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PAS parents have become stuck in the first stage of child development, where survival skills are learned.  Dr. Jane Major; www.BreakthroughParenting.com

To them, having total control over their child is a life & death matter. Because they don't understand how to please other people, any effort to do so always has strings attached. They don't give; they only know how to take. They don't play by the rules & aren't likely to obey a court order.

Descriptions that are commonly used to describe severe cases of PAS are that the alienating parent is unable to "individuate" (a psychological term used when the person is unable to see the child as a separate human being from him or herself). They are often described as being "overly involved with the child" or "enmeshed".

The parent may be diagnosed as narcissistic (self-centered), where they presume that they have a special entitlement to whatever they want. They think that there are rules in life, but only for other people, not for them.

Also, they may be called a sociopath, which means a person who has no moral conscience. These are people who are unable to have empathy or compassion for others. They're unable to see a situation from another person's point of view, especially their child's point of view. They don't distinguish between telling the truth & lying in the way that others do.

In spite of admonitions from judges & mental health professionals to stop their alienation, they can't. The prognosis for severely alienating parents is very poor. It's unlikely that they're able to "get it." It's also unlikely that they'll ever stop trying to perpetuate the alienation. This is a gut wrenching survival issue to them.

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Who alienates more, fathers or mothers?

Contrary to information from some other sources, our files show a fairly even balance of fathers & mothers who act as "alienators."

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Early results of clinical research show important differences in the factors which motivate men & women to alienate their children.

Statements like these by the Alienating  spouse can signal the beginning of PAS:

 

"Call me as soon as you get there to let me know you are okay."

"If you get scared, you call me right away. Okay?" 

"I'll come get you if you want to come home." 

Most adults will recognize this and change behavior when they see the effect on their children

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PAS is an escalation
of Parental Alienation (PA)
     

Dr. Douglas Darnall in his book Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, describes 3 categories of PA:

MILD: Naïve alienators

Naïve alienators are ignorant of what they are doing & are willing to be educated & change.

MODERATE: Active alienators

When triggered, active alienators lose control of appropriate boundaries. They go ballistic. When they calm down, they don't want to admit that they were out of control. 

SEVERE: Obsessed alienators

Obsessed alienators operate from a delusional system where every cell of their body is committed to destroying the other parent's relationship w/the child.

In the case of the Obsessed alienator, no treatment exists other than removing the child from their influence.

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The Naive Alienator

"Tell your father that he has more money than I do, so let him buy your soccer shoes."

Most divorced parents have moments when they're, "Naive" alienators. These parents mean well & recognize the importance of the children having a healthy relationship with the other parent.
 
They rarely have to return to court because of problems with visits or other issues relating to the children. They encourage the relationship between the children & the other parent & their family.
 
Communication between both parents is usually good, though they'll have their disagreements, much like they did before the divorce. For the most part, they can work out their differences without bringing the children into it.

Children, whether or not their parents are divorced, know there are times when their parents will argue or disagree about something.
 
They don't like seeing their parents argue & may feel hurt or frightened by what they hear. Somehow, the children manage to cope, either by talking out their feelings to a receptive parent, ignoring the argument or trusting that the skirmish will pass & all will heal.
 
What they see & hear between their parents doesn't typically damage the children of the naive alienator. They trust their parent's love & protection.
 
The child & the parent have distinct personalities, beliefs & feelings. Neither is threatened by how the other feels towards the targeted parent.
 
The characteristics of Naive alienators are:

  • Their ability to separate in their minds the children's needs from their own. They recognize the importance for the children to spend time with the other parent so they can build a mutually loving relationship. They avoid making the other parent a target for their hurt & loss.
  • Their ability to feel secure with the children's relationship with their grandparents & their mother or father.
  • Their respect for court orders & authority.
  • Their ability to let their anger & hurt heal & not interfere with the children's relationship with their mother or father.
  • Their ability to be flexible & willing to work with the other parent.

  • Their ability to feel guilty when they acted in a way to hurt the children's relationship with their mother or father.

  • Their ability to allow the other parent to share in their children's activities.
  • Their ability to share medical & school records.
Naive alienators usually don't need therapy but will benefit from learning about parental alienation because of the insight they'll gain about how to keep alienation from escalating into something more severe & damaging for all.
 
These parents know they make mistakes but care enough about their children to make things right. They focus on what is good for the children without regret, blame or martyrdom.

The Active alienator
"I don't want you to tell your father that I earned this extra money. The miser will take it from his child support check that will keep us from going to Disneyworld. You remember he's done this before when we wanted to go to Grandma's for Christmas."
Most parents returning to court over problems with visitation are active alienators. These parents mean well & believe that the children should have a healthy relationship with the other parent.
 
The problem they have is with controlling their frustration, bitterness or hurt. When something happens to trigger their painful feelings, active alienators lash out in a way to cause or reinforce alienation against the targeted parent.
 
After regaining control, the parent will usually feel guilty or bad about what they did & back off from their alienating tactics. Vacillating between impulsively alienating & then repairing the damage with the children is the trademark of the active alienator.
 
They mean well, but will lose control because the intensity of their feelings overwhelms them.

The characteristics of active alienators are:
  • Lashing out at the other parent in front of the children. Their problem has more to do with loss of self-control when they're upset than with a sinister motivation.
  • After calming down, active alienators realize that they were wrong. They usually try to repair any damage or hurt to the children. During the making up, such parents can be very comforting & supportive of the child's feelings.
  • Like naive alienators, they're able to differentiate between their needs & those of the children by supporting the children's desire to have a relationship with the other parent.
  • Like naive alienators, active alienators allow the children to have different feelings & beliefs from their own. During the flare ups of anger, however, the delineation between the child & parent's beliefs can become very blurry until the parent calms down & regains control. For the most part, older children have their own opinions about both parents based upon personal experience rather than what they're told by others. To keep peace, the older child usually learns to keep their opinions to themselves. Younger & more trusting children become more confused & vulnerable to their parents' manipulations.
They have the ability to respect the court's authority & for the most part, comply with court orders. However, they can be very rigid & uncooperative with the other parent.
 
This is usually a passive attempt to strike back at the other parent for some injustice. Active alienators are usually willing to accept professional help when they or the children have a problem that doesn't go away.
 
They're sincerely concerned about their children's adjustment to the divorce. Harboring old feelings continues to be a struggle, but active alienators continue to hope for a speedy recovery from their pain.

The Obsessed alienator

"I love my children. If the court can't protect them from their abusive father, I will. Even though he's never abused the children, I know it's a matter of time. The children are frightened of their father. If they don't want to see him, I'm not going to force them. They're old enough to make up their own minds."

The obsessed alienator is a parent, or sometimes a grandparent, with a cause: to align the children to his or her side & together, with the children, campaign to destroy their relationship with the targeted parent.
 
For the campaign to work, the obsessed alienator enmeshes the children's personalities & beliefs into their own. This is a process that takes time but one that the children, especially the young, are completely helpless to see & combat.
 
It usually begins well before the divorce is final. The obsessed parent is angry, bitter or feels betrayed by the other parent. The initial reasons for the bitterness may actually be justified. They could have been verbally & physical abused, raped, betrayed by an affair, or financially cheated.
 
The problem occurs when the feelings won't heal but instead become more intense because of being forced to continue the relationship with a person they despise because of their common parenthood.
 
Just having to see or talk to the other parent is a reminder of the past & triggers the hate. They're trapped with nowhere to go & heal.

The characteristics of obsessed alienators are:
  • They're obsessed with destroying the children's relationship with the targeted parent.
  • They having succeeded in enmeshing the children's personalities & beliefs about the other parent with their own.
  • The children will parrot the obsessed alienator rather than express their own feelings from personal experience with the other parent.
  • The targeted parent & often the children can't tell you the reasons for their feelings. Their beliefs sometimes becoming delusional & irrational. No one, especially the court, can convince obsessed alienators that they're wrong. Anyone who tries is the enemy.
  • They'll often seek support from family members, quasi-political groups or friends that will share in their beliefs that they're victimized by the other parent & the system. The battle becomes "us against them." The obsessed alienator's supporters are often seen at the court hearings even though they haven't been subpoenaed.
  • They have an unquenchable anger because they believe that they've been victimized by the targeted parent & whatever they do to protect the children is justified.
  • They have a desire for the court to punish the other parent with court orders that would interfere or block the targeted parent from seeing the children. This confirms in the obsessed alienator's mind that he or she was right all the time.
  • The court's authority doesn't intimidate them.
  • The obsessed alienator believes in a higher cause, protecting the children at all cost.
  • The obsessed alienator will probably not want to read what's on these pages because the content just makes them angrier.
There are no effective treatments for either the obsessed alienator or the children. The courts & mental health professionals are helpless.
 
The only hope for these children is early identification of the symptoms & prevention. After the alienation is entrenched & the children become "true believers" in the parent's cause, the children are lost to the other parent for years to come.
 
We realize this is a sad statement, but we have yet to find an effective intervention, by anyone, including the courts that can rehabilitate the alienating parent & child.

Provided by Douglas Darnell, Ph.D.

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Obsessed Alienators Are:

 

Narcissistic: The alienator presumes special entitlement to whatever he/she wants. Rules in life are for other people, not for them.

 

Individuate Behaviorists: the alienator is unable to see the child as a separate human being. He/she is often described as being "overly involved with the child" or "enmeshed".

 

Sociopaths: The alienator has no moral conscience and is unable to have empathy or compassion for others. They are unable to see a situation from another person's point of view, especially their child's point of view. They don't distinguish between telling the truth and lying in the way that others do.

 

Dependency Fosterers: Instead of promoting independence, the alienating parent encourages continued dependence. The parent may insist on sleeping with the child, feeding the child ("It's easier if I do it"), and taking care of these rites of passage longer than normal child development calls for. This "spoiling" may not feel right to the child, but they do not have enough ego strength to do anything about it.
 

If this is all sounding a little too familiar, the next page tells you how to deal with the situation, save your children

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Characteristics of Obsessed Alienators

Alienators will display many of the below characteristics.

  • anger
  • frustration 
  • hurt feelings

These feelings can cause even the most upstanding & stable parent to act like a psychopath during a custody battle.

Occasionally in such situations he/she may temporarily resemble the warning signs.  The difference is when faced w/court orders, friends & pressure from their peer group or the pain of their own children, non-obsessive alienators will change their behavior & always put their children's welfare ahead of their own. 

Depending upon the degree, he or she may need counseling to work through the anger.

Obsessed alienators

however are:
incapable of changing.  You want to look for sustained examples of these behaviors over a period of time, not isolated instances to decide if you are dealing w/an Obsessive alienator (in which case the children need to be removed from this persons custody as soon as possible for their own protection) or a rational adult w/hurt feelings & unexpressed anger

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Fathers may alienate children from their mother for:
  • vengeance
  • control
  • to retain the family residence
  • to avoid paying child support

It's seen in various degrees of severity in 90% of cases of conjugal violence.

a personal note: My ex-husband was a police officer most of his life. His father was a police officer as well. When he left me to be with my friend, she told him that his life was worth more than the $17.00 an hour he made. First he went on disability, claiming he hurt his back on the job.
 
Funny how he was seen bowling while his back was hurting him so badly he couldn't work.
 
She owned her own business. Her father had started it. Funny thing, she had the same last name he had. Anyway, he quit his job to avoid paying child support. He went to work for her so he could work under the table. He claimed bankruptcy instead of paying the bills we had owed when we were married.
 
Yeah, he wanted custody so he wouldn't have to pay child support. Although, his girlfriend said to me one night, "I stole your husband and now I'm going to steal your son."
 
I wonder if she can be sued in a civil suit?

In one case the father had no control over his obsession to trash the mother. Numerous professionals told him, including the mother that he could have shared custody if he would be willing to follow the rules. He didn't have the self-control to do this.
 

When he lost custody because of his aberrant behavior, he became a celebrity in the father's rights movement & took his campaign into national circles.

 

No one would know from hearing him speak about his situation that there was serious pathology going on (PAS) or how hard the professionals worked to stabilize it.

 

In cultures where women traditionally have no tangible rights, alienation by the father can be severe. I've met divorcing women whom have been prevented from learning how to make a living to support themselves.

 

At the time of separation all access to financial resources ceased & the children were removed from her care. These women report severe alienation of affection.

The American Journal of Family Therapy, 28:229-241, 2000

REMARRIAGE AS A TRIGGER OF PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME
Richard A. Warshak
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Dallas, Texas, USA

Maladaptive efforts to adjust to remarriage can provoke or exacerbate parental alienation syndrome. The remarried parent, the other parent, the stepparent & the child each may contribute to the disturbance.

Underlying dynamics include:

  • jealousy
  • narcissistic injury
  • desire for revenge
  • the wish to erase the exspouse from the child's life in order to "make room" for the stepparent
  • competitive feelings between the ex-spouse & stepparent
  • the new couple's attempt to unite around a common enemy & avoid recognition of conflicts in the marriage
  • the child's attempt to resolve inner conflict 
  • parent-child boundary violations

These dynamics are discussed & suggestions for treatment are offered.

Parents who remarry often believe that they now have the perfect family setting in which to raise their children.

But one thing mars this image: the former spouse.

Many remarried couples harbor the fantasy, "If only the ex would disappear from the scene . . . "

One way to fulfill this fantasy is by driving a wedge between the children & their other parent.

When competitive feelings are very strong, however, the stepparent may resent having to share the children's affection w/their other parent. Many factors contribute to such resentment. A general sense of low self-esteem is one element.

This may be manifest in generally excessive competitiveness in most situations. More specifically, doubt about one's worth as a parent may stimulate a desire to prove one's superiority over the other parent. Visher and Visher (1979) describe how a man who feels that he failed as a father in a first marriage may regard the second marriage as a chance to compensate for his earlier shortcomings.

The sense of failure may be particularly acute if the stepfather hasn't maintained regular & meaningful involvement w/his biological children.

For some men, their reaction to this sense of failure is to try to replace the other parent in the children's heart. To accomplish this, they instigate, or at least actively support, destructive criticism of the other parent. The result may be the child's alienation from the target of criticism.

Another situation that exacerbates competitive feelings occurs when stepparents have no children of their own &, for reasons of choice or infertility, do not foresee having their own children in the future. This dynamic & other factors underlying excessive competition, affect stepmothers as well as stepfathers.

Nelda & Ophelia were best friends. Then Nelda had an affair w/Ophelia's husband & married him soon after his divorce. Nelda had no children from her previous marriage, was unable to become pregnant & didn't want to adopt any children.

Ophelia's daughter was Nelda's one chance to be a mother.

Feeling intense rivalry w/her now "exbest friend" Nelda pressured her husband to move to a new town, 4 hours away by car w/no airport nearby.

At the same time, through overindulgence, extravagant promises, excessive badmouthing of the mother & the cooperation of the father, Nelda manipulated her stepdaughter to ask to move w/them.

Ophelia initially resisted, but her daughter insisted that she really wanted to move & was angry that her mother was making it difficult. Against her better judgment & without legal counsel, Ophelia caved into pressure & agreed to the move.

Shortly before Christmas vacation, Ophelia received a letter from her daughter. The girl wrote that she did not want to be forced to see her mother during the Christmas vacation. Her dad & Nelda had scheduled a trip to Disneyland & she would have to miss it if she spent the vacation w/her mother.

The vocabulary & sentence structure of the letter made it clear that, although it was in her daughter's handwriting, it was composed by adults. A note from Nelda accompanied the letter. In her note, Nelda selfrighteously exhorted Ophelia to place her daughter's interest before her own.

Nelda pleaded w/Ophelia to allow them to establish themselves as a family before pressing for contact w/her daughter. Ophelia took what she thought was the high road & allowed her daughter to go on the trip to Disneyland instead of seeing her.

When Ophelia was next scheduled to see her daughter, on the girl's birthday, she received another letter. In this letter, her daughter expressed her resentment of what was now being called "forced visitation" & added that, instead of seeing her mother, she wanted to spend her birthday w/her family.

Nelda & her husband had succeeded in twisting this girl's mind so that she no longer thought of her own mother as part of her family! When. the author first became acquainted w/Ophelia, she had been waiting 2 years & had still not seen her daughter.

Ophelia's error, all too common among parents who find themselves the target of alienation, was to wait too long before taking action This generally results from an inadequate understanding of the dynamics & course of PAS.

Some parents, who recognize that their children have been manipulated, still find it difficult not to take the rejection personally. They may respond with hurt & anger & counter-reject their children.

Other parents hope that patience will pay off & that the children will come to their senses & spontaneously recover positive feelings.

It is very important that target parents understand that the absence of contact w/their children creates:

"a fertile habitat for poisoned messages to take root & crowd out loving memories of the parent-child relationship. It isolates children from information & experiences that might enlighten them by contradicting the programming to which they are exposed. And it makes the children more dependent on the parent promulgating the alienation (Clawar & Rivlin, 1991)."

Women are profoundly threatened by the possible loss of custody of their children & may go to any lengths to keep them, in both a psychological & biological reaction.
 
Women may be motivated by:
  • vengeance 
  • financial issues 

Mothers as Alienatorsby Richard A. Gardner. M.D.

In the early 1980's, when I first began seeing the PAS, in about 85% to 90% of the cases the mother was the alienating parent & the father the targeted parent.

Fathers were certainly trying to program their children to gain leverage in the custody dispute; however, they were less likely to be successful. This related to the fact that the children were generally more closely bonded w/their mothers.

Recognizing this, I generally recommended the mother to be designated the primary custodial parent, even though she might have been a PAS indoctrinator. It was only in the severe cases (about 10%) when the mother was relentless &/or paranoid & unable to cease & desist from the programming, that I recommended primary custodial status to the father.

I wasn't alone in recognizing this gender disparity, which was confirmed during that period by others. In my experience, the time frame during which mothers were the primary alienators was from the early 1980's (when the disorder first appeared) to the mid-to-late 1990's (when fathers became increasingly active as PAS indoctrinators). The largest study confirming the preponderance of mothers as PAS alienators during the 1980's was that of Clawar & Rivlin (1991).

During this early period, it was quite common for mothers, w/the full support of their attorneys, to not only deny that they were PAS programmers, but even went further & denied that the PAS existed. This denial was especially common in courts of law where their attorneys would argue that there was no such thing as a PAS & therefore, their clients could not be suffering w/a disorder that does not exist.

In many cases, neither the mothers nor their attorneys could deny that the children were alienated, but would claim that the alienation was the result of abuse &/or neglect to which the children were subjected by their fathers.

Under such circumstances, confusion prevailed & "the waters were muddied," especially in the courtroom. The PAS diagnosis demands the identification of the specific alienator. Other sources of abuse &/or neglect do not produce this particular constellation of symptoms & don't focus so clearly on a specific alienator.

In this more confused environment, the mothers diagnosis as a PAS programmer might never come to the attention of the court, especially if the lawyer was able to convince the court that there was no such thing as a parental alienation syndrome.

"PAS is Not a Syndrome"

Often, the mother's lawyer would argue that PAS wasn't a syndrome w/the implication that it doesn't exist.

A syndrome by medical definition is:

"a cluster of symptoms, occurring together, that characterize a specific disease."

The symptoms, although seemingly disparate, warrant being grouped together because of a common etiology or basic underlying cause. Furthermore, there is a consistency w/regard to such a cluster in that most (if not all) of the symptoms appear together.

Accordingly, there is a kind of purity that a syndrome has that may not be seen in other diseases. e.g., a person suffering w/pneumococcal pneumonia may have chest pain, cough, purulent sputum & fever.

However, the individual may still have the disease w/out all these symptoms manifesting themselves.

A syndrome is more "pure" because most (if not all) of the symptoms in the cluster predictably manifest themselves. An example would be Downs Syndrome, which includes a host of seemingly disparate symptoms that do not appear to have a common link.

These include mental retardation, mongoloid-type facial expression, drooping lips, slanting eyes, short fifth finger, and atypical creases in the palms of the hands. There is a consistency here in that the people who suffer w/Downs Syndrome often look very much alike & typically exhibit all these symptoms.

The common etiology of these disparate symptoms relates to a specific chromosomal abnormality. It's this genetic factor that's responsible for linking together these seemingly disparate symptoms. There is then a primary, basic cause of Downs Syndrome: a genetic abnormality.

Similarly, the PAS is characterized by a cluster of symptoms that usually appear together in the child, especially in the moderate & severe types. Typically, children who suffer w/PAS will exhibit most (if not all) of the 8 symptoms described above. This is almost uniformly the case for the moderate & severe types.

However, in the mild cases one might not see all 8 symptoms. When mild cases progress to moderate or severe, it is highly likely that most (if not all) of the symptoms will be present. This consistency results in PAS children resembling one another.

It's because of these considerations that the PAS is a relatively "pure" diagnosis that can easily be made. Due to this purity the PAS lends itself well to research studies, because the population to be studied can easily be identified. Furthermore, I believe that this purity will be verified by interrater reliability studies. As is true of other syndromes, there is an underlying cause:

programming by an alienating parent in conjunction w/additional contributions by the programmed child. It is for these reasons that PAS is indeed a syndrome & it's a syndrome by the best medical definition of the term.

"PAS Does Not Exist Because It's Not in DSM-IV"

Commonly, the mothers attorneys would argue that PAS doesn't exist because it's not in DSM-IV (1994). The DSM committees justifiably are quite conservative w/regard to the inclusion of newly described clinical phenomena & require many years of research & publications before considering inclusion of a disorder.

This is as it should be.

Lawyers involved in child-custody disputes see it repeatedly. Mental health professionals involved in such disputes are continually involved w/such families. They may not wish to recognize it. They may refer to PAS by another name (like "parental alienation") (Gardner, 2002a). But that does not preclude its existence.

A tree exists as a tree regardless of the reactions of those looking at it. A tree still exists even though some might give it another name. If a dictionary selectively decides to omit the word tree from its compilation of words, that does not mean that the tree does not exist. It only means that the people who wrote that book decided not to include that particular word. Similarly, for someone to look at a tree & say that the tree doesn't exist doesn't cause the tree to evaporate. It only indicates that the viewer, for whatever reason, doesn't wish to see what's right in front of him (her).

DSM-IV was published in 1994. In the early 1990's, when DSM committees were meeting to consider the inclusion of additional disorders, there were too few articles on the PAS in the literature to warrant its submission for consideration. That's no longer the case. It's my understanding that committees will begin to meet for DSM-V in 2003. At this point, DSM-V is scheduled for publication in 2010.

Considering the fact that there are now more than 135 articles on the PAS in peer-review journals, it is highly likely that by that time there will be many more. Furthermore, considering the fact that there are now more than 65 rulings in which courts have recognized the PAS, it is probable that there will be even more such rulings by the time the committees meet. These lists are being continually updated and can be found on my website.

Lawyers for the mothers would often say to the judge, "Your Honor, why don't we really listen to what these children are saying?  If you don't feel comfortable putting them on the witness stand, then bring them into your chambers. They will tell you how they feel. Let's respect their opinions."

Judges not familiar w/the PAS might be taken in by these children & actually believe that they were subjected to the terrible indignities that they described. As far back as 1987 I wrote an article advising judges about this problem & providing them w/guidelines for interviewing these children (Gardner, 1987b).

Although there are certainly judges who are now more knowledgeable about the PAS than in the late 1980's, judges still play an important role in the etiology & promulgation of the PAS, especially w/regard to their failure to impose reasonable sanctions on PAS indoctrinating parents.

Elsewhere (Gardner, submitted for publication), I have elaborated on this problem. The "believe the children" philosophy was & still is espoused by therapists ignorant of the PAS. Many therapists sanctimoniously profess that they really listen to children (as opposed to the rest of us who presumably don't).

They profess that they really respect what children want (w/the implication that the rest of us don't). What they are basically doing is contributing to pathological empowerment, which is a central factor in the development & perpetuation of the PAS (Gardner, 2002c).

Again, it is beyond the purposes of this article to describe therapists role in the development & perpetuation of the PAS. PAS indoctrinators know well that they can rely upon most therapists to empower childrens PAS symptomatology & that they are readily duped into joining the PAS indoctrinators parade of enablers & supporters.

Such therapists are often brought into the courtroom to support the mother & her lawyers denial of the existence of the PAS & to encourage the court to "really listen" to the children.

"Those Who Make the PAS Diagnosis Are Sexist"

Because mothers were the primary alienators during this early period, PAS was viewed as being intrinsically biased against women. And I, as the person who first wrote on the phenomenon, was viewed as being biased against women and as being "sexist."

The facts are that during this time frame women were the primary alienators. Labeling those who diagnose PAS as sexist is the equivalent of saying that a doctor is biased against women if he claims that more women suffer with breast cancer than men.

And the sexist claim has also been brought into courts of law. Fear of being labeled "sexist" has been one factor in many evaluators eschewing the PAS diagnosis.

Denial of the PAS Has Caused Permanent Alienation

The denial of PAS has caused many men to suffer formidable psychological suffering. The lawyers of women who have been PAS indoctrinators have convinced courts that PAS does not exist, and therefore the childrens animosity against their fathers is justified.

The fact that women are increasingly suffering as target parents gives these men little solace, because many of them have lost their children permanently. In my recent follow-up of 99 PAS children, I provide compelling confirmation that the denial of PAS by courts has resulted in permanent estrangement in the vast majority of cases (Gardner, 2001c).

UNCONTESTED DIVORCE - a divorce proceed in which there are no disputes.

URESA(Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act) - the statute which enables one state to request assistance from another state in establishing or enforcing a child support order against a parent located in the other state.
VALUATION PROCESS - a systematic procedure employed to provide the answer to a client's question about real property value.

VENUE - the county in which the court with jurisdiction will hear the matter.

VERIFICATION STATEMENT - an oath stating that the information in a document is true.

VISITATION - the right of the parent who does not have physical custody to see his or her child.

VISITATION CREDIT - the percentage applied to a child support calculation. It reflects the amount of time a child resides with the noncustodial parent.

VISITATION SCHEDULE - a list of dates stating times each parent may see each child.
WAGE ASSIGNMENT OR WAGE WITHHOLDING - a court order requiring the employer of a noncustodial parent to deduct a specific amount of money for child support from the wages of the noncustodial parent (also known as garnishment).

WAIVER - a written document that relinquishes an individual's rights.

WITNESS - a person having knowledge of facts or other information pertaining to a specific situation.

WRIT OF EXECUTION - a court order authorizing the seizure of an asset of a noncustodial parent who owes past due child support. The order usually authorizes the seizure of assets up to the total amount of past due child support owed under the judgment. It is also know as a levy.
YIELD CAPITALIZATION - a capitalization method used to convert future benefits to present value by discounting each future benefit at an appropriate yield rate or by developing an overall rate that reflects the investment's income pattern, value change, and yield rate.

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