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54 Judges J. 23 (2015)
Parental Alienation: Misinformation versus Facts

handle is hein.journals/judgej54 and id is 105 raw text is: PARENTAL ALIENATION Misinformation versus Facts By William Bernet Editor's Note: A version of this article that includes endnotes is available from the author, who can be reached at william. bernet@vanderbilt.edu. everal of the most intense controver- sies involving law and medicine have pertained to child psychology and psychiatry. Arguments have addressed whether practitioners of satanic rituals abuse and murder children, whether recov- ered memories of adults reliably describe past maltreatment during childhood, whether facilitated communication helps autistic children disclose sexual abuse, and whether children always tell the truth when reporting sexual abuse. One of the most active controversies involving chil- dren in a legal context has pertained to parental alienation (PA), which some crit- ics have said does not exist but was invented as a mechanism for abusive fathers to gain control of their children from protective mothers. The author of this essay believes that PA exists and damages thousands of children and families in the United States every year. However, attor- neys and judges are exposed to much misinformation regarding PA. Parental Alienation and Courts PA is a mental condition in which a child-usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict separation or divorce-allies himself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent or alienating parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the target parent) without legitimate justification. The child's rejec- tion of the target parent must be without justification for the child to be considered alienated; if a parent has been abusive or severely neglectful, the child's rejection of that parent is understandable and does not constitute PA. Most contemporary writers use parental estrangement to describe a child's rejection of a parent for a good rea- son, such as a history of abuse or neglect; they use parental alienation to describe a child's rejection of a parent without a good reason. With that distinction in mind, estrangement is typically caused by the rejected parent's own behavior; alienation is usually caused by the preferred parent's indoctrination or brainwashing of the child to fear or dislike the rejected parent. PA comes to the attention of lawyers and judges in several ways, the most com- mon being child custody or parenting time determinations. When judges make deci- sions on contested custody and visitation schedules, they take a number of factors into account, including the child's attach- ment with his parents. When a child refuses to have contact with one parent, the court must sort out whether the child's refusal is justified (estrangement) or not justified (alienation). PA issues also arise in cases involving child maltreatment, especially sexual abuse. That is, children experiencing a moderate or severe level of PA occasionally make up allegations that the rejected parent has abused them to justify their refusal to have visitation with that parent. PA has been described in the legal lit- erature since the early nineteenth century, continued on page 25 Summer 2015 --Judges' Journ:LJ L3 Published in The Judges' Journal, Volume 54, Number 3, Summer 2015. © 2015 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

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