A pattern emerged in the family courts (England & Wales) of parental alienation (PA) raised as a response to domestic abuse claims, as proved in Dr Adrienne Barnett’s research published in January 2020. It resulted in devastating outcomes for mothers and children. The need for a child to maintain contact became a priority as we were subtly influenced to believe in a new stereotype; a hostile, vindictive mother; a woman scorned, one who used her child as a pawn. Domestic abuse was reframed by controlling, abusive fathers who denied their behaviour, lied about it and projected it onto bewildered, abused mothers. Fathers’ rights groups powerfully marketed the new stereotype.  They cried from the rooftops;

“Mothers lie about abuse and cut off contact from deserving fathers; we are the true victims; there is a bias against us!”

Judges routinely minimised domestic abuse in the courtroom; mothers were disbelieved, dismissed and punished through the contact arrangements. Welfare reports were often carried out by unsuitable and underqualified assessors.

Twenty one children were killed in the UK during unsafe contact between 2005 and 2019.

Unscrupulous family lawyers with pound signs in their eyes started promoting American style PA. The same parental alienation which links back to disgraced psychiatrist Richard Gardner, and still has no global definition or scientific evidence to clarify what it actually ‘is’. They marketed alienating behaviour (allegedly carried out by mostly mothers) as ‘child abuse’. Self-proclaimed PA experts (therapists & psychologists) gave rejected fathers a means to put the final nail in the mother’s coffin. They often diagnosed the child as alienated (brainwashed) and used mother’s understandable anxious and distressed demeanour against her, declaring her to suffer mental health problems.  PA supporting judges opened the door for the PA narrative to unfold in cases where abuse claims were raised by omitting details of egregious abuse in their opinions. They ruled on the same cases for years, their judgements slipping through unnoticed in a shroud of secrecy and gagging orders. Narcissism filled the air in a mass quest for power, control and self-gratification.

Some mothers joined the PA camp. Unknowingly, they were the true victims of cruel, coercively controlling parents who lacked empathy and remorse. They were sucked into ‘the PA thing’ by a powerful marketing campaign which used the mothers to give an air of gender neutrality to the so-called problem. These mothers had a justifiable reason for their pain and suffering, as had some healthy, safe fathers, drawn into the parental alienation whirlwind.

Thousands of mothers were re-traumatised in the courtrooms in all the countries where parental alienation had become prevalent. Children were routinely sent into unsafe contact with extremely violent, coercively controlling, or sexually abusive fathers. The horrified mothers started to raise their voices, unable to stand by and helplessly watch their children suffer.

Credible experts, charities, journalists & family lawyers with a conscience grouped with and supported the mothers who had been on the receiving end of the gross injustice. Groundbreaking and extensive research by Professor Joan Meier (USA) had proved the systemic cruelty mothers faced in court when faced with the parental alienation counterclaim; it extinguished their claims of abuse.

The family court review (Professor Rosemary Hunter) and accompanying literature review (Dr Adrienne Barnett) were published in England and Wales, confirming the need for an urgent, major overhaul – the safety of children would now become a priority in the family court system, and domestic abuse victims would receive better treatment in the future.

A wave of panic and hysteria overcame those who had tirelessly promoted parental alienation;  

“The academic research is nonsense!”

“Those who claim domestic abuse are all narcissists; they are poisonous, psychological abusers!”

“Parental alienation is the WORST form of abuse!”

Parental alienation was exposed for the grand charade it is; trickery, a con, or as we say in Scotland, skulduggery, on the masses.  The deception of a narcissist on the family court stage is powerful. The deception of narcissism on a grand scale is highly dangerous, particularly to children.