Here we at PsychLaw.net have looked at three more cases involving mother as the target parent.
- v. J., 2010 – Ontario –
In this case, the parties were married in 1991. It was a first marriage for both. They had two boys C age 15 and M age 9 at the time of trial. Both parents agreed that C suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and that M had a learning disability. Both parents remained in home where court testimony indicated the father sabotaged mother’s disciplining of the children; broke into mother’s room; called mother names; swore at and threatened mother; turned off power and cable; walked around in a towel and exposed himself. Records also documented that the father spoke to his own mother about blowing up the house. There was evidence of self-mutilation in the oldest child C (i.e. carving his initials into his skin).
Court records indicated that the father had a personality disorder and was modeling unhealthy behaviors that had influenced the children. Extended exposure to these behaviors in the father was seen as having long-term negative impact. Court records document that the experts thought that tasking father with day-to-day parenting would stress him and could trigger an explosive reaction.
The court found that the father demonstrated many alienating behaviors. He called mother names in front of the boys and they then mimicked him; and he undermined mother’s efforts to impose bedtimes and discipline. Further, the court found that the father tried to paint himself as the victim in his voice mail messages and in his own diary entries. The court determined that the father undermined the mother’s attempts to discipline C when he assaulted her and the father sabotaged mother’s summer access as well. He allowed C to evade schoolwork by permitting him to come to his house. He did not follow up with the schools to verify mother’s claims that C was simply avoiding work. Result, custody to target parent mother.
- (I.M.M.) v. S. (D.J.), 2010 – British Columbia –
This case involved a serious and ongoing lack of cooperation and active parental alienation. This lack of cooperation by the father was demonstrated by difficulties in planning for the scheduling of vacations and extra-curricular activities for the children during the school year and many other alienating and undercutting behaviors as well.
Court assessor Brown had 30 years of experience according to the court and was a highly experienced, professional registered clinical counselor. Ms. Brown reported to the court that this couple could not work cooperatively together to parent the children and that the father would continue to behave so as to alienate his sons from their mother. Ms. Brown strongly recommended that the father participate in counseling to help him deal with his anger in relation to the mother. The court noted that assessor Brown saw aspects of the father’s behavior as both an active and an obsessive alienator. She determined that he was strongly influencing his sons to his way of thinking by portraying himself as a “victim of their mother’s greed.”
The court determined it was clear on the evidence that the father manifested entrenched behaviors that were likely to seriously damage or even destroy the children’s relationship with the mother. The court determined that despite the various difficulties mother encountered in trying to parent with the father, she persisted in a calm and committed way, as she firmly believed it was in the children’s best interests for them to have a relationship with their father. In contrast, the father told the children that upon reaching the age of 12 years, they may choose which parent they wish to reside with and continue to undercut the mother. Further, the father refused to pay an outstanding order concerning his share of special expenses, and did not move with any dispatch to comply with the orders of the court regarding property division. The trial judge cited significant case precedent and vested custody in the target parent mother.
- v. S., 2010 – Ontario –
This case found experts describing the consequences of parental alienation in stark terms. Court records document that Jacqueline Vanbetlehem, MSW, and Ted Horowitz (Ph.D. in social work) agreed that the children had been heavily influenced by the father to have unrealistic and unjustified negative feelings toward the mother. Despite the father’s repeated attempts to get the experts to agree that the children were justified or at least reasonable in rejecting the mother, both experts regarded the father’s active alienation as by far the more pressing problem. Both witnesses described the long-term serious effects of unresolved alienation in children when they become adults. According to the two experts in this case, alienated children have significantly higher rates of mental and emotional problems, substance abuse or addiction and marriage or relationship breakdown than children who have a relationship with both their parents.
The trial judge offered that it was interesting to hear the father’s submissions, which bore out what the mother and the two expert witnesses had said. Barely a minute into his testimony wrote the trial judge, the father veered sharply from addressing what arrangements would be in the best interests of the boys to talk extensively, about how the mother had betrayed him and the family by acting independently as soon as she began earning a significant income. The father insisted that the mother began neglecting him and the children, abandoning them and forming a new relationship, all in the interest of money. His bitterness was palpable, wrote the court. He accused her of stealing the wealth of the family away from him, in terms similar to those the children repeated to the mother and the two expert witnesses. He also questioned the mother’s willingness and even her intellectual capacity to recognize the needs of the children and make any changes necessary to meet them. After hearing all of the testimony and reviewing the reports of the experts, the court ruled that both children would reside with the target parent mother. The father’s access to each of the children was suspended.