Richard Ducote, one of America’s leading child abuse and domestic violence attorneys, recently cross-examined parental alienation ‘expert’ Robert Evans in a court in Pennsylvania. Ducote’s expertise shone through, while Evan’s testimony left readers horrified as he described his extreme and shocking beliefs, reminiscent of his idol and inventor of parental alienation syndrome, Richard Gardner.

Chills ran up the spine of witnesses as Evans purported parental alienation to be a ‘phenomenon’ and potentially more harmful than a father intentionally breaking the arms and the legs of, or poisoning, his child. Evans appeared oblivious to the absurdity of his words as he then testified that parental alienation was potentially more harmful to a four-year-old child than a father’s rape of that child.

He goes on to describe an alienating parent’s behaviour.

“It could just be using the word him.” Evans testifies.

“It’s ‘him’ on the phone or ‘he’s’ here.”

“Another one is communicating directly to the child that the other parent is abusive or dangerous through your actions. In other words, getting law enforcement involved, doing well-care visits, filing abuse allegations, with child protection organisations, that’s very common”.

Evans describes a typical scenario involving an alienating parent – a mother reports child abuse to a paediatrician. She tells them the other parent is abusive and neglectful, and the paediatrician pays particular attention. In the warped world of parental alienation, reporting the abusive behaviour is more harmful to the child than the actual abuse.

Evans describes the effects on children,

“You have children becoming behaviourally regressed.”

“You’ll have children soiling themselves. They’ll go into sucking their thumbs when they moved beyond that type of development. You see depression in children”.

He then describes the suicide of a 16-year-old son of an alienating parent,

“we’re seeing that type of significant reaction to this phenomenon.”

Evans remedy for these ‘alienated’ children is “essentially, a flip in custody”, including ninety days or more of no contact between the child and the alienating parent, and a strict and authoritarian therapeutic process enforced by like-minded parental alienation practicioners at programs such as Family Bridges and Turning Points for Families.

Evan’s shameful testimony provides the answer to that burning question, what exactly is parental alienation? It is a victim-blaming theory created by unethical practitioners in the family courts to conceal the sexual abuse of children.

Richard Ducote described it as he cross-examined Evans,

“It is a defence for people who are indeed caught abusing their kids. And all it does is it takes the symptoms of abuse and redefines them as symptoms of alienation, which is a circular defence. Every symptom of the abuse is just simply called ‘evidence’ of alienation”.

Evans assertions were brazen, and to the general public, ludicrous. Shockingly, Evans is not the only family court reporter with these extreme and distasteful views; he goes on to sight several of his American cohorts who tried and failed to get the non-scientific syndrome into the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5.

Ducote quipped at their efforts.

“So do you think maybe when the American Psychiatric Association found out that you guys were going and saying that being raped as a four-year-old was not as bad as this parental alienation syndrome, that they kind of figured this was a bunch of nonsense?”

Still today, proponents of the concept repackage it using enmeshment, gatekeeping, resist and refuse, and Stockholm syndrome in desperation to prove parental alienation is real. They do this despite no credible research or scientific evidence. Behind the scenes, the scoundrels continue to deny domestic violence and recommend transferring custody from safe, loving parents to harmful, controlling ones and get rewarded handsomely for doing so.

Family court reporters like Evans hold tremendous influence and power over judges’ decisions in custody disputes. They act in several roles for the court, including mediator, parent coordinator, guardian ad-litem, custody evaluator, and psychological evaluator; a repugnant market has formed. Several parental alienation lawyers and ‘experts’ in the USA, UK and Australia have been sanctioned or are under investigation for professional misconduct or have had their licences terminated.

Ducote hits the nail on the head again as he questioned Evans on the American Psychiatric Association's refusal to recognise the syndrome.

“Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that this is the only supposedly, the only, quote, disorder that’s actually diagnosed by lawyers as opposed to mental health professionals?”

In Scotland, most cases in the family courts are domestic abuse cases, yet around ninety per cent of family court Child Welfare Reporters are from the legal profession; they also act in other roles such as Curator Ad Litem and Child Advocate. The lawyers conceal the evidence of abuse, influence the child’s views, report inaccurately to the court and make harmful recommendations to reunify terrified children with the parent who has harmed them. The lawyers then hide behind the report’s privileged status when the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission passes the eligible complaint to the Faculty of Advocates for investigation.

The family courts have been captured by those who vehemently defend patriarchy. They force women to remain silent about egregious abuse, encourage the child to have a loving relationship with their abuser and force them to protect the fathers right to private life or face punishment. The backlash to progressive legislation designed to protect women and children from abuse is insidious and fierce. The parental alienation proponents now petition and lobby parliament to recognise the concept as coercive control and its own form of domestic abuse in the very legislation designed to protect the victims of the racket. They publicly attack anyone they perceive as a threat to their power and influence, namely domestic abuse survivors crying out for change, charities such as Women’s Aid, and credible experts and academics who have exposed the truth in their research. The parental alienation community churn out unprofessional challenges as the façade of the theory crumbles, challenges that do not hold up to scrutiny and quickly get rebutted.

The parental alienation court reporter’s beliefs are firmly entrenched; they show no shame or remorse for the catastrophic harm they have caused over the last three decades. Their mission is to reunite the family and force women and children into a life of subservience to a perpetrator of abuse. The abuse survivor’s mission is to live peacefully, have their human rights upheld, and be set free from their ex’s and the family court’s power and control.