J Michael Bone, PhD

Upcoming Radio Program

2011-10-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

While still working out the logistical details (time, date, etc.) I wish to put out there my current thinking about the call-in program I hope to start within the month. First, I want it to be solution oriented. There are many phases in the parental alienation experience and each one has its own special challenges. What I envision is an examination of each of these phases, looking for examples of what a solution would like like for each of them.

For example, during the phase where a parent has no contact with a child for a period of time, what would a solution look like? My thinking is that, if all avenues of access to the child or children have been reasonable exhausted, a solution would be more focused on the internal landscape of dealing with this situation. A solution might entail an examination of strategies from the various tracks of psychology that provide specific exercises and things that can be done to maintain a healthy self in the face of this dilemma. Within this one example, there is a wealth of empirical data that supports the fact that one can actually do things that helps turn this experience into not only something that one can hopefully survive, but something that one can ultimately grow from. This is the kind of thing I think would be helpful. And I would hope and anticipate hearing from those in the audience who have successfully found their own methods of dealing with these challenges.

Other phases of the parental alienation experience likewise will have their solutions as well. For example, if one is in the process of preparing for a court hearing or trial, there are practical do's and don'ts that often only are seen when it is too late. Solutions in this phase may include very practical input about the hidden land mines and trip wires that are the stuff of the Family Court System. For example: when can a GAL be a good idea, and when can a GAL's appointment be a disaster? There is a reliable calculus to this and this information can be shared and discussed.

My plan is to have guests on the program that can likewise shed light into their understanding of such solutions. In all, I hope this program to be a clearinghouse and laboratory for the development and exploration of such helpful solution oriented information. Input is invited.

The Secret Rules of Family Court

2011-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Today I spoke with a parent who was following the direction of the court, and in so doing, contacted a Psychologist as directed. From the conversation that occurred between this parent and the Psychologist, it became fairly clear to me that the court had not been clear about the role that this Psychologist was supposed to play, that of evaluator or that of therapist. This is a very significant distinction in that the role of a therapist and the role of an evaluator are as different as night and day. It is surprising that very often, Family Law Judges are not aware of this distinction, and therefore issue unclear and ambiguous orders. The significance of this is that if she, in fact, was to contact this Psychologist to act as an evaluator, she herself should not have contacted him, but her lawyer should have. Her contacting him, assuming he was to act as an evaluator, would have tainted his objectivity to the degree that he probably would have declined to take the job as evaluator. The problem is nobody tells you these rules before you enter into these actions. The fact of the matter is that many otherwise well qualified attorneys and judges do not really understand this. I know that this must sound ridiculous, however I suspect many who may read this post can describe the price they ended up paying for not knowing any better

In Family Law there are many rules that are never described. Most often, parents learn of them after they inadvertently break them, honestly not knowing any better. In the adversarial environment of the the court, the hapless parent in the hypothetical example described above, could have been portrayed by the other side as perhaps sabotaging the whole process and the court's wishes, which was never the case at all. I would have difficulty counting the number of times I have heard the comment that "if I only understood then, what I now have learned now, none of this would have happened."

Working with Attorneys

2011-09-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

A recurring issue that I see repeatedly is that of working in concert with Family attorneys. Like most professionals, attorneys are habituated in how they approach a family law dissolution case, just as a physician approaches a medical problem with an analogous strategy. We humans are all creatures of habit and it shows in our work; even psychologists are this way am told. The interesting thing about family law cases with parental alienation present is that many of those habituated responses will not likely be successful. This is because the elephant in the middle of the room is the overall theme of false allegations of poor parenting, abuse, neglect, and everything in between. These cases must be approached differently and this theme must be exposed early on.

In my consultative role, I have had the opportunity to work with literally hundreds of family lawyers over the years. Many are not initially too certain about my role as a consultant, some are immediately openly inviting and some are skeptical and even a bit put out by another pair of eyes looking in on their work. So what I try to do is to show that I can be a powerful resource for them that can make their job easier and increase the likelihood of success in these difficult cases. What I have found generally is that even the initially skeptical attorney can be brought around to see how I can be of help. As with all things human it is about the relationship that develops in working together.

New Book Announcement

2011-09-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased and excited to announce the publication of a book co-authored by myself and my friend and colleague, Robert Evans, PhD. This book, The Essentials of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): Its Real, It’s Here and It Hurts, is derived from a continuing legal education course that Bob and I created about four years ago. The purpose of the course was to educate family lawyers about the phenomenon of parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome as well as how to best litigate this problem in family court. The course was well received and I believe that we were successful in giving these family lawyers what was essentially a “crash course” in the problem of parental alienation. Since the audience was exclusively attorneys, our focus was very practical and explanatory.

We did not spend too much time on theory or history so much as we did on the “how too’s” of dealing with this problem in the adversarial family court system. We spent a fair amount of time on the issue of dealing with false allegations of abuse, as this is one of the most vexing and challenging that attorney’s must deal with. We spent a good amount of time addressing the fact that the family court system must contain a bias to protect the children that it is asked to oversee. We explained the fact that it is precisely this bias to protect children that is exploited not only by the alienating parent and his or her counsel, but potentially the entire adversarial system of family law. There was significant interest is how to overcome this, and I believe that we did a good job on how to do that, as just one example.

Several months ago Bob Evans realized that this very practical, hands on course, has a wider audience than just the attorney’s in our original audience, and I believe that he was right. So he set about transcribing the course and then editing it so as to be suitable for a book. The result is The Essentials of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): Its Real, It’s Here and It Hurts. We believe that this little book contains what are truly the essentials of dealing with this problem not only in the court, but outside of the court system as well.

We hope that you find it to be of assistance, and we always appreciate any feedback that you might have.

Tragedy in Norway and Parental Alienation

2011-07-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, a 32 year old Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik blew up a government building, killing an uncertain number of people and then went on a shooting spree at a youth retreat, killing even more. The death toll is estimated to 76 at this point. His reason? He was trying to save Norway from Islam. While his acts are obviously heinous and horrible, and the work of a madman, we find that he does not look mad or crazy at all. He is calm, articulate and pleasant looking. He claims that he is guilty of no crime and that his actions are if anything, heroic. This how could this be possible? How is it possible that anyone but a psychotic could do such things?

At this point, you may well be asking, what does this have to do with parental alienation? Unfortunately, much more than you might expect. I believe that the simple answer is this: when motivated by hatred and fear of “the other” from whom they have been separated, unspeakable acts can and do occur, be they in a family context or in the context of politics. In the case of alienated children, they are taught to hate the targeted parent, and this hatred covers over a fear of displeasing the alienating parent. In this young man’s case, he had developed a hatred of the growing Muslim population in Norway, and had been taught to fear its continued growth. Just as alienated children often carry a sense of power, entitlement and a responsibility to protect, this young man seemed to feel a sense of obligation to obliterate what he came to believe was the growing Muslim threat in Norway.

Before appearing before a judge, he asked for trial to be public and even televised, so that he could educate the Norse population and indeed the world of his sense of what he saw as the horrors of the growing Muslim population. He also asked to be able to wear some sort of uniform during court proceedings, in the hopes of suggesting that he was acting in some heroic manner. Both requests were denied by the court. When we look into this young man’s background, we find that he had become more of a loner in the last three years. We learn that his isolation was hastened by his sister’s departure to the United States, when she married an American, and that his spare time became more occupied with internet games, blogging and the creation of a rambling manifesto reminiscent of that of Ted Kysgenski, whom he quoted directly. In other words, his spare time was spent alone in a room with a computer, through which he interacted with other strangers whom he would never actually meet. In this soup of isolation and social distortion, grew a sense of empowerment, hubris, and misinformed heroic obligation.

When children become parentally alienated, they are likewise isolated not only from the targeted parent, but also from adverse opinion as well as even interaction with those with whom may disagree. This sense of isolation and uniformity of perception is likewise intensified and cooked down into a powerful stew that overwhelms all other points of view. It turns out that Anders Behring Breivik parents had divorced when he was young, and that he had no relationship with his father for years. The New York Times described their relationship as being “estranged”. His father had since moved to France. While we cannot know this, it may be speculated that this man might himself be a product of alienation. If this was and is the case, it might be said that a template of isolation, hatred, judgment and cruelty, may have been formed many years earlier, and that it might have invited what later developed in this man’s mind.

As I review more and more cases where parental alienation is present, I see the same patterns. I see isolation from the targeted parent. I see this isolation as a fertile ground for the breeding of harsh judgment and intolerance. I see children claiming to be afraid but acting angry instead. This recipe of judgment, intolerance, distortion and exclusion is the breeding ground of the greatest horrors that we humans have ever created. On the large political and historical stage, examples include Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge, and Jim Jones. The list goes on. However on the more subtle and quiet home front, these same qualities may be seen in the parental alienation of children.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

As the holidays fast approach, many of you who subscribe to this page and related sites, will not see your children this season. Those of you who do, may only see them briefly or perhaps under awkward circumstances. Those remaining who, to the untrained eye, may appear to enjoy more normal contact with your once alienated children, may see signs of the trauma and distortion of thinking that often remains the artifact of parental alienation. Finally, there are probably some of you who have watched your children go through all of these phases, and somehow come out the other end, effected in ways but no longer damaged.

The message I wish to convey is that regardless of where you and your children are in this progression, it is a progression. It is always moving and changing, even in spite of appearances to the contrary. With movement there is life and there is hope.

Happy Holidays!

Lawyers and Parental Alienation

2010-11-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

The more I have learned about the law and its practice within the Family Court setting, the more I am struck by how most (not all) Family Lawyers can be found in two groups. The first group are the lawyers who obviously did well in law school, clearly know the law, and understand the rules and their application. These lawyers are the ones who are most often flabbergasted by how the practice of Family Law is littered with violations of the rules and even statutes. It is like this group of lawyers are offended by the violations of the sacred rules, but have difficulty getting past that, saying often, "that was not supposed to happen," and then leaving the courthouse in disgust.

The second group of lawyers are composed of those who probably took the Bar Exam more than once, did not finish at the top of their classes and probably utilized all of the study guide short cuts (legal and illegal) available to them. These lawyers are not so troubled by the Rules of Evidence and Procedural Law, and are very comfortable in their abasement. These lawyers see such rules more as guidelines than rules and act accordingly. These lawyers will draft Motions and Pleading that do not follow the proper formulas, and lean instead towards hyperbole and accusations about the other party, albeit without any factual basis. This does not seem to trouble them either. This second group of lawyers can be a serious problem in cases where Parental Alienation are present. These lawyers will violate their ethical code as officers of the court and allege incidents that they know did not occur. They will lie freely and without compunction. I believe that they got this way because they get away with it more often than not. While these lawyers are devoid of ethical foundation, they are sometimes very good story tellers. Within the context of Family Court, this storytelling skill is very important and can create great difficulty when used improperly.

The rare find is the lawyer who belongs to the first group, but who also understands that the other side will violate every rule imaginable if allowed. These lawyers see it as being part of their job to prevent the other lawyer as well as the Judge from violating the Rules and the Law. These lawyers will take on the other lawyer in terms of their improper conduct as well as will then take on a Judge who is not doing their job. These lawyers understand that part of their role is to be a watchdog, keeping an eye on both the other lawyer as well as the Judge. They are willing to be perceived and difficult in order to represent their client's interest In the social reality of the Family Court culture, this is however, the rare lawyer. The other quality that they have they share with their more lazy and slovenly colleagues in the second group. That is, they are good at telling succinct stories, quickly and with conviction. These lawyers realize that their job is to get the Judge to identify with their client's situation. These lawyers realize that it is their job to get the Judge to feel what it feels like to be falsely accused and have your children taken from you. Finally, these lawyers prepare and give great thought to their presentations. They work at length with their clients and witnesses regarding their testimony and think about such things as the order of testimony and the unfolding of the story.

So here is is. These are the ingredients of the lawyer you are looking for:
1. The lawyer must know the law and the rules and be willing to fight for their enforcement.
2. They prepare excessively, and include the client in all of this preparation.
3. Finally, they are good story tellers, and they understand the importance of the story.

Good Luck!

Parenting with Parental Alienation

2010-10-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

Parenting, when Parental Alienation is present, requires super-human strengths and the patience of Job. Parenting under the best of circumstances, is challenging. It creates the greatest joys of life as well as its deepest agonies. It is, to say the least, challenging. When you add Parental Alienation into the mix, the word “challenging” becomes pale and weak.

When children are in the midst of an alienating environment, they must somehow stay in the good graces of the alienating parent and still survive being in the middle. The result is behavior that becomes distorted, bizarre, angry, depressive, defiant and even threatening. Under these circumstances, effective parenting is more than challenging. It becomes almost super-human.

This three part Course, Parenting with Parental Alienation, addresses these specific challenges with specific tools and strategies.
• The first course,an Overview provides a roadmap or a template to understand the “whys and wherefores” of parenting.
• The second course, Dealing with Difficult Behavior is, as the title suggests, focuses on absorbing and deflecting the behavioral challenges of the alienated child.
• The third segment, Teaching Your Children to Think for Themselves, focuses on helping the alienated child begin to separate from their enmeshed parent, and to see themselves as being a separate and independent person.

These three, one hour audio courses are only the beginning of much more in the way of evidence based strategies that work.

I hope that you find these courses to be of help. As always, I invite feedback and suggestion.

Sincerely,

J Michael Bone, PhD

Being a War Veteran Does Not Make You an Expert on War

2010-09-27T13:22:00.001-07:00

Let me say that again. Being a veteran of a war does not make one an expert on war. By that I mean this. The war veteran is an absolute expert on his or her experience with the war in which they found themselves, but this experience alone does not equip them to teach at, say The War College. Likewise, ones personal experience with parental alienation, as tragic as it may legitimately be does not - by virtue of that personal experience alone - qualify one to serve in an expert capacity for other peoples cases. Expertise to do this should be grounded in a combination of deep academic experience, research experience, clinical experience "in the trenches" as they say, with many many families in a variety of circumstances, as well as with professional experience in a more general sense in order to place all of these specific experiences in a broader context.

But, you say, what about all of the support groups, websites, etc offering support and advice? Are they not legitimate? Of course they are, and I applaud the wonderful work and support that they provide, and this is not what I am referring to at all. I am a supporter of a great many of them, and hold them in the highest regard. They are wonderful sources of education and validation of the experience of alienation, and enough cannot be said about how profoundly valuable these efforts are. The distinction I wish to make is the distinction between support and education, and the giving of specific strategic advice - which is based in mental health or legalistic principles - to individuals in their cases, and doing so for a fee.

I hear stories from time to time that make me cringe as I hear of the specific advice that has been handed out to a client under these circumstances that was obviously based more on that advisor's own personal experience with parental alienation, than it is based on the facts and factors of the client's specific case. It is important to understand that, while the phenomenon of parental alienation is indeed very patterned, that it also is individually nuanced. One size does not fit all. The best advice I can give is to kick the tires of any potential advisor. Find out about the depth of their academic background, the depth of their experience in dealing with parental alienation, as well as the depth of their experience in dealing with families where parental alienation is not present. Both categories should be significant. Find out about the number of cases in which they have been involved and ask for references. In my experience, parents who have experienced parental alienation are very often inspired to help others and will not be put off by being listed as a reference. Finally, find out how versed they are in the legal system, assuming they are not a lawyer. If their advice comes from more of a mental health perspective, find out what expertise, training and background they have in the mental health field, both related to parental alienation and not related to parental alienation.

None of the questions suggested here should put off anyone you are considering becoming involved in your case. They are reasonable and completely justifiable, and should not ruffle feathers. If feathers do get ruffled however, perhaps the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. Take care.

Persuasive Rhetoric: The Tool of Choice for the Alienating Parent

2010-07-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Persuasive Rhetoric refers to using language in an emotionally laden manner with the purpose of convincing the audience of some particular perspective. Persuasive Rhetoric is a tool for selling ideas, beliefs and positions on a given topic or subject. It is unrelated to truth. It only refers to the spin, the story and the goal of winning over the audience. Nothing in the message requires truth.

In the case of Parental Alienation, this concept is useful in that it describes a favorite modus operandi that the alienating parent uses to vilify the targeted parent. In this context, the alienating parent will allege something either entirely untrue or grossly distorted regarding the targeted parent. It is done with such emotion and tenacity, that the audience is typically drawn into its message. Then the alienating parent does the same thing with another listener. Now there is a group of three who all believe the same either untrue or grossly distorted thing. There are now three voices in this chorus, and the intensity level tends to increase with the volume and the numbers of those involved. Then someone in this group of three relates this to another person, who questions it but is told that several other people told them the same thing, so it must be true. This new "convert" to the distortion then unwittingly spreads the distortion to someone else, and to someone else, and to someone else.

Rightly or wrongly, we humans do tend to be herd animals. Due to our wiring and our evolution, when the herd is exposed to some message that is potentially dangerous or at least negative, we do tend to give it extra weight, and then pass it on. This is a self protective reflex that is easily exploited by the alienating parent in their mission to obliterate the targeted parent.

Socrates, the story goes, is approached by a man who wants to tell him some urgent news. Before he does this, Socrates stops him and says he would first like to ask him three questions before he tells his story. The man agrees. The first question is, "do you know the person to whom this news occurred?" Answer: "No, but I know someone who does know them. " Question two: "did you witness the event yourself?" Answer: "No, but I spoke to someone who was there." Question Three: " Is the news good or bad?" Answer: "It would be considered bad news." Socrates reviews accordingly, "You do not know the person to whom this happened, you only heard about it from someone who says they were there, and it is bad news. Thank you, but I think I would rather not listen to this news."

Dealing with Worry and Danger

2010-06-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why it is that after you tell yourself not to worry about something, or not to think of something that is painful, that you still find yourself worrying, and still find yourself thinking about the negative thing that you have no control over? Ninety-nine percent of the population will identify with this question and this experience. It is normal. Now insert the reality of an alienated child and a former spouse who places this child in the middle, and it is easy to see how this very human proclivity to worry and perhaps even dwell at times on the negatives of life, hits warp speed with the realities of loosing a child to parental alienation. It is like the realities of parental alienation takes this otherwise normal human foible, and blows it up into becoming the theme of one's life.

There are very sound reasons to explain why we are vulnerable to worry and may tend to even focus more on the negative than the positive. The reasons have to do with how we are hard wired, that is, how our brains are wired and how they have evolved over the centuries. We do have certain hard wired biases that have helped us to survive but also have created this vulnerability to be on the lookout for the negative. Add to that the unprecedented explosion of information technology within only the last generation, and it becomes easy to see how this informational excess, layered on top of this neurologically grounded vigilance, further drives us to warp speed, just trying to keep up. Again, then insert the alienated child into this maelstrom, with the themes of being falsely accused of things you never did, nor would ever do, and being treated as a criminal by relative strangers who perhaps used to be friends, and it is all the easier to see how being a targeted parent is such a challenge.

One good thing about we humans is, however that we are very adaptable. Human beings are about the only creatures (other than perhaps cockroaches I am told) who have successfully adapted to virtually all climates and environments known to this planet. Not only have we adapted, but even in the harshest environments, we call these extreme places home. We are very adaptable indeed. Likewise, I believe that parents who identify with the label of "targeted parent" of the parental alienation variety, can also learn to respond to the cruelties of parental alienation in ways that bring light back into their own lives, and that increase the chances of reconnection.

More to come.

Resiliency and the Targeted Parent

2010-06-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

In my recent presentation at the PAS (SAP in spanish) in Spain, I began sketching out the foundation of what I believe will be a very helpful set of coping strategies designed specifically for for targeted parents. Targeted parents, after all, live in perpetual states of reactiveness. The Targeted Parent is chronically left to respond to attacks, accusations, provocations and various slanders of all descriptions by various accusers. This enormously difficult psychological environment is a recipe for the development of either acting out behaviors and/or depression. In the psychological literature we refer to this as an "external locus of control" whereby the individual is left to simply react to whatever may be the next incoming volly of accusations. I remarked in an earlier blog that it is much easier to throw missles than to catch them, and the Targeted Parent is in the perpetual position to be always having to catch them. At least this is what it feels like, and this is what an "external locus of control" feels like. In past studies focused on this perspective, what was found to have happened to these individuals who were depressed and whose sense of control was external to them, was that when their depressive symptoms had abated, what had actually happened was that their perceived locus of control had become internalized. Their "locus of control" had moved from being external to being internal. In other words, they had found ways to refocus their sense of control and attention to things that were within their control. In cases of prisioners of war, we find that the most resilient prisioners were also able to accomplish this. The classic movie The Great Escape provides repetitive examples of this. The character played by Steve McQueen survives unbelievable periods of isolation in the Cooler by throwing a baseball in a repetitive manner, obviously taking him to a different experiential place. When Ruben Carter, the former prizefighter was falsely imprisoned for murder, he chose to be awake at night and sleep during the day, symbolizing not only his protest but also his refusal to be in that place. What these resilient examples reveal is the importance of finding avenues of control, often in very creative ways, that then protects one from giving in to the depths of depression or to the depravity of violence. This is no small feat. Like many things in life, it is simple, but not easy.

The compilation of strategies which I am compiling are not exotic or particularly secret, but when placed within an understanding of their power, they can be just that, quite powerful. Therefore, rather than just providing a list of these Intentional Behaviors, I think it is vital to set the stage, so to speak, so as to make it clear and indelible why they are so important. Therefore, the first part of this newly developed course is devoted to just that. I will address why, as humans, we have become so vulnerable to the things that Targeted Parents live on a daily basis. This vulnerability can be traced down to the brain and its structure and development. It is literally in our DNA. That said, we still have the power to overcome this bias with the right tools.

PAS Congress in Spain

2010-06-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

I have just finished my involvement with the Second International Congress on Parental Alienation Syndrome (SAP in Spanish) in Alcala de Henares, just outside of Madrid. I spoke at the conference as did Jayne Major, as did the imminent German Psychiatrist Wilfred Von Boch-Galhau. Also present as a presenter was well known Spanish Psychiatrist, Jose Miguel Gaona. There were also many prominent Spanish psychologists such as Jose Manuel Aguilar Cuenca and Asuncion Tejedor Huerta, and just about every other Spanish authority on the alienation of children. Also in attendance were two very supportive Judges, the national President of the Spanish Family lawyers, as well as investigators, attorneys, psychologists, and parents. The meeting was organized by Juan Carlos Presa Periera, who is the President of the Association for the Rights of Children. While I have attended many such meetings, I do not believe that I have attended any where the level of enthusiasm and commitment to improve the situation of children caught in the middle, leading often to their alienation, was so great.

As I became more familiar with the issues in Spain, I was astounded to learn that a situation exists in Spain where fathers are in great jeopardy not only of loosing their children, should they divorce, but are also in jeopardy of loosing their freedom. Currently in Spain, under the authority of the Ministry of Equality, any woman or child who accuses the husband/father of abusing them, I any way, ranging from name calling to physical abuse to sexual assault, will result in the automatic and immediate arrest of the accused man, with absolutely no proof being necessary. Consequently, it is common in contested divorce situations for a father to arrive at the home of the mother to pick up the child for visitation, to be met by a law enforcement officer, due to the mother having called in some false accusation of abuse. Under the current law, the officer has no choice but to arrest the accused father. I was told that it was common for fathers to go to pick up their children, with a packed bag so as to accommodate the weekend stay in jail. This is no joke! This is really happening. I know that this sounds suspect. I wondered about this too. However, the more I looked into it the more I found it to be true. During the weekend of this meeting a man who had been held in jail for 14 months was finally released after it was determined that there was absolutely no evidence for the crime that he was jailed for. His former wife had made a claim of his having assaulted her, and he was arrested. Period. In the 14 months he was false incarcerated he lost his job and his home.

Perhaps it should not be a surprise that there has been an increase in suicide amongst this population of men, which there has. Imagine being accused of doing something which you did not do, being arrested for it, being forced to leave your house, which you must still pay for, and then loosing your access to your child. As if this is not enough, if you stay in jail long enough, you probably will lose your job. It is not difficult to imagine that this set of circumstances could not cause one to loose all hope.

I plan to look more into this situation. From what I see now, I believe that this deserves international attention.

Criticisms of Parental Alienation Exposed

2010-03-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

Recently, there has been a increase in negative and unfounded criticisms of parental alienation. In these criticisms, parental alienation is typically referred to as being "junk science" or as a shield for abusers of their own children. Neither is accurate nor founded on any responsible scientific principal.

The scientific basis for parental alienation is wide and deep. The phenomenon of one parent influencing the child against the other parent is familiar to all involved in the field of psychology as well as in Family Law. To argue that this is without foundation is preposterous. In fact virtually all states have statutory language that identifies the negative influences of one parent onto the child regarding the other parent (parental alienation) as a reason to favor the targeted parent in consideration for custody. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of peer reviewed articles that are premised on the phenomenon of parental alienation. Additionally, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) has devoted its entire annual meeting specifically to parental alienation.

Secondly, it is well established in the literature that if real abuse is present on the part of the unfavored parent, that parental alienation cannot be diagnosed. Period. There is no debate about this.

it is difficult for me to grasp where this unfounded criticism is coming from and why. It is like arguing that the earth is flat.

Proving Parental Alienation

2010-03-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

I frequently get the question, "How do you prove parental alienation in Court?" My response is that, luckily, you do not have to prove it, you just have to get the Judge to believe that it is present. By this, I do not mean that your job is to falsely convince the Judge of anything, but that absolute proof of such a thing is not necessary. There are many a judge who "get it" based on how the case is presented and how the various players impact the judge. If the combination is right, the Judge will most likely "get" that parental alienation is present and hopefully will rule accordingly. Given the special circumstances of Family Court, the Judge has immense discretion in his or her ruling, so getting the Judge to believe vs having to prove is less difficult. That said, it is no easy matter.

I often receive email requests asking for the name of an expert in a given area. I typically respond that an expert is only part of the presentation - an important one - but only part. What is needed is a carefully and thoroughly planned strategy wherein the expert is a portion of the plan, who typically ties up the loose ends of the testimony and gives specific meaning to what the fact witnesses have described; but it is not the end all and be all. I have seen too many disasters where this reality was not adequately recognized.

In my effort to educate parents to these difficult lessons and issues, I have created a course on Family Court that I believe is filled with helpful information. To access that, just CLICK HERE. I believe that this information can be crucial to your outcome.

Again, my mission is to get this sort of information to you before you learn it the hard way. I hope that this is helpful.

Education, Education and Education

2010-03-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

As you may already know, a big focus of my work within the last few years has been that of education. I have found that most parents learn of the minefields and trip wires of parental alienation only after they have been stumbled upon and have exploded. For example, an "explosion" might be when a parent learns that the truth will not automatically "come out" in their case, and that how it is presented is critically important. An explosion may be when a parent learns that the court's schedule is treated with more importance than the case it is supposed to hear. Another such explosion may be when a parent learns that it does not really matter if the false allegation about them is never proven, but that the Judge only has to believe it, in order to prevent them from seeing their children. These explosions, or miscarriages are typically met with a sense of shock and surprise, even from your own lawyer, because it is not "supposed" to work that way. But as any "seasoned" targeted parent will tell you, these explosions are more often the rule than the exception in cases where parental alienation is present. But again, these horrible lessons are typically learned only after the damage is done.

I want to change that. My goal is to educate those parents who find themselves in these situations by giving them specific tools and ways of thinking about the "system" that forearms them, and gives them them a far better chance of hatching a more reasonable and happy outcome for themselves and their family. It is within this spirit that I wish to draw attention to the various audio courses and informational papers found on my associated website, www.jmichaelbone.com. Click here While a good amount of this information is offered without charge, some items are for purchase. The courses and papers for purchase have been specifically created with the above goals in mind, such that the only way that I can devote the time necessary for their creation is to charge for them.

Finally, as with any information that is found on my website or its related links, I earnestly invite your feedback and suggestions. It is only through your experience - tragic as it may be at times - that any of this has any meaning at all.

Thank You,

J Michael Bone, PhD

Dealing with Alienation and Keeping your Sanity

2010-02-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the waiting room of my doctor's office reading an article is some magazine that I normally would not have been reading. An article caught my eye in which the author was making the observation that the half dozen men he was writing about in the article - all very successful - shared one common characteristic: none were cynical. Being an occasional cynic myself, this troubled me. Then I began to think of all of the Parental Alienated parents with whom I have known for all of these years, and it occurred to me that those who somehow found success in the mine field of parental alienation in fact did not appear to be cynical. Maybe this guy was right. Then I thought about how difficult it would be to not become cynical after being told that you are hated by your children, that you must pay for all sorts of services that never seem to make things better, and that the people who are charged with finding the truth and acting in the best interest of (your) children do not really seem to be acting that way at all.

Related to this, I recently spoke with a father who had clearly been the target of parental alienation. He had three children, all of whom have become alienated from the mild to the moderate to the severe levels. His eyes were wide open to the fact that those appointed by the court seemed to get what was going on, but would not step up and do what was necessary to fix it. He approached this like a problem to be solved more than the overwhelming and even hopeless tidal wave that it can so easily and often feel like. He somehow never became cynical about it. At any rate, when I spoke with him on the phone I asked him how things were going, and he replied that it was both good and bad. He had good days with his kids and bad days with them. As an example, he pointed out that as I was speaking with him at that moment that he was standing in a lift line with his children and that they were skiing. By contrast, he pointed out that one of these same children had called the police on him the week before. He said that, "its good today," so I am thankful of that. He added, "last week was last week'" and laughed.

I had an anthropology professor in graduate school who had lived for many years with pre-literate peoples, in New Guinea as well as in the Arctic. In both of these cultures, life was very tough and tragedy was potentially close at hand at any moment. One of the things this professor would lecture and write about was the remarkable world view and philosophy of these people in these very difficult situations. They knew from their earliest moments that life was not fair and that bad things very often do happen to good people, and that this is just the way it was. I am not sure why that seems significant here, but it does. I guess cynicism results from feeling victimized. From what I recall from my professor, these primitive peoples who lived in these harsh and difficult environments never seemed to feel that way. It is just the way that life worked...they would say.

Reaction to Jenny Sanford's book and interview

2010-02-12T05:10:00.000-08:00

I am curious to see if my reaction to what I recently heard on the radio is just me. I was driving home the other night and was listening to NPR in the car. Jenny Sanford, the soon to be former wife of the South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford was being interviewed about her new book. It is an autobiographical account of her husbands failure of judgment when he had an affair with a woman from Argentina and secretly left his watch as Governor and went to Argentina to see her. I had read about all of this in the newspapers and recall shaking my head when I read it then. What I heard on the radio interview with Jenny Sanford was her description of how she handled this when she found out about it. It turns out that the Sanfords have four sons. Upon realizing what her husband had done, she assembled the four boys and told them about their father's affair and his related lies. From her description, as she read the passage from the book, she essentially presented it to them as their father's affair being not only a betrayal of her as their mother but also a betrayal of them as his sons.

My reaction was twofold. First, I would strongly suspect that the way that this information was presented to the four sons would have a significantly alienating effect on them and create an environment in which their not feeling personally betrayed by their father's actions, would be a betrayal of their mother. I then thought about how this message essentially conveyed to them that their father's actions - as regrettable and terrible as it was - would be internalized by them as evidence of their father not loving them. Regardless if this is true or not, I was thinking about this not being a helpful message to be sending to these boys: that they were not loved by their father. I believe that Jenny Sanford believed this to be the case, but why would she want her boys to believe this? Would it not be better for them to believe that their father had a horrible failure of judgment, and that in spite of this tragic error - which it clearly was - their father still loved them?

What do you think?

Success in Court

2010-01-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

I regularly receive requests for help from parents who find themselves in the throes of parental alienation. Very often, the parent calling will have educated themselves to some degree about the phenomenon, and then call me with a specific request for something that they feel will help their situation. I recently got a call from a father who wanted me to review some documents and then write an affidavit which he could submit to the court as evidence that these documents revealed parental alienation. While his thinking was accurate about realizing the importance of having the court understand what had happened to his children, his method of educating the court, an affidavit from me about parental alienation in his case, would have been unsuccessful had I agreed to provide this service. I pointed out to him that when a child has become alienated to the degree that they say that they never want to see that parent again, a powerful case strategy is what is needed, and an affidavit by myself or anyone else would simply not work.

I believe that it is important to understand that when a child becomes severely alienated, the Court becomes automatically biased in favor of the child’s position, even if the Judge believes that the child got that way due to the influences of the other parent. The statistics on this are very clear. In other words, it is a significant task to get a Judge to recommend a solution over the protest of the alienated child. In my experience, Judges only do this when they have been shown enough argument that forces them to see the peril that exists for the alienated child to be left with the alienator. What this represents essentially is a “two against one” phenomenon where the child and the alienating parent are saying one thing and the other parent is saying something else. Therefore, when this is the case, the targeted parent is well advised to put together an overwhelming argument about why this child should not be given what they say that they want. So…in the above example, what this father really needed was a comprehensive plan to create this overwhelming argument. It might go something like this: first, an analysis of the judges biases and proclivities regarding parental alienation, the use of psychological experts and personal history should be undertaken. Next, an appropriate expert conforming to these biases would be researched and found. Next, the attorney for the targeted parent would craft direct and re-direct questions to the expert which would be developed in a hypothetical manner that allowed the court to understand how alienation had worked its way into this family’s life. This hypothetical testimony would be structured to echo the fact witness testimony from witnesses that describe specific incidents that show alienation. These steps are only the beginning.

While all parental alienation cases are different, one thing that they have in common is the challenge of making it clear to the Judge why the child should not be left in the situation that they claim they want to be in. Successful results are virtually always premised by the creation of a well thought out, well prepared case that addresses the problems in the case and systematically creates counter-measures for their solution. These cases are simply not won by the “seat of ones pants.” They are the result of careful and painstaking planning and preparation.

Taking Action and Never Giving Up

2010-01-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

I met with a dad recently who is sadly representative of so many mom’s and dad’s who are: (1) being falsely accused of doing things that they have never done, (2) of having scary qualities that they never have had and somehow of (3) posing a danger to the child that they have been moving heaven and earth to somehow see. This familiar and tragic situation can easily overwhelm the strongest parent, yet I continue to notice how few actually give up and walk away. In this dad, I saw the same thing that I have seen so many times: a parent desperately searching for actions, or things to do that will combat and overcome the campaign of vilification that is being waged against them in an effort to poison and remove their children from them. This might be the most important message of his story, the refusal to give up and become inert and defeated. The actions that represent this refusal to give up can take many forms and new ones are explored constantly. I recently heard of a dad who planted a tree in honor of his absent and alienated son. The tree became a symbol of his commitment and love and this father’s care of it kept him sane I think. I heard of a mom who began rescuing the breed of dog that her absent and alienated son had always wanted. Her commitment to this love of his kept her connected to him and moving forward. I heard of a dad who began a website devoted not just to his absent and alienated children, but also served as a touchstone and message center for other alienated children providing them a place to reach out anonymously to other like children and even to their missing parent. I hear many stories of parents who start support groups, chat groups and discussion groups.

I guess that the point is that one must have an action plan in order to be successful. Sometimes the plan may be directly related to the court case, or to the therapy or to the evaluation, but other times the action is more personal and indirectly related but still a part of the refusal to give up. I routinely marvel at the creative actions that parents can do in these circumstances.

Holidays for the Targeted Parent

2009-12-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

Each year about this time I have every intention of creating some sort of conversation, or an audio course, or something that addresses the uniquely piercing experience of the Targeted Parent during these holiday times. While, as you look around your world, it may seem like the neighbors and most strangers are having a very different holiday experience than you are, I would offer you this. If we have learned anything from the growing research regarding the alienated child's inner experience, we have learned that the surface behavior of the child is only part of the story. Granted, it is a big and often loud part, but it does not overtake the entirety of the child's experience. We have learned that, even when there is no outer splinter of evidence of the child still being connected to the targeted parent, we now know more clearly than ever that it is most likely still there, albeit silent and mute. Therefore, even in the absence of all evidence to the contrary, the deeper reality is f that the powerful connections of early childhood are still there.

Therefore, if I can offer anything during these holiday times it would be to suggest that this quiet but clear reality be focused upon. I would ask that you try to locate this and try to take refuge in it.

Pressure on the Courts for Enforcement

2009-12-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

I received a note from a fellow professional who works with parental alienation cases. I have cleansed it of any identity clues and have cut and pasted it below. It follows:

I just received a desperate email from a parent who has been enduring outrageous behavior from their alienated children. These children are obviously acting out a mission on behalf of the other parent. In this case, this is transparently clear. The court had even warned that both parents must cooperate. The court had issued this "warning" before, however with no action. This case had a Parenting Coordinator, Evaluators and virtually all of the tools at the Court's disposal, and all basically agreed that one parent was orchestrating the alienation. There was not much debate. However, even with all of this unusual clarity, little - no nothing - had been done to hold this alienating parent accountable.

If there is a single failure (of all of the many minor ones) that is most tragic, it is the failure of the Family Court to act decisively and with the courage and integrity that was intended to have. The Family Court System has so very much to explain regarding its failure of doing what is best for the children it is charged to protect. We must make it our business to make it clear that the lazy and toothless responses that it so favors, will cannot be accepted.

This person goes on to advance various political suggestions which I did not include. I would however ask for responses from those who agree or disagree.

Thank You.

The Problem of Custody Evaluations

2009-12-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

I got an email yesterday from a dad who underwent a custody evaluation that basically “got it all wrong.” The evaluator apparently believed the untrue things said about this dad, and it sounded like the evaluator did not even investigate the veracity of the claims against the father.

I get about two to three of these kinds of emails each week. They always describe a custody evaluation that got it wrong, was not properly investigated, but was nonetheless accepted uncritically as “the truth” by the court. Most of the victims of this - could be mothers or could be fathers - do not understand why all of this went so wrong. When I have talked to these parents I mostly hear that they were either given no preparation or advice about how to approach being evaluated; or I hear that they were given very bad advice that actually harmed them.

On a personal note, and as a former evaluator, I can readily say that I am routinely frustrated and even sickened by the systemic injustices that are committed under the banner of “psychological objectivity” in the performance of many custody evaluations. The fact of the matter is that custody evaluations are notorious for getting it wrong about as frequently as getting it right.

In response to this, I am preparing a document that basically tells you what you need to know about sitting through a custody evaluation when parental alienation is involved. It provides you with the tools to maximize your chance of being accurately heard by the evaluator.

In addition to this document, I am in the process of creating a much more detailed discussion in the form of an audio course, that takes the points made in the aforementioned document and expands on them with specific examples and suggestions.

If you are in the position of being evaluated or re-evaluated, I know that these resources will be of great assistance.

You Need More Than an Expert

2009-09-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

I frequently receive email requests for expert witnesses in a given case, in a given town. The basis of the request is that if one has the right expert, the case is done. This is simply not the case. While having the right expert is an essential part of any case, it is only part of the puzzle.

Most targeted parents in PA cases have literally boxes of evidence in the form of emails, letters, recordings, etc. However, what most fail to grasp is that even the most voluminous box of the best evidence is basically worthless unless it is properly assembled so as to assist in the telling of the story of your case to the Court (Judge). It is the story that moves the Judge, not the boxes of evidence. The boxes of evidence operates more like the set in a play. It contributes to the story, but does not tell it.

The telling of the story in a way that causes the particular Judge who hears it to become moved to act in ways to take the children in question out of the situation they are in, is the goal. The evidence is the flour, eggs and milk, and the story is the recipe. Therefore, the construction of the story, the selection of specific examples with an eye to the specific audience of the Judge, is absolutely critical. In my experience, this is grossly misunderstood or under weighted in the preparation of Family Law cases involving Parental Alienation.

Getting Others to Understand Parental Alienation

2009-08-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

I have just created a new course designed to get those who do not understand parental alienation, to begin to get it. This course was previously entitled "Parental Alienation: A Primer." I re-titled it because I got enough feedback to the effect that this title was not very clear or helpful. I appreciate the feedback!

Anyway, this course is conversational in nature and I believe very digestible for those who are just outside the circle of personal experience with parental alienation. This course explains why there is a tendency to overly criticize the targeted parent, and how this is a symptom of not really understanding the phenomenon.

I hope that this is helpful.

The link for the course is to the right of this page.

Misinformation Regarding Parental Alienation

2009-06-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

I recently received a comment from a viewer regarding a video that I had posted. The comment said that PA and PAS was junk science and that protective parents had been accused of alienating their children from the otherwise abusive spouse wrongly. Sadly, I am sure that this has happened. However, as is repeatedly made clear in the literature, Parental Alienation should never be considered when real abuse does in fact exist. This is one key method to ruling it out. It is only to be considered when the allegations of abuse are false. Let me repeat that: Parental Alienation should only be considered when the allegations of abuse are false. When real abuse exists, parental alienation does not.

Therefore, when this sort of criticism arises, it suggests that the phenomenon of one parent influencing a child to become alienated from the other parent is somehow bogus, as though this never occurs. I believe that it is important to state that virtually all legitimate published expert opinion which is based on a great deal of literature and research, clearly recognizes that the phenomenon of parental alienation does in fact exist. One parent, under the right circumstances, can indeed influence a child to think badly about and eventually even reject that other parent. No reputable source would disagree with this. Therefore because of the fact that allegations of parental alienation may be falsely and illegitimately made, is not justification for eliminating the entire argument. Such an argument would be tantamount to saying that because some children have been erroneously diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, that ADHD does not exist.

New Course for Newbies and Neophytes

2009-06-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

I have just completed a new audio course that describes the dynamics of Parental Alienation.

One of the things that occurs almost universally, is the phenomenon of the Targeted Parent having those in their lives who do not really "get it." I believe that all will agree that this phenomenon is so powerful and bizarre that those that have not seen it up close may have a hard time really understanding what is occurring. Therefore I have created a new audio course that is very conversational in nature, and I believe easy on the palate of understanding. I have made it as digestible as I know how, using elements of the other courses but putting them in a not too overwhelming format.

I believe likely candidates could be family members, lawyers, guardians, mental health professionals who have not had much traffic with these issues, as well as school teachers who become entangled in these cases. I believe that this course hits the mark, and as always, I look forward to your feedback.

I have entitled this course, "Parental Alienation: A Primer"

I wish you all well.

A Word About Cost

2009-03-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

One of the most pernicious problems associated with dealing with Parental Alienation in the courtroom is cost. These cases can be very expensive. An attorney’s success is premised on him or her being well prepared, which requires significant time and money. Experts are often part of the mix, which also represents added expenses. It is therefore reasonable to question the necessity of hiring an additional person to the team in the form of a consultant, when there is already so much expense.

However, in cases involving Parental Alienation, the experienced consultant – properly having both extensive clinical and professional experience with Parental alienation, as well as considerable time in the courtroom – can actually reduce cost. A common example can perhaps make this clear. As noted above, Expert witnesses are often required in these cases. When an experienced consultant is not involved, this typically takes the form of the attorney finding and hiring the expert, usually from a pool of forensic experts in the given community. If the local experts do not have adequate experience in Parental Alienation, then the attorney is faced with trying to find such an expert who can then be imported for the purpose of litigation. Depending on the attorney’s network of such experts, his or her degree of understanding of the issues, and his or her time in finding such an expert, the expert is eventually found. Once this occurs, the attorney educates the expert about the case and then sends them voluminous documents about the case for their review. Having served in this capacity, I can attest that the preparation required to be able to testify in such a matter can and often is a great many hours of reading over documents that may or may not be germane to the issue. This review and preparation time consists of the expert organizing, reviewing and sifting through all of the documentation in an effort to prepare for testimony. This process can and often takes many hours and typically costs thousands of dollars. This is, of course, even before any conclusions and opinions are hatched. Once this happens, then the expert and the attorney will spend significant time in consultation with each other for strategic and preparatory purposes. This can also take hours and thousands of dollars.

This process is however different with a consultant on board. First, the consultant would take responsibility for finding the best and most viable expert - either locally or not – based on the issues involved. This selection process involves matching the expert to the issue being argued, which should not fall onto the attorney, who could not be expected to know such subtle differences. Even the best prepared attorney should not be expected to be able to perform this function. With the consultant on board, the attorney expends none of their billable time on such a search, yet ends up with a more thoroughly researched choice of experts. Secondly, the consultant would have already reviewed and boiled down the issues and the specific documents that would be necessary for the expert to review and would be able to present it to them in their “own language.” Less time is therefore spent getting the expert up to speed since they do not have to start from scratch. The case is presented to him or her by the consultant who has already pre-digested it. The preparatory time for the expert is therefore significantly reduced to sometimes a fraction of what would have been the case were the consultant not involved.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: Welcome to Family Court

2009-01-09T16:54:00.000-08:00

You don’t know what you don’t know. Let me repeat that. You don’t know what you don’t know. At first glance, this would appear to be a truism, or an obvious statement. However, while it is obviously true, it far from obvious. In fact, as we move through the minutes and hours of our days, we encounter countless ambiguous or unclear situations and circumstances. In an effort to understand the many ambiguous piles around us, we sort them and stack them into orderly piles by making specific assumptions about their meanings, so as to make them sensible to us. This is an automatic cognitive reflex for us humans and we do it thousands of times daily. In the process of doing this, the assumptions that we use become the building blocks of the edifices that we construct that then forms our reality. We use these assumptions to bridge the spaces that we do not know, thereby creating a level of greater comfort for ourselves. We do this so quickly and seamlessly that it is mostly beyond our own notice. It makes us feel better, perhaps more in control.

For example, if one assumes that the court system, by its design and operation, has a way of revealing the truth of a given situation, this assumption would orient how one goes into court. One would go into court with the belief that simply being candid and honest is sufficient to the revealing of the truth. This assumption, after all, is very much supported by taking the oath to tell the truth, the rules of evidence, and other judicial inventions. The machinery of this is, after all, supposed to grind out the truth. Perhaps the reader, by virtue of having found and read this, has a reaction to this position at this moment.

However, if the assumption that the court system, and its operation is supposed to operate in this fashion, but that it, in fact does not, then one would approach the courtroom with a very different orientation. One would be much more cautious and vigilant to understand exactly how it did work, as opposed to how it is supposed to work. Under this circumstance, one might well look to one’s lawyer to be a guide to explain just how it does work. This certainly sounds reasonable. However, such a position would be based on the assumption that the lawyer actually did understand the true workings of the court, was willing to share them with you, and actually did so. These are all things that you simply do not know.

The late, brilliant and albeit eccentric British psychiatrist, R.D. Laing wrote, “The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.” By this, he meant that it is only when we truly realize and accept that we cannot actually know what we cannot see, that we can begin to remove the blinders that this creates. This paradox of embracing the blindness in order to gain sight, is of crucial importance. Yet this insight comes with a price. It is characterized by tireless skepticism and testing. It is themed by such questions as, “what do you base that on?”, and “why?” This state of mind is uncomfortable, difficult to maintain and exhausting, especially in times of stress, like during a divorce. Due to all of this difficulty we humans are therefore easily seduced by untested assumptions that promise a wealth of certainty, yet may well end up being the next Ponzi scheme. We are suckers for this. We are human.

But enough of Philosophy 101. What does this have to do with Family Court, parental alienation, and looking to the court intervene to return your child to you? Everything. The Family Court System is a very specific environment whose true rules of operation are unstated and are, in fact, quite contrary to those which are stated. For example, one often hears the remark that you can or cannot “prove” parental alienation in court, as if this question was critical to being successful in court with parental alienation. In actual fact, the ability or inability to “prove” the presence of parental alienation in a specific family case is very much secondary to the issue of getting the court to “believe” that parental alienation is present. What we very often find is that what one can or cannot prove in family court is quite different than what one can get a very human Judge to “believe.” The rules of evidence and the evidence code do more or less rule the issue of proof, but the subjective impact of causing the audience (the Judge) to believe your story is more the province of emotion, presentation, and even theater. These are, in fact, the principles – emotion, presentation, and theatrics - that predict outcome in Family Law cases where parental alienation is present. Not the law.

Perhaps surprisingly, competent Family Law attorneys very often do not understand this. They believe that outcome is predicted by the “rules” and the application of the law to the facts of the case. If this, in fact, should be so in a given case, it is due to the fact that the legal case happened to agree with the emotional presentation that successfully made the Judge “a believer.” We see over and over that when these two levels disagree – that is when the legalistic level disagrees with the emotionally related “story” - that the subjective emotional level trumps the legal one. Family Law cases involving parental alienation provide abundant example of this. Oddly, the lawyers are often as surprised by unwanted outcome as are their clients. Sadly familiar examples abound. Visitation between parent and child are regularly interrupted when doing so is completely at variance with the conditions that are to be met by the law. Orders of Protection are routinely given when there is no evidence of threat or event a hint at one. Custody is often changed when the burden of “change of circumstance” has been in no way met or even addressed. Visitation Orders are ignored by the very court that issued them for no legal reason whatsoever. False abuse allegations are rarely if ever prosecuted in spite of statutory language that requires prosecution. The list goes on.

The significant fact here is that these anomalies are not anomalies at all. They are the predictable outcome of a “sub- logic” that exists beneath the level of the law, has nothing to do with the law, and is often at odds with the law. Welcome to Family Court.

Why Do I Need Consultative Services with My Parental Alienation Case?

2008-12-15T10:30:00.000-08:00

Some may wonder: Why is it helpful to have a consultant in addition to my attorney in a
case involving parental alienation? There are several reasons. A few are listed below.

First, cases involving parental alienation virtually always find the targeted parent being falsely vilified in some manner. Experience has taught that if this is not properly dealt with, these false allegations never tend to “go away.” When handled properly, these false allegations can actually work on your behalf. The way that is done is not standard operating procedure within Family Law. These issues require an approach that may seem even unwise to your attorney, so you, as a client would be hard pressed to have such a conversation with your attorney. This is best handled by a consultant with expertise in parental alienation. I have found that once this occurs, the attorney realizes that such consultative input can be of significant value. I had one attorney refer to my role as consultant as the “secret weapon” in the case.

Second, since the targeted parent finds themselves in the disadvantaged position of having to constantly defend themselves against various false allegations, a significant amount of preparation in warranted in identifying these critical points and developing strategies or countermeasures for their defeat. This is almost never done adequately. Rather, it is typically done in a more knee-jerk fashion, if it at all. To insure that this is done properly, a strategy worksheet is developed which identifies these specific issues, and then develops specific strategies that are ready and waiting for use. For example, let us imagine that there have been abuse reports filed falsely, and that concern exists that these reports (regardless of their findings) will be used to cast an atmosphere of doubt and concern about you as a parent. In such a case, the countermeasures might include detailed investigation into the specifics of the reports, their sequence, and history, to create an understanding of the pattern of vilification that they create. Another countermeasure might be to consider an independent Psychological Evaluation which is focused on the specific allegations contained in the abuse reports, with an eye to reveal how out of character such behaviors would be. A third countermeasure might be to look for other patterns of misrepresentation engaged in by the other/alienating parent that would reveal this tendency to misrepresent events as a strategy to hoodwink the court. When these three strategies are prepared for and developed, a positive outcome is much more likely. However, given the busy schedules of most attorneys, the development of these strategies is typically considered a luxury, when in fact, they actually are more of a necessity for success. The specific role of the consultant is to provide just this layer of preparation and pre-warning into the litigation process.

Thirdly, you do not know what you do not know. When entering into the environment of Family Court, one relies on the advice and guidance of one’s lawyer to shepard one through the process. One must recall that Family Lawyers are Lawyers and not mental health professionals. Attorneys often make strategic decisions within a case and present the result of their decision to their client, precluding the client from the decision making process. For example, let us suppose that a custody dispute is under way and that parental alienation is present. Depending on the area, and personal preferences of the lawyer, it might be suggested that a Guardian be appointed vs. a Custody Evaluator to help the court in determining what is best for the child. In cases with parental alienation, the wrong choice on this question can seriously sabotage the case, however the reasons for this may be completely outside the expertise of the otherwise competent family lawyer. In these instances, the involvement of an experienced consultant can be invaluable. There are many other examples where otherwise insignificant or pedestrian choices, which would make little difference if the case did not include parental alienation, would be devastating in a case with parental alienation.

Fourth, in cases involving parental alienation, therapists, evaluators, and guardians are not created equal. While the vast majority of these professionals would attest some level of familiarity with parental alienation, experience has shown that the vast majority of these professionals do not truly “get it.” This is routinely devastating to these cases, with these therapist, evaluators, and guardians, becoming a voice in the chorus of the alienation, rather than the voice exposing it. One task that can be performed by the consultant is to research, interview and evaluate who truly does and who does not “get it.” This is not something that an attorney can be expected to be able to do, but it is of vital importance. It is not something that the client can do as well, however for other reasons. This task is something that the experience consultant can do with confidence.

While other areas of law (criminal, civil litigation) utilize consultants with great frequency, such is not the case in Family Law. Experience has taught however that when parental alienation is present in a case, such expertise is extremely valuable. Cases involving this problem are quite specialized and have an entire body of information that, if used properly, can have extremely beneficial effects on case outcome. Such utilization however, requires preparation, an overall case strategy and specific tactical

Two Courses Completed - Two New Courses

2008-10-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

As you may know, we have just completed two courses that are currently available for purchase. They can be found on the link to the www.overcomingparentalalienation.com website. Each course is composed of three one hour sessions, and are downloadable to your computer. The courses are: Treatment of Alienated Children: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why and Family Court: What Works, What Doesn't and Why. In the first course, the current treatment modalities are reviewed, as are all the various treatment strategies. Inquiry is made into learning the ingredients for success in the treatment of alienated children. There are clear answers here, and this course identifies what to look for and what to avoid. The second course addresses how the Family Court System operates. It is well known that Family Court is probably the most unpredictable court system of all. The reasons for this are made clear, and, in spite of this quality, the basic principles for success are identified. Many are surprised to learn that these elements have less to do with the law and the facts of the case than they do with the case presentation.

The feedback received thus far has been very positive. I very much encourage your feedback on all of the courses offered. I learn a great deal from hearing your thoughts and suggestions, and appreciate your unique perspectives. Even though PAS is a very patterned phenomenon, it is also the case that all situations are unique, within this pattern. It is this uniqueness that helps us to further understand, so your feedback is appreciated.

I am also excited to announce that two new courses are under construction, as we speak. They are each two hours in length (two one hour sessions). The first course (being recorded December 3 and December 10) is entitled: Parenting Alienated Children. The second course is also in reference to the Parenting of Alienated Children, but is specifically focused on the unique challenges of the upcoming holidays. Both of these courses are focused on the "do's and don'ts" of dealing with children when contact may still be occurring, but with the children being alienated from you. We will discuss the behavioral principals that have been shown to be most effective in this challenging context. We will use real life situations and discuss the various options in their management, and walk through specific examples. Information about these courses can be gotten by contacting us through the website, as the details have not yet found themselves onto the site.

Why Consultative Services?

2008-08-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

Why Do I Need a Consultant?

First and foremost, if you were searching for information about Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome, it is likely that you may be personally concerned about these issues in your own life and family. If so, it is vitally important that you realize that the specific issues that appear in alienation cases are very different than those arising in even a contentious divorce when alienation is not an issue. A few examples may be illustrative.

It is well understood that visitation interference is a central theme is alienation cases, as are false allegations of abuse. If one’s attorney is not familiar with this, it is very likely that improper advice will be given, such as “not making waves,” that the “kids will come around” and “not to make an issue of a little bit of visitation being missed.” If alienation was not present in an ongoing divorce, this advice would be very likely appropriate. However, if alienation is afoot, such advice could likely begin an avalanche of loss in a parent’s relationship with their children during and after divorce. Many otherwise competent and experienced attorneys who are unfamiliar with PAS will make this error in advice and unwittingly trigger such an avalanche of loss.

In the context of high conflict divorce where alienation is present, it is well understood that false allegations of abuse against the Targeted Parent abound as a strategy to gain advantage in the custody dispute. If an otherwise competent attorney however not intimately familiar with alienation, is representing a client who has been wrongly accused of being abusive to their child, they might very well recommend that that client agree to say, an Anger Management Course, so as to placate the other side and to convey to the Court that their client is being responsible. Such advice is commonly given even though the client in question does not have an anger problem. Such advice might also be given as a means for that client to have visitation, perhaps supervised, rather than have the visitation completely cut off. Again, if alienation was not present in a case, such advice could be sound under certain circumstances. However, if alienation is present, such advice would very likely stigmatize that parent in the perception of the Court as being an angry and difficult parent, when this is not the case, causing further injury to the relationship with the child. Further, such advice, perhaps resulting in unnecessary supervised visitation, would likely send a message to the child that this parent is perhaps “scary” or somehow inferior. Why else would they need a supervisor? In other words, such advice would ironically act in the service of the alienation.

As further example, imagine that the Court has ordered a Custody Evaluation or therapy for an alienated child. If an otherwise competent therapist, who is however unfamiliar with alienation, was appointed, it is likely that they would take a position of supporting the child’s resistance to seeing the Target Parent, essentially treating that child as if they had been the victim of domestic violence when such was never the case. Likewise, an otherwise competent Evaluator who is however unfamiliar with alienation and PAS, would very likely take the child’s complaints about the Target Parent at face value without ruling out bona fide abuse and otherwise negative parental behavior. Such an evaluation would then yield recommendations that likewise would support and even encourage the alienation.

Finally, it is important to understand that dealing with alienation and PAS in divorce are very specialized areas, in both the legal and the mental health arenas. Therefore, it is vitally important to understand that these competencies should not be assumed in the selection an attorney or in the selection of a mental health professional. Having been directly involved in the training of both attorneys and mental health professionals regarding PAS, Dr. Bone has developed an acute sensitivity to these issues of professional awareness and professional performance concerning alienation in the context of divorce. If anything, one should assume that most attorneys and most mental health professionals are not familiar with parental alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). This is a much safer operating assumption that the reverse.

As a consequence of this state of affairs, consulting services to parents, their attorneys, and to mental health professionals has become the primary focus of Dr. Bone’s work regarding Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Selection of Professionals

Over the years, Dr. Bone has developed networks of other professionals who are experienced in the problem of alienation. Through these networks, as well as through other means, both attorneys and mental health professionals can be interviewed and screened by Dr. Bone regarding their familiarity with alienation and PAS. This “initial filtering” process helps a parent who may be dealing with alienation to avoid falling into the “blind spots” of both attorneys and mental health professionals that may be simply unfamiliar with the peculiarities of parental alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Consultation with the Attorney

Competent attorneys welcome and are not threatened by consultative input. When one considers that a busy family lawyer becomes involved in PAS cases in only a relatively small percentage of their cases, it is easy to understand how it would be impossible for even the most competent family lawyer to keep up with the latest developments involving the litigation of PAS. In addition to this purely “informational” purpose, the consultant can also help the lawyer with the development of case strategy, with knowledge of what has actually been successful in other cases.

Most experienced attorneys will be the first to recognize the level of complexity and specificity that is involved in successfully litigating one of these cases. In the capacity of consultant, Dr. Bone typically reviews documents, pleadings and reports, and makes specific recommendations regarding expert testimony, review of expert work product and consultation with experts perhaps already appointed on your case. Through this strategy, the legal system becomes educated about PAS one case at a time, leaving in its wake, newly educated professionals and parents.

Litigating a complex family law case has been described in the following terms. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces, and the attorney is only allowed to use ten of the pieces, yet must still accurately convey the picture of the puzzle to the court, using only these ten pieces. The process of selecting which ten pieces is enormously complex and vexing. The skill of “breaking the code” of which pieces to select, and which not to become distracted by, is a skill that is based on a level of experience that can only be developed by being “in the trenches” in the Courtroom for many years. Dr. Bone has served in all of the capacities for which he now consults. After all, even the most seasoned and experienced family lawyer has only litigated cases involving PAS in a fraction of his or her cases. Virtually all of Dr. Bone’s experience is born of dealing only with these cases in multiple states.

Review of and Trial Preparation For Extant Expert Witness Work

In most ongoing litigation there are already existing mental health professionals involved with the case. The experienced consultant can help the attorney with critique of adverse witnesses as expressed in the analysis of expert reports, analysis of past testimony, and the development of cross examination questioning, as reflected by the current standard of care. Additionally, the consultant can work with mental health professionals also involved in the case, but who may not be knowledgeable of the latest research and related matters regarding PAS.
Consultation for the Litigation Process

One of the most valuable functions served by the consultant has to do with the development of general case strategy, which points are most important to emphasize and which are not. One of the biggest challenges that the Family Attorney faces is in reducing huge amounts of information and presenting it in a way that tells the story of the case in its most compelling terms. If PAS is not involved in a case, this challenge is still present. However, if it is involved, the challenge is even greater and the likelihood increases that the case presentation and focus become distracted and that the fragmentation increases dramatically. The reason for this is that alienation cases typically have huge amounts of information to be organized and somehow presented in a concise manner.

In addition to these overall litigation strategy services, the experienced consultant can also become deeply involved in the “nuts and bolts” of the case in the form of witness coaching, development of cross examination questions for adverse witnesses and related activities.

Cases involving Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) typically have mental health professionals already involved in the case, who may be otherwise competent, but naïve to PAS. Such therapists may find themselves treating a child who has become alienated from the one parent due to the actions of the other parent. These therapists, otherwise competent but naïve regarding PAS, often side with the alienated child’s resistance to seeing the unwanted parent, believing that they are “protecting” the child from the other parent, when in fact there is no danger. In PAS cases, these witnesses become “adverse witnesses,” unwittingly supporting the alienation. In the context of litigation, the attorney for the alienating parent is often able to persuade these therapists to offer an opinion that supports the child’s not seeing that parent, even though they have never even spoken to that parent. Once a therapist has done this, he or she has committed significant ethical errors, that should diminish their credibility. However if the attorney for the alienated parent is not aware of the ethical intricacies of this process, this therapist’s opinion would go unchallenged, and potentially do great damage to the case. Exposing these ethical gaffs are extremely important to the truth of the case as it is understood by the Judge, however these types of ethical errors often go unchallenged. The consultant seasoned in PAS would not allow this process to go forward unchallenged.

Consultation With and Training of Mental Health Professionals Involved in the Case

In the process of having becoming involved in many PAS cases in multiple states, it is striking how many potentially good clinicians are available, except for the fact that they have not had the experience and guidance to know how to handle these difficult cases. Many years of experience has taught that well intentioned, otherwise competent (yet untrained in the area of alienation) professionals have sometimes even unwittingly done harm, and have inadvertently worked in support of the alienation.

Again, very competent therapists, however not experienced in dealing with alienated children, will often ironically support the alienation. Likewise, evaluators naïve to PAS will assume most, if not all, allegations of abuse to be valid and accurate, and will not have the tools to effectively evaluate this and to rule it in or rule it out. Therefore, finding a PAS savvy evaluator is critical.

Finally

There once was a time when, if faced with the process of divorce, one could just pick up the phone, call an attorney and they would “handle it.” In today’s environment of an over 50% rate of divorce, both parents vying for the custodial rights over their children, and record levels of abuse reports of all types, such a strategy to just let the attorney handle it, is perilous. In today’s current environment, it is wise to have an experienced consultant, familiar with both the legal arena as well as the mental health arena, to serve as a consultant or perhaps a case manager to advise all on the team. As noted above, when alienation is involved, failure to have PAS savvy professional advice can be disastrous.

Information for Family Attorneys

2008-08-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

Family Law attorneys may be unaccustomed to working on a consultative basis with a mental health professional. More often than not, attorneys tend to see such professionals as being experts, evaluators and therapists, whom they will depose, examine in court and/ cross-examine. The concept of having a consultant in a “team” framework is often not familiar ground. The purpose of this brief monograph is to outline the nature of the Consultative work that is being proposed by this website.

First, the worlds of the attorney and that of the mental health professional could perhaps not be more different. The attorney deals with “facts” and “fact patterns” as though they were material objects, whereas the mental health professional traffics in subtle mixed realties, fraught with ambivalence and innuendo. As the attorney attempts to bring the mental health professional into the court room, and therefore into this legal world, the translation process can be difficult, imprecise and approximate at best. Lawyers often complain that they cannot get a psychological witness to come up with a simple answer, whereas the mental health professional complains about being “tricked” by the lawyer into saying things that they do not really mean. I would suggest that this dynamic is very often the result of these two “world views” attempting to mix together, however finding them to be more like oil and water, than of similar makeup.

In the most general sense, the experienced Consultant, through years of experience and traffic in both of these worlds, can act as translator. In so doing, the consultant can advise the attorney about how to draw what they need from the most obtuse psychological witness, or alternatively, help the mental health witness to avoid the entrapments that are part of the alien ground of the litigation process. In more specific terms, the consultant can help with cross examination questions of a technical nature, in questioning an adverse mental health witness. For example, familiarity with the otherwise hidden flaws of psychological instruments can help to weaken the credibility of the adverse mental health professional who may be erroneously vilifying the client on technical grounds. Many very competent attorneys are not aware of the striking absence of reliable scientific rigor for the instruments used in custody evaluation. As the Psychological community privately struggles with this serious problem internally, as it has for years, these issues seldom make it into public awareness, much less into public scrutiny. There are myriad issues related to reliability and scientific rigor, with which even the most informed attorney could never be expected to keep current.

As further example, the consultant can serve as a repository of the Standards of Practice and other guidelines by which their profession is called upon to operate. The administrative rules for the operation of the statues governing professional behavior are usually not well known by even the most practiced and experienced attorney. Therefore, when these rules are broken, which they very commonly are, an attorney’s unfamiliarity with the rules precludes exposing them as having been broken.

By acting in the consultative capacity, the Consultant is not hamstrung by the limitations of their role being narrowly defined as say, an evaluator, or a therapist. In order to remain unbiased, the evaluator or the therapist is restricted from casual information exchange that may otherwise be helpful to the attorney. Since the Consultant is typically thought of in terms of being “Work Product,” no such restriction applies. Consequently, a very broad and spontaneous “think tank” environment can exist, which can keep the case fresh, and give the client a sense of confidence with the representation.

In the event that a professional expert is required for testimony or for appointment by the Court, the experienced Consultant, having operated within the world of high conflict divorce for many years, can be absolutely instrumental in finding the best expert for the job. This might require a nation wide search, or it might involve a pre-screening of local professionals to determine their suitability for the job. The value that this single task can bring to the case can be very significant.

Other functions that may be performed by the Consultant are as limitless as one’s creative imagination. The bottom line is however, that the Consultant can and should serve as a valuable resource for the attorney as well as for the client. The effective Consultant should make the work of the litigation operate more seamlessly, and with less effort. In short, the attorney no longer has to carry the entire weight of the case.

Two New Teleseminar Courses: Effective Treatment and The Family Court

2008-08-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

I am very excited about two new courses that have been developed pertaining to two very significant areas of concern that are part of life when Parental Alienation is involved. They are: Treatment - specifically, which treatment strategies are more associated with success in the treatment of alienated children; and Family Court - specifically, given its very high rate of unpredictability, what one can do to reduce this.

First, the issue of treatment. Many have had experiences with reunification plans that involve therapy when a a child is alienated. It is my opinion that the vast majority of these efforts are not very successful. Often, the therapy is ordered, but it simply does not happen as it is scheduled, and when it does occur, it is not effective in reunifying parent and child. In fact, in a substantial number of cases, this kind of therapy often acts in the service of the alienation in that the therapy session itself becomes a place where the child acts out their alienation, very often convincing the therapist of their position. It goes down hill very fast after this. The purpose of this course is to examine the current existing treatment strategies, regimes, and programs in terms of their effectiveness. As this question is drilled down into, the actual mechanisms and foundations of these successful strategies are revealed. The result of this examination is to develop a practical and working understanding of what one should look for when asking the court, and/or a therapist for help in dealing with an alienated child. There are answers here, and the goal of this course is to identify them.

The second course addresses the phenomenon of Family Court. Since, in cases where Parental Alienation is involved, and therefore Family Court is often part of the picture, dealing effectively with this system is most important. For example, even if an evaluator, a guardian and a therapist may all agree on what would help a situation, the adversarial nature of the Court System, and the idiosyncratic nature of the Family Court system, can and often does confuse and fragment the truths that have been exposed. Put another way, the Family Court System can be easily manipulated and exploited by an alienating parent, and this can be as much of a problem as is the alienation. This course seeks to delve more deeply into the unique characteristics that make the Family Court as unpredictable as it is. As these reasons are exposed, another system that is in operation, and is more predictive of outcome is also exposed. Understanding and identifying the cues and signals that allow one to better present a case so that it will be best understood by the audience (the Judge) are explored. The goal of this course is to develop a working understanding of what really does impact outcome, to be utilized in very practical terms.

Each of these courses will be done in 3 one hour sessions which will be recorded. The first course will begin on September 9th, for three consecutive sessions. The Family Court session will take place beginning September 30th, also for three weekly consecutive sessions. Details, more information, and sign up details can be found on the www.overcomingparentalalienation.com web page.

Reunification Therapy

2008-05-25T06:45:00.000-07:00

In my recent Teleseminar, Overcoming Parental Alienation, I addressed the workings of what is referred to as "Reunification Therapy." As has been my experience in the past, I found that as I was describing it, I found myself being a bit surprised at my own conclusions. Specifically, as I systematically went through how it is supposed to work, and how it actually does work, I found that the prognosis for success that I heard myself describing, was even less than I would have said before the development of the Telesiminar.

There are very good reasons to understand why the courts would order such therapy. In so doing, the court does not have to make the difficult decision to change custody or to restrict or supervise the visits between the child and the alienating parent, so the next best thing is Reunification Therapy. Such Therapy recognizes that the child's negative description far exceeds what it should be, given the flimsy and even non-existent reasons offered for a child not wanting to see this parent. This Therapy also addresses the very important fact of the child maintaining contact with both parents. These are very good things for the Court to recognize. The problem is however, that when a child has therapy with a parent they claim to hate or fear, for maybe one hour per week, this therapy backfires, and, if anything, tends to actually intensify the alienation. The reasons for this are logical and predictable, and are addressed in some detail in the presentation.

It appears that much work is yet to be done in more successfully convincing the Court about the causes of alienation. Once we can do that more effectively, the Court is more likely to follow suit with interventions that actually work.

As Discussed by Glen Sacks

2008-05-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

The following appeared on the Blog and Website of well known fathers and parents rights activists, Glen Sacks. I have had the honor to work with Glen on several projects, and he was kind enough to ask me to expand on a point made earlier in this Teleseminar.

Background: J. Michael Bone is an eminent authority on Parental Alienation, and I've often quoted his work in my newspaper columns on the issue.

Starting in late April Michael is going to be doing a four-part Teleseminar on how targeted parents can overcome Parental Alienation. The 4 week telewebcast series begins Tuesday April 29 from 8:30 - 9:30 p.m. EDT, and runs each Tuesday through 5/20. To register, click here or go to www.overcomingparentalalienation.com.

Below is my Q & A with Dr. Bone.

Glenn Sacks: You caution against employing "Unqualified Mental Health Professionals." That's often a difficult thing for a lay person to judge. What should a target parent look at in order to make this judgment?

Dr. Bone: This is a very difficult identification process, and one that most attorneys and judges could not be expected to perform. That said, let me try to take a stab at it, but please understand that I could go on for many pages about this.

Since the vast minority of mental health professionals are not comfortable with or particularly familiar with going to court, the numbers of those who do this kind of work are relatively small. Within this relatively small number, an even smaller number profess familiarity with parental alienation.

Among those who are familiar with parental alienation and how it works, the basic issue boils down to this: the understanding that it is possible for one parent to alienate a child from another parent. Once a child is alienated, only those who truly understand this will be able to successfully manage the child’s protest and vilification regarding the other parent, without being pulled into believing it. Therefore, the best way to identify one who is truly qualified is to ask them questions about how they have, in the past, dealt with children who did not want to see one of their parents when it had been determined that the non-favored or alienated parent had not been abusive to the child.

When the truly qualified mental health professional is asked this question, they will have no trouble responding to it with fairly long and clear explanations of whatever successes or lack of successes they have had with this. What I look for is less about the “success rate” and more about their ability to talk about the complex nuances of this very complicated problem. Mental health professionals who do not really understand that a child can be alienated from a parent will very quickly begin to side with the child, and justify this by finding relatively small imperfections in the targeted parent, and use that as an explanation for the child’s position.

Put another way, ineffective or “less than connected” parenting might well produce somewhat estranged children, but this ineffective parenting alone will not produce alienated children. The necessary ingredient is the alienating behavior of the alienating parent. What one needs is a mental health professional who gets this.

Upcoming Teleseminar

2008-04-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

I am very excited about the upcoming teleseminar that will be offered beginning Tuesday, April 29, 2008. This seminar consists of four one hour sessions, attended via telephone, and recorded for later listening. The attendees, once registered, will be given a specific telephone number and pass code that will admit them into the call, each of these four Tuesday evenings. In the event that an attendee cannot be present for the live call, a recorded version will be available for later listening.

Each session will consist of an interactive interview format wherein John Curtis, PhD, author, well known parenting advocate, will be interviewing myself on the topic of that particular evening. Each of these four separate interview sessions will be focused onto what I have identified as the four most prevalent errors committed in the litigation of cases in Family Court where Parental Alienation is present. My experience for over fifteen years as an expert witness, evaluator, therapist and educator in cases involving Parental Alienation, has given me the opportunity to witness and then to distill the specific and predictable points where these cases are sabotaged. Just as Parental Alienation is a very patterned process with a predictable outcome and course, likewise, how it evolves within the Family court System is also patterned. This patterning creates a high degree of predictability that typically is only seen when it is too late.

The purpose of this four part teleseminar is to prepare the parent and their attorney to identify these seemingly benign issues, before they blow up into becoming a serious problem to later overcome.

The goal of this four part seminar is to provide proactive strategies that allows one to spot a potential upcoming problem area, and develop counter strategies to overcome it.

Misinformation and the Critics

2008-03-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most mysterious and vexing issues related to the subject of Parental Alienation, as especially Parental Alienation Syndrome, is the continued criticisms of it. In most cases, the criticisms are based in misinformation. One of the most prevalent of these notions is that Parental Alienation is used as a shield to deflect from the abuse of a child by a parent. This is simply not the case. It is repeated throughout the literature (even by sources that disagree on other matters related to the subject) that Parental Alienation is not a proper explanation for a child’s not wanting to see a parent, when that parent has truly been abusing that child. When this is the case, Parental Alienation is not the proper explanation. That said, it is also the case that Parental Alienation may be misused by unethical attorneys and abusive parents, claiming that their abused child does not want to see them, not because they have been abused, but because of the influences of the other parent. This is a clear misuse of the Parental Alienation label. This misuse however should not be used as a rationale to dismiss it legitimate use.

Other such criticisms follow this same pattern of misunderstanding and misuse of the literature related to Parental Alienation. I would like to draw attention to an article authored by myself that addresses this in more detail. It may be found on my website or by the following link http://parental-alienation.com/articles/article0004.htm.

I have found that when the criticisms are confronted, that the critic has not read that to which they are referring, or that they had simply been told this misinformation by someone else, who also had not read the source material. This is a troubling, but common finding. It should not perhaps be surprising to find that the dynamic of vilification and distortion is well practiced within this context.

The Professional Debate About How Children are Alienated

2008-02-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

There is currently a debate within the professional community regarding just what causes children to become alienated within the context of their parents divorcing or its aftermath. The debate boils down to this question: Is the behavior of the alienating parent sufficient to cause children to become alienated, or does the targeted parent’s behavior also play a role? While this may seem like an interesting question with not much significance, we find that its answer has profound implications regarding what may be recommended as a solution to the problem.

For example, if one believes that the behavior of an alienating parent is sufficient cause to create alienation within a child, and that the targeted parent simply plays little if any role in the creation of the alienation, the recommendations coming out of that understanding will focus much more on eliminating the toxic effects of that alienating parent’s behavior onto that child. The goal here will likely enforce time with the targeted parent, even over the child’s protest in the beginning. This model will tend to see the child’s protests regarding that parent as unrealistic or even irrational. The goal will be to help the child to eliminate these unrealistic or irrational negative feelings about that parent.

If however, one believes that the alienating behaviors of the alienating parent is necessary but not sufficient to create alienation, then the responsibility for the child’s alienation will be also be placed at the feet of the targeted parent as well as the alienating parent. Even though this model will recognize that it is unhealthy for a parent to influence a child to see their other parent critically and negatively, it will tend to see this parental alienating behavior as being simply bad parenting, but not tantamount to child abuse. Under this understanding, recommendations will be more likely to include, among other things, parenting classes for the targeted parent, and will be less likely to enforce access between that targeted parent and that alienated child. These recommendations will probably refer to access between this child and this parent, as resuming when “the child is ready.”

As a greater generalized understanding of Parental Alienation develops, it appears that the latter model, the one that spreads the responsibility between both parents, is gaining more popularity among the professionals who do these evaluations. This is concerning since this latter model tends to see the alienation of children, once sufficiently progressed, as being incurable. The first model however does not agree with this at all. In support of this position, growing evidence is cited, gleaned from once alienated children, that even severely alienated children can and do become no longer alienated, and do and can reconnect to the parent from whom they were once alienated.

What does this mean? It means that it is of paramount importance to know to which model your potential evaluator subscribes. Both groups will boast knowledge of and familiarity with Parental Alienation, and they will do so honestly, but their recommendations will vary dramatically, as will their outcomes.

Surviving the Family Court System

2008-02-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

Family court is unique among its other variants (criminal, administrative, etc.) in that the rules of evidence may be applied variously in deference to what is best for the children. This has the effect of making any outcome in any Family Court vulnerable to manipulation and misrepresentation. In cases where Parental Alienation is present, this vulnerability is routinely exploited, making the parents status in this scenario especially precarious. For example, when the court is faced with an allegation that one parent has abused a child, and this allegation is not carefully critiqued, the system opens itself up to limitless distortion. I have personally witnessed countless examples of innocent parents being treated by the court as being abusive, when this was simply not the case. As any of these parents will attest, once this label has been acquired, it is very difficult to erase it in the eyes of the court. The abuse allegation may be ruled as being "unfounded," however the cloud of suspicion will probably remain, causing the court to hesitate to allow more time between that parent and that child. Any parents who have experienced this are nodding right now.

One of the most effective, yet still the least used strategies to correct this, is to "litigate the false allegation." By this, we mean that the unjustly accused parent must do more than merely show that they did not commit the abuse. They should then go on to affirmatively argue that the making of the false allegation of abuse by the other parent, is itself evidence of pathological parenting. They should then go on to show that this spurious misuse of the system is designed to actually remove the child from the accused parent for purposes of gaining advantage in the custody dispute. This "second step," the litigating of the false abuse allegation is rarely pursued however. The omission of this step often spells the difference between the truth being revealed, or it being obfuscated.

The Alienation of Children is Child Abuse

2008-02-09T07:58:00.000-08:00

It is important to understand and recall that Parental Alienation is a form of child abuse. The manipulation of one’s children to the belief that their other parent does not love them, is the cruelest form of child abuse. Since it is the parent child- relationship that orients a child’s understanding of their own sense of self and their lovability, teaching a child that one of their parents does not love them, also teaches them that they are in some basic way, unlovable, or not worthy of love. While alienated children typically describe hatred or fear of the alienated parent, gently probing into the nuances of these negative feelings, virtually always reveals that these children believe that the Alienated Parent is self centered, not interested in their wellbeing, and unloving. They are taught, and come to believe that they are not loved by that parent. This is absolutely child abuse in its most pure form. Parental Alienation is child abuse.

Given this, it should not be surprising to realize that parents who perpetrate this form abuse, are also prone to other form of abuse. The literature clearly indicates that those prone to domestic violence, are prone to multiple forms of domestic violence. As we see an increased tendency for truly abusive parents to misuse the diagnosis of PA and PAS to explain why their children may not be close to them, or may be reticent to visit with them after marital separation, it perhaps should not be surprising to then see that when these parents are successful in mis-portraying the other parent as being an Alienating Parent, that they themselves then tend to become the true Alienating Parent. Adults prone to domestic violence, tend to be prone to multiple expressions of abuse. Once these abusive parents have their children more in their control that they ever had before, these children become extremely vulnerable to becoming quickly alienated from the parent whom they used to look to for protection. Under this scenario, these children often become severely alienated, and very quickly. As noted earlier on this blog, I believe that this is an ever increasing phenomenon.

Misapplication of Parental Alienation

2008-02-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

As awareness of Parental Alienation and its effects on children increases, the possibility that it can be used improperly also increases.

There appears to be a growing phenomenon of improperly accusing, let us say, Parent A of being an Alienating Parent by the actual Abusive Parent, whom we shall refer to as Parent B. This spurious explanation is initially offered up as explanation as to why the children are hesitant to see Parent B, when, in actual fact, Parent B has been abusive to them or to the other parent. It is important to note here that the abusiveness of Parent B is well established. There are typically Orders of Protection and Police involvement that go beyond only accusations of abuse. The abuse is clear and not in dispute. This is the first phase.

This is then followed by the phase where the abusive parent puts pressure on the children to "act out" that their parental agenda of vilifying the other parent. This typically takes the form of the children beginning to be provocative and testy with that parent, to which that parent typically then eventually responds by becoming upset, and to some degree, "loosing it." This episode is then portrayed by the abusive parent as being emblematic behavior of the now estranged parent, and representative of his or her instability. The focus now shifts to the non-abusive parent, Parent A, who now is seen as being unstable, abusive, and in dire need of therapy. In the period of time that this sleight of had takes place, the reality of the abusive parent's (Parent B) abusive behavior, which has been clearly documented and recognized by the court, is now obfuscated by these more recent developments, and essentially forgotten.

The original non abusive parent (Parent A), who was a victim of the abuses of Parent B, has now been manipulated into appearing to be unstable and abusive. Parent B improperly uses an allegation of Parental Alienation to explain why the children are not as keen to see him or her. Here, the abusive Parent has blamed the other parent for the children's feelings, when the record clearly shows that his or her behavior was the problem. However, since the children are still emotionally connected even to abusive parents, this abusive parent manipulates this connection with the children to begin the actual process of alienating them from the other parent, the one accused of being an Alienating Parent.

Paradoxically then, the abusive parent becomes the alienating parent, and the now alienated parent is portrayed as being unstable, abusive, and unsafe to be around the children. As fantastic and unrealistic as this may seem, it is a phenomenon of increasing incidence.

Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome(PAS)

2008-02-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome

Parental Alienation Syndrome was first defined and described by Psychiatrist Richard Gardner, M.D. in his work with divorcing families with minor children in 1985. He began to notice a growing phenomenon where one parent would try to alienate the children from the other parent so that the children would ultimately reject that parent. When this alienation was successful, Dr. Gardner identified a cluster of symptoms that these children would begin to exhibit, which he described as the "Parental Alienation Syndrome". Since his original work in this area, there has been much further work and research done by Dr. Gardner as well as many other mental health professionals.

Since this phenomenon would occur in the context of divorce only, it is perhaps not surprising that it would generate a great deal of controversy. That is, it was essentially discovered, described and battled over in the acrimonious environment of the court.

The existence of Parental Alienation Syndrome has been debated in court in the context of litigation. It had until recently been argued that PAS had not been tested within the courts as being admissible as evidence. As noted earlier, this challenge has always been in the context of it being a litigation strategy. It is therefore of some significance that PAS was tested and did pass this important legal test in November of 2000, in Tampa, Florida. J. Michael Bone, Ph.D. was directly involved in this Frye Hearing as was Richard Gardner, M.D. along with Richard Warshack, Ph.D. The court ruled that PAS was accepted in the professional scientific community and did meet the Frye standard. Click here for more detailed information regarding this legal event.

The Misapplication of Parental Alienation

2008-02-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

Parental Alienation, wherein a child no longer wants to see a once loved parent due to the influence of the other parent, is not the only reason that a child might not want to see that parent. When parents are abusive, neglectful, frightening, etc., these behaviors on the part of that parent can also cause a child to not want to see them. This is not Parental Alienation of the kind often referred to as Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Therefore, when a parent has been abusive to their child to the degree that the child no longer wants to see them, this is not PAS. PAS should never be given as a diagnosis, when domestic violence is present.

Unfortunately, PAS is now being inappropriately used as a shield to hide a parent's abusive behavior. This misapplication of PAS is a great disservice to the families where this is occurring, and is dangerous to the children. With this being said, we should also be reminded that it takes a significant amount of abuse from a parent, for that child to become estranged from them. All of the research on domestic violence is consistent in saying that before reaching the point of becoming estranged from a parent, due to that parents behavior, that children will attempt to contort themselves and their behavior to get into the good graces of that abusive parent, in the hopes of them no longer acting this way. Therefore, it is typically only where there has been a great deal of abuse, that a child will want nothing to do with that parent. Small slights and parental missteps simply will not alienate a child from a parent.

Upcoming TeleSeminar

2008-02-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

Beginning on Thursday evening, May 1, 2008, I will describing what I believe are the four most common mistakes made in the litigation of cases where Parental Alienation is present. The course will consist of 4, one hour conference telephone calls, held on 4 consecutive Thursday evenings at 8:00 PM EST, beginning May 1, 2008. For more information about registering for this seminar, please see www.overcomingparentalalienation.com.

The rationale for the course follows:

Who

The audience for this course are parents whose children have been alienated from them within the context of divorce. This course provides the tools necessary to overcome this alienation process both within the court system as well as outside this context. The content of this course is the result of two decades of working with this problem as an evaluator for the court, a therapist, and as a consultant.

Background

This course is the result of my 20 plus years of work devoted to the problem of what has been referred to as Parental Alienation. During this time, I have witnessed egregious errors and injustices that have resulted in the destruction of a great many families. Most of these errors were avoidable if properly handled. However, given the special challenges and demands of the dynamic of parental alienation, failure to understand them within the professional community is more the rule than the exception. There are many reasons for this.

How

The structure of this course is organized around the “Most Common Errors” that are committed in these difficult cases. These “Errors” tend to be patterned, repetitive, predictable, and common. These “Errors” are not typically the result of inferior representation or incompetence, but are the result of the special challenges that alienation cases present, both in and out of court. Each hourly session is devoted to one of these common, if not universal, errors, and provides clear strategies to overcome and avoid them.

Why

Beginning in 2007, I closed my clinical practice and began a purely consultative practice devoted to helping parents, attorneys and mental health professionals with the special problem of Parental Alienation. As a consultant, I am able to apply my experience and understanding in ways designed to help you to be successful with your case. This course represents the basic elements of my consulting work with individual clients.

The Importance of Qualified Experts

2008-02-05T17:57:00.000-08:00

While most mental health professionals who work in the area of divorce would describe some familiarity with Parental Alienation Syndrome, it is important to understand that this is a very specialized field that requires different evaluative techniques and tools than if Alienation is not present. If the evaluator is not intimately familiar with the nuances of this phenomenon, it is likely that this condition will be misdescribed and mistreated.

First, Parental Alienation must be distinguished from Parental Alienation Syndrome. Parental Alienation refers to the behaviors engaged in by the parent, with the possible result being the development of Parental Alienation Syndrome in the child. Parental Alienation refers to the actions of one parent onto the children. Specifically, this refers to one parent denigrating, criticizing and attacking the other parent in front of and ultimately with the children. It represents the one parent's attempt to remove what is referred to as the “Target Parent” from their children's lives, and making it appear that it is the child who feels this way. How this is accomplished ranges from the most subtle to the most obvious of strategies. But they all carry the common goal of attempting to eliminate the Target Parent from the child's life and world. Parental Alienation refers to specific actions by the Alienating Parent. These behaviors are predictable and form an identifiable pattern. The pattern of these behaviors form four Criteria which are listed below

Visitation or access blocking by one parent
False allegations of abuse or unfit parenting against the Target Parent
Deterioration in the relationship with the child and the Target Parent since marital separation
Exaggerated fear reaction on the part of the child at displeasing the Alienating Parent
When these four criteria are present, the stage is set for the development of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is the psychological condition that exists within the child who has been a victim of these Parental Alienating behaviors. These behaviors have the effect of causing the child to internally reformulate how they view and feel about the now absent Parent. Parental Alienation Syndrome is the process of manipulating the child to internally transform their view of the other parent from being an object of love into being an object of hate. This is a profound and very damaging psychological illness can and often will create life long harm to the child, well into adulthood.

Parental Alienation Syndrome is the result of the child living in the presence of the four criteria listed above for some significant period of time. Parental Alienation Syndrome can be identified by the presence of following manifestations or symptoms in the child. They are:

Campaign of Denigration
Weak or Frivolous Rationalizations for the Deprecation
Lack of Ambivalence
"Independent Thinker" Phenomenon
Reflexive support of Alienating Parent
Absence of guilt over cruelty and exploitation of Alienated Parent
Presence of Borrowed Scenarios
Spread of Animosity to Extended Family of Alienated Parent

Children Need Both Parents: TalkShoe Radio Interview

2008-02-05T17:56:00.001-08:00

CHILDREN NEED BOTH PARENTS

TalkShoe RADIO

Dr. Michael Bone will join hosts Ron Smith and Robin Denison for this live broadcast of Children Need Both Parents.
DATE: Thursday, February 7, 2008
TIME: 9:00 p.m. EST

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
1. Phone: Dial 724.444.7444
Enter: 53118# (Caller ID)
Enter: 1# or your PIN if you are a member
2. Join the call from your computer or just listen in by clicking here.
3. Become a TalkShoe Member by clicking here (optional and free)

Dr. Bone participated in the program on January 24, 2008. You may listen to this episode by clicking here and selecting Episode 29.

For additional information, please contact:
Paula at
407.443.5627 or
paula@jmbconsulting.org.

Divorce and the Modern Family

2008-02-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

In today’s changing social landscape, divorce has become a significant and immutable feature. Currently, more marriages end in divorce than do not. The reasons for this are many and complex, and although these reasons are debated, the fact of the predominance of divorce is not disputed. With this upswing in divorce comes also an explosion in the number of children of divorce.

Due primarily to social and legal changes that occurred in the 1970’s, the dilemma of where and with whom the child would live primarily became a reality that more of us knew directly or indirectly. Simply put, child custody disputes have became a much more prominent feature of our everyday lives. Children are routinely fought over in custody disputes, and seldom does a day pass that one does not hear of some tragic and sometime violent event that occurred in the context of a custody dispute. Related to this, the courts have become choked with allegations of one spouse abusing the other spouse and/ or the children, again in the context of one of these custody disputes. It is within this complex social and legal context that the terms Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome were born.