Telling Kids They're Victims of PAS

[NotJamesBond]

Yes, I agree.

When you took her back to court to show contempt of the court order, what happened?



Yes, I agree.

Was this behavior addressed in the custody agreement? If yes, when you took her back to court to show contempt of the court order, what happened?



Yes, I agree.

Was this behavior addressed in the custody agreement? If yes, when you took her back to court to show contempt of the court order, what happened?



Yes, I agree.

When you took her back to court to show contempt of the court order, what happened?



This means nothing at all. You cannot make someone like you ... and she doesn't have to even be civil.



Yes, I agree... however, I am seeing something of a pattern here. One, why haven't you taken mom back to court for violations of the court order?

Two, if these actions are not addressed by the custody order, then they are not in violation of anything and you need to go back to court to have them added.

Three, even if all this is happening EXACTLY as you say, do NOT drag the children into the middle.

Trust me, they already see what is going on.. but using them as the rope in your control battle with your ex will (and should) sour them on BOTH of the petty people that would use children as weapons to fight a personal battle.

Take the high road... children recognize it...

She would always agree to do these things verbally, and I would never put these things in writing.

To do these it looks like a custody evaluation would have to take place which costs thousands of dollars, and would have to be court ordered-2 things she has always avoided.

Looks like I may have to make her do it now-thru the courts.

njb

[NotJamesBond]

Here's a thought, is it legal or advisable to show a minor child (16) a generic parenting plan?

It took me literally years to work one out w the kids' mom.

I had to drag her into court and have her sign it-so she wouldn't interfere and honor my time w my kids.

It was so bad she had to be arrested for access interference, trespassing.

I could then let my kids reach their own conclusion, after reviewing how a normal effective plan is suppose to work, and maybe let them see that their dad isn't quite a monster after all.

What do you guys think?

njb.

[cyjeff]

I'm sure his opponents put together all sorts of fabrications and distortions - that's always easy than challenging ideas on their merits. If it makes you feel better to repeat the slurs, who am I to stop you.

Then believe this...

PAS Discredited in Mental Health and Legal Communities

This past year (2006) the American Bar Association’s Children’s Legal Rights Journal published an article that undertook a comprehensive analysis of the scientific, legal and policy issues involved in the evidentiary admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome, and found that there was no support for its use.

“PAS’s twenty-year run in American courts is an embarrassing chapter in the history of evidentiary law. It reflects the wholesale failure of legal professionals entrusted with evidentiary gatekeeping intended to guard legal processes from the taint of pseudo-science…. As a matter of science, law, and policy PAS should remain inadmissible in American courts.”
Jennifer Hoult Esq, The Evidentiary Admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Science, Law, and Policy, 26 Child. Legal Rts J. 1 (2006).

Also this past year, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges published a judges bench book that also found no scientific or legal basis for admission of parental alienation. Further, it cautioned:

The discredited "diagnosis" of "PAS" (or allegation of "parental alienation"), quite apart from its scientific invalidity, inappropriately asks the court to assume that the children's behaviors and attitudes toward the parent who claims to be "alienated" have no grounding in reality. It also diverts attention away from the behaviors of the abusive parent, who may have directly influenced the children's responses by acting in violent, disrespectful, intimidating, humiliating and/or discrediting ways toward the children themselves, or the children's other parent.
Navigating Custody & Visitation Evaluations in Cases with Domestic Violence: A Judge’s Guide, 2006, pg 24)

In 2003, the National District Attorneys Association’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse stated that

Although PAS may be hailed as a "syndrome" . . . in fact it is the product of anecdotal evidence gathered from Dr. Gardner's own practice. [...] PAS is based primarily upon two notions, neither of which has a foundation in empirical research. […] PAS is an untested theory that, unchallenged, can have far-reaching consequences for children seeking protection and legal vindication in courts of law.”

And the 1996 Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family states that

Although there are no data to support the phenomenon called parental alienation syndrome, in which mothers are blamed for interfering with their children's attachment to their fathers, the term is still used by some evaluators and courts to discount children's fears in hostile and psychologically abusive situations.[pg 40] Family courts often do not consider the history of violence between the parents in making custody and visitation decisions. . . . Psychological evaluators not trained in domestic violence may contribute to this process by ignoring or minimizing the violence and by giving inappropriate pathological labels to women's responses to chronic victimization. Terms such as "parental alienation" may be used to blame the women for the children's reasonable fear of or anger toward their violent father. [pg 100]

And a few quotes from the nutjob himself... you tell me how to take these INTO context...

Here are just a few of the outrageous statements that Richard Gardner has written in his own books published by his own vanity press:

• Pertinent to my theory here is that pedophilia also serves procreative purposes. Obviously, it does not serve such purposes on the immediate level in that children cannot become pregnant nor can they make others pregnant.
• However, the child who is drawn into sexual encounters at an early age is likely to become highly sexualized and crave sexual experiences during the prepubertal years. Such a "charged up child" is more likely to become sexually active after puberty and more likely, therefore, to transmit his or her genes to his or her progeny at an early age.
• The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity, and the greater the likelihood the individual will create more survival machines in the next generation. The ideal then - from DNA's point of view - is for the child to be sexually active very early, to have a highly sexualized childhood, and begin the time of puberty. This increases the likelihood that more survival machines will be produced for the next generation. (...)
• This reflects society's repression of the animal within us: a male animal who has the potential for rape and a female animal who, by merely a small extension of permissible attitudes, may become masochistic - thereby gaining sexual pleasure from being beaten, bound and otherwise made to suffer. It may very well be that, for some masochistic women, allowing themselves to be beaten into submission is the price they are willing to pay for gaining the gratification of receiving the sperm."
• Gardner's sociobiologist ideology has him endorse all "paraphilias" (merely atypical sexual behaviors) as "serving the purposes of species survival" by "their ability to enhance the general level of sexual excitation in society and thereby increase the likelihood that people will involve themselves in activities that are more directly contributory to the reproductive (and by extension, species survival) process".
• This extends not only to pedophilia but even to zoophilia and, yes, necrophilia. In the same essay Gardner writes: "Yet, the necrophiliac is still keeping (the likelihood) of heterosexual involvement with a person who is more likely to conceive."
• Gardner says that "the mother's own suppressed and repressed sexual fantasies are projected onto the child and father. By visualizing the father having a sexual experience with the child, the mother is satisfying vicariously her own desires to be the recipient of such overtures and activities."
• According to Gardner, 90% of "alienators" are women.
• "In custody litigation,…the vast majority of children who profess sexual abuse are fabricators."
• ''What I am against is the excessively moralistic and punitive reaction that many members of our society have toward pedophiles ... (going) far beyond what I consider to be the gravity of the crime.''
• "...there is a bit of pedophilia in every one of us."
• When a child has been sexually abused and feels guilt about it, Gardner suggests, the child may be helped to appreciate that "sexual encounters between an adult and a child are not universally considered to be reprehensible acts. The child might be told about other societies in which such behavior was and is considered normal." If sexual urges continue after the abuse ends, Gardner suggests such children be encouraged to masturbate.
• As for the alienating mother, Gardner suggests that vibrators can be useful and "one must try to overcome any inhibition she may have with regard to their use."
• . . . . An apparent benefit of the mother's use of a vibrator is that "her diminished guilt over masturbation will make it easier for her to encourage the practice in her daughter, if this is warranted." With this imagined solution, Gardner believes, the mother's "increased sexuality may lessen the need for her husband to return to their daughter for sexual gratification."

All of the above quotes are from Gardner's self-published True and False Accusations of Child Sex Abuse: A Guide for Legal and Mental Health Professionals, Creative Therapeutics, 1992, as reprinted in Ralph Underwager's self-published journal "Issues in Child Abuse Accusations", Spring 1993, pp. 115-118, under the title "A Theory About the Variety of Human Sexual Behavior" and Richard A. Gardner, M.D. , The Parental Alienation Syndrome (1992).

"What would a good mother do if her child told her of sexual abuse by his or her father?", asked film produce Garland Waller during a videotaped interview of Richard Gardner for her award-winning documentary, Small Justice. His answer: "What would she say? Don't you say that about your father. If you do, I'll beat you."