Recent studies indicate that when abusive fathers sue for custody in family court, 70% of these fathers end up with sole custody of the children they have abused.
How do they do it?
Apparently, such fathers use false accusations of Parental Alienation Syndrome as a means to wrest custody from fit mothers who are trying to protect their children from abuse. This is particularly true of what occurred in "Anna Cooper's" case which was recently highlighted in a moving article by Tom Stelloh published in Aljazeera on January 24, 2014 entitled "Do courts use a controversial theory to punish mothers who allege abuse?
See the associated link below:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/24/does-a-controversialdiagnosishelpfathersdodgeabusecharges.html
Anna Cooper is not the only mother who has reported this happening to her. Many other mothers have come forward stating the same thing.
No, Attorney Franklin. Aljazeera didn't get it wrong. You did!
So what is this Parental Alienation Syndrome that abusive men have been using in widespread custody switching schemes? Parental Alienation Syndrome is a theory proposed by psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardener which claimed that some parents try to undermine their children's relationship with the other parent, typically the noncustodial parent, by making false allegations about that parent, most often in the form of abuse allegations.
Further, according to Tom Stelloh, author of the original Aljazeera article, Dr. Gardener theorized that "custody-related fabrications [of abuse] constituted a kind of hysteria" and described the mothers he accused of parental alienation syndrome as being "sadistic" animals who "literally fight to the death in order to safeguard their progeny." Their goal, he wrote was "the total elimination of the father."
Dr. Richard Gardener's recommendation on how to deal with so called parental alienation, i.e. immediately switching custody to the father and denying the mother all access to the children, is quite striking.
Essentially, his recommendation, in an interesting role reversal, was to have the court order the father do to the mother exactly what the mother was accused of doing--in other words cut the mother off from all access to the children. How ironic! If children need both parents, how is it acceptable to eliminate the mothers from the lives of the children, particularly if they have acted as primary custodians of those children up to that time?
Anna Cooper became a victim of this theory when she reported that her son, Ben, was showing signs of sexual abuse. As journalist Tom Stelloh explained it, "Ben returned from a visit with his father--who had a four-days-a-week custody arrangement--with bruises and abrasions that he couldn't explain. After returning from another visit, Ben asked Cooper for help going to the bathroom. When she discovered blood on his toilet paper, she rushed him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with anal fissures."
The child's pediatrician, Dr. Richard Whelan, later confirmed that sexual abuse had occurred as did Dr. Eli Newberger, founder of the child-protection unit at Boston Children's Hospital, and also Dr. Joyanna Silberg, a psychologist and child-trauma specialist at the prestigious Sheppard Pratt hospital in Maryland.
Once the sexual abuse was diagnosed by experts in the field, Ms. Cooper expected that her son would be protected from this abuse. Instead, she faced an extensive coverup starting with the child's GAL. In her words, "[Ben] came home from his father's house with his anus torn to bloody shreds, and an infection in his penis that went untreated because [GAL] Maureen Murphy threatened my son's pediatrician, tampered with evidence, his medical documents, perjured herself, and removed my ability to get medical care for my child."
Continuing further, she stated, "I watched in horror as the infection went systemic while I was disallowed, under threat of never seeing my son again, even to seek medical treatment for his injuries, all so Murphy [the GAL] could prevent documentation of his badly infected genitals."
As a result of this kind of obstruction (and this is just one example--there were others), Ms. Cooper was unable to present to the Court vital information in regard to the abuse of her child and ended up being accused of--you guessed it--Parental Alienation Syndrome and placed on supervised visitation. Then, since she could not afford to pay for that visitation, she ended up being denied all access to her child. At this point, she has not seen him in over a year.
It is not surprising, then, granted the widespread abuse of the diagnosis and its general lack of foundation in any kind of legitimate science, that the American Psychiatric Association has not included the diagnosis of Parental Alienation Syndrome in the DSM-5 despite considerable pressure from men's advocacy groups.
Not only did they determine that there was no scientific basis for the syndrome, opponents of the diagnosis were concerned that, as I have reported, it was being used in family court as a means to take custody from parents who allege abuse, particularly protective mothers.
It didn't help that Dr. Richard Gardener generated additional controversy on his own by appearing to use the diagnosis to condone pedophilia having made such statements as, "At the present time, the sexually abused child is generally considered to be the victim, though the child may initiate sexual encounters by 'seducing' the adult." or "There is a whole continuum that must be considered here, from those children who were coerced and who gained no pleasure (and might even be considered to have been raped) to those who enjoyed immensely (with orgastic responses) the sexual activities."
Despite these very serious problems with the PAS diagnosis and its lack of inclusion in the DSM-5, in his recent blog on the subject, Attorney Robert Franklin states that Parental Alienation Syndrome must exist because he says it is in the DSM-5 but not under that specific name.
Ok, so what he actually means is that many of the truly fanatical proponents of Parental Alienation Syndrome refused to accept the fact that the DSM-5 didn't include PAS so what they did was pick and peck through the book and found a few embellished diagnoses which they state friendly editors clandestinely included in the DSM-5 so that litigants wishing to claim PAS could have something legitimate to use in Family Court. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you as well!
Attorney Franklin also mentions some book by Dr. Robert Bernet which he claims "contains some 700 citations in contemporary science on parental alienation from over 40 countries..." and he also mentions that PAS has been "recognized in at least 500 law cases and numerous statutes."
Likewise, I am sure, discredited diagnoses such as Recovered Memory Syndrome or Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personality disorder) also generated considerable attention in their day, but that still didn't make them any more legitimate.
This is not to say that there are not anecdotal situations where one parent viewed the other as alienating him or her from the children, but this does not make such observations scientific, or articles based on such observations scientific. There is no doubt that many of us have had the other parent interfere with our access to our children. Still, that is simply bad behavior, not necessarily mental illness of any kind.
It never fails that with every decade there are new social movements and theories which generate a whole new bunch of quack ideas and fads that seem really legitimate at the time, but which eventually fade out, hopefully without causing too much damage to the rest of us.
I believe that PAS is one of them.
Attorney Robert Franklin faults Anna Cooper for contributing to the Aljazeera article anonymously. But you can be sure that if she used her own name, he would criticize her for inappropriately exposing her child to public scrutiny. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't!
Attorney Robert Franklin further states that Anna Cooper's case is not credible because "court appointed experts [plural]" found the allegations of abuse to be untrue. Yet, the only court appointed expert he mentions is Dr. Kenneth Robson.
Since Attorney Franklin isn't from Connecticut, I can understand he wouldn't be familiar with Dr. Robson, but those of us who do live in Connecticut are very familiar with this psychiatrist's notorious reputation for malfeasance in child custody cases throughout the State.
Not only did Dr. Kenneth Robson deny that there was sexual abuse in Ms. Cooper's case, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he also denied that there was sexual abuse in the Linda Wiegand case where the father was accused of sexually abusing her two boys--Ben and Jon.
When the Massameno Report came out in 1998 confirming that the abuse had occurred, the Institute of Living where Dr. Robson worked was sufficiently convinced of his wrongdoing that they chose to sever their relationship with him.
I am personally aware of a recent case in the last few years in which Dr. Robson was again the custody evaluator. In this case the mother also accused the father of sexually abusing their children. In his evaluation, Dr. Robson denied that the sexual abuse had taken place and insisted that the father was a loving father. He then recommended sole custody to the father. One year later, DCF removed the children from the home permanently based upon the sexual abuse of the children.
As an additional note, even though the Institute of Living discontinued its relationship with Dr. Kenneth Robson, up until at least 2011 Robson continued to represent himself fraudulently as being affiliated with the Institute of Living even though he hadn't been for many years.
Attorney Robert Franklin states, "Again, for the umpteenth time, those who claim parental alienation to be a fiendish ruse by abusive fathers to wrest custody from "protective mothers' cannot come up with a single instance in which that actually occurred."
Ok, well I just gave you three.
I will also add to that four, my own case, one in which, among other things, my ex husband deliberately medically neglected my children. When I went to the GAL and reported to her what was going on, she answered me by saying, "They all say they are being abused." In other words, using the all or nothing language of Attorney Franklin, "all" mothers who say they are being abused are making it up.
During the course of my divorce, which took several years, my ex continued to abuse me and also continued to medically neglect my children. The GAL, my own attorneys, the trial court did nothing to stop any of it.
Why?
Because they were programmed to believe that any mother who seeks to protect herself or her children is just trying to get back at her ex husband, or simply attempting to parentally alienate the children from their father.
In other words, as Attorney Robert Franklin so eloquently stated in his article "Of Teflon and Velcro: Constructing a High-Impact Narrative", the myth overcame the reality, and for the Court and all the professionals involved in my case, the fact that my ex was abusing me and that he was causing damage to my children's health which could have lifelong consequences for them, meant nothing in the face of the concern that the legal system clearly felt was ten times more important, i.e. their naïve investment in a fake mental health diagnosis that is so lacking in credibility it isn't even included in the DSM.
What a travesty!
Not only are there the cases that I have detailed up to this point, I am contacted on a regular basis by mothers with well documented cases of domestic violence who are being accused falsely of having Parental Alienation Syndrome. Despite the frequent statements to the contrary, judges and attorneys throughout Connecticut are well aware of Parental Alienation and use the diagnosis freely as a means to switch custody from mothers who have long acted as primary caretakers of their children to fathers with histories of abuse.
This happens despite the fact that, as far as I know, Judges have no statutory basis for doing so.
Even where there has been no abuse and no alienation, but father now wants custody, the slightest hint that the mother may have been critical of the father or let an ill considered remark slip in an unguarded moment is enough to cause that mother complete loss of custody, despite the fact that she has been primary caretaker of the children for many years. See the many cases I have reported on my blog under the label "cases in the news" for examples of that.
The additional irony, of course, in this highly contentious debate, is that as long as men's rights advocates continue to deny the existence of abuse, there is no way to establish whether Parental Alienation Syndrome truly exists or not because the definition has been corrupted. More specifically, Parental Alienation Syndrome can only exist absent abuse, but if you maintain a rigid policy of denying that abuse exists, there is no way to establish whether you have a legitimate case.
I have tremendous sympathy for parents who have genuinely experienced situations where the other parent has blocked their access to their children, and who use the language of Parental Alienation Syndrome in order to explain what happened to them. Again, ironically, Anna Cooper is one such parent who could easily claim that kind of languaging. But attempting to legitimize a theory which is being used on an ongoing basis to enable abusive parents to continue to abuse their children--that is simply unacceptable.
