In Parental Alienation must be excluded from all custody hearings, (Capitol Weekly, 2/18/10), Preston Thymes, the head of public relations for the domestic violence service provider Shelter Outreach Plus, criticizes efforts by Fathers & Families and others to promote recognition of Parental Alienation. Thymes writes:
Parental Alienation is a perilous accusation that should never be recognized in courts or viewed as particularly compelling in cases deciding the custody of a child…
[V]ocal proponents of Parental Alienation Syndrome such as Glenn Sacks, Executive Director of Fathers and Families, are captious…We fully support AB 612, which is coming up vote in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to ban Parental Alienation Theory…
In our new column Preventing courts from considering parental alienation will harm kids (Capitol Weekly, 2/25/10), Fathers and Families’ legislative representative Michael Robinson and I respond to Thynes and lay out our case why courts should take Parental Alienation seriously. We also detail the problems with AB 612, whose passage Robinson was instrumental in blocking last year.
To post a comment on the column, please click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page. To write a thoughtful Letter to the Editor of the Capitol Weekly concerning the issue, please write to letters@capitolweekly.net.
Robinson and I wrote:
At Fathers & Families, we receive thousands of heart-wrenching calls and letters from parents whose children have been taught to fear or hate them. Both mothers and fathers can be perpetrators of Parental Alienation, but the true victims are always the children.
Thymes asserts that recognizing Parental Alienation as a legitimate issue in custody cases would endanger abused children. But in genuine cases of domestic violence or child abuse, all sides agree that courts need to protect children from abusive parents. Yet there is a large body of evidence which shows that false accusations of domestic violence are a major problem in child custody cases.
Unfortunately, Shelter Outreach Plus, like many domestic violence service providers, displays a troubling lack of awareness of this problem. Thymes writes:
“At Shelter Outreach plus, we render any claims of Parental Alienation invalid…we absolutely do everything we can to keep [the father alleged to be abusive] away from those children [including] our legal advocates through restraining orders…’
Thymes apparently feels that a mere accusation equals the truth, and that judges should not even consider whether an accuser is misleading the court…
Certainly there are fathers (and mothers) who have alienated their children through inept parenting, narcissism, drug or alcohol problems, or abuse, and who attempt to shift the blame to their exes by falsely claiming Parental Alienation. Sometimes, as research by Janet R. Johnston Ph.D. of San Jose State University confirms, Parental Alienation exists but is only one of several factors causing a deterioration of the parent-child bond. Sometimes parental alienators are unaware of their harmful actions.
Nevertheless, Parental Alienation is a serious problem. When fact-finding in custody cases, judges and custody evaluators must be able to properly consider all available evidence. When abuse is alleged, the accusation merits serious consideration. When Parental Alienation is alleged, the accusation merits serious consideration, too.
Read the full article here.
To learn more about Parental Alienation, as well as Fathers & Families’ Campaign to Ask DSM to Include Parental Alienation in Upcoming Edition, click here.