTROVERSIES REGARDING PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME
Richard A. Warshak, Ph.D.
SHOULD CHILDREN BE FORCED TO SPEND TIME WITH THE TARGET PARENT?
By far the most controversial issue in the PAS literature is the recommendation of enforced access between children and their alienated parents and reduction of access between the children and the parent promulgating the alienation.
In the majority of cases of moderate PAS, Gardner recommends that the court award primary custody to the alienating parent, appoint a therapist for the family, and enforce the child’s contact with the target parent through the threat and imposition (if necessary) of sanctions applied to the alienating parent (33). Such sanctions are similar to those the court would use against a parent who is in contempt for failure to pay court-ordered alimony or child support. The sanctions include a continuum from requiring the posting of a bond, fines, community service, probation, house arrest, to short-term incarceration. Some states grant courts the power to suspend a contemnor’s driver’s license or order public service duty. Turkat notes that the absence of such sanctions has allowed parents to interfere with visitation and flaunt court orders with impunity (86).
The goals of therapy with children suffering from moderate PAS are to foster healthy contact with the target parent and to assist children in developing and maintaining differentiated views of their parents as opposed to polarized views of one parent as all good and the other as all bad. One way to get children involved with the rejected parent is to take the decision about contact out of the children’s hands, reminding them of the possible sanctions against the preferred parent for resisting court-ordered contact, and thereby giving them an excuse to spend time with the target. The therapist also tries to help the children appreciate that their animosity has been influenced by programming which has undermined their ability to reach conclusions on the basis of their own direct experiences with the target. Some authors compare this aspect of treatment with the “deprogramming†that is used with cult victims to help counteract the effects of indoctrination (29, 33).
In some cases of moderate PAS, when the parent is more intensively programming the children and there is a high risk of the alienation becoming more severe, Gardner recommends a different legal approach. In such cases he recommends that courts consider awarding primary custody to the alienated parent and extremely restricted contact between the alienating parent and child, in order to prevent further indoctrination. Similarly, in the most severe cases of PAS (which, in Gardner’s experience, comprise about 5-10 percent of all PAS cases), Gardner recommends that the court remove the children from the home of the alienating parent.
Because children with severe PAS will not generally comply with court orders, and the programming parent cannot be relied upon to facilitate contact with the target parent, and because courts are reluctant to place children with a parent they appear frightened of, Gardner recommends temporary placement of the children in a transitional site before reintegrating the children in the home of the target parent. Possible transitional sites range from least restrictive to most restrictive, depending on the amount of control necessary to ensure the children’s cooperation and the alienating parent’s compliance with court orders. Such sites include the home of a relative or friend, a foster home, a community shelter, or a hospital. Gardner makes a good case for the transitional program, but he has had little direct experience with it, mainly due to courts’ general hesitance to implement it (3). Rand, however, describes some success with it (2).
In addition to serving as transitional sites, the threat of temporary placement in a foster home, community shelter, or juvenile detention center may induce children to cooperate with court-ordered visitation. With older children (ages 11-16) who refuse visits with the alienated parent, Gardner suggests the possibility of finding the child in contempt of court (4). This recommendation has met with the most opposition.
One author who objects to enforced visitation argued that a contempt finding for a child who refuses visitation is strictly punitive in nature and counterproductive (87). The concern is that such actions will reinforce the child’s hatred of the alienated parent. Instead, this author recommends that the court examine why a child resists contact with a parent and rely on family counseling and supervised visitation as a first step in repairing the child’s relationship with the alienated parent: “Instead of punishing them for their feelings, we need to work with them to help them understand the value of a relationship with their parent†(87; p. 95). Gardner, on the other hand, warns against unnecessary indulging of children’s visitation refusal (3). He believes that the best way to reverse alienation is to provide a child with direct experiences which can counteract negative programming and correct the child’s distorted perceptions of the target parent.
One problem with supervised visitation is the message it can send to a child: It can suggest that the child’s fears of the target parent are rational and that the court agrees that the child needs some sort of protection from the alienated parent. Thus, rather than increase the child’s security around that parent, it may reinforce the child’s uneasiness. The AC model makes a similar point (25).
The importance of separating the child from the alienating parent, and ensuring the child’s exposure to the target parent, is consistent with treatment methods for victims of brainwashing, including prisoners of war and members of cults. Clawar and Rivlin report on the similarities between the methods used by cult leaders to control their followers and the manipulations of alienating parents (29). Brainwashing scholars have identified the victim’s dependence on the programmer and isolation from the target as critical conditions for successful indoctrination. These conditions must be removed for effective deprogramming to take place.
The results of the ABA-sponsored study support a firmer approach to enforcing parent-child contact. The study reported, “One of the most powerful tools the courts have is the threat and implementation of environmental modification. Of the approximately four hundred cases we have seen where the courts have increased the contact with the target parent (and in half of these, over the objection of the children), there has been positive change in 90 percent of the relationships between the child and the target parent, including the elimination or reduction of many social-psychological, educational, and physical problems that the child presented prior to the modification†(29; p. 150).
Gardner’s recent follow-up study of 99 children diagnosed with PAS found a strong association between environmental modification and reduction in PAS symptoms (76). In 22 instances, the alienated child’s contact with the rejected parent was increased and contact with the alienating parent was decreased. In all 22 cases, PAS symptoms were reduced or eliminated. By contrast, only 9% of the children (7 out of 77) whose contact with the rejected parent was not increased by the court, showed a reduction in PAS symptoms. This study also provides a beginning understanding of the factors that lead alienated children to initiate their own reconciliation with the rejected parent. Further study along these lines may assist decision-makers in determining which children might not require environmental modification in order to recover from PAS. The large sample and the statistical test of significance allowed by this size sample make this an important study. Nevertheless, its limitations must be noted, chiefly that the children were not interviewed, the only informant for the follow-up was the rejected parent, and the interviews were conducted by a clinician who had formulated the hypothesis being tested.
Other treatment approaches to severe PAS have been reported in the clinical literature, but in general such approaches have met with failure. Dunne and Hedrick published a clinical study of 16 severe PAS cases (41). The court ordered a custody change and/or strict limitation of contact between the alienating parent and the children in only three of these cases. In all three cases PAS was eliminated. The other 13 cases were treated with various, less restrictive interventions, ranging from individual or conjoint therapy for the parents, therapy for the children with either the alienating parent or target parent, or the assignment of a Guardian Ad Litem. In none of these cases was the PAS eliminated. Two cases showed “some†or “minimal†improvement, nine showed no improvement, and two were worse after the interventions.
This study has significant limitations. The sample size is small. Details are not provided about the methods used to analyze clinical case material. As is typical in clinical research with small samples, no statistical analyses were conducted to document that the findings were not due to chance. Nevertheless, the 100% correspondence between elimination of severe PAS and transfer of custody does provide some evidence in support of this intervention.
Lampel analyzed clinical case studies on 18 families, out of which seven children were described as rejecting a father who had no objectively noted parental dysfunction (48). Such children could be classified as moderately to severely alienated. The therapists conceptualized the children’s rejection of the father as a phobia with hysterical features and tried two different approaches commonly used to treat phobias.
The first approach, used with six children, included individual therapy sessions with the child followed by gradually increasing times with the father both in and out of the therapist’s office. Sessions were also held for the mother, both individually and jointly with the child, for the father, and for both parents and child jointly. This approach is similar to Gardner’s recommended treatment for moderate PAS cases.
The second approach, used with one child, is similar to Gardner’s recommendation for severe PAS. The child was placed with the father for six to eight weeks while the therapist provided individual therapy sessions for the child and parents, and joint sessions with the child and father. This child was the only one of the seven children whose symptoms reduced markedly. The children whose treatment did not include placement with the rejected father experienced results varying from minor improvement to deterioration. In three cases the treatment was regarded as a clear failure. Lampel attributed the failures to the mothers’ “collusive involvement†with their children. Again, although this is a very small sample, the results support the effectiveness of placing the child with the alienated parent.
Naturally, treatment approaches to PAS will benefit from more and higher quality research. Given the limitations in the available studies, some might dismiss the current professional literature as too inadequate to serve as an authoritative guide to decisions for alienated children. But no study is free of limitations. The issue is whether the limitations render the study useless. The peer review process, though no guarantee of a study’s lasting value, is designed to weed out studies whose flaws outweigh their contributions.
Courts and clinicians face decisions about alienated children on a daily basis. These decisions can draw on the best available information, while duly noting its limitations, and thereby benefit from the experience of the families reflected in the published reports. Or the decisions can ignore this information. At this point in time, all the published findings on treatment outcomes support the effectiveness of enforcing contact between the child and alienated parent and no findings oppose this policy. When all available studies point to the same conclusion, it makes sense to pay attention to that conclusion, while allowing for the possibility that the circumstances of any single case may dictate an alternative treatment approach. Indeed, an emerging consensus among mental health professionals supports the idea that “court orders for continued contact are the cornerstone for treatment†of PAS cases (30; p. 309). Similarly, Stahl refers to “general agreement†that recommendations should include “forced consistent time between the child and the alienated parent†(88; p. 6).
But no consensus has been reached on the proposal for courts to consider a transfer of custody (as opposed to enforced contact) in severe PAS cases. Some have expressed the concern that alienated children are ill-equipped to cope with the change in custody, and that they could be seriously harmed (23). Although this possibility must be entertained, if this were a likely outcome, one would expect to see reports in the professional literature; to date there is no published documentation of such harm. Some allegations that harm has resulted from custody transfer may actually be misrepresentations promulgated by embittered litigants. Nevertheless, some clinicians advise parents of severely alienated children to accept the loss of their children while maintaining hope for future reconciliation (88).
Based on their ABA-sponsored study, Clawar and Rivlin conclude, “Caution must be exercised in judging that the point of no return has been reached. We have seen numerous cases where children have been successfully deprogrammed by making radical changes in their living arrangements—often with appropriate legal interventions†(29; p. 144). As they explain it, “There are risks incumbent in any process; however, a decision has to be made as to what is the greater risk. It is usually more damaging socially, psychologically, educationally, and/or physically for children to maintain beliefs, values, thoughts, and behaviors that disconnect them from one of their parents (or from telling the truth, as in a criminal case) compared to getting rid of the distortions or false statements†[emphasis in the original] (29; p. 141).
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