The first ever national study has confirmed that mothers who make complaints of child abuse against a father in court are more likely to lose contact rights with their children.
The research also found that this risk doubled when a father made a counter-claim of parental alienation, leading the researchers to conclude that “alienation trumps abuse”.
The data revealed the following:
- When fathers alleged mothers were engaged in alienation, regardless of any abuse claims, they took contact rights away from her 44% of the time;
- When the genders were reversed, and fathers started out with custody of the children, courts removed children from fathers and placed them with mothers only 28% of the time;
- Even when the father’s abuse was proven in court, mothers who had alleged that abuse still lost custody in 13 % of the cases;
- By contrast, fathers lost custody only 4% of the time when a mother’s abuse was proved in court;
- Overall, fathers were much more likely than mothers to win contact disputes when claiming alienation.
The US study was produced by Professor Joan Meier, a nationally recognised expert in the US on domestic violence, and Sean Dickson, and is the second piece of research they have published on this topic.
A pilot version of the study was published in 2017 and found that family courts only believed a mother’s claim of a child’s sexual abuse 1 out of 51 times (approximately 2%) when the accused father alleged parental alienation.
The investigation went on to discover that in cases where alienation is not mentioned, family courts only believed mothers’ claims about child sexual abuse 15% of the time.
The final study, published in January 2020, and funded by the US Justice Department, revealed that alienation’s impact was gender-specific, and that fathers alleging mothers were abusive were not similarly undermined when mothers cross-claimed alienation.
However in non-abuse cases, the data held that alienation had a more gender-neutral impact.
The research incorporated published court opinions available online between 2005 and 2014, and used those judgments to create a data set of 4,388 custody (child contact) cases.
The team classified the cases into different types of abuse allegations by either parent:
- Domestic violence against the mother,
- Child sexual abuse, and;
- Child physical abuse.
The study also included allegations that one parent was trying to alienate the child from the other parent.
As in their pilot study, Meier and her research team found that only 1 out of every 51 cases in which a mother reported child sexual abuse by the father was believed, when the father claimed parental alienation.
Another recent study in Canada made strikingly similar findings.
Many thanks to Kelly Williamson, who tweeted the new research.
Researching Reform 
A mother abused as a child and put in care had this used against her in court and had her daughter, how is subject to an incurable genetic condition, proven by forensic DNA evidence that the mother was not responsible, placed in care. So the logic of this beggars belief, the child placed in care, care that was used against her mother. It shows the extent of the inherent stupidity of all those running the system, judges, social workers, Cafcass, and expert witnesses.
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I don’t see the point of posting this quite frankly. Whilst it’s always tempting to extrapolate what happens in the USA over to the UK, this is not research which is of any help to parents in the UK, other than to encourage fathers to believe that it is worth making such claims about PA and abuse in UK FC also.
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Hi Meme, the point, I think, is to raise awareness of the problem and to give professionals some insight into how they could be improving things in genuine cases of abuse. The UK and the US family courts are very similar in a lot of ways, and this research while not carried out in the UK, highlights the same problem we have here.
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It raises awareness of how effective it might possible be for a man to make these claims in the UK. Other than that it only raises awareness of what is going on in the US courts. This is going on in ALL countries to a lesser or greater extent. What we need reporting is the research on what is actually happening in UK courts – THAT could be used in a court case. This research on US courts would be of no use to me in defending against such allegations in a UK FC.
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The point in highlighting this research is to invite UK researchers to look into this issue, which we know is alive here. I haven’t added it with the sole purpose of assisting court goers.
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I don’t think superficial research is helpful. Unless we can see how thoroughly abuse claims are investigated and adjudicated we can’t know whether the point Meier is trying to make is valid. Abuse claims tend to be part of a raft of other actions by alienating parents; not investigated here. What Meier should be highlighting is that there is a general lack of proper, efficient and effective process in the vast majority of cases at family court, not cherry-picking a particular type, and spinning the narrative to suit the agenda of the organisations she works with. I’ve seen examples of what she alleges here in the UK, and I’ve seen the opposite. Until senior judges and the government understand and apply what can be reasonably viewed as sincere implementation of what would genuinely qualify as transparency in cases, we’ll never be able to gauge how well the courts are doing; perhaps that’s the point, in not actually promoting any form of real transparency at all. Until then, all we’ll get is access to the first few pages of any cases when conducting research into what happens at court, and we’ll never have the true picture.
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This doesn’t come across as superficial research. It is going to cause upset among men however, which is a foreseeable and understandable end result of data which speaks in part to gender. Whether we like it or not, sometimes things do come down to gender bias, much in the same way as they do for race, religion and ethnicity. The key questions we should be asking, are why are men and women perceived a specific way in this context and what can we do to ensure that children genuinely being harmed are protected?
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“The key questions we should be asking, are why are men and women perceived a specific way in this context and what can we do to ensure that children genuinely being harmed are protected?” We need to start with social services. It is social workers who inform the court and judicial decisions. We need to ensure that any SW found to be committing perjury is tried in a criminal court, and then maybe they’d actually tell the truth without partisan bias. We need transparency and accountability right from day one. We need social workers who are fit for purpose. Not ones who allow themselves to be groomed, and not ones who work to their departmental or managerial agendas.
It is common these days to talk about endemic racial discrimination in institutions and organisations such as social care, and addressing that, but what you hear nothing about is the endemic discrimination in social work amongst social workers against single parents, against the disabled, against the poverty stricken, against the less well educated.
Social work is THE ‘blame and shame’ culture. Until that gets changed, children will continue to be victims because victimisation by agents of the state is the hardest possible victimisation to end. Changing what happens in FC, starts with changing what happens the very first time social service involvement commences. From a FC judgement I was party to in 1979 to a recent one which I was party to, nothing has changed. In FOURTY YEARS nothing has changed for the better in FC despite the 1989 Children’s Act.
To get any substantial changes we must start at the bottom. Dig out all the roots of discrimination, blame and shame from SW culture. Currently, they are too protected and they know it. Until we do this, all other efforts on behalf of children are like Sisyphus. Social services are a par excellence example of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We need to break that power by holding them very publically and, where required criminally accountable.
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“It is going to cause upset among men”
Actually, Natasha, as a father I found this study entirely encouraging and a positive sign that the US Family Courts are finally starting to recognise the tsunami of false allegations of child abuse being raised by vengeful mothers (Baldwin, Haigh, Minnock, et al) in the Family Courts when defending applications by fathers for contact with their children after divorce or separation, for the child abuse that it is!
The US Family Courts and State Legislatures have always been far in advance of the UK’s Jurassic judges in acknowledging the value of shared parenting and are clearly ensuring that the best interests of the children are protected.
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I think Vicky Haigh and Jo Dean would agree with the findings! In my case I never made any derogatory comments or allegations about the mother of my child, despite her taking the child to the High Court (to testify against me) without her having a solicitor (her right as a child, and free). So I was shut out of my daughter’s life, not by the High Court who recommended contact, but by Oxford Family Court. Perhaps if I’d made allegations of abuse I would have done better! Despite being a male unable to see his child, I think there is truth in this.
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Pingback: Mothers Who Allege Abuse More Likely To Lose Custody of Their Children – Researching Reform | cathy fox blog on child abuse
The conversation here is very much about when mothers allege abuse. What it needs to be about is when children allege abuse. And are ignored or disbelieved by social workers or other professionals. And we need a CPS prepared to take cases forward when police officers investigating any such allegations believe the child is telling the truth.
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The reality is that the family courts used to be heavily biased in favour of mothers who reported sexual abuse of their children by the father.These fathers not only lost custody but were denied all future contact with their own children.This unfairness roused a movement called “fathers for justice to climb on roof of important buildings and to pickett the home addresses of judges !
Subsequently and probably as a result of this activity the situation was reversed and now any mother complaining of sex abuse of children by the father is very likely to lose custody to the alleged abuser and denied all contact with the childen indefinitely .
What is wicked in both cases is that in the absence of a criminal conviction either parent can be and often is jailed for sending a birthday card or waving to the children in breach of the no contact order.
This denial of even indirect contact to either parent (with no criminal conviction for sex abuse) is wicked and wrong.
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A very true and balanced assessment, I think. I was one who climbed buildings and stood with other fathers outside ‘Jurassic Judges’ and certain MPs houses in protest, and have seen prejudice swing from one gender to another. This prejudice is wrong whatever gender – fathers and mothers should unite in protest and Family Courts should emerge, kicking and screaming with their unthinking cohorts, from the stone age!
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This ‘research’ and the hopelessly amateurish reporting of it are only worthy of someone who already has an answer. For a professional to present it this way is staggering in a UK context. The US has long been ahead of the toxic gender politics and fellow travellers so enmeshed within the UK. I presume the fear of making false allegations of abuse is beginning to reasonate within the ‘remove fathers at any cost’ mindset! If so, good, let’s move forward to impartial professionalism.
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May I please have the doi to the “similar research in Canada”
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Hi Amanda, I’m afraid I no longer have it.
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I reported abuse of my son. I don’t feel it was properly investigated. When I was accused of being insane by the father it was much easier to solve the case this way. After one session with psychiatrist I was prescribed drugs for bipolar. I decided to end the absolute white wash and left with my son. I was found and returned. My son was handed to his father. I have not seen him since. What astounds me is the profound disregard for my son’s mental health. My son and I never spent a day apart in three years. I know his father abused him and I doubt this has stopped. I hope it has for my son’s sake. It’s devastating and wrong and should not be allowed to happen. I understand father’s are equally important but the bond with a mother and child is vital for a child’s development and should never be broken.
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Children need both parents when possible .Any parent that has NOT been charged with or convicted of a serious offence against children should never be refused contact (supervised if considered necessary by doctors or police)
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List readers may be interested in this review of the Joan Meier study by family law commentator Robert Franklin.
He is happily married and has served as Associate Editor and Executive Editor of the Houston Law Review, and as Adjunct Professor of legal research and writing at the University of Houston Law School.
https://nationalparentsorganization.org/blog/24534-now-it-s-forbes-promoting-joan-meier-s-shoddy-work
Now It’s Forbes Promoting Joan Meier’s Shoddy Work
January 31, 2020 by Robert Franklin, JD
The core of Meier’s and Cahn’s claims is that fathers use false claims of parental alienation to wrest custody from mothers. They do so particularly when mothers allege some form of DV or child abuse to a family court. Cahn, who, just like Meier, is a law professor at George Washington University asks no questions, but merely regurgitates Meier’s claims.
What’s wrong with them? A great deal. For example, although she uses the terms “abuse” and “alienation” liberally, she nowhere defines abuse and her definition of parental alienation is flat wrong. Worse, Meier nowhere attempts to ascertain whether mothers’ claims of abuse or fathers’ claims of alienation were justified or not. In the cases she studied, it’s entirely possible that judges’ decisions were completely sound and well-founded. But we’ll never know because Meier made no effort to find out. My guess is that most people inquiring into the topic would want to know those things, but not Meier.
Plus, to her, all abuse is the same. Nowhere did she attempt to differentiate between, say, a push or shove and a beating that put the victim in the hospital. If Mom pushes Dad during a heated disagreement, should she later lose custody of the kids solely because of that? According to the Administration for Children and Families, mothers commit about twice the abuse and neglect of children that fathers do. Should all those mothers lose custody? I doubt many people think so, but apparently Meier is one who does.
Or maybe not. After all, her entire study is based on the false premise that parental alienation is nothing more than an attempt by fathers to gain an advantage in custody cases. Here’s what she said:
Parental alienation (or “alienation”), while lacking any universal definition, at its essence, is the theory that when a mother and/or child seek to restrict a father’s access to the child, their claims of dangerousness or harm are not true, but due to the mother’s anger or hostility, or pathology.
But no scientist working in the field of alienation has ever defined PA as a gendered phenomenon for the good and sufficient reason that it’s not one. Mothers can alienate, but so can fathers as even a cursory glance at the literature on the subject reveals. But Meier’s less interested in facts than she is in keeping kids from maintaining healthy relationships with their fathers post-divorce, so why use a real definition of PA when a false one is so much more serviceable?
Then there’s the fact that Meier’s study is hamstrung by its own methodology that’s doomed by selection bias. She chose only appellate court cases to study, meaning that all those that were never tried to a court and never appealed weren’t considered by her. It’s a fatal flaw for any study and one that caused Prof. Bala to call her work “extremely skewed.”
That hardly exhausts the many flaws in Meier’s study, but suffice it to say that Cahn isn’t interested in giving Forbes readers a balanced view of the matter. Consider this:
When fathers alleged mothers were alienating, regardless of abuse claims, they took custody away from her 44% of the time. When the genders were reversed, and fathers started out with the children, mothers took custody from fathers only 28% of the time. Fathers were overall much more likely to win than mothers by claiming alienation.
Meier studied 4,338 cases in all. In just 163 of those was there an allegation of abuse by the mother that was countered by a claim of alienation by the father. And in just 81 of those was custody transferred from Mom to Dad. That’s 1.8% of the cases. So even if all the allegations by mothers were true and all those by fathers were untrue, only a tiny percentage of all litigated cases have the problem. And of course those are in turn a tiny percentage (about 3%) of all cases. So, Houston, do we have a problem?
Cahn’s article is entitled “Why Women Lose Custody,” but Meier’s dubious claims aren’t the reason.
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@YuriJoakimidis. As a UK ‘list ‘reader’, personally I don’t give a fig about any studies that were not done in the UK, and am even less interested in reviews of any study done by any non UK ‘expert’. And in regard to any originating in the USA, anything that happens in the USA can stay in the USA as far as I am concerned. Had that review been by one of the UK leading experts such as prof Andy Bilson it might have credibility to me, and even more so if it had been a review by one of our leading female academics. As it is, it is simply unhelpful ‘white noise’ of no value – trash on the periphery of my life. What I am most interested in, is my own lived experience of domestic violence, child abuse and parental alienation. You know, the experiential experience. And I am happy that my experiences have formed part of several reputable UK academic studies in the last few years. The only other things that matters to me is working to get body cameras on social workers made manadary, complete transparency in family courts with each FC hearing to be video taped, evidential standards in FC to be the same as in criminal courts, for all cases involving allegations of abuse/violence of any kind to be pursued and actioned in the criminal courts concurrent with any FC hearings and such criminal cases to be CONCLUDED before conclusion of the FC case.
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“MeMe. “The only other things that matters to me is working to get body cameras on social workers made manadary, complete transparency in family courts with each FC hearing to be video taped, evidential standards in FC to be the same as in criminal courts, for all cases involving allegations of abuse/violence of any kind to be pursued and actioned in the criminal courts concurrent with any FC hearings and such criminal cases to be CONCLUDED before conclusion of the FC case.”
While I concur with the above. the leftover comments on relevance and academic integrity, to borrow your words, are insular “white noise.”
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I agree COMPLETELY about body cameras on SWs. Have been shouting out for this for last 7 years myself
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A further review of Joan Meier’s treatise that works through the misrepresentation of data and exposing bogus academic research driven by doctrinaire dogma.
Child Custody, PA and Abuse Allegations: Critique of a Paper by Joan Meier
As advocacy research goes, this is not one of the more subtle varieties. Some advocacy research is extremely well camouflaged, hiding behind apparently balanced academic language. It can take a lot of effort, unwrapping statistics, before it stands revealed in its true colours. Not so here. The author’s partisan position is painfully apparent from the opening sentence.
However, I will not take up readers’ time with the loaded language. You will all be familiar with its like (and citation of Elizabeth Sheehy and Linda Neilson is all you need register to have it accurately pigeon-holed). The paper in question is “U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: what do the data show?”, By Joan S. Meier, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 42:1, 92-105 (2020).
The site Researching Reform summarised the paper’s findings thus,
“The first ever national study has confirmed that mothers who make complaints of child abuse against a father in court are more likely to lose contact rights with their children. The research also found that this risk doubled when a father made a counter-claim of parental alienation, leading the researchers to conclude that ‘alienation trumps abuse’.”
What image does this conjure? A poor abused mother who plucks up the courage to mention in court the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her male partner, only to find that her children are taken off her as punishment for her temerity. This faithfully reflects the tenor of the paper itself. We read this in its Conclusion,
“The data support the widespread critiques of family court proceedings sending children into the care of destructive and dangerous parents.”
It is eminently clear from the rest of the paper that “dangerous parents” means fathers. There is nothing within the paper to support this conclusion. For all we know from the paper, the courts might have been 100% perfect in their rulings, always ensuring a safe adult was given custody of the children. We simply know no different based on the contents of the paper. The “conclusion” comes from nowhere – or, rather, it comes from pre-existing prejudice but not from the data within the study.
The blame for this failure to uphold academic standards lies not only with the author but also with the peer reviewer(s), and the journal itself. I have reviewed a great many academic publications. A standard requirement is to confirm that “the conclusions follow from the arguments of the text”. Clearly, in this case, the reviewer(s) failed in their duty. That conclusion should not have been permitted.
In the Abstract we read,
“The findings confirm that mothers’ claims of abuse, especially child physical or sexual abuse, increase their risk of losing custody, and that fathers’ cross-claims of alienation virtually double that risk. Alienation’s impact is gender-specific; fathers alleging mothers are abusive are not similarly undermined when mothers cross-claim alienation.”
Consider the first part of that conclusion, “The findings confirm that mothers’ claims of abuse, especially child physical or sexual abuse, increase their risk of losing custody”. I can find nothing within the paper to substantiate it. Whilst the paper tells us that mothers reporting a father’s abuse lost custody in 26% of cases, we are not told what percentage of mothers lost custody when no allegations of abuse were made, so the conclusion in the Abstract appears from nowhere. It might be that Meier’s dataset does support the conclusion, but the text of the paper does not support the statement in the Abstract and so is another failure of the peer reviewers to do their job.
The paper purports to reveal certain correlations, or associations, between allegations of abuse, allegations of alienation, and courts ruling to change the custodial parent from mother to father, or vice-versa. The wording of the above quote (and throughout the paper) invites us to interpret these associations thus: if a poor abused mother has the nerve to allege that her ex-partner is abusive, she is likely to be punished for it by removal of her children. Worse – the wicked father may make a counter-allegation of alienation which will have the effect of further increasing the likelihood that she will lose her children. What woman reading this will not be hopping mad?
Well, the better-informed ones, actually.
Let me unpick the paper a little so you can see how propaganda gold is spun out of factual straw.
Start with this quote referring to the source of Meier’s data (published court opinions),
“the majority of the opinions analyzed were appellate decisions.”
So, the data derives predominantly from appeal courts. What does that tell you in the context of child custody cases? In the UK, 92% of resident parents after parental separation are mothers. I believe the percentage is slightly lower in the USA – perhaps 85%. (If an American reader has a better figure I’d be obliged). Straightaway we see that the data source used by Meier is severely skewed.
Who is likely to be the appellant in such cases? That would be the parent who failed to gain custody in the preceding case – which means fathers in about 85% of cases. If the outcome of the appeal is to change the children’s residency, in 85% of cases it can only go from mother to father. So, simply due to sample bias we can anticipate as obvious what the paper does in any case reveal…
“We found that mothers losing custody were over-represented in the appeals”
Well, bloody obviously! And, surprise, surprise…
“There were lower custody loss rates among the non-appealed cases.”
Clearly, in cases where the father sought custody in the initial hearing, but failed, and has subsequently made an appeal, any decision by the court to change residency can only go one way.
Can Joan Meier truly be unaware that this is simply sample bias? This same sample bias contaminates all the observations which follow, irrespective of allegations of abuse or alienation.
This is another issue over which the peer reviewer(s) failed badly. This sample bias is so serious the paper should have been rejected as it invalidates all that follows.
However, let’s press on, ignoring that flaw, fatal though it actually is.
Recall that the claims revolve around the effect that allegations of abuse or of being alienated have upon the likelihood of custody being reassigned. From this point on I shall simply assume the data that Meier quotes is valid (as I have no way of checking it). What is in contention is how the data may be interpreted.
To pull the argument apart most cogently the best place to start is this revealing quote,
(A) “Mothers and fathers fared equally in several circumstances: First, when a parent’s claim of alienation was credited (across abuse and non-abuse cases) mothers and fathers lost custody at identical rates (71%). More broadly, win rates were also identical (89%) for mothers and fathers when the other parent was found to have committed alienation. Second, and notably, virtual parity is apparent in the non-abuse alienation cases, where win rates are 58% (fathers) and 56% (mothers).”
I think we may interpret this to mean that, when the court believes an allegation of alienation, it has a substantial effect on the likelihood that they rule to change the children’s residency. Since alienation involves psychological trauma to the child, and the courts are mandated to make the child’s welfare paramount, if the court believes this is happening it is hardly surprising that the result is frequently a court ruling for change of residency. Nothing odd here.
Moreover, Meier’s quote, above, indicates that this is not gendered: both mothers and fathers as resident parents guilty of alienating run the same risk of having the children moved to the other parent.
So far, so good.
Now consider this quote from the paper, which encapsulates Meier’s main claim,
(B) “Across all alienation cases (both with and without abuse claims), when a father alleged a mother was alienating they took custody from her 44% of the time (166/380). When the genders were reversed, mothers took custody from fathers only 28% of the time (19/67).”
Meier’s interpretation is that this observation implies that allegations of alienation are a cunning plan to obtain custody which works far more effectively for fathers than mothers. (Note in passing how statistically weak is the 28% figure, resulting as it does from just 19 cases out of an original dataset of 4,338).
How does quote (B) differ from quote (A), above? The difference lies in whether the court believes the claim of alienation. The custody reversals in (B), i.e., 44% or 28%, are less than in (A), i.e., 71%, because the latter is conditional upon the alienation claim being believed. But alienation will not be believed – or not believed to be sufficiently serious – in all cases.
Taking into account the non-gendered nature of the courts’ response to allegations of alienation when they believe them, the reason for the differing percentages in (B), i.e., 44% versus 28%, can only be because the courts disbelieve more claims by mothers of being alienated than claims by fathers of being alienated. The possible reasons for this are, (a) the courts are biased against mothers, or (b) the courts are broadly accurate in their assessments but a larger percentage of alienation claims by mothers than by fathers are false within Meier’s skewed dataset.
Strictly, from the data within the paper, we cannot decide between these possibilities. Meier simply takes as axiomatic that the explanation is (a), bias against mothers. But a systemic bias against mothers in the courts seems unlikely, both in view of quote (A), above, and also because mothers are awarded custody far more often (~85%).
The more likely interpretation of Meier’s own data is that they reveal that a larger percentage of claims of alienation by mothers are false than claims of alienation by fathers, bearing in mind that this relates only to Meier’s skewed dataset. This need not be inconsistent with a claim that, other things being equal, mothers and fathers are equally likely to be alienators. But – crucially – other things are not equal in Meier’s dataset. We have already seen the skew due to being predominantly appellate court data, and hence the huge gender-skew in which sex is the appellant. But there is another skew: quote,
“This article focuses primarily on findings related to cases where a mother accused a father of abuse. There were some – although not many – cases where the genders were reversed.”
Of the 4,338 cases in the total dataset, at least 52% involved allegations of abuse, almost all being allegations by mothers against fathers. Some proportion of these the court of appeal will conclude to be false. Necessarily, then, virtually all allegations of abuse which the court does not believe will be allegations by mothers against fathers. Here we have another crucial skew in the data. These allegations are likely to have played a part in the decision to place the child with the mother (in 85% of cases). But where the court of appeal has failed to find these abuse allegations to be convincing, is it not reasonable to expect this to count against the false accuser? This is the further skew in the data sample which renders Meier’s findings unsurprising.
There is no need to opt for an interpretation that the courts are biased against mothers, as Meier’s findings are only what would be expected on purely statistical grounds given the multiple biases in the sample of data analysed. The entire “study” is an exercise in statistical misdirection, and the claims made in the Conclusion and Abstract are invalidated by serious statistical shortcomings.
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The research here is gender-biased. eg Why would you analyse violence against the mother but ignore violence against the father? If you start from a gender-biased perspective you will inevitably reach a gender-biased conclusion. Mothers are no more important than fathers to their children. What is important is that children continue their upbringing with both parents, and to that extent the needs of the child are paramount. The familial and relational stability of the child is ultimately the health of the nation.
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Most men drabbed by domestic abuse are hit by MALE partner.
You bring a myth: you claim mothers not more important thsb fathers, which is false, especially in the first couple of years where mother is more important.
Your false narrative cannot and will not change biological facts.
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Can a father breastfeed his child? When they can then you can claim equality with mothers. Not before
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Don’t be ridiculous, father’s are changing newborns nappies, bathing and “burping” babies from day one, they take time to attend classes on how to swaddle babies in classes before babies are born, a mother can express breast milk which can be frozen btw don’t go with the “golden womb” theory it simply doesn’t work in fact it’s ridiculous ask any new Mother like me how wonderful it is to have a weekends break, good night’s rest, watch a full episode of my favorite series etc etc. He did it before the divorce he can damn well do it again. I wouldn’t give up my breaks for the world even though my daughter is the love of my life. HERE’S TO 50/50 parenting – what a bonus l get a life too. Express, express, express
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“Challenging Parental Alienation – New Directions for Professional and Parents”. Eds: Jean Mercer and Margaret Drew. Routeledge 2020
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Pingback: Mariella Frostrup: victim-blaming does a disservice to survivors – #thecourtsaid
There is not some pervasive confirmatory biased mind set or scheme among Family Court Judges to wrest custody away from fit mothers who allege abuse in child custody cases. That does not exist. Each case is litigated and tried on its own merits. Parental Alienation, which is a form of psychological or mental child abuse, is not some magical potion concocted by defense attorneys and experts to convince Judges they must reduce or remove a mother’s parenting time. Professor Meier’s allegations and position on this topic has been answered by Harman and Lorandos, 2020.
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