Greg Mullholland, MP; Joanna Abrahams, family lawyer; Anthony Douglas, CEO Cafcass; Victoria Derbyshire, host.
Just when you weren’t expecting it, Victoria Derbyshire and Mike Cowan, the hard working reporter, have come up trumps. (No, not that Trump … the pack of cards kind!)
On Victoria’s eponymous daily TV news magazine on BBC2 this week (21st Nov 2016), they ran a great feature on Parental Alienation with interviews with families, experts and a discussion with an MP, a family lawyer, and the CEO of Cafcass. … Cafcass is the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (in England and Wales), providing the standard service for assessing and helping families who are going through the family courts.
There I was working away on a blogpost about how people struggle to get Parental Alienation properly featured in the mainstream media. I was linking to various good attempts, including how some have used the internet and social media to create ‘do-it-yourself’ shows that look like mainstream shows.
And now, given such a good job on the subject by the Beeb, I need hardly say any more at all!
For those in the UK, when the grandparent of mainstream media, the good old BBC, does the job, you just want to sit back and proudly glow at being British! If you’re not in the UK, you may not be able to access all the links below, but you’ll be able to view some of them.
As important as the Prime Minister
Mike Cowan – who did all the ground work
It’s brilliant that this is on a daily respected and popular programme. Parental Alienation is interleaved with news and interviews as if it has always been as important as the Prime Minister addressing the CBI, Andy Murray being ‘world No 1’, the next manager of the England football (aka soccer) team, and big stories on torture and tax credits.
Then you have the pleasure of watching the CEO of Cafcass – Cafcass not being the most famous service for understanding and tackling this problem – talking as if he knows all about Parental Alienation: “It’s like living in a cult … Better to intervene early than criminalise … There’s a case for getting together and recommend stronger guidance.” Yep. The power of having to answer questions in public. Ace. (And that could be both the Andy Murray kind of ace and the pack of cards kind!)
For those that aren’t so pleased with the show, there’s the Comment boxes below! Please use them. So now, er, what else do you need. … Oh yes! The links!
- Here is the selected Parental Alienation material put together on its own.
- This is the online news item in words.
- And (for a month only after the show) here is the whole 2 hour Victoria Derbyshire show of 21st Nov 2016 – including all the other stuff covered that day – plus the many messages from viewers and the discussion at the end. NB: If you want to skip to the PA bits they are: 0 > 50 secs; 10:55 > 12:10 mins; 15:15 > 33:55; 34:50 > 35:08; 1:18:15 > 1:28:55 hrs & 1:52:25 > 1:54:15
the alienation experience 
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This is brilliantly done. As stated, parental alienation is a “set of strategies” used by one parent to undermine the relationship between the children and the other parent. I would only add that these strategies are part of a fixed pattern of narcissistic/borderline traits and follows a predictive pattern of devaluing and discarding the ex-partner.
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Thanks ‘targeted Mom’. As is familiar now across all the social media debates on Parental Alienation, people naturally assume that their own personal experience – their own particular case or the limited caseload in their particular neck of the woods – is the only pattern there is, and that what is appropriate for them is what everyone needs too.
Some professionals see a wider range. They see the clear cut picture – one parent on their own disturbingly responsible for the the pattern as shown in the TV show – but also a less clear cut messier mixture or ‘hybrid’ pattern. For example here (with her permission) is Chip Chimera’s thoughts on watching this TV programme.
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Please sign this petition to introduce a law that recognizes Parental Alienation as a criminal offence.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/164983
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Thanks for the petition link. Here’s my tuppence worth:
It sounds appealingly simple to make a law that makes Parental Alienation a crime. There are countries that have done this as we know. But as ever it can cause more problems than it solves. And it would take hours to debate all the ins and outs. In the UK / Europe we have quite a few other handles on how to give children the care they need – what’s missing is the know-how and practice to make it happen. Meanwhile, here’s a few of the problems.
1. As in the USA, making PA a crime creates another football for the two sides to kick viciously around the courts. Remember the principle is that we want to protect children from being in the middle of that pitch.
2. The broad range of PA includes situations where it is not always so clear cut that it is entirely one parent’s doing. Courts can still be useful for such common hybrid cases, ensuring that proper assessment and mandated child-focused / parenting coordination / family work is made to happen. But that is not the same as punishing or imprisoning one of the parents.
3. Emotional abuse, which is what PA would count as – even if the most severe Personality Disorder names were attached to a parent – is not going to be likely to be a punishable offence or disorder, I think. The point of these labels is to better understand and help the offenders. The most the label and blame would lead to, I think, would be as part of an assessment that recommends transfer of main residence. But we can see how that could be done without PA being a crime.
4. Laws take years and years and years to put into place. Laws about complicated relationship things tend not to work – see for example how the Controlling and coercive law that began this year is proving of only limited use.
In Romania with its new law, the benefits that I see are that a comprehensive approach will ensure qualified assessment in all cases where PA is suggested as needing looked at. That is not the same as making it a crime. We don’t need to make PA a crime to get courts and qualified assessments and skilled help in place. There are more direct – even if it seems frustratingly like it will take forever – ways to make these things happen. I say it’s best to focus all our energy on making what we could already be doing happen.
Nick Child, Edinburgh
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I am an alienated father
My children are being alienated (the same as all members of my family, ie my sister or my mom) for almost 5 years. We haven’t seen them or speak to them at all. My wife had stolen everything from me: my house, my business and even my documents. Because I had no documents I was totally excluded from the society for about 1.5 years: I could not get a job, credit line, rent accommodation or travel. From the home owner, business owner and a dad I become within hours a homeless person without any job and without rights to get one, a person separated from my children. My family members who had previously a frequent contact with my children immediately lost this contact. I had several times to defend myself from false accusations: that was a tactic used to keep me away from my children. My children, who loved me previously, after a couple of months started hating me. They were simply brainwashed. Totally.
What I found during the last 5 years of the parental alienation is that there is no help for separated men. They have no rights at all. Social work in Inverness does not work. The Police in Inverness does not work. The social worker to which I raised a concern that the children are being coercively controlled simply replied that “that is OK, because they are with their mother”. The Police that was informed that my wife is keeping my passport and using this to make frauds said that they can do nothing. Can you imagine that a violent man is taking passport from a woman, keeping it and using to purchase services on her name? Wouldn’t the Police act immediately? This is not the case with a violent woman is doing so – more: she will receive any support in domestic violence from the government, that she requires. The sheriff in Inverness was totally backing the pure woman. Every false allegation she was throwing against me was diligently checked, but all violence made by my wife was diligently ignored, even if this was well documented. Contact with any charities is a nightmare: it is like a tennis game, where you are a ball and the agencies are tennis rockets. Everywhere you can hear: we don’t deal with this but call “them”. When you are calling them they are saying “call another them”. And you are coming back to the first agency and start your round again. And again. And they are happy, because they get their money for the workload they have done. They answered your call.
And don’t take me wrong: nothing is black and white. I was in touch with mothers alienated somehow from their children. I don’t want to use the word “marginal” here, because this is also a serious problem that is someone’s tragedy and is a violence against children too, but they are in absolute minority.
I was trying to find help everywhere and contact everyone, including Mr Child, who was described as a specialist on parental alienation, but till now unsuccessfully. I am still looking for help for myself and the way to make my case transparent, but everyone who I get through were interested only in making good articles when money was needed. For some I didn’t get through (To be transparent: the telephone number that I received to Mr Child was not valid and as a result I was not able to speak to him, but I would like to). very often you see the article on parental alienation, phone them and hear “ehm… uhm… we really don’t deal with this/we are not able to help… maybe call “them”. End of story. Or maybe not the end of the story but rather taking another round.
And there are plenty of people that for money are jumping out screaming “parental alienation claims are just a tactic! Nobody should claim that!”
No. Sometimes it might be a tactic, but more than often this is a fact. Very painful and damaging fact that is harming alienated parents, children and sometimes even whole families (as it is in my case).
I am still looking for help, regardless the fact that I lost hope.
Andy
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Hello Andy
It’s always grim to hear of stories like your own repeated, as you must have, without finding any satisfactory answers. As I’ve tried to explain a while back (see my last blog for example), my ten years of working hard to understand and help people and change systems led me to realise how limited anyone outside or inside the system is to make things work better “downstream” after things go wrong. Given how many are still locked into trying to help people who are “in the river” and to change the present but wrong (adversarial courts) system, I’ve been one of the (so far) few who are trying to change the system and the culture further upstream. Which is why I’m afraid I’m not available as I used to be to try (and fail) to help anyone. I’m no longer up to date with others to suggest who else to turn to – it sounds like you’ve tried everyone. 😦
Best wishes, Nick
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