Narcissistic abusers take an exploitative approach to relationships; they demand a constant source of adoration and attention from their partner. They target empathetic, nurturing individuals who will satisfy their needs. Should a baby come along, the baby can be perceived as a threat; a baby naturally becomes a priority to any nurturing, loving caregiver. Rather than celebrate and support a pregnancy and the bonding that takes places post-pregnancy, the narcissistic abuser can sabotage their victim’s experience and attempt to harm a mother’s bond with their child, particularly if the relationship ends.

When a mother leaves a narcissistic abuser, she is unaware that there is significant access to justice barriers for women. The abuser seeks vengeance and often threatens to remove the child from the mother’s care. Separating and sabotaging causes distress, pain, and fear. Given an opportunity, the abuser will make good on his threat. The family courts present an abusive father with this opportunity; the courts often prioritise a father's rights over a child's needs.  The family court’s ideological conversion and the repugnant market that has formed around them result in poor outcomes for women and children.

If a coercively controlling father successfully separates a mother from her child before family court proceedings, she will make desperate and emotional pleas to get her child back into her care to protect them. She quickly falls into the family court trap; the judge does not recognise her trauma symptoms and see her as a victim. Women are generally disbelieved, belittled, and blamed by the family courts. The abuser’s mask is firmly in place; they appear admirable parents, and their story seems plausible.

If a coercively controlling father has not managed to separate the mother from her child before family court proceedings, he will use the theory of parental alienation to get a transfer of custody and separate her from the child. Unethical lawyers and mental health practitioners in the family court system abuse their power and collude; they exploit a mother’s emotional state, report inaccurately to the court and facilitate the custody switch.

The abuser does not only attempt to isolate the child from the mother; they attempt to isolate the child from anyone the child admires and opens up to; siblings, grandparents and therapists. Weakening their target and causing confusion allows the abuser to avoid exposure and remain in control. When an abuser successfully separates a mother from her child, her situation becomes almost helpless. Coercive control and psychological abuse of a child is a crime in the UK, but mothers seeking help from the police in this situation will get referred back to the family courts. Statistically, mothers do not have the same success when claiming parental alienation in court. The label has been misused in the family courts for decades and the false stereotypes are entrenched. Mothers often find their only remedy is an expensive appeal. By this stage, she is often traumatised and financially and emotionally drained; only the wealthy can obtain justice.  

Once the abuser has full control of the child, their attempts to sabotage the child’s relationships with those they love and trust go into overdrive; they manipulate their thoughts and actions. They lie to the child and gaslight them. They influence the child. They attempt to buy the child’s affections and reward them for their compliance. The cruel and calculating abuser will use misleading court reports to prove to the child, the school and society that the mother is the unhealthy, unfit or unsafe parent; that she is the psychological abuser. To attack the mother and drive her to despair is their goal; they have little regard as to how this harms the child - to deceive everyone and control the narrative empowers the abuser and makes them feel like a god.

The nurturing mother who has prioritised the child’s needs and provided them with unconditional love can’t quite believe what has unfolded before her eyes.  The knife drives deeper as a mother watches her child start to use the same harmful patterns of behaviour or become depressed, anxious, or fully submissive for fear of repercussions. Every bone in the mother's body told her that the child’s exposure to this harmful behaviour growing up would cause them to suffer later. Her intuitions materialised as the family courts handed the abusive parent control and silenced the vulnerable child’s voice in the process.

The mother’s predicament is horrifying, and her pain is intense; it can break her. Some mothers get lured into the parental alienation lobby under false pretenses; their experiences get validated. They gain a sense of purpose in fighting for change to the system that has harmed them; they naturally label their experience parental alienation without realising the harm this label does to women and children globally. Those who abuse their power in the family court system feel no shame in deceiving these mothers and convincing them that the domestic abuse community is their enemy. Narcissistic abusers excel at causing confusion and the appearance of conflict; it is a powerful strategy used in courts and campaigns. The mother’s traumatic experiences give the concept of parental alienation credibility and an air of gender neutrality. However, when the same traumatised mother finds herself in the clinic of a parental alienation ‘expert’, she is the one leaving with a diagnosis of a mental health disorder, not her controlling and abusive ex.

The mothers who campaign against parental alienation have suffered similar traumatising experiences to the mothers attracted to the parental alienation lobby. While many of them have not been fully separated from their children, the family courts have forced them to co-parent with their child’s abuser. They too have battled the abuser’s attempts to control the children's thoughts and actions.

‘Parental alienation’ in legislation will not help coercively controlled women and children; it will only give abusive men more power. The interventions of the parental alienation practitioners are child abuse in themselves.

What will help mothers whose children are being turned against them?

• Tailored support services for separated mothers whose children are being coercively controlled

• Access to justice for women; equality in family law

• The implementation of children’s rights in law

• Transparency and accountability in the family courts

• Legislation proposed by the Domestic Abuse (coercive control) community

This is not a gender war; this is a battle to prioritise a child’s right to live free from mental and physical violence and their right to a voice over a father’s rights to private family life. It’s a war to end the harm the family courts do to women and children; it’s a war against narcissism and patriarchy, and one that mothers must fight together to achieve kinder, fairer and safer outcomes in the future.

Is your cruel ex attempting to separate and sabotage?

• Instruct a specialist domestic abuse lawyer who understands coercive control if you can

• Consider trying to show the court evidence of a pattern of abusive behaviour towards you and towards the child. Prove to the court how this behaviour harms your parenting and the child. Show, with expert evidence, that this behaviour is an extension of the abuse/coercive control of you. You may have evidence of behaviour such as blaming, shaming, isolating, influencing, coaching, monitoring, manipulating, badmouthing, threatening, intimidating and scaring. Controlling behaviour puts children under immense pressure and that pressure can emotionally overwhelm them. It can cause them anxiety, depression, to self-harm, to deteriorate at school. It can also cause them to behave in the same manner modelled to them by the abusive parent.

• (Note: unless you have a professional diagnosis, it is better not to label your ex in court - judges do not like the word narcissist, instead use the articles to help you describe their behaviour and its effects on the child).

• Show how the child’s circumstances (living with controlling/abusive behaviour) can cause short term and long term suffering: Adverse Childhood Experiences

• Propose family court experts who use trauma-informed approaches and interventions (See The Power Threat Meaning Framework )

• My book teaches the methods required to present your evidence to the court. With knowledge comes confidence and with confidence, the fear dissipates. Understanding how the narcissistic abuser communicates to their advantage helps you use communications to your advantage).

Resources

• Monk & Bowen: Coercive Control of Women as Mothers via Strategic Mother-Child Separation

• Susan Lynn Heward-Belle: Exploiting the ‘good mother’ as a tactic of coercive control

• Carolina Overlian: The Children of Patriarchal Terrorism

• Dr Emma Katz: Coercive Control, Domestic Violence, and a Five-Factor Framework: Five Factors That Influence Closeness, Distance, and Strain in Mother–Child Relationships

• Dr Emma Katz: When Coercive Control Continues to Harm Children; Post-Separation Fathering, Stalking and Domestic Violence

• Dr Emma Katz: Beyond the Physical Incident Model: How Children Living with Domestic Violence are Harmed By and Resist Regimes of Coercive Control

• William E Krill: How a Parents Narcissistic Personality Disorder Affects their Child

• Anne Morris: Maternal Alienation: the Use of Motherblaming in Abuse

• Anne Morris: SEEKING CONGRUENCE Bringing Language to Experiences of Maternal Alienation and Gender Violence

• Anne Morris: Gendered Dynamics of Abuse and Violence in Families: Considering the Abusive Household Gender Regime

• Dr Adrienne Barnett: Greater than the mere sum of its parts': coercive control and the question of proof

• Scottish Women’s Rights Centre

• Rights of Women