Readers have responded to an article about a mother who feels betrayed by the family courts, sharing their own experiences and raising concerns about the misuse of parental alienation allegations.
Distinguishing syndrome from behaviour
One reader argues that the article would benefit from a clearer distinction between the discredited theory of “parental alienation syndrome” (PAS) and genuine, demonstrable alienating behaviour. PAS proposed that a child’s unjustified rejection of a parent could be identified as a distinct syndrome. It is no longer an accepted clinical diagnosis, since a child’s rejection of a parent cannot itself establish manipulation, therefore treating it as diagnostic risks overlooking abuse or other legitimate reasons for the child’s feelings.
However, rejecting PAS as a clinical diagnosis should not obscure the reality that one parent can manipulate a child into rejecting the other. Persistent denigration, emotional pressure and demands for loyalty can leave a child feeling that loving one parent means betraying the other. No child should have to carry that burden.
Cafcass and the Family Justice Council
The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) deliberately uses the term “alienating behaviours”, recognising that these can damage children’s identity, self-worth and wider family relationships, and that manipulation or coercion may amount to emotional abuse. The Family Justice Council similarly distinguishes the unsupported syndrome from behaviour whose existence and consequences courts must determine as matters of fact.
For a child, being made to feel that loving one parent betrays the other is an intolerable burden. For the rejected parent, losing a relationship with a living child can bring devastating grief. These experiences deserve recognition alongside the suffering caused to both the child and rejected parent.
Children must be heard, domestic abuse taken seriously and allegations carefully examined. Rejecting an unsupported diagnosis should strengthen that scrutiny, without obscuring the reality of harmful parental manipulation.
Balanced reporting should acknowledge both the danger of unfounded allegations and the anguish caused by proven manipulation. These are not competing concerns. Both demand attention if children and families are to be protected.
A mother’s painful experience
Another reader shares a painfully familiar experience, having lost custody of her daughters in 2013 after initially applying for shared, 50/50 care. Her case was complicated by the fact that her barrister argued that it was her ex-husband who was alienating the children from her. Her daughters, now adults, have since told her that their father and his family coached them on how to answer Cafcass questions and encouraged them to believe that she was mentally ill and did not want to care for them.
At the time, Fathers4Justice and fathers’ rights were receiving considerable media attention. The judge in her case was approaching retirement, and her barrister told her she believed his decision to award her ex-husband full custody was intended to make a wider statement. She cannot know whether her barrister was right.
Central to the judgment was the claim that she was mentally unstable. After her ex-husband abruptly removed the children from school and obtained an ex parte order preventing her from seeing them, she was distraught and called the Samaritans. Her ex subsequently obtained her phone records and used that call as evidence. The judge treated calling the Samaritans as evidence that she might be suicidal and therefore unsafe to care for her children.
At her barrister’s suggestion, she obtained an independent psychiatric/psychological assessment. It found no reason why she could not care for her daughters. As she remembers it, that report was simply ignored.
She struggles with the suggestion that parental alienation is not “real”. The label may be problematic, but parents can manipulate and coach children against another parent. Her daughters have since confirmed to her that this happened to them.
A father’s case in Zurich
A third reader, a father living in England whose son lives with his mother in Switzerland, highlights the consequences of failing to obtain any psychological assessment. Despite joint legal custody, court orders providing for contact and repeated enforcement proceedings, he has not seen his son since July 2023.
Zurich court decisions recognised his mother’s interference with contact. Two sets of social workers, involved at different times, recommended psychological assessments of the parents to assess parenting capacity. Yet the authorities never acted on those recommendations. Without those assessments, his son has remained with the parent whose behaviour he regards as emotionally manipulative, while his relationship with him has been allowed to disappear.
Reliable psychological assessment can help authorities understand family relationships; its absence can leave damaging behaviour unexamined. The answer to poor expert evidence should be rigorous assessment where warranted, alongside careful examination of the facts.
A child’s expressed wishes matter, but so does understanding how they developed. Refusal of contact may reflect harmful experiences, pressure, divided loyalties or several factors together.
He argues that we should resist drawing general conclusions from individual cases. Misusing allegations of alienation to dismiss genuine abuse is an injustice. Ignoring deliberate obstruction and denigration can also deprive a child of a loving parent. Rejecting a disputed diagnostic label does not establish that the underlying behaviours never occur.
Neither mothers nor fathers have a monopoly on suffering or causing harm. His case cannot establish what happened in Sarah’s family, any more than hers settles his. Both call for competent investigation, timely intervention and scrutiny of outcomes. Years lost to a parent and child cannot be restored by a later acknowledgment that the system failed them.
