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Parental Alienation Syndrome
Have you always had a loving relationship with your kids, and they had always loved you right back?
Now, months (or years) into your divorce that’s all changed. Your children are becoming unwilling to visit you. They no longer express or feel all that love you and they shared when they were younger. When they do visit, it’s with sullenness, withdrawal, disinterest, and distance. Maybe they’re so loaded-up with “activities” there isn’t any quality time available. You hear them blaming you for things, maybe even adult things like money or court, you never even discussed with them. You sense that they have aligned with their other parent against you.
Perhaps they make excuses for not being able to see you, using words that don’t even sound like theirs. Maybe your ex, or soon-to-be-ex-spouse, tells your children that they can make their “own decisions” now. Maybe you’ve heard words like, “if they don’t want to come and see you, I can’t make them.”
If this sounds like what you’ve been hearing, you’re not imagining things, and there is a term for it. Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is just what the name implies: a campaign by one parent to emotionally separate the children from the other parent. PAS is related to a term known as “Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome”.
Parental Alienation Syndrome is Identified
PAS is a compelling, emerging area of psychology, first recognized, identified, and defined in 1985 by Richard A. Gardner, M.D. Its very existence has often forcefully and viciously been denied by women’s groups, and their lobbies, partisans, attorneys, and others, who wish to paint nearly all fathers as deadbeats, villains, and unworthy people.
The most widely-accepted definition reads, “PAS is a disorder that arises primarily in the context of child-custody disputes. Its primary manifestation is the child’s campaign of denigration against a parent, [with] no justification. It results from the combination of a programming (brainwashing) parent’s indoctrinations and the child’s own contributions to the vilification of the target parent.”*
“Children are not born with genes that program them to reject a father. Such hatred is environmentally induced, and the most likely person to have brought about the alienation is the mother.”**
Among the set of symptoms appearing in the child who is a victim of PAS are these***:
- a campaign of denigration against the victim parent
- weak or absurd rationalizations for the denigration
- lack of ambivalence
- “independent thinker” phenomenon (the child is said to have rejected a parents on his/her own)
- knee-jerk support of the alienating parent
- absence of guilt over cruelty to and/or exploitation of alienated parent
- the presence of “borrowed scenarios”
- the spread of animosity about dad to friends and family
Parental alienation syndrome is beginning to become a genuine factor in child custody cases where the affections of the children have been warped, sometimes beyond recognition, by the efforts of an often irrationally vindictive other parent, almost always mom. Mom is the parent who the children still live with and still love. But children are no match for her overwhelmingly powerful psychological efforts, which a PAS mother uses to brainwash them.
Long Island Divorce & Family Law Attorneys
Lang, Berman & Lebit, P.C., in conjunction with its’ very strong orientation as a fathers’ rights matrimonial law firm, feels equally strongly about the prevalence of PAS in custody cases involving severely alienated children. There is persuasive and mounting evidence that PAS is a definable, frequently-occurring, genuine disorder, identifiable in many alienating mothers who remorselessly not only hurt their husbands or ex-husbands, but also ultimately hurt the couple’s children.
There is a body of case law and judicial decisions, which have begun to understand and rule that the PAS syndrome is identifiable in many cases, and have begun to do something about it.
Utilizing our understanding of the role PAS plays in disadvantaging fathers in child custody scenarios, our up-to-date knowledge of Long Island court room trends and decisions, and our vast experience for many years representing dads, Lang, Berman & Lebit, P.C. can help you fight PAS. If you are a victim of PAS, we are the right firm to call. We will vigorously pursue PAS and other avenues of relief on your behalf.
Call us today at 516-227-2255 or 631-226-4200 for your free consultation.
Contact us about your legal matter today!
* Gardner, 1985.
** Gardner, 1992.
*** Gardner, 2002.
Family Law Attorneys Serving Long Island | Suffolk | Garden City | Nassau County | New York
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