Parental Alienation Syndrome and Orders of Protection

All too often parents let the emotions of a divorce or child custody battle and their feelings toward their ex, lead them to punish the other parent, often by attempting to disrupt 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 additional strategies involves 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 erroneous orders of protection against one parent can be a form of parental alienation and it is extremely damaging to children and their development.

In Missouri restraining orders are called orders of protection.  To initiate the process one party files an application or motion for an order of protection. The Court then accepts the allegations as true, and then decides if the allegations rise to the standard required by the Court in order to issue an ex parte order of protection, or if the allegations are not severe enough the Court will likely schedule a hearing. If the Court determines the allegations are without merit or there is simply no danger, the Court may outright deny the motion for order of protection.

So how does a judge decide whether the particular allegations in each case warrant an order of protection? Orders of protection in Missouri are governed by Missouri Revised Statute 455.035. The Statute states the court may immediately issue an ex parte order of protection for good cause shown. “Good cause shown”, according to the statute, is “[a]n immediate and present danger of domestic violence to the Petitioner or the child.

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 immediate and present danger of domestic violence, the Court will grant a temporary order of protection ex parte, meaning it is ordered and the responding parent doesn’t get to respond right then. 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 the temporary order of protection should become permanent for one year, or when the allegations don’t rise to the necessary legal standard of danger, the order of protection should be completely dismissed.

Erroneous orders of protection are effective for an alienating parent because they often physically remove the other “alienated” parent from the family house, leaving the “alienating” parent with complete physical (and typically legal) custody 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 visitation 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 coined 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 nonrational 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 necessary to protect victims of domestic violence, but unfortunately they are abused in Missouri. At the Men’s Center for Domestic Resolution, we are experienced in representing clients who have been the victim of a false order of protection.