Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) was created by a psychiatrist/court reporter Richard Gardner with the sole purpose of creating a defence in court to deny a parent’s sexual abuse of their child, and a means to discredit a mother’s claims of abuse. He had extremely distasteful views on women and child sexual abuse.
It progressed through case law over the last three decades with the help of fathers rights activists, mental health ‘experts’ and lawyers who benefited from it ideologically, politically and financially, and it evolved from PAS into PA. Its true purpose was revealed in extensive research in recent years. PA originated in America where several cases involving PA allegations got overturned after the evidence of domestic abuse was investigated.
There is no peer-reviewed academic research to support PAS Theory. PA has now become conflated with PAS. While some present it as a gender-neutral concept and a relational phenomenon in pubic, in practice it is used to remove custody from mostly women, and it is still Gardner’s strict, authoritarian and inhumane interventions and treatments that are used by many of the PA ‘experts’ in family court cases. It has proven to be a biased concept designed to punish mothers.
Parental Alienation Syndrome is not recognized as a mental health condition and is not a professionally recognized diagnosis by the:
American Psychological Association
American Medical Association
World Health Organization
It was removed from The World Health Organisation index in Sept 2020.
Even the PA 'experts' can't agree on what parental alienation actually 'is' and fight amongst themselves in public domains. Credible international experts in domestic abuse, child psychology and law discuss parental alienation in the context of domestic abuse cases here. Most cases in the family courts are domestic abuse cases. Credible experts in domestic abuse must be considered as a more appropriate option in family court matters.
The purpose of PA today remains the same as it did when it was invented. With the abundant research to prove how harmful it is to victims of domestic abuse and children, and a significant lack of research proving what PA ‘is’, it should be enough to keep any form of PA out of the legislation.
Family courts have a lack of understanding around coercive control and have put a father’s rights to contact before a child’s right to protection from harm. Courts historically sought to keep children’s voices out of proceedings, to their detriment. The PA ‘experts’ in practice ‘override the voice of the child’ in their assessments. Research shows that Harming children’s participation rights puts children at risk.