Parental Alienation
How Ireland Tackled Parental Alienation and Exposed The “Rotten” Legal System to Save Children
If you fight long enough, you might just win
Parental alienation — the worst form of abuse that parents/grandparents and wider family can cause to their children. It is too common but rarely spoken about worldwide, but not in Ireland anymore.
Let me first summarize Parental Alienation:
- It’s when one parent uses a child as a weapon to punish the other parent, denying access rights and even “eliminating” the other parent from the child’s life.
The child is then manipulated into a “game” and says negative things about the other parent and extended family without any justifiable reason. This act is obviously very damaging for the long-term mental and emotional well-being of the child.
The courts, social workers, lawyers, and other bodies are used by an alienating parent to push the targeted parent away from the life of the child. And they get away with it because the legal bodies are simply uneducated in the matters of PA.
The Legal System and Courts
- Most judges are uneducated in Parental Alienation;
- Most judges are not even trained in Family Law but get “somehow ” appointed to cases that include Family Disputes;
- Most judges don’t listen to the Voice of the Child;
- Most judges don’t act in a Child’s Best Interests;
- There are constant adjournments of Family Law cases causing 3rd party alienation!
Court Orders
- Court orders can be ignored and broken without any consequences;
- False allegations are made against the targeted parent, without tangible proof;
- Are repeatedly breached;
- Are not even fully executed;
- There are no penalties imposed for perjury;
- There are horrendous delays in obtaining court orders.
For example, if a mental health professional opinion is needed it will take months for a hearing to take place, but it gets worse because many of these “professionals” are not trained in high conflict cases and they are biased.
The costs of making reports range anywhere between $4.000–$8.000, if the high conflict parent doesn’t want to have a professional then the other parent has to pay for it fully. Which leads the alienated parent into debts — while the children are suffering.
If the alienated parent seeks therapy for the child during court proceedings and the alienator refuses, again, nothing is done, the child is stuck in the warzone without having a specialist help them deal with the high-conflict parent and neverending court process.
Child Mental Health Services
These services should support and know how to deal with all mental health traumas such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, psychosis, PTSD, ADHD, ASD, and especially Parental Alienation. But they don’t, because they are:
- under-funded;
- under-resourced;
- understaffed,
- uneducated;
- and have huge delays with making reports!
To put it simply, worldwide, Parental Alienation is not recognized well enough!
People who’ve gone through this are the only ones that can “understand” what it entails.
And to be honest, not everyone wants it to be recognized. Dealing with Parental Alienation and implementing Early Intervention, would be costly for governments and would make lawyers lose their money — after all, many of them are enthusiastic when hearings get dragged out.
Mario Puzo’s take on lawyers is evergreen:
“A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”
But in Ireland, a group of alienated parents (both female and male) has pushed so hard to put these issues in front of the eyes of the government. They, the parents, had to educate lawyers, social workers, legal bodies, and the Minister for Justice how crucial it is to find ways to support children who are being alienated.
They’ve had to put out a petition for a new bill and show that they are better ways how to approach shared parenting and that not always the courts act in the best interest of the child — disrespecting their human rights to having two parents in their lives!
The estimated number of victims of parental alienation in Ireland alone is over 300,000. Parental alienation is an international disease, which is not spoken about enough and is not tackled worldwide properly because it doesn’t profit certain bodies.
But what happens to these children when they grow up?
They are damaged and soon enough we as a society will be facing an epidemic of traumatized, splintered, anxious, depressed, alienating, narcissistic adults.
Thankfully, the pleas of the parents have been heard by the Irish Minister of Justice Helen McEntee, and she has set out steps to raise awareness on parental alienation, arranging full research to be carried out that would be coming out this June.
She promises to:
- Identify the various definitions and characteristics of parental alienation being used internationally;
- Investigate what is known about the prevalence of this issue (in Ireland or internationally);
- Identify and outline the various approaches and responses being taken in other jurisdictions to deal with the issue of parental alienation;
She says will create a new dedicated Family Court within the existing court structure and provide for court procedures that support a faster and less adversarial resolution of disputes in specialized centers.
One of the areas being considered is additional PA training for those working within the family justice system that would benefit all those who engage with the system. A number of other issues that are being considered for inclusion in the Family Justice Strategy include the availability of and access to support services and information dissemination and awareness-raising…
What Hellen McEntee says sounds promising, hopefully, she will deliver.
But what can we learn from Ireland?
We can’t expect and rely on judges, lawyers, the legal system, government, social workers, therapists to help us in regards to our children.
If we want to be heard, we must knock, shout, pound on the door until it finally opens. It is us, alienated parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, step-parents, children that can bring this matter to the governing bodies. It’s up to us!
Let the Irish group of alienated parents be our inspiration. Don’t ever give up on your kids, and yourself! Every step, however small, is a step towards a better future for forthcoming generations.
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