Batterer's Terrorist Tactics are Not "PAS"

We are noticing that some women who have lost custody to batterers who subsequently have succeeded in barring them from contact with their children, or turning the children away from them believe that what they are experiencing is "parental alienation syndrome."

However, "parental alienation syndrome" as described by the late Richard A. Gardner involved a "campaign of denigration" and manipulating tactics. What made this theory so popular was that it gave language to a perception of often subtle hidden family dynamics that otherwise did not have a label in the law. Coercive control and outright terrorism, such as using illegal means to cause false charges to be brought, interfering with lawful investigations, and fabricating evidence required no new label.

Abused women not infrequently are the targets of a pattern of criminal and terroristic behavior that goes far beyond what parental alienation syndrome ever was described as by Gardner or intended to be applied to. We are concerned that as more and more abused women lose custody to batterers in family courts, they are embracing the very ideas that enabled their abusers to gain custody in the first place.

"Parental alienation" is a psychological theory and a legal defense theory that is used sometimes on its own, but often in connection with the denial of an accusation of abuse, to turn tables on the accusing parent and find an explanation for a child's fear of or unwillingness to visit an accused parent, to explain a child's preference for one parent over the other, and to explain similarly otherwise "inexplicable" child positions in the claimed absence of the target parent having done anything wrong, and no clear indicators that the "alienating" parent did either.

What Gardner described as "PAS" therefore was an internal psychological process of identification that a child purportedly had with a parent who encouraged this
identification with them at the expense of the other parent. Gardner never clearly described how this identification could lead to false accusations of abuse, and this is a gaping hole in his theory. But it's important to remember that Gardner and his followers were not using PAS to describe illegal, terroristic behaviors, battery, destruction of property, locking children in rooms to prevent them from calling parents, falsifying documents, and similar behaviors. No one needed a psychological theory to explain these kinds of things -- or a child's reaction to them.

Controlling, coercive, illegal acts often done by abusive and controlling people, usually men, are not subtle, and do not encourage an identification with a parent. These behaviors encourage compliance by threats and fear. If views of the child do change internally when exposed to tactics like this over time then it is more likely a form of "Stockholm Syndrome" or attachment to the abuser, rather than the alignment with one parent and negative reaction to the other that Gardner described as "alienation".

One dangerous thing about Gardner's theory is that in large part these mysterious processes of alienation are invisible, or at least unseen. That's why a psychological theory was needed. Criminal, fraudulent, coercive acts are visible and obvious.

A recent and comprehensive article on PAS and its use in the court system, by Jennifer Hoult can be downloaded HERE.