In this blog we at PsychLaw.net will discuss two more cases of PA where the target parent was the mother.
In re Marriage of R., 1994 – Iowa
In this case two doctors of osteopathy and “Trudi” were at war. In this difficult matter, the trial court spent eighteen days listening to mother’s twenty-one witnesses, including seven by deposition, and father’s thirty-five witnesses, including five by deposition. The trial court extracted from the voluminous evidence several specific examples of what it considered conduct on the part of the father’s new wife – Trudi and the father to alienate the children from their mother. The first involved a Fourth of July weekend. Mother asked to trade holidays because she had to work a sixty-hour weekend. Father refused to change the holiday schedule and, although he knew mother was working, he got the son up to get ready for his mother’s visitation and let the child sit for two hours with his bag by the window watching for his mother who did not come. When she did not come on Monday, the same scene was reenacted.
The second was an attempt to charge mother or someone who cared for the son with or for the mother, with sexually molesting the child. Trudi took the boy to doctors four times on two separate occasions with her complaints. All medical opinions refuted Trudi’s claims but Trudi told others about them, including their Rabbi, and she then made her complaints in front of the child. In another example of alienation seen as telling by the court of appeals, mother volunteered with the school to accompany one of the child’s classes on a field trip. When the father learned about it, he called the school and complained. He also insisted that mother take the hours she had chaperoned the field trip as her visitation time. The trial judge found this was a case of parental alienation syndrome and it was severe. The appellate court, as did the trial court, found that Trudi contributed substantially to the discord. The trial court in its findings noted the fact Trudi had alienated her three children from a prior marriage from their father after she divorced him. She seemed to view the children as items to be secreted and was manipulative, forbidding the son to talk to his mother at school and religious functions. The trial court’s award of custody of the children to the target parent mother was affirmed.
- v. G., 1995 – Texas
In this Texas case, a modification was sought within one year of the original decree. As it was in Texas, the custody dispute was tried to a jury in 1992. The record indicated that the father had a history of severe emotional outbursts and had engaged in threatening behavior toward the mother and the children. There was testimony that the father was destructive as well. Mother testified of her belief that the child was afraid of his dad, and that father had no real love for their son and was only using him. The child had problems controlling his bowels that mother believed were stress-related. The record reflects that the father wanted the four-year-old daughter to fly unescorted from San Antonio to Houston and back and father admitted he refused to let the boy talk to the guardian ad litem alone.
Dr. Kit Harrison, the court appointed psychologist, described father as very bombastic, loud, combative, verbally argumentative, very power-oriented and that he referred to the four-year-old as “the girl.” Dr. Harrison testified that the son acted as his father’s messenger or robot, and that he was “brainwashed.” It was Dr. Harrison’s opinion that the father exploited both children. He testified father’s behavior was extremely detrimental to the children because it completely stifled growth and development. Dr. Harrison’s expert opinion was that the son was subject to his domineering and extremely controlling father and that the father was alienating the child from his mother. Dr. Harrison further testified he suspected father had a personality disorder. After hearing all the evidence, custody was changed to the target parent mother. Father’s appeal was dismissed.