Thread by @CCCBuryStEd

Focus on:

Dr Richard A. Gardner.

Child psychiatrist who developed the theory of Parental Alienation Syndrome
A THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt
#ThreatTherapy

Richard Alan Gardner, psychiatrist: born New York 28 April 1931; MD 1956; twice married (one son, two daughters); died Tenafly, New Jersey 25 May 2003.

The Grieco Boys

In a contentious child custody dispute, three teenage boys begged a family court judge not to force them to continue visits to their father because, they said, he was physically abusive towards them.

Rather than believe the boys, the judge relied on the testimony of an expert witness retained by the father, a Columbia University professor of clinical psychiatry, Richard A. Gardner.
#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt
#ThreatTherapy

Gardner insisted the boys were lying as a result of brainwashing by their mother and recommended "threat therapy".

The Grieco boys were told they should be respectful and obedient on visits to their father and, if they were not, their mother would go to jail.

16-year-old Nathan Grieco, the eldest of the brothers, hanged himself in his bedroom, leaving behind a diary in which he wrote that life had become an "endless torment".

Both Gardner and the court were unrepentant even after the suicide.

It was only AFTER an exposé in the local newspaper that custody arrangements for the two surviving boys were changed.
#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt
#ThreatTherapy

This "threat therapy" was part of a much broader theory of Gardner's known in family courts as "Parental Alienation Syndrome".

The theory holds that any mother who accuses her spouse of abusing the children is lying more or less by definition.

She tells these lies to "alienate" the children from their father, an abrogation of parental responsibility for which she deserves to lose all custody rights in favour of the alleged abuser.

Courts deferred to Gardner's academic credentials and put children in the custody of their alleged abuser, EVEN in cases where police records, medical records and testimony by teachers and social workers supported the mother's accusations.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is not recognised by the American Psychiatric Association or any other professional body.

The books Gardner produced on the subject from the late 1980s were all SELF PUBLISHED, without the usual peer review process.
#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt

Gardner believed that 90 % of mothers were liars who "programmed" their children to repeat their lies.

He theorised that mothers alleging abuse were expressing, in disguised form, their own sexual inclinations towards their children.

Gardner suggested there was nothing wrong with paedophilia, incestuous or not.

Paedophilia, he added, "is a widespread and accepted practice among literally billions of people".

#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt
#ThreatTherapy

Asked once by an interviewer what a mother was supposed to do if her child complained of sexual abuse by the father, Gardner replied: "What would she say? Don't you say that about your father. If you do, I'll beat you."
#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt
#ThreatTherapy

“ One of the steps that society must take to deal with the present hysteria is to 'come off it' and take a more realistic attitude toward paedophilic behaviour," Gardner wrote in Sex Abuse Hysteria - Salem Witch Trials Revisited (1991).

#ParentalAlienation
#familycourt

In one of his earliest cases, Gardner labelled a physicist a "parental alienator", unfit to retain custody of her children.

She was shot dead by her ex-husband.

Gardner insisted that her lies had made the husband temporarily psychotic.

#parentalalienation
#domestichomicide

Source: independent.co.uk/news/obituarie…

Focus on Richard Gardner and Parental Alienation as a Mental Disorder
Part 2

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#FamilyCourt

Richard Gardner described #PAS as a disorder that causes a child to vilify a parent without reason. It often arises, he said, in bitter custody cases in which one parent brainwashes a child against the other parent by making false accusations of sexual abuse.
#ParentalAlienation

Proponents pushed to have PAS included in the 2012 edition of the DSM of Mental Disorders, the “bible” of the psychiatric field.
They say 1% - potentially 750,000 - of American children could be deemed to have a mental disorder — MORE THAN ARE CONSIDERED AUTISTIC?

William Bernet, a Vanderbilt University psychiatrist says:

“ We don’t want to label kids unnecessarily, but these kids are not reacting in a normal way,” 1/

“ We’re talking about kids who have a false belief, a little like a delusion, that the other parent is an evil, dangerous person. To me that looks and sounds like a mental disorder.” 2/
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#FamilyCourt

PAS “is not geared toward helping the diagnosed individual, but assisting a third party — an estranged parent — with a legal or personal goal, and thus appears more to reflect a political agenda than a bona fide mental health disorder,” says psychologist Joyanna Silberg

Classifying PAS as a mental disorder could lead to higher health costs as providers rush to cash in on therapies not currently covered by insurance.

“ You can’t just open a facility with no accreditation, no oversight and say, ‘This is what we do,’ especially when you’re dealing with vulnerable children,”
- Joyanna Silberg, psychologist
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#FamilyCourt

“The premise that you can improve a relationship with a parent through force and coercion and isolation from the preferred parent is simply erroneous and unethical,”
- Joyanna Silberg, psychologist
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#FamilyCourt

SOURCE: psychsearch.net/new-york-psych…

Focus on Richard Gardner and paedophilia
Part 3

THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#RichardGardner

In 1991 Gardner wrote: “ What I am against is the excessively moralistic and punitive reaction that many members of our society have toward pedophiles . . . far beyond what I consider the gravity of the crime,”

Though he called pedophilia “a bad thing,” Gardner argued that it’s common in many cultures and that children might be LESS HARMED by sex abuse than by the “trauma” of the legal process.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Gardner was widely quoted in counterpoint to what some felt were sensationalized allegations of sex abuse in day care centers.

Gardner contended that sex abuse allegations arising from divorce are usually false, made by a vindictive mother trying to cut off a child from the father. His typical advice: Kids should be forced to see the estranged parent, and judges should punish the “alienating” parent.

“ The premise that you can improve a relationship with a parent through force and coercion and isolation from the preferred parent is simply erroneous and unethical,”
-Joyanna Silberg, psychologist and executive VP -Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence.

Source: psychsearch.net/new-york-psych…

Focus on Richard Gardner
Part 4 - Cases

THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Nathan Grieco

In 1998, a Pittsburgh high school student, Nathan Grieco, was found dead with a belt around his neck after complaining that his father had caused him and his brothers “endless torment” in a custody fight.

A judge, acting on Gardner’s recommendation, had threatened to jail the mother if the boys refused to see their father.

“These children need coercion,” Gardner had said.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

John M. Kilgore.

A Brandon doctor, had accused his ex-wife of poisoning their two daughters against him to the point they refused to see him. The oldest had even changed her name.
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Circuit Judge Ralph Stoddard allowed Gardner to interview all four family members, ruling that PAS had gained enough acceptance in the scientific community to be admissible as evidence.

But once Gardner got on the stand, his testimony was so biased in favor of the father against the daughters that the judge rejected it.

While interviewing the girls, Gardner “was really trying to get them to admit the facts were as their father saw them,” Stoddard said.

The Tampa case underscored what critics say is a major problem with classifying parental alienation as a mental disorder: It is hard to determine the cause of the alienation, who is to blame or even who has the alleged disorder.
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Few knew of the judge’s rebuke, and Gardner continued testifying in cases until 2003. At age 72, shortly after failing to appear in another Florida courtroom, he repeatedly stabbed himself with a steak knife.
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Source: psychsearch.net/new-york-psych…

Focus on Richard Gardner
Part 5 - Reunification- The Rachel Foundation

THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Pamela Hoch was an alienated parent whose first husband turned their four children against her by falsely claiming she belonged to a religious cult. A judge agreed that father had “deliberately poisoned” the children’s minds, and gave Hoch custody of the two youngest kids.

The case drew heavy media attention and led to Hoch and Gardner meeting as guests on a TV program. Partly on his recommendation, she became executive director of a foundation that spread information on parental alienation syndrome.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

In 2000, she and her second husband started their own nonprofit organization with $50,000 from the U.S. Justice Department. The Rachel Foundation gets its name from a Bible verse in which Rachel weeps for her descendants’ exile.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

At first, the Hochs operated out of a church parsonage in Maryland. One of their early “reunifications” involved a 14-year-old boy who had been on the run with his mother for nearly a decade after she accused her ex-husband of molesting him.

In 2000, the FBI arrested the mother for child abduction. Father and son spent weeks in a hotel suite. Each had his own room, separated by a room with a couch where Pamela Hoch slept.

In the daytime, we would play games designed to help us learn about each other,” the son, now 23, said in a statement to the St. Petersburg Times. “Write 10 things you like about your father so far . . . Things you don’t like . . . Finding positive memories we had of each other.”

A 2002 Readers’ Digest story suggested the reunification had been a success.

But the son says his experience with the Rachel Foundation was traumatic.
#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

“ Pam would tell me how my mother was disturbed, manipulative and selfish, had deprived me of a life with my father, who would tell me of the life I might have had with him.”

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

“ The Rachel Foundation is a scary organization. It’s taken every day of my life since to put myself back together in a way I see fit.”

KELLI CARR

A man won custody of his two daughters in a 2004 court order and took them to Rachel House.

At first, “they were very withdrawn and alienated toward their father,” Pamela Hoch says.

A month later, they were doing “very well,” and even baked him a birthday cake.

But the girls gave a different view when they testified last year on behalf of a Georgia woman fighting to keep her own daughter from being sent to Rachel House.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

The Hochs “told us that if we didn’t obey our dad and if we didn’t agree to act happy with him that we would never see our mom again,” testified Kelli Carr, now 17.

She said she and her sister weren’t allowed to eat until they agreed to say positive things about their father.

“ How many days did you go without being fed?” the judge asked.

“Just the first two days, because then my sister and I just started . . . making things up.”

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Pamela Hoch calls the claims “ridiculous.” The girls’ mother, Stephanie Carr, sued the Hochs in 2005, but a judge recently dismissed the case for lack of prosecution.

The Hochs say 44 parents and 59 children attended “intense” programs, either at the Rachel House or in other residential settings. The accompanying parent is responsible for costs inc $75pp/day room/board
up to $1,500/day “ professional reunification/reintegration services.”

“ I’m just blown away by the lack of information,” says Andrew Vachss, a New York lawyer who represents only children, not parents. “I can’t imagine a judge approving of a child going any place that isn’t monitored.”

Source: psychsearch.net/new-york-psych…

Focus on Richard Gardner
Part 6- The Critics

THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Joyanna Silberg, PhD ( Clinical Psychologist and Executive Vice President of the Council ) has seen first hand the long-term emotional damage this so-called syndrome has caused.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

"How do you explain to young children forced to live with abusers why the courts have considered them liars and ignored their cries for help?" Silberg has found that it can take years for these children to get past their feelings of betrayal by the system meant to protect them.

Dr. Joyanna Silberg views PAS allegations as part of a larger strategy in which abusive parents try to fool courts, attorneys, child custody evaluators, mental health professionals into believing that their children and ex-spouses are crazy when they raise concerns about safety.

She notes the recent case of Darren Mack, accused of shooting his custody judge and stabbing his wife to death. Mack successfully convinced a custody evaluator that he was a loving parent with no violent tendencies, notes Silberg.

Dr. Paul Fink ( President of the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, and a former President of the American Psychiatric Association) says “ PAS is junk science at its worst,"

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Dr. Fink explains, "Science tells us that the most likely reason that a child becomes estranged from a parent is that parent's own behavior. Labels, such as PAS, serve to deflect attention away from those behaviors."

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Dr. Fink concludes, "Children suffer when law embraces a 'syndrome' just because a so-called 'expert' coined a snappy phrase. Increasingly, courts are seeing through the PAS charade and refusing to allow the courtroom to be used as theater for the promotion of junk science."

Judge Sol Gothard (retired from Louisiana's 5th Circuit Court of Appeal, Judge Gothard has been involved in over 2000 cases of allegations of child sexual abuse.) is glad to see that the legal community has joined other professionals in recognizing the harm that PAS can cause.

He states, "PAS has caused emotional harm, physical harm and in some cases, even death to children." [read about Nathan's death; see also Jana Bommersbach. Parental Alienation. Phoenix Magazine, May 2006]

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

The 2006 edition of "Navigating Custody and Visitation Evaluations in Cases with Domestic Violence: A Judge's Guide," published by The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, called PAS a "discredited" syndrome that favors child abusers in custody determinations.

The Spring 2006 issue of the American Bar Association's Children's Legal Rights Journal provides a comprehensive analysis of all legal case involving allegations of PAS. This definitive review concludes science, law& policy all oppose the admissibility of PAS in the courtroom.

Stephanie Dallam, MS, a researcher with the Leadership Council, has spent the 10 years researching PAS. She traces the syndrome to a controversial psychiatrist, Richard Gardner, who described sex between fathers and their offspring as normal and natural.

Source: leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/PR_PAS.h…

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Parental Alienation and Abuse Allegations
By Professor Joan S Meier et al

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Richard Ducote ( the last attorney to cross examine Richard Gardner before his suicide)

“ Parental Alienation Syndrome is a bogus, pro-pedophillic fraud concocted by Richard Gardner.”

“ I was the last attorney to cross examine Gardner. In Paterson, NJ, he admitted that he has not spoken to the Dean of Columbia’s medical school for over 15yrs & has not had hospital admitting privileges for over 25yrs.
He has not been court appointed to do anything for decades.

The only two appellate courts in the country who have considered the question of whether PAS meets the Frye test, i.e., whether it is generally accepted in the scientific community, said it does not.

As Dr. Paul Fink, former president of the American Psychiatric Association has stated, Dr. Gardner and PAS should be only a "pathetic footnote" in psychiatric history.

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Gardner and his bogus theory have done untold damage to sexually and physically abused children and their protective parents. PAS has been rejected by every reputable organization considering it.

In a Florida case in which I was recently involved, when the judge insisted on a Frye hearing, Gardner simply did not show up.“

Richard Ducote on Parental alienation


#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt

Focus on Richard Gardner and Parental Alienation

Part 7 - Reunification isn’t about connecting. It is trauma bonding.

THREAD

#ParentalAlienation
#ThreatTherapy
#familycourt
#Trauma

I have to ask:

What kind of parent puts their need to see a child before the psychological well-being of a child?
What kind of a parent willingly and deliberately inflicts trauma on their child?

Here are some child experiences:

#ParentalAlienation
#Reunification

Laura Jeu, age16 and her 3 brothers aged 13, 12 and 9 years old

In November 2011, Laura’s mother returned from a custody hearing and told her four children to get ready to go see their father.

“ I could tell she had been crying,” recalled Laura, as she recounted the story. “I knew something out of the ordinary had happened. There was no way I was getting in that car.”

What Laura didn’t know was that the Circuit Court Judge had just granted her father temporary custody of the children so he could take them to a four-day workshop in California to repair their relationship.

The judge ordered Laura’s mother to bring the children to their therapist’s office without telling them where they were ultimately going, according to the interim custody order. If she couldn’t get them to comply, a warrant would be issued for her arrest.

“ She was supposed to lie,” a family friend said . “But the children knew something was wrong.”

Alarmed, the children refused to get into the car, and not only were her children too old to be forced, she had grave concerns about their mental health.

Without telling her mother, Laura phoned the attorney, saying she & brothers were suicidal. The attorney called emergency unit & children were brought to the hospital where, in the emergency room , the children’s father arrived with the custody order, a few friends the police.

Stunned and homesick, the children remained in their father’s home for two weeks, the older siblings said, with occasional visits from members of the County Sheriff’s Office and Child Protective Services.

Though neither remembers this time well, David, now 20, said there were adults and police going in and out of the house, while he and his siblings mostly sat on the couch in a daze.

The night of Dec. 14, Laura and David recalled, they were abruptly awakened by their father , accompanied by four burly adults. The grown-ups, were from a youth transport service and shuttled the disoriented children into cars.

WITH LITTLE UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING, THE FRIGHTENED CHILDREN WERE SEPARATED AND SENT OFF.

[ This makes me want to cry and scream. They must have been terrified. Who does this and think it’s ok???? ]

Laura went off with a man and woman, while the 3 boys went with the other 2 men. They spent the rest of that night at a motel, Laura was taken to Dulles International Airport while her brothers went to Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport for flights to California.

When the children landed at San Francisco International Airport, they were met by their father and who took them to the Larkspur Inn in Mill Valley, to start their reunification program. It would be almost a year before the Jeu children saw or spoke to their mother again.

The judge found that the alienation arose, because Laura’s mother “had an enmeshed parenting style with loose boundaries due to her needs and anxieties. … She had difficulty setting limits, and there were some parent-child role reversals.”

The premise of reunification is that if children and the alienated parent can spend uninterrupted time together without interference from the other parent, they can mend their relationship.

To encourage this outcome, however, programs require two controversial legal measures:

-The judge must award full custody to alienated parent
-The children must have no contact with favored parent for 90 days after completion of the workshop.

This is how trauma bonding works.

“ There is just no empirical scientific evidence or way to determine if children are estranged because they were maltreated or if a favored parent turned them against the other parent,” said Joan Meier, a clinical professor at George Washington University Law School

Professor Meier is also founder of the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project, which provides appellate representation in domestic violence cases.

Just as research has not definitively proved the validity of parental alienation, it has not shown that family reunification programs work. Often the workshops are billed as educational or psycho-educational, which allows them to circumvent medical regulations and oversight.

The only psychologist who has evaluated Family Bridges (where Laura stayed) is Richard Warshak, who helped develop the program, is one of the trainers & testified in custody cases in support of sending children to the workshops, where his DVDs/books are often required materials.

He has written three papers citing the efficacy of Family Bridges; one paper said 95 percent of interventions were successful, although the number dropped to 83 percent after the children returned home.

Laura and David Jeu said their parents’ custody battle had nothing to do with their increasing disaffection for their father.
Their problems with him started long before their parents’ divorce.

David said his dad ruled the household with an iron fist. “He had an unpredictable nature. You weren’t certain if it was going to be a nice person that was going to take you on a bike ride or if he was going to be angry, if you were going to get slapped or hit,”

In 2004, Laura and David’s mother decided to take the children and leave, and in 2005, their father sued for visitation.

The judge decided on joint custody, with the children visiting their father every weekend, but the children didn’t want to go.

A 2011 National Institute of Justice study conducted by Daniel Saunders at the University of Michigan found that 47 percent of evaluators still recommend unsupervised visitation even when there were reports of violence in the family.

#domesticabuse
#DomesticViolence
#familycourt

Gregory Jacob, a partner at international law firm O’Melveny & Myers, has litigated custody cases for nearly two decades, is familiar with parental alienation & believes it happens, “not with anywhere near the frequency with which it is alleged as a defense by abusers.”

Until Jacob took the Jeu children’s case in 2012, however, he was unaware of family reunification programs. “I had never seen anything like this,” he said of McCahill’s order giving temporary custody of the Jeu children to their father and sending them to Family Bridges.

According to court documents, Family Bridges founder Randy Rand told Laura’s father, he had to obtain the custody change and pay a $29,000 fee — excluding travel, room and board — before he and the children could start the workshop.

The four-day program costs $25,000 to $40,000, paid by the parent who attends.

The programs are basically shams. It was clear to me what they were doing was reaping massive fees by selling a custody change,” said D.C. lawyer Gregory Jacob.

Once a judge switches full primary custody to one parent, Jacob said, the noncustodial parent faces an uphill battle to get the children back BECAUSE COURTS DONT LIKE TO CHANGE ORDERS OFTEN.

Over the remaining three days, the children went to lunches with their dad and participated in mock family meetings. The older children said they were petrified that if they didn’t do exactly as asked they would never see their mother again.

They claim, Randy Rand had suggested their mother could go to jail or face serious fines if they were in contact.

If anything,” said David, “Family Bridges made me angrier at my situation and more suicidal than I ever was before.”

David said he sometimes responds to his father’s texts with a “yes” or a “no” out of fear for his younger siblings, who are still under court order to visit their father.

After their return to Virginia, Laura said, she missed her mother but was afraid to reach out while the no-contact order was in effect. She recalled going to Library where she tucked a letter into the edge of a book.The envelope read, “If this is found, please send to my mother.”

In 2013, Laura turned 18.

“The day after my birthday, I turned around and walked out.”
She said she has hardly spoken to her father in the past four years and doesn’t believe she ever will have a relationship with him.

In January 2016, when David turned 18, he decided to stop seeing his father. He lives with his mother, is attending a nearby university and is happy he can no longer be forced to do anything by the courts.

“I spent my whole childhood waiting for it to be over,” he said.

Source: washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/maga…

Three children talk about their experiences of reunification programmes.

“ I feel like I was robbed of all of my childhood when I was 12.”

#ParentalAlienation
#reunification
#familycourt

nbcbayarea.com/news/local/no-…