Parental Alienation in U.S. Courts, 1985 to 2018

• Published date: 01 April 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12475
• Date: 01 April 2020
• Author: Demosthenes Lorandos

PARENTAL ALIENATION IN U.S. COURTS, 1985 TO 2018

Demosthenes Lorandos

Courts have been dealing with alienating behaviors in high conflict family litigation for hundreds of years. Experts in the

behavioral sciences have been writing about mothers and fathers manipulating their children to disparage the other parent for

more than seventy years. But in the last two decades some social scientists and legal professionals have questioned the legiti-

macy of parental alienation as a concept and its admissibility in child abuse and child custody litigation. This study was

designed to examine the extent to which courts in the United States have found the concept of parental alienation material,

probative, relevant and admissible. Thirty-four years of cases were found with a WESTLAW query and analyzed. Cases were

selected for study only if the record reflected that a judge or an independent expert found the concept of parental alienation

to be of value in the litigation. Results illustrate increasing awareness of the concept and document its admissibility in every

one of the United States. The numbers, sex of the alienating parent and prevalence of significant custody changes are dis-

cussed. Limitations inherent in this form of quantitative analysis are also discussed with recommendations for future

research.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Do courts admit expert testimony on parental alienation?

Do courts rely on expert testimony on parental alienation?

Are the numbers of parental alienation cases increasing?

What are the gender proportions of the alienating parents in appellate cour ts reports?

Do courts change custody when dealing with parental alienation?

What are the challenges in this kind of research?

Keywords: alienation; children; courts; custody; evidence; parent.

I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Two-hundred-and-fifteen years ago, the first recorded case resembling parental alienation

(PA) was fought out in the courts of England.

1

Over the last two centuries, English-speaking jurists

have grappled with parents kidnapping, brainwashing, manipulating and influencing their children

to reject the other parent in thousands of cases.

2

In dealing with the construct, innumerable courts

have addressed “alienation”

3

; hundreds of peer-reviewed research articles have been published con-

cerning it, using both qualitative and quantitative data

4

; scores of books legal and behavioral sci-

ences professionals discussing PA have also been published; numerous chapters in scholarly books,

lectures, and legal treatises on the subject have been produced;

5

many alienated parents and adult

survivors of alienation have also written first-hand accounts.

6

But a meme has developed that PA does not exist.

7

In contrast to scientific and legal literature

describing PA behaviors, there have been a number of published articles and book chapters doub-

ting the existence of the concept. Between 1994 and 2018, we find many Notes, bar journal and law

review articles, lectures, newspaper stories, and websites where law students, attorneys, ex-lawyers

and law professors critique the social science literature and research related to PA, while social

workers, psychologists and a nurse have focused on the law of evidence and PA. These critics have

left their fields of expertise, though in fairness th ere is a smaller literature where lawyers and legal

Corresponding: dr.lorandos@psychlaw.net

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 2, April 2020 322–339

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

scholars who have criticized judicial approaches to alienation, and mental health profession als have

raised concerns about social science research concerning alienation.

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENTAL ALIENATION IN THE

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Seventy-seven years ago, David M. Levy, a pioneer in child psychiatry who introduced the Ror-

schach test to the United States and coined the term “sibling rivalry”, wrote about cases where a

child developed a “derogatory attitude …towards the father, which was in several instances fostered

by the mother.”

8

His contemporaries also described attempts by one parent to psychologically sepa-

rate a child from the other parent. Wilhelm Reich described high conflict divorces in 1949 where

“[t]he true motive is revenge on the partner through robbing him or her of the pleasure in the child.

…In order to alienate the child from the partner, it is told that the partner is an alcoholic or psy-

chotic, without there being any truth to such statements.”

9

And in 1953, New York psychiatrist

Juliette Louise Despert wrote about “a sharp temptation for the parent who remains with the chil-

dren to break down their love for the one who has gone. …but it can do only hurt to the child.”

10

In the 1960’s, family systems pioneer, Murray Bowen, described parents “in an extreme over-

adequate position”who caused distance between the children and the other parent,

11

and by the end

of the decade, forensic psychiatrist Philip J. Resnick published about “parents who killed their off-

spring in a deliberate attempt to make their spouses suffer.”

12

Throughout the 1970s, behavioral scientists and others continued to describe various types of

manipulation. In 1970, Jack Westman and colleagues discussed cases where “one parent appears to

deliberately undermine the other through a child,”

13

and in 1974, structural family therapy origina-

tor Salvador Minuchin discussed parental conflicts in which “[o]ne of the parents joins the child in

a rigidly bounded cross-generational coalition against the other parent.”

14

Also in the mid-1970s,

psychiatrists Sheffner and Suarez wrote about a “woman who harbored much resentment”and

influenced her young children against her ex-husband, and offered that “[t]he children experienced

considerable anxiety when visiting their father and wanted to discontinue their relationship with

him altogether.”

15

In 1976, social worker Judith Wallerstein and psychologist Joan Kelly first identified one now

well-known factor of PA - that the child had not previously rejected the target parent.

16

They described aligned children who “formed a relationship with one parent following the sepa-

ration which was specifically aimed at the exclusion or active rejection of the other. The alignments

were usually initiated and always fueled by the embattled parent, most often by the parent who felt

aggrieved, deserted, exploited, or betrayed by the divorcing spouse.”

17

By 1978, child psychiatrist

Alan Levy introduced the term “brainwashed”to describe the phenomenon, when he wrote about

children who were pathologically unambivalent: “[T]heir statements seem well-rehearsed, almost

programmed; and the words they speak are stilted and inappropriate, often repeating the exact phra-

seology used by the preferred parent in meetings alone with the psychiatrist. They can be described

as having been brainwashed by that parent.”

18

One of the most eventful years in the development of PA was 1985, when sociologist Janet

Johnston and colleagues described children whose parents separated involved in strong parental alli-

ancesasmanifesting“a strong, consistent, overt (publicly stated) verbal and behavioral preference for

one parent together wit h rejection and denigra tion of the other.”

19

That same year, psychiatrists Elissa

Benedek and Diane Schetky wrote about hostile, vindictive parents who may pressure their children

to take sides, causing them “to feel guilty about visiting the other parent. In the extreme, this may lead

to brainwashing. [and]…Very young children …may be particularly susceptible to brainwashing and

come to believe that the horrible things one parent says about the other are true.”

20

This was also the year that child and adolescent psychiatrist Richard Gardner published his first

formulation of “parental alienation syndrome.”

21

In developing it, Gardner noted what he witnessed

as two distinct factors in the high conflict families in his practice: (1) the brainwashing phenomenon

Lorandos/PARENTAL ALIENATION 323