UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2, 2023:
New research published October 2023 has established a new term for interfering in the relationship between a mother and child. It has been termed Child And Mother Sabotage (CAMS), and pertains to coercive and controlling behaviors by a father against his child and the mother of his child. THIS is the term to use if you are a protective mother who's relationship has been damaged by your child's coercively controlling other parent. Dr. Emma Katz, one of the world's leading researchers in the field of coercive control of children and mothers, wrote this compelling article on the term child and mother sabotage (CAMS), just this week.
Keep the term child and mother sabotage (CAMS) in mind while reading the following article, originally published January 2023.
The proliferation of the terms parental alienation syndrome, parental alienation, and alienation in family court are so frequently used that both coercive controllers and survivors of coercive control are using them to describe what is happening to their children when the "couple" separates or divorces. This is problematic. Why? Because parental alienation was created as a deceptive and manipulative strategy for coercively controlling and abusive parents to avoid and deflect allegations of domestic violence, domestic abuse, child abuse, child sexual abuse, and coercive control in family court. In short... Parental Alienation Syndrome, and all variations of it, including parental alienation, and simply, alienation, are primarily being used to DARVO court professionals, especially those in family court and child protection, into thinking that the protective parent is alienating the abusive parent from their children. As a DARVO tactic of coercive control, Parental Alienation allegations are taking the focus off of protecting children, and instead are being weaponized to protect and embolden coercively controlling abusers.
In my last blog post I explained how guilty coercive controllers often use DARVO to avoid consequences, play the victim, and flip the script to blame the victim. Victim blaming is rampant in our county (the US) as it is in most countries around the world. Society's inclination for victim blaming makes DARVO incredibly effective as a smokescreen for coercive controllers to maintain plausible deniability and hide their pattern of coercive control in plain sight to silence the whistleblower.
Back to Parental Alienation Syndrome and why survivors need to be cautious using this term. PAS, or "Parental Alienation Syndrome" is a theory. It is not based on empirical evidence. It was created by a man named Richard Gardner who, in addition to claiming that abuse allegations are often false, also believed incest, child sexual abuse and pedophilia are normal and healthy for children. He wrote and self-published a book on his Parental Alienation Syndrome theory, and he sent it to family court professionals. In his book Gardner basically DARVO'ed attorneys and judges into disbelieving legitimate claims of domestic violence, child abuse, and especially, child sexual abuse. Through deception and manipulation, Gardner convinced many many people that PAS is a valid and science-based approach to determining the validity of allegations of abuse (which, of course, it is not).
Gardner misled court professionals, including judges, attorneys, guardians ad litem, custody evaluators, etc. to believe that the majority of abuse allegations brought by mostly mothers, are false. This incorrect assumption, that most allegations are false, is now the predominating belief in family court. The truth is that research has found that most allegations, nearly ALL allegations of abuse are true. False allegations of domestic violence and child abuse are rare. But Gardner convinced courts that if abuse allegations are raised, they are most likely an attempt by the mother to retaliate against the father in order to get a leg up in family court. This has led to a pervasive incorrect belief that women lie in family court and that fathers need to be protected from abuse allegations. If child does not wish to have contact with the "alleged" perpetrator, Gardner has instilled the belief that it is a sign that the accuser has alienated the children. This assumption, the entire foundation of PAS, is not only false, it is incredibly dangerous, especially to targets, victims and survivors of coercive control, domestic abuse, domestic violence and child abuse. Family courts in the US are currently placing approximately 58,000 children each year into unsupervised contact with these abusers, in large part, because of Gardner's PAS theory.
So... if you are a victim, I do NOT recommend you use the term Parental Alienation Syndrome, or any of it's equivalents. "But... that's what my abusive ex is doing!" you say. "He is turning my children against me."
I don't doubt that if you are dealing with a coercive and controlling abuser that your children are being turned against you. As a matter of fact, there is probably a high likelihood that your abuser is turning a lot of people against you.... or at least trying to. But if that is what your coercive controller is doing, it is not helpful to your case or your children to call it Parental Alienation. It's best to refer to it by another term. If we call it PAS, we add fuel and legitimacy to the LIE that when a child doesn't want to see a parent, and there have been abuse allegations (sometimes there's even documented proof of the abuse), then the child has been "alienated."
PAS is a theory, which in effect, only works for abusers to avoid accountability for their abuse, and legally embolden them to take custody from their adult victim. Joan Meier found in her research, conducted by the US Department of Justice, that although proponents of PAS claim it happens to both genders, that is NOT how it is playing out in family court. In family court Parental Alienation Syndrome is being used primarily by coercively controlling abusers to retaliate against adult and child victims of abuse. It is mainly being used by abusers as a weapon to take custody away from a parent who is trying to protect their child from their abusive and/or dangerous ex partner.
Parental Alienation Syndrome as DARVO:
DENY: "I'm not abusive. I never hit my wife, and I would never harm my child."
ATTACK: "She is to blame, not me. She drinks too much and she's a bad mother. She just doesn't want everyone to know she's been having an affair. That's why she says I'm abusive."
OR, the covert coercive controller's ATTACK: "I just don't understand why my ex wife hates me so much. I think maybe she just hates men. She was abused as a child, and has always struggled with her mental health, but I never imagined she would take it out on me and the children."
REVERSE VICTIM & OFFENDER: "I just want what's best for my children. I love my children. She won't let me see them. I miss them so much. How can I protect myself and the kids? She is turning the children against me."
DARVO using Parental Alienation Syndrome is very effective.
So, if we can't call it Parental Alienation, what can we do if we are the survivor, and our coercive controller is turning our children against US? We need to use other terms, terms that accurately describe the behavior without legitimizing PAS.
Instead of calling what your abusive ex is doing to turn your children against you Parental Alienation, which, for the most part is only used to protect abusers, I prefer to call it abuse by proxy or parent child relationship sabotage. I use the term parent child relationship sabotage when referring to an abuser harming the relationship between the protective parent and the child in an attempt to: gain sympathy, punish the adult victim, hide their own abuse or generally gain the upper hand. Parent child relationship sabotage is a term coined by Dr. Emma Katz in her ground-breaking new book Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives. Katz' research has shown the significant detrimental effects of coercive control on children, and especially on their relationships with their mothers, when a coercive controller uses this tactic.
Abuse by proxy is the term I use, and recommend, when referring to abusers using coercive control to manipulate others into either abusing the victim directly, or into viewing the victim through the coercive controller's distorted and potentially dangerous lens. Professionals, friends, family and community members are often easily manipulated into seeing the victim as the problem, at least in part, either through the use of PAS or some other form of DARVO.
Lying in family court, calling CPS with false allegations about a victimized parent, turning police against the victim, there are endless ways in which a coercive controller might use abuse by proxy and/or parent child relationship sabotage. These may seem to equate to PAS, but they are NOT Parental Alienation Syndrome. We must distinguish these coercively controlling behaviors from the weaponization of Parental Alienation Syndrome, which is, in and of itself, abuse by proxy and/or parent child relationship sabotage.
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