Parental Alienation Forces Children To Be With A Hated Parent Who Is Possibly An Abuser.
A very controversial issue surrounding Parental Alienation is the recommendation of forced visitation and access between a child and the rejected or alienated parent.
If the alienation is moderately severe to severe then the access between the child and the alienating parent is recommended to be limited. This makes sense, if the child remains under the toxic influence of a parent the chances of their rehabilitating the other relationship is very unlikely.
Interestingly, when the alienation is at a mild or in some moderate level cases Gardner recommended a court award primary custody to the alienating parent, appoint a therapist for the family, and enforce the child’s contact with the rejected parent through the threat of imposing sanctions applied to the alienating parent. Such sanctions would be similar to those a court would use with a parent who is in contempt for failure to pay child support. The sanctions could include a continuum from requiring the posting of a bond, fines, community service, probation, house arrest and even short-term incarceration. When courts are reluctant to impose such sanctions, it is all too common that alienating parents have interfered with visitation with the other parent and flaunt court orders with impunity.
In one case, we know of an alienating mother, living in the Midwest, who actually placed the children in a psychiatric hospital multiple times, when it was time for them to visit their father in Florida.
The treating psychiatrist knew full well that the children were to visit their father in Florida, but admitted them anyway each time. The courts in Florida were helpless to enforce the visitation because the courts in the other state refused to enforce the visitation. This situation has remedied itself, however, apparently to the satisfaction of the authorities in the mother’s state. The mother received word from the local Sheriff’s that the following day they were coming to take the children. So, the mother kidnapped the children, one of which is severely handicapped, and has not been heard from since.
An entire book could be written on this one case alone, critiquing the condition of the legal, law enforcement and mental health professions regarding this problem.
We’ll dive into this topic further next week, in the interim, if you would like additional information on PA, please connect with me on LinkedIn.
