Part of the argument to the court must be that the alienating parent seems incapable of parenting the child and uses the child’s “wishes” as reason to violate the court orders thus “absolving” themselves of any blame. I have heard children say that they have to be careful what they say to the alienating parent about the target parent because they are met with anger and tears if they report they had a good visit or love the target parent. After a while these children simply find the entire dynamic too stressful and will begin to simply agree with mom to keep the peace. Over the years I have heard children say things like “But if I say I want to go to Dad’s house Mom says she’ll kill herself!”, “I told mom that I love Dad and she told me to just pack my bags and go live with him, but when I said OK she just screamed at me!”, “Mom said that Dad doesn’t really want me but the Court forced him to visit me.” The list is endless, but in reality clearly shows the manipulation being done by the alienating parent.

Too often there is too much faith put on a child’s statements made during an in camera or to an evaluator and unless the dynamics of the reasons behind a child being reluctant to disclose their true feelings or to tell the truth about the alienating parent’s instructions are explained the court is left without a valid counter-argument. What many evaluators and, indeed, the Court, fail to grasp is that when a child does disclose the truth too often the custody remains the same except that now the child is sent back to an angrier alienator. There must be a point where the child’s best interests are put first or the pattern of behavior cannot be broken and the target parent will eventually lose any connection the the child.

While I have testified in many cases, I have also found a powerful tool in the preparation of a strong supporting memorandum prepared by an expert for the target parent’s attorney. This puts a concise case specific argument before the court. I find that a growing number of judges nationally are listening to these arguments and understanding the dynamics so I no longer feel that the case at point is so drastic. However, taking that extra step toward a finding of perjury and using the criminal process to be, while drastic because we rarely see it, refreshing. It is this step which should be more the norm since it possibly could be a powerful detriment to other parents interfering so egreiously with the target parent’s relationship with the child. I also admire the judge’s ruling that there needs to be a “cooling off” period where the alienating parent cannot interfere with the custody transition. I have seen rulings in Ohio where the court orders monitored visitation with the alienating parent when contact resumes, subject to review in 6, 9 or 12 months before any unsupervised visitation is granted.

It must be strongly understood that during the initial weeks after the change in custody there is an extremely high risk of parental abduction and concealment of the child. The rather infamous case of Holly Collins which is currently in the news stresses this danger and while this case is recieving national coverage it is only one of hundreds actually taking place. The alienating parent feels they have nothing to lose once they have lost primary custody so they move on to becoming the “victim” and unfortunately they are able to convince people to assist them in “protecting” their poor children from the evil target parent. The only way to prevent this is by not allowing unfettered access to the child for a period of time and then only when any and all preventive measures have been addressed.