Parental Alienation Syndrome

All too often parents let the emotions of a divorce or child custody battle as well as their feelings toward their ex, lead them to punish the other their ex, often by destroying that parent’s relationship with the children involved.  The alienating parent attempts to convince the child the other parent is bad and uses other strategies to alienate the child from the victim parent. One of the most frequently implemented other strategies is fabricating allegations to convince a Court to issue a restraining order or order of protection against the victim parent.  It’s so commonplace, almost half of the calls I receive from potential new clients tell me they have an order of protection against them or there was one in the past filed by the other parent. Filing for an erroneous order of protection against one parent is parental alienation and it is very harmful to the children involved.

In Missouri, restraining orders are referred to as orders of protection.  To initiate the process, one party files an application or motion for an order of protection with the Court. The Court then accepts the allegations as true and decides if the allegations rise to the standard required by the Court in order to issue a temporary ex parte order of protection. If the Court determines the allegations are not severe enough to immediately issue a temporary order of protection, the Court will likely schedule a hearing to evaluate the validity and severity of the allegations, and then determine whether or not to issue a full order of protection that extends for one year.

Much of the public use the phrases order of protection, restraining order, and ex parte interchangeably to mean someone has been legally ordered to have no contact or communication with another individual.  However, ex parte actually means “on or from one side or party only,” and with respect to orders of protection, ex parte means one of the parties is absent and unaware of the proceedings.  If the Court finds the allegations in the motion for order of protection are significant enough to believe the person may be in danger, the Court will grant a temporary order of protection ex parte, meaning it is ordered without notice to the other party. However, once the order of protection has been granted, a hearing will be expeditiously scheduled by the Court where the responding party will have an opportunity to tell their side of the story.  The Judge can then decide whether or not the temporary order of protection should become a full order of protection for a one year.

Erroneous orders of protection are effective for the alienating parent because the process often physically removes the other “alienated” parent from the family house, leaving the “alienating” parent with complete physical (and typically legal) custody of the children where they can do as they please without interference or input from the alienated parent.  The victim parent (typically the father) is now essentially guilty until proven innocent and the alienating parent often uses the situation to further alienate the children from the victim parent by telling the children the order of protection proves that parent is a bad or dangerous person. Then when the displaced parent is able to see the children, it is often under cold and awkward conditions such as in a center specifically designed to facilitate supervised visitations of parents with children. During these visits an individual from the facility monitors the visit so that the child is protected at all times. Alienating parents use these uncomfortable meetings as a way to discourage the child from seeing the victim parent at all. Typically, the longer a child is prevented from seeing the victim alienated parent, the more severe the child is emotionally damaged, and the more extensive of a recovery will be required.

The disorder “Parental Alienation Syndrome” was identified and named by child psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner in 1985.  Although the "syndrome" portion of parental alienation syndrome is not well accepted, Dr. Gardner uses the phrase to describe the phenomena where children exhibit significant but irrational fear toward one parent, caused my manipulation from the other parent. He believed parental alienation syndrome involved intentional behavior by the aggressor parent in child custody litigation, where one parent uses psychological manipulation or other undue influence of the child, to prevent, destroy or disrupt the relationship between the child and the alienated parent.

Dr. Gardner’s observations of various cases of parental alienation syndrome led him to conclude that children who are repetitively exposed to negative alienating behavior by one parent, will eventually adopt the distorted view toward the other parent and act accordingly. Parental alienation indeed has lifelong consequences and the victim child and the victim parent are often never able to repair the broken relationship.

        Orders of protection are abused in Missouri. While they were designed to protect women from abusive men, women have learned to wrongfully use restraining orders to further their own agenda and punish the father of their children. Some parents simply believe their children would be better off without the other parent involved in their children's lives, but in 95% of cases they are wrong.  Many women simply don’t understand the importance of a father figure in children’s lives or just simply don’t care. At the Men’s Center for Domestic Resolution, I attack and attempt to dismiss erroneous orders of protection to prevent deterioration of the relationship between father and child, and to illustrate to the Court that the alienating parent’s allegations are false.