Parental Alienation
As a 3rd year law student I am very excited to volunteer for the production of Family Matters with Harvey Brownstone. This is my first experience on set and I am gaining exposure to various lawyers and advocates from several different areas participating to offer their unique knowledge and experience to the show.
I found the segment filmed this morning, on parental alienation, particularly interesting as Justice Harvey Brownstone delved into the emotional past of a victim who underwent extreme parental alienation. As a young child, upon separation, her father turned her against her mother completely by forcing her and her siblings to move far away without her mother's knowledge or consent. They suffered abuse for doubting his adamant declarations that their mother didn't want them and didn't love them. In fact, they were required to refer to her as 'the thing'.
Senior family lawyer, Lorne MacLean, clarified that that kind of situation, thankfully, is quite rare. In any event, enough children undergo parental alienation upon marriage breakdowns for it to be a pressing concern. He outlined the legal remedies available to parents who find themselves to be the subject of alienation and expanded on type of orders that may or may not be more likely to be granted in light of his practical experience.
Although I'm sure I won't articulate this quite as eloquently as him, I especially appreciated his emphasis on successful post-separation relationships. A healthy post-separation relationship is reflected by the willingness of both parents to avoid a perpetually antagonistic or combative relationship and to work together to eliminate quarrelsome behavior. This type of attitude results in a more harmonious relationship not only for their benefit, but for the benefit of the children - who too often become casualties providing sounding boards for their parental frustrations. In sum, enduring harsh feelings and an overall lack of congeniality or mutual understanding between parents is harmful for everyone involved.
So anyways, bottom line: I'm learning... and having fun. Oh no. If I can do both of these at the same time, does that mean that I'm officially a nerd?
Category: Behind the Scenes
1 Comment
Rhonda Pisanello said
Thank you for the synopsis on this episode of Family Matters. One thing I would like to add about Parental Alienation is that it can be broken down into three distinct levels of emotional abusive behaviours. Mild, Moderate and Severe. Parental Abduction and Parental Homicide, (where one parent will murder the children to keep them from the other parent usually during a custody depute, such as the Campione case in Ontario or more recently the McConnell case in Millet , AB.) are the most severe forms of parental alienation. They are the obvious ones that are far more easily recognized. The mild form of Parental Alienation is often left ignored and overlooked in Family Court because the custodial parent is very good at appearing to want the children to have a relationship with the other parent and often try to say it is the children that do not want this relationship and so on. As this behaviour goes on, and as a parent gets away with this, it often escalates to moderate abusive behaviour as the increased pressures are put on that parent for access by the other target/rejected parent. This is where so many children get lost in the crossfire and where too much precious time is wasted in Family Court on evaluations, assessments and so on. This is where the alienating parent uses that time to further brainwash the poor children into perfect replicas of themselves. Furthermore whether a child is taken thousands of miles away from a target parent or lives right around the corner from them, once the child becomes enmeshed with the alienating parent's views and feelings, distance is not the challenge for the targeted parent to see or spend time with their child, it is all the other invisible barricades placed by the alienating parent such as the school, the extracurricular activities, the blackmail on the children, the guilt trips, the punishments, even physical if the children show any positive feelings for the other parent and so on. No-one realizes unless they have been there just how utterly helpless, afraid and insecure a child feels in the home of an alienating parent. They become more afraid to defy the alienator than they feel safe showing love and affection for the other target parent to anyone and everyone involved and as their fear escalates that rejection is more often than not spread to the targeted parents family as well. This is truly emotional and mental child abuse that leaves invisible and often lifelong scars on a children carried long into adulthood. With more awareness and education on this topic, for all involved we can eventually help stop parental alienation on a major scale, for the sake of the thousands and thousands of children across our Country. Thank you to Mr. Justice Brownstone for talking about this very important and destructive topic on his show.