Associates of Kids In Distress
In just about all social situations, people vie for the attention,affections and support of others. Aliances are formed, others are ostracised and vice versa in an ebb and flow of human interactions. When parents are not able to relate well to each other and/or their children, competition can increase for a child's affections,as children are used as 'weapons' against each other. Parents who practice unpleasant behaviors, such as yelling, drinking too much and smacking to hard may find that it is their own actions that cause their children to be fearful of them, with no input at all from the other parent. Very few will admit to unsavoury behaviour and cry 'false allegations' when their behaviour is held up for examination. When a relationship breaks down, the dynamics change again. Every time a parent denigrates or abuses a child, or the other parent, they are inducing fear and distrust either against themselves or the other parent. It must be remembered that `alienation' is a subjective outcome which may or may not occur from the unpleasant behavior. Alienation from a parent who is denigrated is only one of any number of outcomes. For example, if one parent `denigrates' the other, the outcome can in fact be to strengthen the child's loyalty/admiration of the abusive parent as they see them as being strong and powerful and wish to associate with them. They could also bond closer to the abused parent in an effort to protect them.
However, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) according to the 'theory' occurs only when a child express's their distrust, or makes disclosures of abusive actions by their father. Under the PAS theory, children's disclosures of abuse by their natural father, are reinterpreted as evidence of "brainwashing" by the mother in an effort by her to gain residency and/or exclude the father from the child's life. It is the child, who by the making of disclosures of abuse is said to have the Parental Alienation SYNDROME - induced by the so called "obsessive", "vindictive", "manipulative" actions of the mother. There is no protection, under the PAS theory for children who have actually sufferred physical, sexual or emotional abuse, due to such abuse being virtually impossible to 'prove', due to the childs age and general legal disbelief of children's disclosures.
It is noteworthy that to date we have not found any reports of the "Syndrome" being induced in children by fathers, protective of them from abusive mothers, or grandparents protective of children from unstable parents of either sex. We are aware of situations where protective fathers have been denied contact for many convoluted and possibly unjust reasons, and where residential fathers have systematically alienated children from the non residential mother. However,parental alientation SYNDROME has not been an issue in those situations.
It would seem that within all legal arenas, when the mother is seen to be supporting the child when abuse is alleged, there is an entrenched belief that children lie, or are coached by their mothers. Enmeshment, Munchausen by Proxy are all devices used to discredit protective mothers in both family law and all sexual assault matters. The curiosity is that the reverse does not apply to protective fathers, and in essence the PAS theory holds firm to a generalisation that incest and paternal child abuse does not occur. As testified to by all to many adult survivers incest and abuse does occur. In those cases allegations of Parental Alienation Syndrome are false, but the allegations are upheld, empowering an abusive parent and placing the child at serious risk of further harm.