http://www.endabuse.org/programs/display.php3?DocID=100107
Remarks by Gayle Nicolson
From Alameda, California: I feel that it is a tribute to my daughter and grandson to be here today to tell their story because this past Sunday, May 21, marked the third anniversary of their death. My daughter Nicole and three-year-old grandson Warren were stabbed to death in their own home. The murderer was not a stranger , but John Hoffman, my grandson's father. The effect this act of violence has had on our family can not be put into words, and the wounds we have been left with can not be seen, but they are there, and they will never go away.
Our grief is made even worse because of the guilt. The reason for the guilt is that we were with Nicole and Warren almost every day, but did not know of the violence that they were suffering at the hands of John. But there was one person who did know, and that person was Dawn Girard, a family law judge.
We knew that she did not want a relationship with John and that she had been trying to move on with her life without him, but it was particularly hard for her because she wanted her son to have his father in his life. This wasn't good enough for John, he wanted her and his son. He was constantly harassing her and generally intruding on her life. We suggested that she get a restraining order and set up a place where John could have supervised visits with Warren without involving her. She agreed that this was the best course of action. She sat in my house and very carefully wrote a request for a restraining order. She asked me not to read what she had written. She said it was very hard for her to write but she knew it was time to take some action. She wanted to handle it through the legal system on her own.
I truly believe that if the court had been more sensitive to her request for help, I would not be standing here telling their story today.
We found out the details of what had been happening to her by reading her request for a restraining order on the front page of a local newspaper the day after the murders. At first, we considered the news article to be a thoughtless invasion of our family's privacy, but it has turned out to be an awakening and has given me a purpose and a reason to go on. That purpose is to see that all judges that preside in family courts are trained to recognize the signs of battered women, and be sensitive to their needs.
On May 1, 1992 Nicole stood in front of Judge Dawn Girard with a restraining order request that told of rape, beatings, child abuse, and numerous threats of death to her, her child, and her family. The following are a few direct quotes from that document.
"Starting over 4 years ago John Hoffman has been acting out sexual and physical abuse. He has regularly beaten me and has made several threats to kill me. He has forced me to perform sexual acts despite desperate pleas to leave me alone. He also has made threats to harm my family and destroy their property if I leave him or call the police." "He has injured Warren by slapping him, causing a blackened eye and welts on his face and head." "I was severely beaten, almost strangled, and left with black eyes and bruises all over my body." "These are not necessarily the worst things that John Hoffman has done to us, just examples of his capability of injuring me and my son." "The fear my son and I have lived in has been horrible. I am terribly afraid of him and I need protection." However, she left that courtroom without a signed order.
The newspaper headline read that Nicole had dropped the restraining order. I could not understand why she would have dropped the order when there was no other reason for her to go to court that morning. After obtaining and reading the transcript, I became aware that the sense of resolve and confidence that Nicole had that morning was stripped away after having to stand beside a man she feared and testify to a Judge that had neither the sensitivity nor the interest to concern herself with the seriousness of the situation. The very first thing the Judge said was "Is everything you wrote in your application true and correct to the best of your knowledge and belief? Or do you want to drop this today?" Those words, "Or do you want to drop this today?" haunt me. I am at a loss to understand how one in a judge's position could not see the obvious fact that Nicole and Warren were in mortal danger from this man. It is clear from reading the transcript that it was not Nicole who made the decision to drop the restraining order, but the influence of the judge's authority.
It is the duty of family court judges to act in the best interest of those who come before them seeking help. If Nicole had been listened to and taken seriously and able to plead her case in a more sympathetic and understanding environment, perhaps she would have felt more empowered, knowing that she could make a difference in protecting herself and her child through the court system, which is the only legal means that exists to protect victims like Nicole and Warren.
The manner in which the civil courts deal with domestic violence is in serious need of reassessment. We need mandatory intensive training and new policies for all levels of personnel who deal with families in crisis. Battered women have to be recognized and handled properly in the courts. Their cries for help must be taken seriously and the batterers must not be let off lightly.
There is nothing more that can be done for Nicole and Warren, but it is my deepest wish that by telling their story I may, in some small way, help change our legal system so that tragedies such as mine are averted in the future.
(As told at a Family Violence Prevention Fund Press Conference, San Francisco, CA, May 25, 1995)
Showing newest 9 of 11 posts from 7/27/08 - 8/3/08. Show older posts
Showing newest 9 of 11 posts from 7/27/08 - 8/3/08. Show older posts
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Fathers Rights, Child Abuse, Parent Alienation...
Its a sad world when because you are born a male that the courts are inclined to rule against you because of baseless allegations from a mother looking to game the system. The courts still favor mom when evidence shows she has never put the needs of her children before her own selfish interests. People that believe there is no gender bias in FLC need to look at the National statistics. When will judges wake the hell up and see that dad's are good parents too. Equality is supposed to our right under the constitution.
“There is a fundamental liberty right guaranteed to both parents by the 14th Amendment to the care, custody, and nurture of their children. According to the US Supreme Court: “Absent a Compelling State Interest of harm or potential harm to the child, the State may not intervene in the privacy of family life.”
The State family law systems are designed to benefit the professions that feed on them. They have nothing to do with justice or protecting the rights of innocent children falsely accused by malicious parents. The system is the last bastion of Human Rights Abuse in this country. The system must be destroyed so America does not turn in to a fatherless wasteland of ever increasing societal problems.
“There is a fundamental liberty right guaranteed to both parents by the 14th Amendment to the care, custody, and nurture of their children. According to the US Supreme Court: “Absent a Compelling State Interest of harm or potential harm to the child, the State may not intervene in the privacy of family life.”
The State family law systems are designed to benefit the professions that feed on them. They have nothing to do with justice or protecting the rights of innocent children falsely accused by malicious parents. The system is the last bastion of Human Rights Abuse in this country. The system must be destroyed so America does not turn in to a fatherless wasteland of ever increasing societal problems.
Kathleen Parker: Daughters have been especially wounded by the men bad/daddy lousy myth
Kathleen Parker: Daughters have been especially wounded by the men bad/daddy lousy myth
July 31st, 2008 by Glenn Sacks
Kathleen Parker's Save the Males criticizes the way "men, maleness, and fatherhood have been under siege in American culture for decades."
In the following excerpt from her chapter "Our Fathers, Our Selves," Parker discusses the damage that divorcing mothers and family law courts do to children when they limit fathers' role in their lives after divorce or separation. Parker writes:
Seeing one’s dad fifty days a year—the average number of days children of divorce see their biological father—can’t be compared with having a father in-house, day-to-day. It’s an unnatural relationship, often awkward, in which fathers try to jam the month they missed into a single weekend. Never mind the impossibility of consistency in boundaries and discipline.
Experience teaches that we develop our sense of “self” from the ways in which we interact with both our same-sex and our opposite sex parents. Further, our success in future relationships hinges to some degree on how we navigate those first relationships. One does not need to be a psychotherapist to reckon that a girl abandoned by her father will have trouble trusting men or relating to them in healthy ways as an adult.
A boy without a father will have trouble learning that he belongs to the fraternity of men and, in the absence of a strong male role model, may over identify with Mother. How does a boy learn to be a father when he has none to show him?
And finally, if fatherhood doesn’t matter, how can we expect boys and young men to aspire to become responsible fathers someday? The answer is, we can’t.
Daughters have been especially wounded by the men bad/daddy lousy story they’ve heard from their mothers and the wider culture. How does a little girl reconcile her love of her first “hero” with the antihero messages all around her?
Interestingly, we seem to accept that children shouldn’t be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional seasoning, as though children are little casseroles, especially tasty with a pinch of Dad, but guests will hardly notice if you leave him out.
To learn more or to purchase Save the Males, click here.
Parker, a syndicated columnist who is published in over 300 newspapers every week, is concerned about the decline of fatherhood, and has favorably covered many of our action campaigns.
These include: Campaign Protesting Fox's Reality Show Bad Dads; Campaign Protesting Florida DCF's Mistreatment of Loving Father in 'Elian Gonzalez II' Case; Campaign Against PBS's Father-Bashing Breaking the Silence; and Campaign Against 'Boys are Stupid' Products.
Restraining Orders Can Be Straitjackets On Justice
By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks
Women’s advocates and the state Attorney General's office are criticizing a new court ruling which will make it harder for women to get restraining orders against their male partners. Star-Ledger columnist Fran Wood, in her recent op-ed “Don't soften protection for women,” called New Jersey’s Domestic Violence Prevention Act “one of the best statutes in the country,” and said the new ruling could “diminish the ability of domestic violence victims to get the protection they need.”
Certainly abused women need protection and support, but there are many troubling aspects of the DVPA’s restraining order provisions that merit judicial and/or legislative redress.
Under the DVPA, it is very easy for a woman to allege domestic violence and get a restraining order (aka “protection order”). New Jersey issues 30,000 restraining orders annually, and men are targeted in 4/5ths of them. The standard is “preponderance of the evidence” (often conceptualized as 51%-49%), and judges almost always side with the accusing plaintiff.
Under the DVPA, the accuser need not even claim actual abuse. Alleged verbal threats of violence are sufficient, even though it’s almost impossible for the accused to provide substantive contradictory evidence.
The restraining order boots the man out of his own home and generally prohibits him from contacting his own children. Men are cut off from their possessions and property, and some end up in homeless shelters. Yet most have never even had a chance to defend themselves in court. In recognition of the gravity of these orders, the Hudson County judge, Francis B. Schultz, found the current standard of proof unconstitutional, however, and required the stricter "clear and convincing evidence" standard in the case before him. His ruling was not binding on other judges, but will likely be appealed, which could lead to a decision with a broader impact.
There is a large body of evidence which shows that restraining orders are frequently misused. For example, the Family Law News, the official publication of the State Bar of California Family Law Section, recently explained:
“Protective orders are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody…[they are] almost routinely issued by the court in family law proceedings even when there is relatively meager evidence and usually without notice to the restrained person....it is troubling that they appear to be sought more and more frequently for retaliation and litigation purposes.”
An article in the November, 2007 issue of the Illinois Bar Journal explains:
"If a parent is willing to abuse the system, it is unlikely the trial court could discover (his or her) improper motives in an Order of Protection hearing."
These orders have become so commonplace that the Illinois Bar Journal calls them "part of the gamesmanship of divorce.”
Newark family law attorney Bruce Pitman says:
“Anybody who practices family law sees people who abuse the restraining order process. Some create false allegations or take minor or insignificant acts and use them to remove their spouse or partner from the home for advantage in litigation. Such abuses undermine victims of real abuse and violence who seek protection.”
Opponents of the ruling point to the relatively rare instances where men have killed their female partners as evidence of why the current law should stand. While these cases are heart-wrenching, they do not constitute a viable argument against the new ruling.
For one, the new ruling does not eliminate restraining orders, but merely requires a proper evidence standard for their issuance. Moreover, it is highly questionable whether restraining orders protect genuinely abused women. A violent spouse intent on killing his ex is not going to be deterred from doing so out of fear of violating his restraining order. In many domestic violence killings, a restraining order was already in place. In general, a restraining order is only enforceable against a law-abiding, non-violent man.
Jane Hanson, executive director of Partners for Women and Justice in Montclair, argues that Superior Court Judge Francis B. Schultz is wrong in ruling that the DVPA violates parents’ “fundamental” right to “be with or maintain their relationship with their children.” Yet when a restraining order is issued, fathers can be (and sometimes are) arrested for calling their own children on the phone or going to their Little League games.
Moreover, by removing the father from the home, a custody precedent is set with mom as primary caregiver and dad as occasional visitor—a precedent which harms fathers’ ability to gain joint custody of their children in divorce proceedings.
Wood calls the current law on restraining orders “an efficient system.” We disagree. Yes, the system is efficient in separating men from their children and their homes. However, it is hardly efficient in delivering justice.
This column first appeared in the Newark Star Ledger (7/28/08). To discuss this issue on Glenn's blog, click here.
Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. Their website is www.acfc.org.
Glenn Sacks’ columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. He invites readers to visit his website at www.GlennSacks.com.
Women’s advocates and the state Attorney General's office are criticizing a new court ruling which will make it harder for women to get restraining orders against their male partners. Star-Ledger columnist Fran Wood, in her recent op-ed “Don't soften protection for women,” called New Jersey’s Domestic Violence Prevention Act “one of the best statutes in the country,” and said the new ruling could “diminish the ability of domestic violence victims to get the protection they need.”
Certainly abused women need protection and support, but there are many troubling aspects of the DVPA’s restraining order provisions that merit judicial and/or legislative redress.
Under the DVPA, it is very easy for a woman to allege domestic violence and get a restraining order (aka “protection order”). New Jersey issues 30,000 restraining orders annually, and men are targeted in 4/5ths of them. The standard is “preponderance of the evidence” (often conceptualized as 51%-49%), and judges almost always side with the accusing plaintiff.
Under the DVPA, the accuser need not even claim actual abuse. Alleged verbal threats of violence are sufficient, even though it’s almost impossible for the accused to provide substantive contradictory evidence.
The restraining order boots the man out of his own home and generally prohibits him from contacting his own children. Men are cut off from their possessions and property, and some end up in homeless shelters. Yet most have never even had a chance to defend themselves in court. In recognition of the gravity of these orders, the Hudson County judge, Francis B. Schultz, found the current standard of proof unconstitutional, however, and required the stricter "clear and convincing evidence" standard in the case before him. His ruling was not binding on other judges, but will likely be appealed, which could lead to a decision with a broader impact.
There is a large body of evidence which shows that restraining orders are frequently misused. For example, the Family Law News, the official publication of the State Bar of California Family Law Section, recently explained:
“Protective orders are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody…[they are] almost routinely issued by the court in family law proceedings even when there is relatively meager evidence and usually without notice to the restrained person....it is troubling that they appear to be sought more and more frequently for retaliation and litigation purposes.”
An article in the November, 2007 issue of the Illinois Bar Journal explains:
"If a parent is willing to abuse the system, it is unlikely the trial court could discover (his or her) improper motives in an Order of Protection hearing."
These orders have become so commonplace that the Illinois Bar Journal calls them "part of the gamesmanship of divorce.”
Newark family law attorney Bruce Pitman says:
“Anybody who practices family law sees people who abuse the restraining order process. Some create false allegations or take minor or insignificant acts and use them to remove their spouse or partner from the home for advantage in litigation. Such abuses undermine victims of real abuse and violence who seek protection.”
Opponents of the ruling point to the relatively rare instances where men have killed their female partners as evidence of why the current law should stand. While these cases are heart-wrenching, they do not constitute a viable argument against the new ruling.
For one, the new ruling does not eliminate restraining orders, but merely requires a proper evidence standard for their issuance. Moreover, it is highly questionable whether restraining orders protect genuinely abused women. A violent spouse intent on killing his ex is not going to be deterred from doing so out of fear of violating his restraining order. In many domestic violence killings, a restraining order was already in place. In general, a restraining order is only enforceable against a law-abiding, non-violent man.
Jane Hanson, executive director of Partners for Women and Justice in Montclair, argues that Superior Court Judge Francis B. Schultz is wrong in ruling that the DVPA violates parents’ “fundamental” right to “be with or maintain their relationship with their children.” Yet when a restraining order is issued, fathers can be (and sometimes are) arrested for calling their own children on the phone or going to their Little League games.
Moreover, by removing the father from the home, a custody precedent is set with mom as primary caregiver and dad as occasional visitor—a precedent which harms fathers’ ability to gain joint custody of their children in divorce proceedings.
Wood calls the current law on restraining orders “an efficient system.” We disagree. Yes, the system is efficient in separating men from their children and their homes. However, it is hardly efficient in delivering justice.
This column first appeared in the Newark Star Ledger (7/28/08). To discuss this issue on Glenn's blog, click here.
Mike McCormick is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. Their website is www.acfc.org.
Glenn Sacks’ columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of the largest newspapers in the United States. He invites readers to visit his website at www.GlennSacks.com.
CJE Advocacy: Judicial Performance Evaluations
Whilst I believe that the movies below are 99% on point, I have to disagree with the position they take on PAS. In my humble opinion of being on the inside of the problem faced by fathers - I believe it is a real issue that needs to be expanded to cover both partial alienation of the children against the targeted spouse but also to include consideration of what the Ex Spouse does to achieve wholesale outright alienation of the other Spouse from the children. The biggest sign of this is when unsubstantiated facts appear in the moving parties motions alleging abuse, danger to Ex/Children - alcohol abuse - allegations THAT ARE NEEDED to fabricate a call for the mother being granted SLPC and near zero visitation to the father. This fact always alleges ex husband as a violent/Angry man, even though their is no history of this behavior(ever). Its more likely the reality is the mother wants dissolution because she could not deal with living a lie any longer through an undisclosed relationship (best friends husband in my case + her former X boyfriend). See the book below for info about why this can happen (womens infidelity). The accusation is utterly absurd to suggest that the spouse is now a danger when truth is he is likely a deer in the headlights and still in love with his X wife because he is only just getting up to speed on the fact that his wife wants a divorce when she has in contrast been been use to the idea because she had been planning it with her secret lover for a year or more ;-)
In my case, the Ex's first indication that she wanted a divorce was a server dropping her motion on the door mat in front of the family house for dissolution while she was traveling out of state with the children. No warning! Amazingly she included in her allegations that I somehow posed a threat to her ~ even though she was the last person on the planet that I could harm. The fact was I never so much as touched a hair on her head ever even when her affairs with her ex and all of the sordid details were fully known to me.
If you look at the history of a similar mother you will see she is always the moving party and always alleging abuse which is always coinciding with requested alienation of the father using the courts to acheieve the outcome. Unsubstantiated or fabricated Allegation and pushing for custody and visitation never seems to be a subject that evaluators mention. Its seems they are to ignorant and stupid to comment on it being a possibility. Their reports don't ever say; suspects mother is a Sociopath and practicing PAS. Meaning mother dragging Ex through courts to relieve him of the children and his money while mother actively encourages kids to say certain things to evaluators to set up father. In my case my daughter walked out of a custody assessment with the court approved evaluator with a note book that I had never seen before that was full of things that daddy apparently said ~ comments that I had never heard before in my life! Sure enough - the judge went on to quote from the notes... DUuuuuhhh!
With this exception on PAS the producers of this movie are absolutely on point especially about how mediation services mediators do not even read the files before a court mandated hearing - they don't read the pleadings of the court record and yet they make their decisions favoring mother against the local rules of the court.
This happens when their is absolutely no reason to have a new hearing because there is no REAL EVIDENCE showing just cause for a change in custody or visitation other than BS allegations by the woman holding the gun and now openly hooked up with her her best friends husband.
The purpose of the mother winning custody is so that they can start a which hunt and find a reason or create one by escalating a peaceful working custody process in to one that is now charged and hostile simply because the mediator granted the mother a shot at screwing over husband in the courts (by hook or crook) and during the witch hunt evaluation. Now she just needs to pay off a court clerk and pay him to not tell father about a hearing (father then becomes a no show and court rules against him which happens all of the time), or they buy services of someone like Rhonda Barovsky to load dice against father in an evaluation and misrepresent the evidence... If the father is in pro per now he is pretty much screwed - he will loose custody - its just a matter of how much. Of course now he has lost it it now means he now needs to pay the lying toad that stole his time away from his children...not that would make a man angry - someone stealing his kids on lies and manipulation.... it only gets better from here on out!
This is exactly what happened in my case. I filed a formal complaint with the head of mediation services after he ordered a full custody evaluation after 10 minutes in to the hearing. The head of CE advised me that each mediator only has four hours to go through each file - I explained - "is four hours not enough to open the court record to see if he is dealing with a litigant with a history of lying, litigation. Does this not allow enough time to look at the motion for - the motion against"... she fumbled... I then asked her "what is there to stop a scheming manipulating woman forcing a custody evaluation to try and then further manipulate the court in the process" ~ as women do. She concluded that the system was not perfect. I call this imperfection fraudulent, fixed, loaded against men - especially when you consider that 9 times out of 10 the judge follows the mediators advice. It means the system can easily be gamed when there is absolutely no reason for a case to be in the court system in the first place. In this I can only conclude they want every case to go through the courts whether warranted or not so that work loads drive fees and work loads and head count. You have to feed the machine right!
Fathers - there is nothing stopping you being played by the system once the custody evaluation process is ordered. Its now a role of the dice - its already loaded against you. Even though you are being forced in to the system and forced to pay for year long dog and pony show that the mediator just signed you up for with out your agreement - Please don't get frustrated about the fact your Ex and her pit-bull is playing you - trying to steal your children with no evidence - because if you do, you will be seen by the court to be an angry guy and that means you are not a fit parent according to Alameda Kangaroo Court Judges and that you will need to go to anger management class for 12 weeks before you can go and see your children again!!!
Now I know that when you are on the street and someone steals your kids they will be an all points bulletin out for the kidnappers, their will Amber alerts on the highways - when you are being accused of abuse by an ignorant judge that cant tell the difference between a banana and an orange who then steals your children from you because some one in the court was paid off or he did not bother reading the pleadings before the court. In this situation - remember you are not allowed to say anything and you are supposed to speak calmly to the Gods in the court. You should allow the judge to put his foot up your arse - and turn around and smile ask him/her and to kick you with the other foot and then say thank you. You should applaud at having your children kidnapped by the court and tell the judge that despite the national statistics on fatherless children - he is a very wise man and that you respect his deep wisdom and profound sense of justice! If you scream out like you would if someone other than a judge stole your children - then you will likely go to prison for contempt of court! Welcome to Kangaroo Court in Alameda county.
Judicial Performance Evaluations
Community Outreach & Education
CJE hosts public forums, hearings and presentations to encourage an ongoing community dialogue about the judicial system in general, and our county in particular. Click here to learn more about our public events or watch a forum video. CJE also recently produced a 42-minute documentary addressing the serious systemic breakdown of our family courts. Click here to view the 12-minute documentary trailer or click here order your own copy of the DVD. To arrange for a screening in Marin, contact Steve at 415-459-9211 ext. 25.
Advocacy
CJE is introducing the idea of a Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) program for California to our State legislators. JPE programs already exist in 19 other states and are generally popular among judges and voters alike where they have been established. Colorado and Alaska are two great examples of states with successful JPE programs. To learn more about JPEs visit the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (University of Denver) online or click here to download a one-page pdf about CJE's advocacy work.
Members of the Center for Judicial Excellence have had productive meetings with the following individuals to discuss our proposed 2008 legislation:
o Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata’s Consultant Shelley Curran
o Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata’s Consultant Lindy Rose Graham
o Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s General Counsel Fredericka McGee
o Gene Wong, Chief Counsel, Senate Judiciary Committee
o Drew Liebert, Chief Counsel, Assembly Judiciary Committee
o Senator Dick Ackerman, Senate Minority Leader, Judiciary Committee member
o Senator Tom Harman, Ranking Republican, Senate Judiciary Committee
o Senator Carole Migden’s Legislative Director Laura Metune
o Assemblymember Mark Leno and his Legislative Director Carlos Machado
o Assemblymember Van Tran, Ranking Republican, Judiciary Committee
o Assemblymember Jared Huffman, D-Marin/Sonoma
o Assemblymember Lloyd Levine’s Judiciary Committee staffer Greg Girvan
o Assemblymember John Laird’s Consultant Janus Norman
o Assemblymember Sally Lieber’s Principal Assistant Barry Steinhart
o Donna Hershkowitz, Assistant Director of Governmental Affairs, Judicial Council of
California/Administrative Office of the Courts
We are encouraged by the positive feedback we’re receiving about developing a statewide Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) program for California, similar to those working in 19 other states. Our preferred model for California’s JPE program is Colorado, where volunteer commissions at the state and local levels conduct evaluations, and the program is funded using revenue from traffic violations. CJE is currently focusing on building support for JPEs among diverse statewide organizations and drafting legislation to be introduced in 2008.
Basic Assumptions of a Judicial Performance Evaluation Program
Each sitting judge should be evaluated on a regular schedule, at least twice during each term. Evaluations should emphasize apolitical metrics of judicial performance, and should be based primarily on performance against predetermined benchmarks.
An evaluation committee should gather a broad and deep set of information on the judge’s performance, including survey data, review of case management skills and written opinions, courtroom observation, and information gained from interviews with the judge. The committee should issue a report concerning each judge’s performance.
The evaluation committee should be independent, and should consist both of lawyers and nonlawyers. The evaluation process should be transparent both to the judge being evaluated and to the public. Evaluation results, and information on the evaluation process itself, should be widely disseminated to the public.
SOURCE: Shared Expectations: Judicial Accountability in Context , Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, www.du.edu/legalinstitute
Please call Kathleen Russell or Erin Fogg at 415-459-9211 for more information about JPEs.
In my case, the Ex's first indication that she wanted a divorce was a server dropping her motion on the door mat in front of the family house for dissolution while she was traveling out of state with the children. No warning! Amazingly she included in her allegations that I somehow posed a threat to her ~ even though she was the last person on the planet that I could harm. The fact was I never so much as touched a hair on her head ever even when her affairs with her ex and all of the sordid details were fully known to me.
If you look at the history of a similar mother you will see she is always the moving party and always alleging abuse which is always coinciding with requested alienation of the father using the courts to acheieve the outcome. Unsubstantiated or fabricated Allegation and pushing for custody and visitation never seems to be a subject that evaluators mention. Its seems they are to ignorant and stupid to comment on it being a possibility. Their reports don't ever say; suspects mother is a Sociopath and practicing PAS. Meaning mother dragging Ex through courts to relieve him of the children and his money while mother actively encourages kids to say certain things to evaluators to set up father. In my case my daughter walked out of a custody assessment with the court approved evaluator with a note book that I had never seen before that was full of things that daddy apparently said ~ comments that I had never heard before in my life! Sure enough - the judge went on to quote from the notes... DUuuuuhhh!
With this exception on PAS the producers of this movie are absolutely on point especially about how mediation services mediators do not even read the files before a court mandated hearing - they don't read the pleadings of the court record and yet they make their decisions favoring mother against the local rules of the court.
This happens when their is absolutely no reason to have a new hearing because there is no REAL EVIDENCE showing just cause for a change in custody or visitation other than BS allegations by the woman holding the gun and now openly hooked up with her her best friends husband.
The purpose of the mother winning custody is so that they can start a which hunt and find a reason or create one by escalating a peaceful working custody process in to one that is now charged and hostile simply because the mediator granted the mother a shot at screwing over husband in the courts (by hook or crook) and during the witch hunt evaluation. Now she just needs to pay off a court clerk and pay him to not tell father about a hearing (father then becomes a no show and court rules against him which happens all of the time), or they buy services of someone like Rhonda Barovsky to load dice against father in an evaluation and misrepresent the evidence... If the father is in pro per now he is pretty much screwed - he will loose custody - its just a matter of how much. Of course now he has lost it it now means he now needs to pay the lying toad that stole his time away from his children...not that would make a man angry - someone stealing his kids on lies and manipulation.... it only gets better from here on out!
This is exactly what happened in my case. I filed a formal complaint with the head of mediation services after he ordered a full custody evaluation after 10 minutes in to the hearing. The head of CE advised me that each mediator only has four hours to go through each file - I explained - "is four hours not enough to open the court record to see if he is dealing with a litigant with a history of lying, litigation. Does this not allow enough time to look at the motion for - the motion against"... she fumbled... I then asked her "what is there to stop a scheming manipulating woman forcing a custody evaluation to try and then further manipulate the court in the process" ~ as women do. She concluded that the system was not perfect. I call this imperfection fraudulent, fixed, loaded against men - especially when you consider that 9 times out of 10 the judge follows the mediators advice. It means the system can easily be gamed when there is absolutely no reason for a case to be in the court system in the first place. In this I can only conclude they want every case to go through the courts whether warranted or not so that work loads drive fees and work loads and head count. You have to feed the machine right!
Fathers - there is nothing stopping you being played by the system once the custody evaluation process is ordered. Its now a role of the dice - its already loaded against you. Even though you are being forced in to the system and forced to pay for year long dog and pony show that the mediator just signed you up for with out your agreement - Please don't get frustrated about the fact your Ex and her pit-bull is playing you - trying to steal your children with no evidence - because if you do, you will be seen by the court to be an angry guy and that means you are not a fit parent according to Alameda Kangaroo Court Judges and that you will need to go to anger management class for 12 weeks before you can go and see your children again!!!
Now I know that when you are on the street and someone steals your kids they will be an all points bulletin out for the kidnappers, their will Amber alerts on the highways - when you are being accused of abuse by an ignorant judge that cant tell the difference between a banana and an orange who then steals your children from you because some one in the court was paid off or he did not bother reading the pleadings before the court. In this situation - remember you are not allowed to say anything and you are supposed to speak calmly to the Gods in the court. You should allow the judge to put his foot up your arse - and turn around and smile ask him/her and to kick you with the other foot and then say thank you. You should applaud at having your children kidnapped by the court and tell the judge that despite the national statistics on fatherless children - he is a very wise man and that you respect his deep wisdom and profound sense of justice! If you scream out like you would if someone other than a judge stole your children - then you will likely go to prison for contempt of court! Welcome to Kangaroo Court in Alameda county.
Judicial Performance Evaluations
Community Outreach & Education
CJE hosts public forums, hearings and presentations to encourage an ongoing community dialogue about the judicial system in general, and our county in particular. Click here to learn more about our public events or watch a forum video. CJE also recently produced a 42-minute documentary addressing the serious systemic breakdown of our family courts. Click here to view the 12-minute documentary trailer or click here order your own copy of the DVD. To arrange for a screening in Marin, contact Steve at 415-459-9211 ext. 25.
Advocacy
CJE is introducing the idea of a Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) program for California to our State legislators. JPE programs already exist in 19 other states and are generally popular among judges and voters alike where they have been established. Colorado and Alaska are two great examples of states with successful JPE programs. To learn more about JPEs visit the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (University of Denver) online or click here to download a one-page pdf about CJE's advocacy work.
Members of the Center for Judicial Excellence have had productive meetings with the following individuals to discuss our proposed 2008 legislation:
o Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata’s Consultant Shelley Curran
o Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata’s Consultant Lindy Rose Graham
o Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s General Counsel Fredericka McGee
o Gene Wong, Chief Counsel, Senate Judiciary Committee
o Drew Liebert, Chief Counsel, Assembly Judiciary Committee
o Senator Dick Ackerman, Senate Minority Leader, Judiciary Committee member
o Senator Tom Harman, Ranking Republican, Senate Judiciary Committee
o Senator Carole Migden’s Legislative Director Laura Metune
o Assemblymember Mark Leno and his Legislative Director Carlos Machado
o Assemblymember Van Tran, Ranking Republican, Judiciary Committee
o Assemblymember Jared Huffman, D-Marin/Sonoma
o Assemblymember Lloyd Levine’s Judiciary Committee staffer Greg Girvan
o Assemblymember John Laird’s Consultant Janus Norman
o Assemblymember Sally Lieber’s Principal Assistant Barry Steinhart
o Donna Hershkowitz, Assistant Director of Governmental Affairs, Judicial Council of
California/Administrative Office of the Courts
We are encouraged by the positive feedback we’re receiving about developing a statewide Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) program for California, similar to those working in 19 other states. Our preferred model for California’s JPE program is Colorado, where volunteer commissions at the state and local levels conduct evaluations, and the program is funded using revenue from traffic violations. CJE is currently focusing on building support for JPEs among diverse statewide organizations and drafting legislation to be introduced in 2008.
Basic Assumptions of a Judicial Performance Evaluation Program
Each sitting judge should be evaluated on a regular schedule, at least twice during each term. Evaluations should emphasize apolitical metrics of judicial performance, and should be based primarily on performance against predetermined benchmarks.
An evaluation committee should gather a broad and deep set of information on the judge’s performance, including survey data, review of case management skills and written opinions, courtroom observation, and information gained from interviews with the judge. The committee should issue a report concerning each judge’s performance.
The evaluation committee should be independent, and should consist both of lawyers and nonlawyers. The evaluation process should be transparent both to the judge being evaluated and to the public. Evaluation results, and information on the evaluation process itself, should be widely disseminated to the public.
SOURCE: Shared Expectations: Judicial Accountability in Context , Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, www.du.edu/legalinstitute
Please call Kathleen Russell or Erin Fogg at 415-459-9211 for more information about JPEs.
Parent Alienation Syndrome / Divorce FAQ: "Do attorneys contribute to parent alienation?
Parents Who Have Successfully Fought
Parental Alienation Syndrome
by Jayne A. Major, Ph.D. (UCLA)
Nothing stirs up passions more than the controversy generated when parents are at war over the custody of a child.
A controversy is an issue where evidence on both sides can make a compelling case. It is never black and white, but when people have their emotions aroused, an issue can quickly turn into two polar opposites.
Fear takes over reason, incomplete facts become evidence, and court calendars become jammed with repeat visits to a judge to try to bring sanity to what is unlikely to ever be sane. On top of this, social movements are promoting one side over another in their clamor for justice. Politicians are lobbied to pass laws to bring order to chaos. Gender wars are fueled and lives are destroyed.
My exposure to custody wars came from the mothers and fathers attending my Breakthrough Parenting® classes at The Parent Connection, Inc., an agency that I founded in Los Angeles in 1983.
Many of the parents in my classes were litigating over child custody. Most said that they wanted to settle the case, but none of them would settle by giving up all access to their child, which seemed to be the only other alternative open to them.
It was disturbing to see that in many of these cases, the child was behaving outrageously, to the point of cursing one of their parents, and kicking, spitting, and calling them stupid, mean and horrible.
What can you do when one parent is intractable and vitriolic? What can you do when the child becomes caught up in the fight and starts taking sides? I came to realize that this level of conflict in custody disputes was a fallout from sweeping societal changes.
What has changed?
In the 1960's and the 1970's, feminists told fathers that they should take a more active role in raising their children. Women were going to work, going back to college and pursuing careers as never before.
A shift then began, and fathers became more involved in the day-to-day care of their children than was true in previous generations.
As rigidity about parental roles began to fall away, the tender years doctrine was still in place. This doctrine presumed that by virtue of the fact that a woman was the mother of a child, that she must be the superior parent. In the early 1970's several states passed "no-fault" divorce laws, where anyone who wanted out of a marriage was free to leave. Some have called it the "no guilt laws." There was a proliferation of divorce that was historically unprecedented.
After a family breakup, many fathers wanted to continue to be involved with the care of their children. Suddenly, they found that they had no legal right to have custody of their children unless the mother agreed to it.
Due to the lobbying efforts of James Cook, founder of the Joint Custody Association, who was caught up in this problem himself, the California legislature successfully passed the first joint custody laws.
Joint custody was widely seen as a better way of handling the evolving problem of how to share child custody. It was believed that it would lead to fewer fights over the custody of children because it was more equal. Other states also passed joint custody laws. These laws helped to level the playing field for fathers.
The majority of mothers and fathers welcomed joint custody. Others did not. As with any trend, there was a backlash. Child custody became a highly political gender-specific issue. Thus, the ramping up of high-level disputes also began in the 70's.
In most states the tender years presumption (mother knows best) was replaced with the best-interests-of-the-child presumption of joint custody (the best parent is both parents).
In the 1980's, courts began to increasingly ignore gender in determining child custody. This removed the automatic allocation of full custody rights to the mother, so she had less time with the children. Instead, the courts looked first at how the custody could be shared, and if that wasn't possible, judicial officers attempted to determine which parent was more interested and better able to attend to the best interest of the child.
Fathers perceived that they were at a disadvantage because of a bias toward the mother having custody. Because of this, in the 1980's more fathers than ever started showing up at parenting classes to make sure that their skills were state of the art. This is when these issues were first called to my attention.
Most parents were able to share custody of their children, and they worked out childcare issues in an amicable way.
A large number of women were even relieved to have fathers share in the childcare, which enabled them to pursue their personal life goals involving their education and career.
However, when there was not a friendly resolution to custody, fathers found themselves with a greater opportunity to gain joint or primary custodial status by litigating (going to court). The stakes got even higher when the legal system was used to resolve these difficult problems. In extreme cases, the alienation of a child's affection against a targeted parent became a bizarre escalation of the intensity of the conflict.
Who discovered Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)?
In association with this growing child-custody litigation, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner first identified Parental Alienation Syndrome in the 1980's. He noticed a dramatic increase in the frequency of a disorder rarely observed before, that of programming or brainwashing of a child by one parent to denigrate the other parent.
However, the disorder wasn't just brainwashing or programming by a parent. It was confounded by what Dr. Gardner calls self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent's campaign of denigration against the targeted parent. He called this disorder Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), a new term that includes the contribution to the problem made by both the parent and the child.
What is PAS?
Gardner's definition of PAS is:
1. The Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child-custody disputes.
2. Its primary manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification.
3. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) of a parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the targeted parent.
Excerpted from: Gardner, R.A. (1998). The Parental Alienation Syndrome, Second Edition, Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, Inc.
What is the child's part in PAS?
Gardner notes that the PAS is more than brainwashing or programming, because the child has to actually participate in the denigrating of the alienated parent. This is done in primarily the following eight ways:
1. The child denigrates the alienated parent with foul language and severe oppositional behavior.
2. The child offers weak, absurd, or frivolous reasons for his or her anger.
3. The child is sure of him or herself and doesn't demonstrate ambivalence, i.e. love and hate for the alienated parent, only hate.
4. The child exhorts that he or she alone came up with ideas of denigration. The "independent-thinker" phenomenon is where the child asserts that no one told him to do this.
5. The child supports and feels a need to protect the alienating parent.
6. The child does not demonstrate guilt over cruelty towards the alienated parent.
7. The child uses borrowed scenarios, or vividly describes situations that he or she could not have experienced.
8. Animosity is spread to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent.
In severe cases of parent alienation, the child is utterly brain- washed against the alienated parent. The alienator can truthfully say that the child doesn't want to spend any time with this parent, even though he or she has told him that he has to, it is a court order, etc. The alienator typically responds, "There isn't anything that I can do about it. I'm not telling him that he can't see you."
PAS is an escalation of Parental Alienation (PA)
Dr. Douglas Darnall in his book Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, describes three categories of PA:
The mild category he calls the naïve alienators. They are ignorant of what they are doing and are willing to be educated and change.
The moderate category is the active alienators. When they are triggered, they lose control of appropriate boundaries. They go ballistic. When they calm down, they don't want to admit that they were out of control.
In the severe category are the obsessed alienators or those who are involved in PAS. They operate from a delusional system where every cell of their body is committed to destroying the other parent's relationship with the child.
In the latter case, he notes that we don't have an effective protocol for treating an obsessed alienator other than removing the child from their influence.
An important point is that in PAS there is no true parental abuse and/or neglect on the part of the alienated parent. If this were the case, the child's animosity would be justified. Also, it is not PAS if the child still has a positive relationship with the parent, even though one parent is attempting to alienate the child from him or her.
Which gender is most likely to initiate PAS?
Gardner's statistics showed that the majority of PAS occurrences were initiated by mothers. Mothers have traditionally had primary custody of children (although before the 20th century it normally belonged to the father), and the mothers usually spend more time with the children.
In order for a campaign of alienation to occur, one parent needs to have considerable time with the child. However, in recent years increasing numbers of fathers have started instigating PAS, since there are few legal sanctions for doing so.
I've seen several dramatic cases where the father was the alienator.
In one case, the father had no control over his obsession to trash the mother.
Numerous professionals told him, including the mother, that he could have shared custody if he would be willing to follow the rules. He didn't have the self-control to do this.
When he lost custody because of his aberrant behavior, he became a celebrity in the father's rights movement and took his campaign into national circles. No one would know from hearing him speak about his situation that there was serious pathology going on (PAS) or how hard the professionals worked to stabilize it.
Moreover, in cultures where women traditionally have no tangible rights, alienation by the father can be severe.
I've met divorcing women who had been prevented from learning how to make a living to support themselves. At the time of separation all access to financial resources were stopped and the children removed from her care. These women reported severe alienation of affection.
It makes one grateful to have laws that protect human rights and enforce a better way of resolving conflict than a winner-take all approach.
How common is PA and PAS?
When parents first separate there is often parent alienation. For example, due to the anxiety of the mother, she is likely to say indirectly to a child that he or she is not safe with the father.
She might say:
"Call me as soon as you get there to let me know you are okay."
"If you get scared, you call me right away. Okay?"
"I'll come get you if you want to come home."
Usually this level of alienation dies down after the separating parents get used to changes brought on by the separation and move on with their lives.
However, in rare cases, the anxiety not only doesn't calm down, it escalates. PAS parents are psychologically fragile. When things are going their way, they can hold themselves together. When they are threatened however, they can become fiercely entrenched in preserving what they see is rightfully theirs.
Fortunately only a small percentage end up in this level of conflict.
Why do PAS parents act like they do?
I believe that PAS parents have become stuck in the first stage of child development, where survival skills are learned.
To them, having total control over their child is a life and death matter. Because they don't understand how to please other people, any effort to do so always has strings attached. They don't give; they only know how to take. They don't play by the rules and are not likely to obey a court order.
Descriptions that are commonly used to describe severe cases of PAS are that the alienating parent is unable to "individuate" (a psychological term used when the person is unable to see the child as a separate human being from him or herself). They are often described as being "overly involved with the child" or "enmeshed".
The parent may be diagnosed as narcissistic (self-centered), where they presume that they have a special entitlement to whatever they want. They think that there are rules in life, but only for other people, not for them.
Also, they may be called a sociopath, which means a person who has no moral conscience. These are people who are unable to have empathy or compassion for others. They are unable to see a situation from another person's point of view, especially their child's point of view. They don't distinguish between telling the truth and lying in the way that others do.
In spite of admonitions from judges and mental health professionals to stop their alienation, they can't. The prognosis for severely alienating parents is very poor. It is unlikely that they are able to "get it." It is also unlikely that they will ever stop trying to perpetuate the alienation. This is a gut wrenching survival issue to them.
How does the child get involved in PAS?
The targeted parent needs to understand what has happened to what as once an affectionate and loving child who is now unexplainably hostile. Remember Gardner’s definition stated earlier, "the disorder wasn’t only brainwashing or programming by a parent, but was confounded by what he calls self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent’s campaign of denigration against the targeted parent." It isn’t PAS in the severe form of this disorder, unless the child has crossed over and joined up with the alienating parent. The child shares the alienating parent’s psychosis. How does this happen?
At birth, children are totally reliant on a parent, usually the mother, for having all of their needs met. It is part of normal child development to be enmeshed with their primary caregiver, and very young children do not have a separate identity from this caregiver.
One of the mother's roles is to help the child develop as a separate person, therefore, infancy and childhood become a series of tasks of learning how to become independent. For example, learning to putting oneself back to sleep, eating, toilet training and caring for one's hygiene.
Instead of promoting this independence, the alienating parent encourages continued dependence. The parent may insist on sleeping with the child, feeding the child ("It's easier if I do it"), and taking care of these rites of passage longer than normal child development calls for. This "spoiling" may not feel right to the child, but they do not have enough ego strength to do anything about it.
A PAS mother can't imagine that the father is capable of planning the child's time while in his care. Therefore, she arranges several things for the child to do while at the father's house. One of the most common ways of doing this is to sign the child up for on-going lessons without permission from the father.
The parent may even decree whom the child can and cannot see, particularly specific members of the child's extended family on the father's side. The mother desperately wants control over the time when the child isn't with her.
One of the most unusual situations that I ran into was the father who picked up his sons at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday for the weekend. He discovered that his very excited boys had their hearts set on going to Disneyland for the day, when this idea had never crossed his mind.
One theory about why a mother will act this way is that when a father takes his share of joint custody, it is like asking her to give away part of her body. One mother said, "He is going to remove my right arm and take it for the weekend." It feels like the mother has lost a profound part of who she is as a person. She feels fractured, pulled apart.
Why is PAS a double bind for the child?
When children spend time with the father, and enjoy it, they are put into a double bind. Clearly, they cannot tell the mother that dad treats them well or that they had fun together. They want to bond with the father, but don't dare. They figure out on which side the bread is buttered (who has the power), and their survival needs tug at them. Therefore, children will tell the mother about everything they didn't enjoy about time spent with the father, which will add to her belief that they don't like to be with him. These children feel that they must protect the mother. The same is true when the alienator is the father. The child will avoid expressing their affectionate feelings for the mother to him.
Family volitility
These are volatile families. The father may have indeed spanked a child, or lashed out at the mother physically or emotionally. An isolated incidence can turn into a holocaust. One father spanked his rebellious child and ended up in jail on child abuse charges, followed by a six week trial to determine his guilt. The jury returned with a not guilty verdict in 20 minutes. The verdict didn't end it as far as the mother was concerned, however.
The alienating parent's hatred can have no bounds. The severest form will bring out every horrible allegation known, including claims of domestic violence, stalking and the sexual molestation of the child. Many fathers say that there have been repeated calls to the Department of Family and Child Services alleging child abuse and neglect.
In most cases the investigators report that they found nothing wrong. However, the indoctrinating parent feels that these reports are not fabrications, but very, very real. She can describe the horror of what happen in great detail. Regardless of the actual truth, in her mind, it did happen.
Most of the alienated fathers that I work with are continually befuddled by her lying. "How can she lie like that?" They don't realize that these lies are not based on rational thinking. They are incapable of understanding the difference between what is true and what they want to be true. A vital part of fighting PAS is to understand the severity of the psychological disturbance that is the source of it.
Intergenerational patterns
What makes this problem very complicated is that PAS is often intergenerational in dysfunctional families. Almost always the alienator has people within the family who support the alienation. It might be the mother, father or grandparent who encourage fighting. They are likely to support the parent financially or even provide massive amounts of money to fund litigation. This is further proof to the PAS parent that he or she is justified in what he/she does.
When a child is placed in the role of the parent's therapist
Alienation advances even further when the alienating parent uses the child as a personal therapist. The child is told about every miserable experience and negative feeling about the alienated parent with great specificity. The child, who is already enmeshed with the parent because his or her own identity is still undefined, easily absorbs the parent's negativity. They become aligned with this parent and feel that they need to be the protector of the alienating parent.
What happens to the child when you can't stop PAS?
Obviously, without anyone to stop the alienation from progressing, the child will become estranged from the alienated parent. The relationship with this parent will eventually be severed. It is doubtful that, without psychological intervention as the child grows, he or she will ever understand what happened.
The child's primary role model will be the maladaptive, dysfunctional parent. He or she will not have the benefit of growing up with the most well-adjusted parent and all that this parent can contribute to enrich the child's life. Many of these children come to experience serious psychiatric problems.
Will they ever grow up and realize what happened to them? Without someone who can recognize the syndrome and counsel them about it, it isn't likely that they will ever figure it out. However, there have been exceptions where the child and the alienated parent have been successfully reunified later in life.
How can good intentions backfire?
Those people who are typically called upon to handle such difficult situations, such as the police, social workers, attorneys or psychologists assume that what the frightened mother is saying is true. These things DO happen. There are men who are seriously disturbed, violent, out of control sexually, and stalk, who are rightfully feared. The mother is very convincing in her desperation and vivid in her descriptions. The clincher is that the alienated child collaborates with the mother by saying, "Yes, I am afraid of my father." "Yes, my father did touch me down there." "Yes, he does beat me." What would you do if you were faced with having to decide how to protect a child in such a situation?
Therapists
Some therapists don't realize the severity and depth of the problem. In fact, they may unwittingly side with the alienating parent and even testify in court that the child is afraid of the alienated parent. This can be a serious stumbling block in getting an accurate diagnosis. Indeed, it can tip the scale into the alienating parent's agenda and do real damage.
Our courts, social services and mental health workers are all committed to stop child abuse and neglect when they see it occurring. Unfortunately, in PAS situations a dramatic and loud complaint from the alienating parent often ends up being acted upon without an investigation as to the accuracy of the allegation. This frequently removes the alienated parent from the children and allows the alienating parent considerable additional time to proceed with the alienation.
By the time all of the evaluations are in place and the case is heard by the court, considerable damage has been done to the child. It is an irony that the very people we turn to for help in such a difficult situation can often be those who most contribute to allowing the on-going abuse and neglect of the child to continue.
What can be done about the problem?
First, it takes a sophisticated mental health professional to be able to identify that PAS is occurring. Most forensic evaluators such as psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have studied the disorder and are able to recognize it.
Forensic evaluators diagnose PAS by having the parents take a battery of psychological tests, doing a detailed case history and by observation. They make recommendations as to what to do. After the evaluator has written a report on the family and made recommendations, nothing will happen to resolve the crisis without court intervention.
The alienated parent has to take the report to a judge who must then be convinced that the child is being alienated and that it is not in their best interest to stay in such an environment.
It is rare however that judges have any degree of mental health training. They most often learn about PAS from the bench. It usually takes several trips to court to point out how badly a child is being treated before a judge is willing to act.
How are PAS cases resolved legally?
Judges are inevitably conservative in their orders. Even when the evidence is overwhelming that the alienation is occurring, the court order may still end up saying, "the parents are to make joint decisions about the child's welfare," when this is impossible to do.
This is further evidence that the judge doesn't understand the magnitude of the problem. The judge in one of the most severe PAS cases I worked on was from the old school. He was tired of having the litigants continue to appear before him. One day he said, "Why don't the two of you go out in the hallway and kiss and make up." This is an example of how frustrating these cases are for judges. Indeed, these are the hardest cases to decide.
Judges have been slow to place serious sanctions on the alienating parent. If there is no threat of severe fines, jail time or sole custody to the targeted parent, the chances are remote that the out-of-control parent can be stopped.
It usually takes a dramatic situation where court orders are broken to force the court to change primary custody. Often it is only a matter of time before alienating parents become desperate and their unstable mental health gets the better of them. People in an official position start to recognize the alienating parent as being out of line, and become supportive of the targeted parent.
In one case, the 9 and 4 year old daughters were abducted and presumed to be on their way to Australia through an underground group that hides women who are victims of domestic violence, often of a sexual nature and where the father is stalking. The girls were missing for 3 months and found in another county where they were waiting for final arrangements to be made before their departure. When the police broke into the house at 3:00 a.m., they found the girls sleeping with their mother. They had been given boy's names, clothes, haircuts and their hair was dyed. They were not allowed contact with anyone outside of their hiding place, not even to go to school. The oldest child had strep throat and the youngest was seriously withdrawn.
In another case, the mother could no longer convince the social workers, the police or the Court about her allegations. She was known to be unstable because she had "cried wolf" too many times. She abducted her daughter to Utah. She told officials there that the courts where she lived were protecting a proven child molester. The press was called. After she was interviewed; there was a virtual feeding frenzy as the father's photograph and the story was on all the local news networks.
A big part of the problem was that the seven year old girl, said "Yes" when asked if her father had molested her. Even though this had already been disproved by forensic evaluators, she was still confused.
Can the alienation of children be reversed?
As children get older, the alienation can be reversed with proper psychological care. However, it won't work if the alienating parent is not contained. In the last case described above, the mother had severely limited visiting rights. She had remarried and had a new child, however, she still regularly calls the police to report the father for abuse. Presently, the daughter resides with her father, receives weekly therapy and hates the police. She gradually understands how disturbed her mother is.
In the former case, where the mother was kidnapping the children, she now sees them two hours a month at the Department of Children's Services with a social worker present to monitor everything that she says and does. The girls have also been in extensive therapy and are doing well.
Since this is among the most severe kinds of abuse of a child's emotions, there will be scars and lost opportunities for normal development. The child is at risk of growing up and being an alienator also, since the alienating parent has been the primary role model.
What is the best way to deal with PAS?
The parents I know who were successful in getting primary custody of their children in a PAS situation shared the following characteristics:
* They completed a comprehensive parenting course such as Breakthrough Parenting, and stuck with it until they rated excellent in the knowledge, skills and methods taught. Their parenting skills became superior.
* They were even-tempered, logical and kept their emotions under control. They never retaliated. A person who reacts in anger is proving the alienator's point that he or she is unstable.
* They certainly thought of giving up but never did. No matter how awful the harassment got, they worried about leaving their daughter or son in that environment. They were driven to continue trying to get the court to understand the seriousness of the issues and to change primary custody to them.
* They were willing and able to go to the financial expense of seeing it through.
* They got help from a skilled family lawyer who had experience with parent alienation syndrome.
* They became good at understanding how the courts work and the law as it applied to their case. In many cases, because of excessive expenses, parents even ended up as pro per (called pro se in some states) where they were representing themselves without a lawyer.
* They had a case where a forensic evaluator made a strong statement about the alienation and recommend changing legal and primary custody to the alienated parent. Some parents had to go back to the evaluator to demonstrate that his or her earlier recommendations were not working.
*
They persevered in demonstrating that they were rational, reasonable, and had the best interest of the child at heart.
* They provided the court with an appropriate parenting plan that showed how the child would be well taken care of in their care.
* They understood the nature of the problem and focused on what to do about it, even though they and their children were being victimized. (Alienated parents who got caught up in "how terrible it all is" and spent time judging the situation, went under emotionally.)
* They didn't live a victim's life.
* They were proactive in seeking constructive action.
* They avoided adding to the problem. One father expressed it like this: "I don't know how to make it better with the mother, but I do know how to make it worse." He was one of the most successful parents I met in fighting the PAS problem because he stayed in the role of the peacekeeper.
* They kept a diary or journal of key events, describing what happened and when.
* They documented the alienation with evidence that was admissible in court.
* They always called or showed up to pick up their children, even if they knew that the children won't be there. This was often very painful, but then they could document that they tried, when the alienator alleged that this parent had no interest in the child.
* They focused on enjoying their children's company and never talked to their children about their case. They always took the high road and never talked badly about the other parent to their children. They absolutely never showed a child any court orders or other sensitive documents. They didn't let the children overhear inappropriate conversations on the telephone.
* They didn't violate court orders. They paid their child support on time and proved that they could live within the letter of the law.
* They were truly decent, principled people. It was obvious that they loved their children.
Conclusion
PAS cases are notoriously difficult to figure out, even for professionals in the field of divorce.
Once the syndrome is discovered, it is even harder for the professionals to figure out what to do about it.
It is important for alienated parents to be supported by compassionate people while going through this difficult time.
PAS is never easy, but there is plenty of hope for those who take the high road and follow what worked for other PAS parents as shown above.
Jayne Major, Ph.D
What does Dr. Major recommend to do if you have a PAS case?
PAS Action #1: Complete a comprehensive parenting course such as Breakthrough Parenting, and stick with it until you rate excellent in the knowledge, skills and methods taught. Your parenting skills will become superior, which you will need to be able to deal with the challenges of alienation.
This also helps give the judge as well as the family professionals involved the confidence that you are able to support your children effectively in the new, more stressful situation of a divided family, especially after you have usually already been accused of being a “clueless” or even “dangerous” parent.
The ideal is a local, live 10-week Breakthrough Parenting class, one evening per week. Call +1 (310) 823-7846 for classes in the Greater Los Angeles area, or +1 (310) 207-9977 for classes in the rest of the U.S.
If local classes are not available in your area, or you have to complete a comprehensive course in less than 10 weeks, the next best is our Breakthrough Parenting Class-In-A-Box, which uses the same materials as the live classes, but you complete them on your own with additional easy instructions. You read a lively textbook with great illustrations and many real-life examples from Breakthrough Parenting families; you learn how they were able to quickly solve difficult problems with their children, then fill out a workbook that helps you figure out how to apply this in your own unique family. It really works, and parents love it!
When you have finished your workbook and sent it in to us, we do a Review and Mini-Coaching Session with you over the phone. If all OK, you get a 2-page detailed Letter of Completion that we guarantee will be accepted by any Family Court in the U.S. or Canada, or you get a 100% refund of what you paid!
In a PAS case, the Parenting Class-In-A-Box is also vital for properly preparing you for a Custody Evaluation. If you don't speak the language family professionals use, and you don't acquire some new, higher skills for this new situation, you can end up with a negative evaluation, resulting in limited supervised visitation instead of what could have been full custody. Yes, the difference can be that great.
For more information on the Parenting Class-In-A-Box, click here (opens in a new window, but see the special deal on this page only below).
PAS Action #2: Provide the court with an appropriate "comprehensive parenting plan" that shows how the child will be well taken care of in your care.
PAS Action #3: Keep a diary or journal of key events, describing what happened and when.
For these two key PAS actions, you'll find everything you need to know in Dr. Major's Creating A Successful Parenting Plan book about how to quickly create what is legally called "a comprehensive parenting plan” and what is the meaning of all the many important choices you have to make, choices that are uniquely personal. Getting your understanding this way is much more efficient than having your family lawyer explain it one hour at a time.
The template on the Companion CD-ROM allows you to very quickly build your own plan on your computer (PC or Mac), in a format that is ready to to present to your family lawyer for review, or to file with the court if you are forced to represent yourself (unfortunately common in PAS cases).
With this material, you will have a maximally complete plan upfront.
In a hostile PAS case, this can saves you a lot of money later, when the other parent is often continuously looking for ways to make trouble. Many parents just put into the plan what they can think of at the beginning, plus what their lawyers suggest to add at that time, which is only what they know about in your family situation.
Then six months later the other parent says, “You didn’t put in anything about xxx!” and the judge is forced to call the parties in again, usually at a cost of $3,000-$6,000 in legal fees, and that's each time.
Many PAS parents end up financially devastated by this, and after a while they are unable to defend themselves in court, losing custody of their children.
If on the other hand the parenting plan is truly comprehensive from the beginning, it will be very difficult or even impossible for the other parent to claim that anything was missed up front.
Family court judges have to deal with omissions, but they do not care much for requests for changes for change’s sake.
The Creating A Successful Parenting Plan book also describes how to document everything that happens in a way that it can be used for your PAS case.
For more information on the Creating A Successful Parenting Plan materials, click here (opens in a new window, but see the special deal on this page only below).
SPECIAL PACKAGE DEAL FOR PAS PARENTS, ONLY AVAILABLE ON THIS PAGE:
(1) Breakthrough Parenting Class-In-A-Box (Super-Clear Materials + Review w/Personal Parenting Tips + Mini-Coaching by Phone + Letter of Completion (Subject to Satisfactory Completion) + Return via Priority Mail, or First Class Air mail if you are in Canada or overseas)
(1) Creating A Successful Parenting Plan (Super-Clear Book + Template CD-ROM for PC/Mac + Full Instructions)
What should you expect from this package?
1. You will be able to quickly understand and use the correct terminology used by family professionals in court. When parents use everyday language to describe the PAS problems in their family, it frequently comes across as "adult whining," and even serious complaints are often disregarded by the courts for this reason.
2. You will be able to understand the psychological problems involved in PAS cases, and you will learn how to effectively deal with them.
3. You will learn how to reduce your stress. If you don't have any strength left, how are you going to fight? Our methods have been proven effective for thousands of parents in difficult cases.
4. You will learn how to communicate effectively with your children regardless of their age (yes, even teens!), so that you can guide them and support them through this difficult time, even reconnect with them after a forced absence.
5. You will quickly understand all the choices you have to make in what is legally called a "comprehensive parenting plan."
6. You will learn how to use a parenting plan to protect yourself from foreseeable future legal expenses if your ex should become unhappy after your divorce is finalized, whether it's 3 months later, or 6 months, 9 months, or a year or more. This is a very common source of great expense in PAS cases.
7. You will find everything explained with exceptional clarity, and many real-life examples from families we have helped (only the names have been changed).
8. You will of course find that your own satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you are not totally satisfied with how these unique materials help you connect with your children and save you big money on legal expenses, just return the materials within 30 days for a 100% refund.
The regular everyday price (never discounted) for the materials in this package is $149.95+$39.95=$189.90, but here is a special, valid only through June 30, 2008:
Click here to buy this package for only $177.00 (We ship 98% of incoming orders within 24 hours, and overnight FedEx is available, as is shipping to Canada, Mexico, UK, Australia, NZ, and other countries.)
Ordering online through our secure server gives you the fastest delivery. If for any reason you feel uncomfortable about using credit cards online, just click above and place the order using the "Pay by Telephone" option, then call us with your credit card.
You can also enter an order online with shipping options, etc. that you can print out to mail to us with a US$ check or USPS Money Order. With USPS Money Orders we ship immediately on receipt, while personal checks require 7-10 days to clear first.
If you have more questions, please call us at +1 (310) 207-9977. We’re always glad to help, and you will be talking only to real knowledgeable people.
Breakthrough Parenting, Inc. is a long time member of the
Better Business Bureau, rated "AAA" with a 10-year perfect record, and we will continue to do our best to keep it that way.
If you have an unusually complicated case and you would like one-on-one help, we recommend you get personal consulting with Dr. Jayne Major, who has 25 years of continuous experience with helping PAS parents.
She will ask you questions related to your completion of the materials in the special package above, because PAS cases are won or lost based on the facts as they are presented therein.
This means that you will save time and money if you finish as much of the materials as possible before making your phone appointment with Dr. Major (or an in person appointment with her in Los Angeles).
To schedule an appointment with her, call +1 (310) 823-7846.
Dr. Major has saved many parents from total alienation, turning around seemingly impossible situations with creative strategies.
"My very experienced family lawyer, who had done 3,000 cases over 23 years, was very surprised when I was able to do in two days in court what he had expected would take two months. This was 100% thanks to what I learned from Dr. Major in my personal PAS consulting sessions. These sessions paid for themselves ten times over."
~B.J. Ahlen, parent, Pacific Palisades, CA
It is not just about how to present your side in court, but also about how to communicate with custody evaluators about the alienation problems you have seen, all the different aspects of how to handle communication with your ex so that your children are not harmed psychologically, unusual parenting plan issues, and much more. No matter how unusual, it is likely that Dr. Major has seen it before in her 25 years of educational counseling of divorce parents, many with very difficult PAS situations.
If you have questions about the materials, call us at +1 (310) 207-9977.
Parental Alienation Syndrome
by Jayne A. Major, Ph.D. (UCLA)
Nothing stirs up passions more than the controversy generated when parents are at war over the custody of a child.
A controversy is an issue where evidence on both sides can make a compelling case. It is never black and white, but when people have their emotions aroused, an issue can quickly turn into two polar opposites.
Fear takes over reason, incomplete facts become evidence, and court calendars become jammed with repeat visits to a judge to try to bring sanity to what is unlikely to ever be sane. On top of this, social movements are promoting one side over another in their clamor for justice. Politicians are lobbied to pass laws to bring order to chaos. Gender wars are fueled and lives are destroyed.
My exposure to custody wars came from the mothers and fathers attending my Breakthrough Parenting® classes at The Parent Connection, Inc., an agency that I founded in Los Angeles in 1983.
Many of the parents in my classes were litigating over child custody. Most said that they wanted to settle the case, but none of them would settle by giving up all access to their child, which seemed to be the only other alternative open to them.
It was disturbing to see that in many of these cases, the child was behaving outrageously, to the point of cursing one of their parents, and kicking, spitting, and calling them stupid, mean and horrible.
What can you do when one parent is intractable and vitriolic? What can you do when the child becomes caught up in the fight and starts taking sides? I came to realize that this level of conflict in custody disputes was a fallout from sweeping societal changes.
What has changed?
In the 1960's and the 1970's, feminists told fathers that they should take a more active role in raising their children. Women were going to work, going back to college and pursuing careers as never before.
A shift then began, and fathers became more involved in the day-to-day care of their children than was true in previous generations.
As rigidity about parental roles began to fall away, the tender years doctrine was still in place. This doctrine presumed that by virtue of the fact that a woman was the mother of a child, that she must be the superior parent. In the early 1970's several states passed "no-fault" divorce laws, where anyone who wanted out of a marriage was free to leave. Some have called it the "no guilt laws." There was a proliferation of divorce that was historically unprecedented.
After a family breakup, many fathers wanted to continue to be involved with the care of their children. Suddenly, they found that they had no legal right to have custody of their children unless the mother agreed to it.
Due to the lobbying efforts of James Cook, founder of the Joint Custody Association, who was caught up in this problem himself, the California legislature successfully passed the first joint custody laws.
Joint custody was widely seen as a better way of handling the evolving problem of how to share child custody. It was believed that it would lead to fewer fights over the custody of children because it was more equal. Other states also passed joint custody laws. These laws helped to level the playing field for fathers.
The majority of mothers and fathers welcomed joint custody. Others did not. As with any trend, there was a backlash. Child custody became a highly political gender-specific issue. Thus, the ramping up of high-level disputes also began in the 70's.
In most states the tender years presumption (mother knows best) was replaced with the best-interests-of-the-child presumption of joint custody (the best parent is both parents).
In the 1980's, courts began to increasingly ignore gender in determining child custody. This removed the automatic allocation of full custody rights to the mother, so she had less time with the children. Instead, the courts looked first at how the custody could be shared, and if that wasn't possible, judicial officers attempted to determine which parent was more interested and better able to attend to the best interest of the child.
Fathers perceived that they were at a disadvantage because of a bias toward the mother having custody. Because of this, in the 1980's more fathers than ever started showing up at parenting classes to make sure that their skills were state of the art. This is when these issues were first called to my attention.
Most parents were able to share custody of their children, and they worked out childcare issues in an amicable way.
A large number of women were even relieved to have fathers share in the childcare, which enabled them to pursue their personal life goals involving their education and career.
However, when there was not a friendly resolution to custody, fathers found themselves with a greater opportunity to gain joint or primary custodial status by litigating (going to court). The stakes got even higher when the legal system was used to resolve these difficult problems. In extreme cases, the alienation of a child's affection against a targeted parent became a bizarre escalation of the intensity of the conflict.
Who discovered Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)?
In association with this growing child-custody litigation, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner first identified Parental Alienation Syndrome in the 1980's. He noticed a dramatic increase in the frequency of a disorder rarely observed before, that of programming or brainwashing of a child by one parent to denigrate the other parent.
However, the disorder wasn't just brainwashing or programming by a parent. It was confounded by what Dr. Gardner calls self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent's campaign of denigration against the targeted parent. He called this disorder Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), a new term that includes the contribution to the problem made by both the parent and the child.
What is PAS?
Gardner's definition of PAS is:
1. The Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child-custody disputes.
2. Its primary manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no justification.
3. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) of a parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the targeted parent.
Excerpted from: Gardner, R.A. (1998). The Parental Alienation Syndrome, Second Edition, Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, Inc.
What is the child's part in PAS?
Gardner notes that the PAS is more than brainwashing or programming, because the child has to actually participate in the denigrating of the alienated parent. This is done in primarily the following eight ways:
1. The child denigrates the alienated parent with foul language and severe oppositional behavior.
2. The child offers weak, absurd, or frivolous reasons for his or her anger.
3. The child is sure of him or herself and doesn't demonstrate ambivalence, i.e. love and hate for the alienated parent, only hate.
4. The child exhorts that he or she alone came up with ideas of denigration. The "independent-thinker" phenomenon is where the child asserts that no one told him to do this.
5. The child supports and feels a need to protect the alienating parent.
6. The child does not demonstrate guilt over cruelty towards the alienated parent.
7. The child uses borrowed scenarios, or vividly describes situations that he or she could not have experienced.
8. Animosity is spread to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent.
In severe cases of parent alienation, the child is utterly brain- washed against the alienated parent. The alienator can truthfully say that the child doesn't want to spend any time with this parent, even though he or she has told him that he has to, it is a court order, etc. The alienator typically responds, "There isn't anything that I can do about it. I'm not telling him that he can't see you."
PAS is an escalation of Parental Alienation (PA)
Dr. Douglas Darnall in his book Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, describes three categories of PA:
The mild category he calls the naïve alienators. They are ignorant of what they are doing and are willing to be educated and change.
The moderate category is the active alienators. When they are triggered, they lose control of appropriate boundaries. They go ballistic. When they calm down, they don't want to admit that they were out of control.
In the severe category are the obsessed alienators or those who are involved in PAS. They operate from a delusional system where every cell of their body is committed to destroying the other parent's relationship with the child.
In the latter case, he notes that we don't have an effective protocol for treating an obsessed alienator other than removing the child from their influence.
An important point is that in PAS there is no true parental abuse and/or neglect on the part of the alienated parent. If this were the case, the child's animosity would be justified. Also, it is not PAS if the child still has a positive relationship with the parent, even though one parent is attempting to alienate the child from him or her.
Which gender is most likely to initiate PAS?
Gardner's statistics showed that the majority of PAS occurrences were initiated by mothers. Mothers have traditionally had primary custody of children (although before the 20th century it normally belonged to the father), and the mothers usually spend more time with the children.
In order for a campaign of alienation to occur, one parent needs to have considerable time with the child. However, in recent years increasing numbers of fathers have started instigating PAS, since there are few legal sanctions for doing so.
I've seen several dramatic cases where the father was the alienator.
In one case, the father had no control over his obsession to trash the mother.
Numerous professionals told him, including the mother, that he could have shared custody if he would be willing to follow the rules. He didn't have the self-control to do this.
When he lost custody because of his aberrant behavior, he became a celebrity in the father's rights movement and took his campaign into national circles. No one would know from hearing him speak about his situation that there was serious pathology going on (PAS) or how hard the professionals worked to stabilize it.
Moreover, in cultures where women traditionally have no tangible rights, alienation by the father can be severe.
I've met divorcing women who had been prevented from learning how to make a living to support themselves. At the time of separation all access to financial resources were stopped and the children removed from her care. These women reported severe alienation of affection.
It makes one grateful to have laws that protect human rights and enforce a better way of resolving conflict than a winner-take all approach.
How common is PA and PAS?
When parents first separate there is often parent alienation. For example, due to the anxiety of the mother, she is likely to say indirectly to a child that he or she is not safe with the father.
She might say:
"Call me as soon as you get there to let me know you are okay."
"If you get scared, you call me right away. Okay?"
"I'll come get you if you want to come home."
Usually this level of alienation dies down after the separating parents get used to changes brought on by the separation and move on with their lives.
However, in rare cases, the anxiety not only doesn't calm down, it escalates. PAS parents are psychologically fragile. When things are going their way, they can hold themselves together. When they are threatened however, they can become fiercely entrenched in preserving what they see is rightfully theirs.
Fortunately only a small percentage end up in this level of conflict.
Why do PAS parents act like they do?
I believe that PAS parents have become stuck in the first stage of child development, where survival skills are learned.
To them, having total control over their child is a life and death matter. Because they don't understand how to please other people, any effort to do so always has strings attached. They don't give; they only know how to take. They don't play by the rules and are not likely to obey a court order.
Descriptions that are commonly used to describe severe cases of PAS are that the alienating parent is unable to "individuate" (a psychological term used when the person is unable to see the child as a separate human being from him or herself). They are often described as being "overly involved with the child" or "enmeshed".
The parent may be diagnosed as narcissistic (self-centered), where they presume that they have a special entitlement to whatever they want. They think that there are rules in life, but only for other people, not for them.
Also, they may be called a sociopath, which means a person who has no moral conscience. These are people who are unable to have empathy or compassion for others. They are unable to see a situation from another person's point of view, especially their child's point of view. They don't distinguish between telling the truth and lying in the way that others do.
In spite of admonitions from judges and mental health professionals to stop their alienation, they can't. The prognosis for severely alienating parents is very poor. It is unlikely that they are able to "get it." It is also unlikely that they will ever stop trying to perpetuate the alienation. This is a gut wrenching survival issue to them.
How does the child get involved in PAS?
The targeted parent needs to understand what has happened to what as once an affectionate and loving child who is now unexplainably hostile. Remember Gardner’s definition stated earlier, "the disorder wasn’t only brainwashing or programming by a parent, but was confounded by what he calls self-created contributions by the child in support of the alienating parent’s campaign of denigration against the targeted parent." It isn’t PAS in the severe form of this disorder, unless the child has crossed over and joined up with the alienating parent. The child shares the alienating parent’s psychosis. How does this happen?
At birth, children are totally reliant on a parent, usually the mother, for having all of their needs met. It is part of normal child development to be enmeshed with their primary caregiver, and very young children do not have a separate identity from this caregiver.
One of the mother's roles is to help the child develop as a separate person, therefore, infancy and childhood become a series of tasks of learning how to become independent. For example, learning to putting oneself back to sleep, eating, toilet training and caring for one's hygiene.
Instead of promoting this independence, the alienating parent encourages continued dependence. The parent may insist on sleeping with the child, feeding the child ("It's easier if I do it"), and taking care of these rites of passage longer than normal child development calls for. This "spoiling" may not feel right to the child, but they do not have enough ego strength to do anything about it.
A PAS mother can't imagine that the father is capable of planning the child's time while in his care. Therefore, she arranges several things for the child to do while at the father's house. One of the most common ways of doing this is to sign the child up for on-going lessons without permission from the father.
The parent may even decree whom the child can and cannot see, particularly specific members of the child's extended family on the father's side. The mother desperately wants control over the time when the child isn't with her.
One of the most unusual situations that I ran into was the father who picked up his sons at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday for the weekend. He discovered that his very excited boys had their hearts set on going to Disneyland for the day, when this idea had never crossed his mind.
One theory about why a mother will act this way is that when a father takes his share of joint custody, it is like asking her to give away part of her body. One mother said, "He is going to remove my right arm and take it for the weekend." It feels like the mother has lost a profound part of who she is as a person. She feels fractured, pulled apart.
Why is PAS a double bind for the child?
When children spend time with the father, and enjoy it, they are put into a double bind. Clearly, they cannot tell the mother that dad treats them well or that they had fun together. They want to bond with the father, but don't dare. They figure out on which side the bread is buttered (who has the power), and their survival needs tug at them. Therefore, children will tell the mother about everything they didn't enjoy about time spent with the father, which will add to her belief that they don't like to be with him. These children feel that they must protect the mother. The same is true when the alienator is the father. The child will avoid expressing their affectionate feelings for the mother to him.
Family volitility
These are volatile families. The father may have indeed spanked a child, or lashed out at the mother physically or emotionally. An isolated incidence can turn into a holocaust. One father spanked his rebellious child and ended up in jail on child abuse charges, followed by a six week trial to determine his guilt. The jury returned with a not guilty verdict in 20 minutes. The verdict didn't end it as far as the mother was concerned, however.
The alienating parent's hatred can have no bounds. The severest form will bring out every horrible allegation known, including claims of domestic violence, stalking and the sexual molestation of the child. Many fathers say that there have been repeated calls to the Department of Family and Child Services alleging child abuse and neglect.
In most cases the investigators report that they found nothing wrong. However, the indoctrinating parent feels that these reports are not fabrications, but very, very real. She can describe the horror of what happen in great detail. Regardless of the actual truth, in her mind, it did happen.
Most of the alienated fathers that I work with are continually befuddled by her lying. "How can she lie like that?" They don't realize that these lies are not based on rational thinking. They are incapable of understanding the difference between what is true and what they want to be true. A vital part of fighting PAS is to understand the severity of the psychological disturbance that is the source of it.
Intergenerational patterns
What makes this problem very complicated is that PAS is often intergenerational in dysfunctional families. Almost always the alienator has people within the family who support the alienation. It might be the mother, father or grandparent who encourage fighting. They are likely to support the parent financially or even provide massive amounts of money to fund litigation. This is further proof to the PAS parent that he or she is justified in what he/she does.
When a child is placed in the role of the parent's therapist
Alienation advances even further when the alienating parent uses the child as a personal therapist. The child is told about every miserable experience and negative feeling about the alienated parent with great specificity. The child, who is already enmeshed with the parent because his or her own identity is still undefined, easily absorbs the parent's negativity. They become aligned with this parent and feel that they need to be the protector of the alienating parent.
What happens to the child when you can't stop PAS?
Obviously, without anyone to stop the alienation from progressing, the child will become estranged from the alienated parent. The relationship with this parent will eventually be severed. It is doubtful that, without psychological intervention as the child grows, he or she will ever understand what happened.
The child's primary role model will be the maladaptive, dysfunctional parent. He or she will not have the benefit of growing up with the most well-adjusted parent and all that this parent can contribute to enrich the child's life. Many of these children come to experience serious psychiatric problems.
Will they ever grow up and realize what happened to them? Without someone who can recognize the syndrome and counsel them about it, it isn't likely that they will ever figure it out. However, there have been exceptions where the child and the alienated parent have been successfully reunified later in life.
How can good intentions backfire?
Those people who are typically called upon to handle such difficult situations, such as the police, social workers, attorneys or psychologists assume that what the frightened mother is saying is true. These things DO happen. There are men who are seriously disturbed, violent, out of control sexually, and stalk, who are rightfully feared. The mother is very convincing in her desperation and vivid in her descriptions. The clincher is that the alienated child collaborates with the mother by saying, "Yes, I am afraid of my father." "Yes, my father did touch me down there." "Yes, he does beat me." What would you do if you were faced with having to decide how to protect a child in such a situation?
Therapists
Some therapists don't realize the severity and depth of the problem. In fact, they may unwittingly side with the alienating parent and even testify in court that the child is afraid of the alienated parent. This can be a serious stumbling block in getting an accurate diagnosis. Indeed, it can tip the scale into the alienating parent's agenda and do real damage.
Our courts, social services and mental health workers are all committed to stop child abuse and neglect when they see it occurring. Unfortunately, in PAS situations a dramatic and loud complaint from the alienating parent often ends up being acted upon without an investigation as to the accuracy of the allegation. This frequently removes the alienated parent from the children and allows the alienating parent considerable additional time to proceed with the alienation.
By the time all of the evaluations are in place and the case is heard by the court, considerable damage has been done to the child. It is an irony that the very people we turn to for help in such a difficult situation can often be those who most contribute to allowing the on-going abuse and neglect of the child to continue.
What can be done about the problem?
First, it takes a sophisticated mental health professional to be able to identify that PAS is occurring. Most forensic evaluators such as psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have studied the disorder and are able to recognize it.
Forensic evaluators diagnose PAS by having the parents take a battery of psychological tests, doing a detailed case history and by observation. They make recommendations as to what to do. After the evaluator has written a report on the family and made recommendations, nothing will happen to resolve the crisis without court intervention.
The alienated parent has to take the report to a judge who must then be convinced that the child is being alienated and that it is not in their best interest to stay in such an environment.
It is rare however that judges have any degree of mental health training. They most often learn about PAS from the bench. It usually takes several trips to court to point out how badly a child is being treated before a judge is willing to act.
How are PAS cases resolved legally?
Judges are inevitably conservative in their orders. Even when the evidence is overwhelming that the alienation is occurring, the court order may still end up saying, "the parents are to make joint decisions about the child's welfare," when this is impossible to do.
This is further evidence that the judge doesn't understand the magnitude of the problem. The judge in one of the most severe PAS cases I worked on was from the old school. He was tired of having the litigants continue to appear before him. One day he said, "Why don't the two of you go out in the hallway and kiss and make up." This is an example of how frustrating these cases are for judges. Indeed, these are the hardest cases to decide.
Judges have been slow to place serious sanctions on the alienating parent. If there is no threat of severe fines, jail time or sole custody to the targeted parent, the chances are remote that the out-of-control parent can be stopped.
It usually takes a dramatic situation where court orders are broken to force the court to change primary custody. Often it is only a matter of time before alienating parents become desperate and their unstable mental health gets the better of them. People in an official position start to recognize the alienating parent as being out of line, and become supportive of the targeted parent.
In one case, the 9 and 4 year old daughters were abducted and presumed to be on their way to Australia through an underground group that hides women who are victims of domestic violence, often of a sexual nature and where the father is stalking. The girls were missing for 3 months and found in another county where they were waiting for final arrangements to be made before their departure. When the police broke into the house at 3:00 a.m., they found the girls sleeping with their mother. They had been given boy's names, clothes, haircuts and their hair was dyed. They were not allowed contact with anyone outside of their hiding place, not even to go to school. The oldest child had strep throat and the youngest was seriously withdrawn.
In another case, the mother could no longer convince the social workers, the police or the Court about her allegations. She was known to be unstable because she had "cried wolf" too many times. She abducted her daughter to Utah. She told officials there that the courts where she lived were protecting a proven child molester. The press was called. After she was interviewed; there was a virtual feeding frenzy as the father's photograph and the story was on all the local news networks.
A big part of the problem was that the seven year old girl, said "Yes" when asked if her father had molested her. Even though this had already been disproved by forensic evaluators, she was still confused.
Can the alienation of children be reversed?
As children get older, the alienation can be reversed with proper psychological care. However, it won't work if the alienating parent is not contained. In the last case described above, the mother had severely limited visiting rights. She had remarried and had a new child, however, she still regularly calls the police to report the father for abuse. Presently, the daughter resides with her father, receives weekly therapy and hates the police. She gradually understands how disturbed her mother is.
In the former case, where the mother was kidnapping the children, she now sees them two hours a month at the Department of Children's Services with a social worker present to monitor everything that she says and does. The girls have also been in extensive therapy and are doing well.
Since this is among the most severe kinds of abuse of a child's emotions, there will be scars and lost opportunities for normal development. The child is at risk of growing up and being an alienator also, since the alienating parent has been the primary role model.
What is the best way to deal with PAS?
The parents I know who were successful in getting primary custody of their children in a PAS situation shared the following characteristics:
* They completed a comprehensive parenting course such as Breakthrough Parenting, and stuck with it until they rated excellent in the knowledge, skills and methods taught. Their parenting skills became superior.
* They were even-tempered, logical and kept their emotions under control. They never retaliated. A person who reacts in anger is proving the alienator's point that he or she is unstable.
* They certainly thought of giving up but never did. No matter how awful the harassment got, they worried about leaving their daughter or son in that environment. They were driven to continue trying to get the court to understand the seriousness of the issues and to change primary custody to them.
* They were willing and able to go to the financial expense of seeing it through.
* They got help from a skilled family lawyer who had experience with parent alienation syndrome.
* They became good at understanding how the courts work and the law as it applied to their case. In many cases, because of excessive expenses, parents even ended up as pro per (called pro se in some states) where they were representing themselves without a lawyer.
* They had a case where a forensic evaluator made a strong statement about the alienation and recommend changing legal and primary custody to the alienated parent. Some parents had to go back to the evaluator to demonstrate that his or her earlier recommendations were not working.
*
They persevered in demonstrating that they were rational, reasonable, and had the best interest of the child at heart.
* They provided the court with an appropriate parenting plan that showed how the child would be well taken care of in their care.
* They understood the nature of the problem and focused on what to do about it, even though they and their children were being victimized. (Alienated parents who got caught up in "how terrible it all is" and spent time judging the situation, went under emotionally.)
* They didn't live a victim's life.
* They were proactive in seeking constructive action.
* They avoided adding to the problem. One father expressed it like this: "I don't know how to make it better with the mother, but I do know how to make it worse." He was one of the most successful parents I met in fighting the PAS problem because he stayed in the role of the peacekeeper.
* They kept a diary or journal of key events, describing what happened and when.
* They documented the alienation with evidence that was admissible in court.
* They always called or showed up to pick up their children, even if they knew that the children won't be there. This was often very painful, but then they could document that they tried, when the alienator alleged that this parent had no interest in the child.
* They focused on enjoying their children's company and never talked to their children about their case. They always took the high road and never talked badly about the other parent to their children. They absolutely never showed a child any court orders or other sensitive documents. They didn't let the children overhear inappropriate conversations on the telephone.
* They didn't violate court orders. They paid their child support on time and proved that they could live within the letter of the law.
* They were truly decent, principled people. It was obvious that they loved their children.
Conclusion
PAS cases are notoriously difficult to figure out, even for professionals in the field of divorce.
Once the syndrome is discovered, it is even harder for the professionals to figure out what to do about it.
It is important for alienated parents to be supported by compassionate people while going through this difficult time.
PAS is never easy, but there is plenty of hope for those who take the high road and follow what worked for other PAS parents as shown above.
Jayne Major, Ph.D
What does Dr. Major recommend to do if you have a PAS case?
PAS Action #1: Complete a comprehensive parenting course such as Breakthrough Parenting, and stick with it until you rate excellent in the knowledge, skills and methods taught. Your parenting skills will become superior, which you will need to be able to deal with the challenges of alienation.
This also helps give the judge as well as the family professionals involved the confidence that you are able to support your children effectively in the new, more stressful situation of a divided family, especially after you have usually already been accused of being a “clueless” or even “dangerous” parent.
The ideal is a local, live 10-week Breakthrough Parenting class, one evening per week. Call +1 (310) 823-7846 for classes in the Greater Los Angeles area, or +1 (310) 207-9977 for classes in the rest of the U.S.
If local classes are not available in your area, or you have to complete a comprehensive course in less than 10 weeks, the next best is our Breakthrough Parenting Class-In-A-Box, which uses the same materials as the live classes, but you complete them on your own with additional easy instructions. You read a lively textbook with great illustrations and many real-life examples from Breakthrough Parenting families; you learn how they were able to quickly solve difficult problems with their children, then fill out a workbook that helps you figure out how to apply this in your own unique family. It really works, and parents love it!
When you have finished your workbook and sent it in to us, we do a Review and Mini-Coaching Session with you over the phone. If all OK, you get a 2-page detailed Letter of Completion that we guarantee will be accepted by any Family Court in the U.S. or Canada, or you get a 100% refund of what you paid!
In a PAS case, the Parenting Class-In-A-Box is also vital for properly preparing you for a Custody Evaluation. If you don't speak the language family professionals use, and you don't acquire some new, higher skills for this new situation, you can end up with a negative evaluation, resulting in limited supervised visitation instead of what could have been full custody. Yes, the difference can be that great.
For more information on the Parenting Class-In-A-Box, click here (opens in a new window, but see the special deal on this page only below).
PAS Action #2: Provide the court with an appropriate "comprehensive parenting plan" that shows how the child will be well taken care of in your care.
PAS Action #3: Keep a diary or journal of key events, describing what happened and when.
For these two key PAS actions, you'll find everything you need to know in Dr. Major's Creating A Successful Parenting Plan book about how to quickly create what is legally called "a comprehensive parenting plan” and what is the meaning of all the many important choices you have to make, choices that are uniquely personal. Getting your understanding this way is much more efficient than having your family lawyer explain it one hour at a time.
The template on the Companion CD-ROM allows you to very quickly build your own plan on your computer (PC or Mac), in a format that is ready to to present to your family lawyer for review, or to file with the court if you are forced to represent yourself (unfortunately common in PAS cases).
With this material, you will have a maximally complete plan upfront.
In a hostile PAS case, this can saves you a lot of money later, when the other parent is often continuously looking for ways to make trouble. Many parents just put into the plan what they can think of at the beginning, plus what their lawyers suggest to add at that time, which is only what they know about in your family situation.
Then six months later the other parent says, “You didn’t put in anything about xxx!” and the judge is forced to call the parties in again, usually at a cost of $3,000-$6,000 in legal fees, and that's each time.
Many PAS parents end up financially devastated by this, and after a while they are unable to defend themselves in court, losing custody of their children.
If on the other hand the parenting plan is truly comprehensive from the beginning, it will be very difficult or even impossible for the other parent to claim that anything was missed up front.
Family court judges have to deal with omissions, but they do not care much for requests for changes for change’s sake.
The Creating A Successful Parenting Plan book also describes how to document everything that happens in a way that it can be used for your PAS case.
For more information on the Creating A Successful Parenting Plan materials, click here (opens in a new window, but see the special deal on this page only below).
SPECIAL PACKAGE DEAL FOR PAS PARENTS, ONLY AVAILABLE ON THIS PAGE:
(1) Breakthrough Parenting Class-In-A-Box (Super-Clear Materials + Review w/Personal Parenting Tips + Mini-Coaching by Phone + Letter of Completion (Subject to Satisfactory Completion) + Return via Priority Mail, or First Class Air mail if you are in Canada or overseas)
(1) Creating A Successful Parenting Plan (Super-Clear Book + Template CD-ROM for PC/Mac + Full Instructions)
What should you expect from this package?
1. You will be able to quickly understand and use the correct terminology used by family professionals in court. When parents use everyday language to describe the PAS problems in their family, it frequently comes across as "adult whining," and even serious complaints are often disregarded by the courts for this reason.
2. You will be able to understand the psychological problems involved in PAS cases, and you will learn how to effectively deal with them.
3. You will learn how to reduce your stress. If you don't have any strength left, how are you going to fight? Our methods have been proven effective for thousands of parents in difficult cases.
4. You will learn how to communicate effectively with your children regardless of their age (yes, even teens!), so that you can guide them and support them through this difficult time, even reconnect with them after a forced absence.
5. You will quickly understand all the choices you have to make in what is legally called a "comprehensive parenting plan."
6. You will learn how to use a parenting plan to protect yourself from foreseeable future legal expenses if your ex should become unhappy after your divorce is finalized, whether it's 3 months later, or 6 months, 9 months, or a year or more. This is a very common source of great expense in PAS cases.
7. You will find everything explained with exceptional clarity, and many real-life examples from families we have helped (only the names have been changed).
8. You will of course find that your own satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. If you are not totally satisfied with how these unique materials help you connect with your children and save you big money on legal expenses, just return the materials within 30 days for a 100% refund.
The regular everyday price (never discounted) for the materials in this package is $149.95+$39.95=$189.90, but here is a special, valid only through June 30, 2008:
Click here to buy this package for only $177.00 (We ship 98% of incoming orders within 24 hours, and overnight FedEx is available, as is shipping to Canada, Mexico, UK, Australia, NZ, and other countries.)
Ordering online through our secure server gives you the fastest delivery. If for any reason you feel uncomfortable about using credit cards online, just click above and place the order using the "Pay by Telephone" option, then call us with your credit card.
You can also enter an order online with shipping options, etc. that you can print out to mail to us with a US$ check or USPS Money Order. With USPS Money Orders we ship immediately on receipt, while personal checks require 7-10 days to clear first.
If you have more questions, please call us at +1 (310) 207-9977. We’re always glad to help, and you will be talking only to real knowledgeable people.
Breakthrough Parenting, Inc. is a long time member of the
Better Business Bureau, rated "AAA" with a 10-year perfect record, and we will continue to do our best to keep it that way.
If you have an unusually complicated case and you would like one-on-one help, we recommend you get personal consulting with Dr. Jayne Major, who has 25 years of continuous experience with helping PAS parents.
She will ask you questions related to your completion of the materials in the special package above, because PAS cases are won or lost based on the facts as they are presented therein.
This means that you will save time and money if you finish as much of the materials as possible before making your phone appointment with Dr. Major (or an in person appointment with her in Los Angeles).
To schedule an appointment with her, call +1 (310) 823-7846.
Dr. Major has saved many parents from total alienation, turning around seemingly impossible situations with creative strategies.
"My very experienced family lawyer, who had done 3,000 cases over 23 years, was very surprised when I was able to do in two days in court what he had expected would take two months. This was 100% thanks to what I learned from Dr. Major in my personal PAS consulting sessions. These sessions paid for themselves ten times over."
~B.J. Ahlen, parent, Pacific Palisades, CA
It is not just about how to present your side in court, but also about how to communicate with custody evaluators about the alienation problems you have seen, all the different aspects of how to handle communication with your ex so that your children are not harmed psychologically, unusual parenting plan issues, and much more. No matter how unusual, it is likely that Dr. Major has seen it before in her 25 years of educational counseling of divorce parents, many with very difficult PAS situations.
If you have questions about the materials, call us at +1 (310) 207-9977.
Are you living with a SocioPath?
A read of VENUS ~ The dark side, got me looking in to the traits of the SocioPath and realizing full well - line for line, word for word, I have seen the pattern before.
Are your a guy caught in a relationship with a woman who compulsively lies to you and blames you for what she does to destroy the relationship, marriage and family.
Do you find yourself having to deal with overt Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt from your spouse yet you are doing nothing wrong, nothing different - just trying to be the same guy you always were, doing everything possible to please your spouse. If this is you then I highly recommend the book Venus the dark Side detailed at the end of this article.
~ P ###
Profile of the Sociopath
This website summarizes some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths.
- Glibness and Superficial Charm
- Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims. - Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right." - Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests. - Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way. - Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises. - Incapacity for Love
- Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common. - Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. - Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others. - Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc. - Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed. - Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts. - Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively. - Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.
Other Related Qualities:
- Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
- Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
- Authoritarian
- Secretive
- Paranoid
- Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
- Conventional appearance
- Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
- Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
- Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
- Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
- Incapable of real human attachment to another
- Unable to feel remorse or guilt
- Extreme narcissism and grandiose
- May state readily that their goal is to rule the world
(The above traits are based on the psychopathy checklists of H. Cleckley and R. Hare.)
NOTE: In the 1830's this disorder was called "moral insanity." By 1900 it was changed to "psychopathic personality." More recently it has been termed "antisocial personality disorder" in the DSM-III and DSM-IV. Some critics have complained that, in the attempt to rely only on 'objective' criteria, the DSM has broadened the concept to include too many individuals. The APD category includes people who commit illegal, immoral or self-serving acts for a variety of reasons and are not necessarily psychopaths.
DSM-IV Definition
Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Individuals with this disorder are sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths.
Diagnostic Criteria (DSM-IV)
1. Since the age of fifteen there has been a disregard for and violation of the right's of others, those right's considered normal by the local culture, as indicated by at least three of the following:
A. Repeated acts that could lead to arrest.
B. Conning for pleasure or profit, repeated lying, or the use of aliases.
C. Failure to plan ahead or being impulsive.
D. Repeated assaults on others.
E. Reckless when it comes to their or others safety.
F. Poor work behavior or failure to honor financial obligations.
G. Rationalizing the pain they inflict on others.
2. At least eighteen years in age.
3. Evidence of a Conduct Disorder, with its onset before the age of fifteen.
4. Symptoms not due to another mental disorder.
Antisocial Personality Disorder Overview (Written by Derek Wood, RN, BSN, PhD Candidate)
Antisocial Personality Disorder results in what is commonly known as a Sociopath. The criteria for this disorder require an ongoing disregard for the rights of others, since the age of 15 years. Some examples of this disregard are reckless disregard for the safety of themselves or others, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, deceitfulness such as repeated lying or deceit for personal profit or pleasure, and lack of remorse for actions that hurt other people in any way. Additionally, they must have evidenced a Conduct Disorder before the age of 15 years, and must be at least 18 years old to receive this diagnosis.
People with this disorder appear to be charming at times, and make relationships, but to them, these are relationships in name only. They are ended whenever necessary or when it suits them, and the relationships are without depth or meaning, including marriages. They seem to have an innate ability to find the weakness in people, and are ready to use these weaknesses to their own ends through deceit, manipulation, or intimidation, and gain pleasure from doing so.
They appear to be incapable of any true emotions, from love to shame to guilt. They are quick to anger, but just as quick to let it go, without holding grudges. No matter what emotion they state they have, it has no bearing on their future actions or attitudes.
They rarely are able to have jobs that last for any length of time, as they become easily bored, instead needing constant change. They live for the moment, forgetting the past, and not planning the future, not thinking ahead what consequences their actions will have. They want immediate rewards and gratification. There currently is no form of psychotherapy that works with those with antisocial personality disorder, as those with this disorder have no desire to change themselves, which is a prerequisite. No medication is available either. The only treatment is the prevention of the disorder in the early stages, when a child first begins to show the symptoms of conduct disorder.
THE PSYCHOPATH NEXT DOOR (Source: http://chericola57.tripod.com/infinite.html)
Psychopath. We hear the word and images of Bernardo, Manson and Dahmer pop into our heads; no doubt Ted Bundy too. But they're the bottom of the barrel -- most of the two million psychopaths in North America aren't murderers. They're our friends, lovers and co-workers. They're outgoing and persuasive, dazzling you with charm and flattery. Often you aren't even aware they've taken you for a ride -- until it's too late.
Psychopaths exhibit a Jekyll and Hyde personality. "They play a part so they can get what they want," says Dr. Sheila Willson, a Toronto psychologist who has helped victims of psychopaths. The guy who showers a woman with excessive attention is much more capable of getting her to lend him money, and to put up with him when he strays. The new employee who gains her co-workers' trust has more access to their chequebooks. And so on. Psychopaths have no conscience and their only goal is self-gratification. Many of us have been their victims -- at work, through friendships or relationships -- and not one of us can say, "a psychopath could never fool me."
Think you can spot one? Think again. In general, psychopaths aren't the product of broken homes or the casualties of a materialistic society. Rather they come from all walks of life and there is little evidence that their upbringing affects them. Elements of a psychopath's personality first become evident at a very early age, due to biological or genetic factors. Explains Michael Seto, a psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental health in Toronto, by the time that a person hits their late teens, the disorder is almost certainly permanent. Although many clinicians use the terms psychopath and sociopath interchangeably, writes psychopath expert Robert Hare on his book 'Without Conscience', a sociopath's criminal behavior is shaped by social forces and is the result of a dysfunctional environment.
Psychopaths have only a shallow range of emotions and lack guilt, says Hare. They often see themselves as victims, and lack remorse or the ability to empathize with others. "Psychopaths play on the fact that most of us are trusting and forgiving people," adds Seto. The warning signs are always there; it's just difficult to see them because once we trust someone, the friendship becomes a blinder.
Even lovers get taken for a ride by psychopaths. For a psychopath, a romantic relationship is just another opportunity to find a trusting partner who will buy into the lies. It's primarily why a psychopath rarely stays in a relationship for the long term, and often is involved with three or four partners at once, says Willson. To a psychopath, everything about a relationship is a game. Willson refers to the movie 'Sliding Doors' to illustrate her point. In the film, the main character comes home early after just having been fired from her job. Only moments ago, her boyfriend has let another woman out the front door. But in a matter of minutes he is the attentive and concerned boyfriend, taking her out to dinner and devoting the entire night to comforting her. All the while he's planning to leave the next day on a trip with the other woman.
The boyfriend displays typical psychopathic characteristics because he falsely displays deep emotion toward the relationship, says Willson. In reality, he's less concerned with his girlfriend's depression than with making sure she's clueless about the other woman's existence. In the romance department, psychopaths have an ability to gain your affection quickly, disarming you with words, intriguing you with grandiose plans. If they cheat you'll forgive them, and one day when they've gone too far, they'll leave you with a broken heart (and an empty wallet). By then they'll have a new player for their game.
The problem with their game is that we don't often play by their rules. Where we might occasionally tell a white lie, a psychopath's lying is compulsive. Most of us experience some degree of guilt about lying, preventing us from exhibiting such behavior on a regular basis. "Psychopaths don't discriminate who it is they lie to or cheat," says Seto. "There's no distinction between friend, family and sucker."
No one wants to be the sucker, so how do we prevent ourselves from becoming close friends or getting into a relationship with a psychopath? It's really almost impossible, say Seto and Willson. Unfortunately, laments Seto, one way is to become more suspicious and less trusting of others. Our tendency is to forgive when we catch a loved one in a lie. "Psychopaths play on this fact," he says. "However, I'm certainly not advocating a world where if someone lies once or twice, you never speak to them again." What you can do is look at how often someone lies and how they react when caught. Psychopaths will lie over and over again, and where other people would sincerely apologize, a psychopath may apologize but won't stop.
Psychopaths also tend to switch jobs as frequently as they switch partners, mainly because they don't have the qualities to maintain a job for the long haul. Their performance is generally erratic, with chronic absences, misuse of company resources and failed commitments. Often they aren't even qualified for the job and use fake credentials to get it. Seto talks of a patient who would get marketing jobs based on his image; he was a presentable and charming man who layered his conversations with educational and occupational references. But it became evident that the man hadn't a clue what he was talking about, and was unable to hold down a job.
How do you make sure you don't get fooled when you're hiring someone to baby-sit your child or for any other job? Hire based on reputation and not image, says Willson. Check references thoroughly. Psychopaths tend to give vague and inconsistent replies. Of course the best way to solve this problem would be to cure psychopaths of their 'illness.' But there's no recipe for treating them, say psychiatrists. Today's traditional methods of psychotherapy (psychoanalysis, group and one-on-one therapy) and drug treatments have failed. Therapy is more likely to work when an individual admits there's a problem and wants to change. The common problem with psychopaths, says Sets, "Is they don't see a problem with their behavior."
Psychopaths don't seek therapy willingly, says Seto. Rather, they're pushed into it by a desperate relative or by a court order. To a psychopath, a therapist is just one more person who must be conned, and the psychopath plays the part right until the therapist is convinced of his or her 'rehabilitation.'
Even though we can't treat psychopaths effectively with therapy, it doesn't mean we can't protect ourselves, writes Hare. Willson agrees, citing the most important factor in keeping psychopaths at bay is to know your vulnerabilities. We need to "realize our own potential and maximize our strengths" so that our insecurities don't overcome us. Because, she says, a psychopath is a chameleon who becomes "an image of what you haven't done for yourself." Over time, she says, "their appearance of perfection will begin to crack," but by that time you will have been emotionally and perhaps financially scathed. There comes a time when you realize there's no point in searching for answers; the only thing is to move on.
Taken in part from MW -- By Caroline Konrad -- September 1999
THE MALIGNANT PERSONALITY:
These people are mentally ill and extremely dangerous! The following precautions will help to protect you from the destructive acts of which they are capable.
First, to recognize them, keep the following guidelines in mind.
(1) They are habitual liars. They seem incapable of either knowing or telling the truth about anything.
(2) They are egotistical to the point of narcissism. They really believe they are set apart from the rest of humanity by some special grace.
(3) They scapegoat; they are incapable of either having the insight or willingness to accept responsibility for anything they do. Whatever the problem, it is always someone else's fault.
(4) They are remorselessly vindictive when thwarted or exposed.
(5) Genuine religious, moral, or other values play no part in their lives. They have no empathy for others and are capable of violence. Under older psychological terminology, they fall into the category of psychopath or sociopath, but unlike the typical psychopath, their behavior is masked by a superficial social facade.
If you have come into conflict with such a person or persons, do the following immediately!
(1) Notify your friends and relatives of what has happened.
Do not be vague. Name names, and specify dates and circumstances. Identify witnesses if possible and provide supporting documentation if any is available.
(2) Inform the police. The police will do nothing with this information except to keep it on file, since they are powerless to act until a crime has been committed. Unfortunately, that often is usually too late for the victim. Nevertheless, place the information in their hands.
Obviously, if you are assaulted or threatened before witnesses, you can get a restraining order, but those are palliative at best.
(3) Local law enforcement agencies are usually under pressure if wealthy or politically powerful individuals are involved, so include state and federal agencies as well and tell the locals that you have. In my own experience, one agency that can help in a pinch is the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service or (in Canada) Victims Services at your local police unit. It is not easy to think of the IRS as a potential friend, but a Swedish study showed that malignant types (the Swedes called them bullies) usually commit some felony or other by the age of twenty. If the family is wealthy, the fact may never come to light, but many felonies involve tax evasion, and in such cases, the IRS is interested indeed. If large amounts of money are involved, the IRS may solve all your problems for you. For obvious reasons the Drug Enforcement Agency may also be an appropriate agency to approach. The FBI is an important agency to contact, because although the FBI does not have jurisdiction over murder or assault, if informed, they do have an active interest in any other law enforcement agencies that do not follow through with an honest investigation and prosecution should a murder occur. Civil rights are involved at that point. No local crooked lawyer, judge, or corrupt police official wants to be within a country mile if that comes to light! It is in such cases that wealthy psychopaths discover just how firm the "friends" they count on to cover up for them really are! Even some of the drug cartel biggies will scuttle for cover if someone picks up the brick their thugs hide under. Exposure is bad for business.
(4) Make sure that several of your friends have the information in the event something happens to you. That way, an appropriate investigation will follow if you are harmed. Don't tell other people who has the information, because then something bad could happen to them as well. Instruct friends to take such an incident to the newspapers and other media.
If you are dealing with someone who has considerable money, you must realize that they probably won't try to harm you themselves, they will contract with someone to make the hit. The malignant type is a coward and will not expose himself or herself to personal danger if he or she can avoid it.
Update: A thorough article.
Venus: The Dark Side (Paperback)
Venus: The Dark Side (Paperback) 
'Venus: The Dark Side' by Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary.
Just to clarify Venus: The Dark Side and That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women with Malicious Intent are the SAME book
Venus, chronicles how unscrupulous women target and abuse innocent, gentle men, women and children. These women see their victims as having a character flaw that is there to be exploited.
The case studies in this book of how men are abused physically, financially, psychologically and even sexually, are truly shocking.
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