speaker-0 (00:18.454)
All right, hello everyone and welcome to today's presentation. My name is Ashley Rumschlag and I am the National Director of domesticshelters.org, a program at Alliance for Hope International. I'm joined by Rachel Myers, our Senior Digital Services Specialist and Hannah Craig, our Director of Content. Rachel and Hannah are going to be working behind the scenes today in the chat and the Q &A.

Today's presentation will be 90 minutes and will feature an honest look at parental alienation frameworks in custody cases. As I mentioned, domesticshelters.org is a program of Alliance for Hope International. Our goal at the Alliance is to create communities of safety, hope, and healing. To learn more about our various programs and to search our resource library, please visit Alliance for Hope.

Just want to pause for a moment to acknowledge the amazing Alliance for Hope team led by our CEO and President Katherine Johnson.

speaker-0 (01:29.976)
Here's a look at our upcoming events, including the Purple Ribbon Awards Virtual Celebration, which will be held on May 21st at 1 p.m. If you're not familiar, the Purple Ribbon Awards are a national recognition program led by Alliance for Hope International. Its purpose is to honor individuals, teams, and organizations making a significant impact in the response to domestic violence.

Our 2026 Medallion winners have been announced and we'll announce the winners of the $30,000 in grants during the virtual event on May 21st. For more details on the Purple Ribbon Awards, visit purpleribbonawards.org and to register for this year's celebration, please use the link in the chat. I'd also like to highlight the 26th annual

an international Family Justice Center Conference, which will be held in St. Petersburg, Florida, November 3rd through 5th. This conference will include opportunities to learn from experts in areas like strangulation prevention, collaborative support models, trauma-informed care, and so much more. Prosecutors, law enforcement officers, advocates, therapists, civil attorneys, doctors, nurses, judges, survivors, parole and probation officers, court

professionals, social workers, and child welfare are all encouraged to attend.

And also just a reminder that if you love the webinars that we put on, especially love hearing from Veronica and Barry, there are quite a few webinars available that they've presented for us and they're all available in our webinars archive. We have over 60 webinars available on demand, including AI and DV, strangulation, coercive control, leadership, fundraising, pets and DV, stalking, human trafficking, tech abuse, post-separation abuse and self-care.

speaker-0 (03:26.478)
All right, we are so grateful to welcome back Barry Goldstein and Veronica York of Goldstein and York DV Experts LLC. Both Barry and Veronica are authors, speakers, and advocates, and their newest book, Preventing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse, is available now. Welcome, Veronica and Barry.

speaker-2 (03:51.192)
Thank you. It's really great to be back. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so we can.

speaker-0 (03:53.639)
speaker-0 (04:00.846)
Make sure everything looks good. Got a great audience today. We've got about 500 people tuning in and it just keeps growing. So I'm so glad to see so many people interested in this very important topic. And I can see your screen just fine.

speaker-2 (04:17.378)
Great, okay. You should see our first slide then. Okay, so I'll kick us off. Welcome everyone. I really appreciate you taking out the time today to come to this webinar on this extremely important topic. And we are excited to be back with domesticshelters.org and the wonderful people who work here and the great work that they do. So thank you for having us.

speaker-0 (04:21.237)
If they do.

speaker-2 (04:43.54)
We are excited because we have our new book coming out that Ashley mentioned. It is called Preventing Domestic Violence and Child Abuse, Legal, Medical, Social, and Faith-Based Strategies for Protecting Children and Families. It was out this month and I'm sure later in the webinar we can provide links if you're interested in purchasing a book.

But one of the, we're here today because one of the chapters in our book is that Barry and I actually co-wrote is called Removing Bias from Alienation Theories. And if you're on this call, you've probably heard many things about parental alienation, parental alienation syndrome, to resist and refuse dynamics, to gatekeeping, to all of these different things that court professionals like to throw out there.

in family court in child custody cases. But our chapter is going to focus on how we can use, how we can talk about alienation in a way that removes the bias because the parental alienation of yesteryear that was concocted in very evil and bad circumstances, the foundation of it.

is not the same alienation that we want to talk about today. And so alienation is a huge problem. It is controversial topic. That's why we wanted to address it. That's why we wrote this chapter. We wanted to take a new approach to it. You know, there have been arguments on the DV advocate side about alienation and using the term alienation. There are arguments on the cottage industry side who

promote parental alienation and how they determine what it is and how to approach it and how to have solutions to it. And so we kind of, want to present a very, I would say simple and non-biased way of looking at alienation because we understand that there is such thing as alienation. In fact, we deal with it.

speaker-2 (07:03.712)
a lot in our cases where we have abusive parents, particularly abusive fathers, because alienation is one of the common abuser tactics that they use to undermine the relationship with the other parent. So many of our protective mothers, our protective parents, are victims of that type of behavior and abuse. And so we want to take another look at alienation, not as a bias theory, not

the lack of research on scientific alienation theories that aren't fair, but we want to offer a new solution. And we know that we can't ignore alienation because, we can't say we're just not going to talk about it, or we're not going to call it that, or whatever you want to call it, we can't ignore it. And so that's why we want to talk, we want to do this presentation and talk about the chapter we wrote in our book. So I guess I will let Barry

Talk next and he will do the next leg

speaker-1 (08:06.894)
Welcome everybody. What we missed is that for many decades, while the poison of the bogus alienation theories has been infecting hearts, our side has tried to respond by pointing out that it's been twice-redacted by the American Psychiatric Association, that there's no research to support it.

et cetera, et cetera. And unfortunately that hasn't worked. It should have, but it hasn't. And what we noticed is that no one has offered an alternative way to deal with alienation. And just the problem is, as Veronica said, there is such a thing as alienation. We see abusers using alienating behavior all the time, but fundamental problems with the

biased alienation theories is that they were deliberately designed to help use of fathers, take custody from good mothers. And what they did was they asked the court to only look at mothers' behavior. That's a big part of the bias and it's something that needs to be overcome. So we're saying to the courts, if you're going to consider alienation,

you need to do it in an unbiased way. I don't know who could argue with that, although I'm sure they'll do. But that's what we're trying to do. So there are a lot of problems with parental alienation syndrome and the other theories that have all come from that. And it starts with the fact that there is no research to support it.

That means that the alienation theories the courts have heard for many decades are unreliable. There's no reason to be following them. And the problem again is they don't have a better approach. And that's what we hope to provide. The alienation theories were created to help abusive fathers take custody from good mothers.

speaker-1 (10:35.232)
And what's really gone on is think about domestic violence. It's about control, including financial control. What that means is that in most custody cases, most of the money is on the side of abusive others. Now, if you are a mental health professional or you're an attorney and you want to make a lot of money,

and you don't have hurting children, you need an approach that can help abusive fathers take custody from good mothers. That's why Richard Gardner created parental alienation syndrome. That's why the cottage industry started. That's why it's had unfortunately way too much success.

So what we want to do is understand that there is the bias in the original frontal alienation syndrome and in the other theories that are based on because it focuses only on mother's behavior. In most cases, when children don't want to see the father, when they're afraid of the father, it's because of the father's behavior.

But if we take the father's behavior out of the equation, then the only thing to look at is the mother's behavior, and that leads to lot of misstep decisions. And so that is the basis for our chapter, and we're explain how we can do things differently.

speaker-2 (12:24.096)
Okay. So in continuing and talking about the problems with the present court responses to alienation, as Barry said, if they are going to even consider what, you know, courts want to call alienation, they really need to, again, remove the bias that it was created to present, meaning

We can't just claim a mother is crazy or alienating just because she left the relationship and reported the abuse. That's the assumption right now. So they ignore the actual effects of the behavior on the child. And obviously that is going to put the burden on the mother's behaviors rather than looking at how is her behavior

or the father's behavior actually affecting the child and what is going on with the child. it really, courts are supposed to work in the best interest of children. So not focusing on the best interest or the actual behaviors of the child, the trauma the child's been exposed to, et cetera, really undermines the whole point of doing what's best for the child.

So courts are assuming that alienation is happening instead of just using an evidence-based approach, which would include looking at the effects of the child and also looking at the behaviors of the abusive parent. Current practices that courts are using to combat or have a solution to the present alienation and scientific theories

are things like harmful outcome cases. And harmful outcome cases are exactly what the reunification type therapies and reunification camps of the world, they're trying to do. So they're trying to basically take a child from their primary attachment figure who is their protective parent and put them in the custody of their alleged abusive parent. Meanwhile,

speaker-2 (14:42.776)
taking any contact away from the parent they're bonded to. And this is called a harmful outcome case because this increases the child's risk of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and suicide, which is much more harmful to the child than any benefit the court thinks it's providing by doing that solution. That's why we have laws in place that are under the federal cadence law. We'll talk about that more later.

but these laws are trying to ban these reunification camps and ban these practices that are so harmful to children. And what these theories are doing is they're excusing all the bad behaviors of the so-called alienated parent. And they're not even addressing those behaviors of domestic violence, of course, of control, et cetera. And they are only looking at the behaviors of the so-called

parent who's alienating the other parent and looking at any behavior that parent is doing and calling it alienation. In fact, there's no standard definition for what alienation actually is because there's no scientific research to support it. So court professionals can look at any basic behavior that a protective parent is doing and call it alienation if they want to. So really, they're just relying on speculation. They're relying on assumptions.

that they have no personal knowledge about of what the other parent is saying or doing to the child that is supposedly making them being alienated from the other parent.

Okay, Barry.

speaker-1 (16:22.902)
Yes. So I think fundamental, what we need to talk briefly is that the courts have been taught that children need both rents equally. And that's often true or we suppose in the vast majority of cases where you have two safe parents, it's not true in domestic violence cases.

And we need to say something very clearly and very obviously. Children do not need each parent equally. They need their prime management figure more than the other parent. They need the safe parent more than the abusive one. That should be obvious. But I think over and over again, we talk about cause courts

are using a subjective approach instead of an evidence-based approach. They can just pick whatever they want and then just say, I believe that's best for the child. this purpose of the is to do a more evidence-based approach because the research support what courts are doing. And what Veronica and I did in terms of chapter

is we took some of the case that we've had where it should be obvious that what the court did is wrong. But because using a subject approach, they just do these things that are so obviously harmful to the children. And when we talk about some of the specifics, it's easier to see why the present practice is

don't work and have caused so much harm to children. So in our cases, the father, I mean, he had a long history of abuse, but what we want to talk about is he would repeatedly walk in on his teen and preteen daughters when they were in the shower, when they were getting dressed or undressed in their bedroom. And when the girls had not to do that, when they expressed

speaker-1 (18:49.292)
how much it bothers them, it was embarrassing, et cetera, he would say, it's my house, I get to decide. And when there was an evaluation, the evaluator said, the father claims he's not due for sexual purposes, so therefore it's not sexual abuse, and we don't have to worry about it. And the judge bought that logic.

or lack of logic. But of course, in the real world, when the father is walking in on his daughters when they're undressed, that is going to affect them. It's going to affect his relationship with them. It's going to harm them. It's going to cause exactly the fear and stress that Ace tells us is so harmful. And yet courts using a biased alienation theory

didn't see that, didn't see that the bad relationship the father had with the daughter was because of his actions, not because of anything they assumed the mother might be doing. On the other side, we often see cases where the mother is holding the children from the father or the children are so

upset they refuse to go. At court treats that as alienation that she's interfering with the father's relationship. In reality, the children don't want to go. The mother's afraid to send the children because of the father's abusive behavior. That's a very good example of gender bias. They're blaming the mother for the actions of the father.

If he would stop the abuse, if he would promise never to do that again, if he would apologize, that's the way to develop a relationship. But what abusers want is just to force the issue and to call anything that interferes with his relationship alienation so that they don't say it's false. Bramka?

speaker-2 (21:11.2)
Yes, and I'll just add that we see in our cases that abusive fathers not only will do what Barry just said, but they'll also want the mother to do everything in her power to make sure that the children will go see him. So he'll send her harassing messages like you're not doing anything to help my relationship with the child. You're not doing... So he's basically just blaming her.

or putting the burden on her to make his relationship better when he could do it by just changing his behaviors. Okay, so next we want to talk about how obviously this bias harms children. And as Barry said, these are actual cases that we've worked on. So we're using these examples to show the bias of the current alienation theories in courts. So in this one, there were actually this mother,

had two ex-fathers or ex-partners. And so both of these ex-partners were abusive and each one of them was demanding opposite weekends with the children. So what that meant is that the mother really didn't have...

weekend off. She didn't have time to work on the weekends to provide for her children. She didn't have time where all of them could spend time together with all of her children. And you know these fathers were doing this deliberately to hurt the mother. There was no you know reasonable explanation as to why they needed separate weekends but they had kind of worked together to make sure that they did that. Really just to punish her.

And in turn obviously hurting the children as well as they couldn't spend time with their siblings Etc and they blamed the mother for objecting to these harmful demands that they were making they were claiming that she was alienating The children or I'm yeah alienating the children because she did she was she was trying to figure out a way Where she could have the children on the same weekends and because of that they called her an alienator

speaker-2 (23:29.248)
In a separate example, there was a mother who was encouraging her children to eat healthy and to dress appropriately for the weather and wanting them to have healthy food, wanting them to have appropriate clothing, and she wanted them to avoid television shows that were not appropriate for their age. Basically, she was doing what any good parent would do. However, the judge and the GAL in that case,

decided that her requests for the children to have these things was alienation. And the reason they said it was alienation was because the father didn't agree to what they were eating and how they were dressing and what TV shows. And so because of that, they claimed the mother was being controlling and she was trying to undermine the father's parenting and they called her an alienator. So these are examples of how

The cottage industry of parental alienation uses any type of behavior that the mother is doing and calls it alienation just to fit their narrative. And like Barry said, make a lot of money.

Very.

speaker-1 (24:44.808)
Okay, so we're going to continue with some examples. And again, because the present alienation theories don't look at the father's behavior, we don't even have discussions of this, which is something our new chapter seeks to change. And so here, the father's coercive control on the mother impacts her health because the stress

that he is causing, you know, creates a wide variety of health issues, everything from mental illness to cancer to heart disease, that autoimmune diseases. And so when he engages in course of control, he's not just hurting the mother, he's hurting the children because the children depend on

using the outdated and false alienation theories don't even think about this. Don't even think about the harm that the father is doing to the children's relationship with the mother. Yet, if you look at the research, it's obvious. Another example why the courts really need to use evidence-based approaches. The other side of that is when the mother

is reporting the father's abuse. Typically, the cottage industry wants to view that alienating because it can interfere with the father's relationship. But worse, it's his abuse that has harmed the relationship and it's his abuse that requires the mother to take action to

protect the children. This is another example of gender bias because standard alienating approaches seek to blame the other for the actions of the father. That's what we're dealing with and that's what needs to change. And we think that the examples we provide here

speaker-1 (27:10.976)
And in the book, make it easier for courts to understand that there's been fundamentally wrong and something fundamentally unfair with the approach they're used to and that there's now a better approach so they don't have to use the only approach that has been available.

speaker-2 (27:40.394)
Okay, so I'm going to talk a little bit more about the reporting and the withholding. First, we want to talk about that. Like Barry says, when a mother reports abuse, she's doing so because she's trying to protect her child. If the father is

committing domestic violence towards her or abuse towards the child, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, whatever that might be. She's seeking to protect her child. That is what a mother should do. In fact, when CPS gets involved with these types of cases, they often will, if a mother doesn't protect her child from those things, will say she's failing to protect.

And again, so she's held responsible for that. But when she does report abuse, she's now in the court system where they're going to call her an alienator for doing so. So mothers in this situation are really between a rock and a hard place. The current alienation unscientific theories would view this as the mother trying to undermine the relationship with the father.

And the reason for that is because of number one, what Barry said earlier about how courts believe that children need both parents in their lives no matter what. Abusers are obviously liars. They are manipulators. And so obviously they are going to deny their abuse. And in denying their abuse, they oftentimes sound very reasonable. They are intelligent. They are articulate.

and they seem like they're telling the truth when they deny their abuse. so courts automatically assume and alienation theories are absolutely tied to the assumption that virtually all allegations of abuse are false. And that's the issue. So the reality is that if, and like Barry said, if the father actually

speaker-2 (29:56.888)
took responsibility and accountability for his behaviors, the child wouldn't need to be really protected anymore from that father. But the problem is that abusers never take accountability for their abuse. They only, what we call, do DARVO, what we call DARVO, which is deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. So the focus really should be on changing his behaviors.

rather than on the mother's reactions or the child's reactions to his abuse. It sounds pretty obvious when you say it out loud, but courts are hearing from father's rights groups and 50-50 type narratives, and it's muddying the waters when it comes to domestic violence and child abuse cases. If a child custody case that is contested has to be decided by a judge, we know it is not a

appropriate to do shared parenting in that case. So these 50-50 bills that are going around the country and being promoted by abusers themselves, these bills are not appropriate. They are only going to make things worse in domestic violence cases, which are the cases that we are seeing that are contested that have to be decided by a judge. If there are two good reasonable parents that can handle shared parenting, i.e. 50-50,

those are going to, for the most part, be settled out of court. So we need to have common sense when we look at these types of cases. The other thing we wanted to talk about is when the father complains to the court about the mother's reaction to his abuse, it really puts the burden of proof on the mother. And oftentimes, evidence of domestic violence is equivocal, which means it is ambiguous or it

The evidence is capable of being interpreted in different ways. And obviously courts look at that as he said, she said, right? So this is why Saunders recommends a multidisciplinary approach in domestic violence cases, because as experts, we understand patterns. We know what to look for to decide. What other information do we have that makes it more likely that what he's saying or what she's saying is true?

speaker-2 (32:19.546)
And when they're relying on guardian ad litems and evaluators, et cetera, who do not have the specific knowledge and expertise in domestic violence that's needed, then these cases are becoming epidemically horrible in our country where they're making recommendations and decisions that are harming children. And the main reason they're doing that is for these alienation theories.

So obviously then the mother gets blamed as if it was a false report of abuse because they can't, they don't have any experts in their case that can actually look at the information to decide is there abuse or is there not? They're automatically gonna say, well, the father denies the abuse and the mother keeps reporting it, so I guess she's lying. And that's it. I mean, they don't take it much further than that. And there is a chapter in our book as well that I wrote.

It's a chapter about child protective services and the role that they play in keeping children safe in these types of cases. And in the book, I explain how CPS is hindering safety for children. And the reason for that is because when they work on abuse cases, most of the time their focus is on cases where

they are gonna be able to, the child's in an environment where they have to be removed and put in foster care. That's where their bread and butter is, so to speak. When they're working on cases that involve two parents who are seemingly good parents, what they're going to do is they have very, they have overworked, crowded desks, they have a lot of work.

they have timelines in which they have to close cases. And so a lot of times what they'll do is they'll interview the father, they'll interview the mother, they'll talk to the child. And if they don't see, and they're also, again, not domestic violence experts. So if they don't have what they call enough evidence to substantiate any kind of abuse, what they're going to do is just close the case and say it's unsubstantiated. Okay, but when in doing that,

speaker-2 (34:42.388)
What they're doing, unfortunately, is the child, the family court system is gonna look at that unsubstantiated finding and they're gonna treat it as there was no abuse or the abuse never happened. And that is incredibly problematic because unsubstantiated doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means there wasn't enough evidence and they probably didn't know what to look for.

And now the court has this piece of paper that says it's unsubstantiated and that's going to give them the inclination to say, well, mom must be alienating or, you know, lying about the abuse because the child, you know, doesn't want to go with the other parent. So the problem is CPS thinks that the family court is going to handle it. Family court thinks that CPS already handled it.

and now the child is unprotected. And that's what my chapter is about in the book. And we wanna try to avoid that. The last thing I wanna say about this slide is that, you know, the Saunders study found that abusive fathers use decision-making things like medical, you know, shared legal custody, medical decisions, psychological decisions, education decisions.

those types of decisions of use of fathers will use that authority to block anything the mother wants and particularly things like therapy and medical treatment. And the reason that for that is because they do not want their abuse to be exposed. So as we look at patterns in domestic violence cases, we're looking for things like that. If a parent, particularly a father, if that father is, you know,

not agreeing to therapy for the child. You a lot of times we see cases where the father will be extremely aggressive with therapists or medical doctors, pediatricians who can substantiate the abuse who the child has outcries to our medical professionals who see signs of abuse. You know, the father will try to discredit them, try to take their licenses away. I mean, these are very telltale signs to us as experts as

speaker-2 (37:04.002)
you know, this person, it's more likely he's an abuser because that's exactly what we see as a common abuser tactic. And so when we see those things, we understand that this father is using the authority he has through the court of decision-making to undermine treatment for the child. And of course, we know that this means that this father is not acting out of love for the child.

But instead he's using that decision making to regain his control over the mother, over the children, and to punish the mother for leaving the relationship or reporting his abuse. And so these are the things we're looking for to make it more likely that what he said or she said is true. If the father's willing to hurt the child in order to hurt the mother, then we know what his motive is. So.

Again, parental alienation really treats these types of situations, i.e. the father using his authority to block their, he had to block medical care, as just his equal right to decide. So they don't look at it as he's doing something to undermine. They're looking at it as, well, he has the authority to do that, so if that's what he wants to do, that's fine. And it's not fine, because what we're doing is we're creating this situation

where we're leaving the father in control because when courts use shared parenting, like equal decision-making and equal physical time, what they're doing is creating a false equivalency between an abuser and a victim, and there is an unequal balance of power. So essentially 50-50 means the abuser gets all the power. Okay, I'll let Barry talk now.

speaker-1 (38:58.036)
Okay, so parental alienation syndrome and the other theories based on it recommends what the Saunders study calls a harmful outcome case. These are extreme decisions in which custody is awarded to the alleged abuser. The protected mother who is usually the primary attachment figure is limited to supervised or no visitation.

found that this outcome is always wrong. And we capitalize always because this kind of research rarely uses a word like always. There are usually exceptions, but this we know is always wrong. The reason that it's always wrong is that the harm denying a child a normal relationship

with primary attachment figure. It's a home that increases the depression, low self-esteem, and suicide is greater than the benefit the court thought it was providing. And we understand from Saunders that these outcomes are based on flawed practices. One other point I want to make here,

harmful outcome cases are perhaps the most common example of retaliation in courts against protective mothers. Other examples are often financial penalties and in the worst case situations, they send mothers to jail. We've several really horrific cases like that.

and mothers are just horribly mistreated. And I think we need to talk a little bit more about retaliation against mothers. Several years ago, I had some meetings with a group from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and we discussed this, and they agreed that

speaker-1 (41:25.738)
It's not just that it's a mistake to retaliate against protect the mothers in an individual case, but it's very harmful to the courts. It's harmful because it discourages attorneys from providing the courts with information and evidence that courts need to protect children. And what many of our clients have told us

I'm sure many people in the audience have seen is that there's a lot of attorneys who are afraid to present evidence of abuse, who pressure mothers to accept outcomes that place children in jeopardy. And the reason for that is they are afraid that their client or even themselves will be retaliated against for presenting evidence of domestic violence.

So we need to focus on making the courts aware of the importance of not retaliating against protective mothers. Veronica?

speaker-2 (42:36.108)
Yes, thank you, Barry. And I will add that many times mothers are jailed for protecting their children. Let that sink in for a minute. They are put in jail for not allowing their children or at least even accepting the children's desire not to go to the other parent's house because they're being abused.

and then they're put in jail for interference of child custody.

backwards. Okay, so Barry just described harmful outcomes. Who do we know that promotes these very harmful outcomes for children? Well, parental alienation syndrome. They support harmful outcomes. The cottage industry, the reunification camps of the world,

who have 90 day programs that takes a child away from their protective parent and basically children who've been through it has called it threat therapy. Threaten them, try to make them forget the abuse, tell them that the abuse didn't happen, tell them that their memories are wrong, tell them that they have to

forget the abuse and go forward and that they have to have a relationship with their abusive parents, that their protective parent has been alienating them. There are so many things that are horrific. They deprive them of food. They deprive them of contact with their other parents. They deprive them of sleep. They will pretty much make them write letters.

speaker-2 (44:37.11)
that say they were lying about the abuse. I mean, I don't understand how this even is going on in our country. And it's going on all the time in these reunification camps. So these 90 day programs, right? And then they say it's 90 days, but if the mother who is supposedly the alienator doesn't write a letter that says that she was alienating and she was lying about the abuse.

then it turns into years and years and years of that mother never seeing her children. I don't understand how that's even, you know, part of our, it can't be a violation of our constitution. So these parental alienation camps, obviously on a federal level have been banned and several states have adopted laws, it's, you know, the states are, even the states that have passed laws, Colorado being the first one.

New Jersey, think, being the most recent. Courts are very slow to implement these laws. There are still, to this day, I have a case I'm working on now where there are therapists and GALs recommending reunification camps. And this is in a state that's already passed a version of Caden's Law. So we need to make sure that we're talking to

these cottage industry professionals, or even if they're not part of the cottage industry and they just don't understand the dynamics of what they're actually proposing, that they get the information that they need. And of course the father's rights, abusers rights groups who promote 50-50 shared parenting when it's not appropriate. Obviously parents who are reasonable and put the kids first can probably do

some appropriate shared parenting in 50-50. Again, they wouldn't be in front of a judge. So in our book, the second chapter that I wrote is about father's rights versus abuser's rights. And I get into the history of father's rights. I get into what's happening in these groups and...

speaker-2 (46:55.678)
why it is a detriment to cases that have domestic violence and child abuse and why shared parenting. In fact, the Saunders study found that shared parenting is never appropriate in domestic violence cases. If there's domestic violence, then 50-50 should not even be considered.

speaker-0 (47:15.576)
Veronica, can I ask you one question kind of to elaborate on what you mean by the cottage industry of jails and evaluators? It's a new term to some of the people participating today. So wanting to make sure that that's very clear.

speaker-2 (47:29.41)
Sure, and I get it because when I first met Barry, he talked about the cottage industry and I was thinking cottage cheese? Like I had no idea what that meant either. Cottage industry is just a term that's used for a group of individuals who promote a specific.

narrative or a specific thing. So we call the cottage industry of parental alienation the it just means the group of therapists or a group of mental health professionals or a group of guardian ad litems or child particularly child custody evaluators who use parental alienation in its unscientific form. So they are using the same parental alienation syndrome that's been twice rejected

by the American Psychiatric Association. And in fact, there have been several custody evaluators who are mental health professionals who have had their licenses taken away or suspended because they continue to say things like the DSM-5 has a language in it that confirms or supports parental alienation.

and they're still trying to diagnose parents, particularly mothers, with parental alienation syndrome when it is not even recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. So when we talk about cottage industry, we're just meaning the group of individuals who are still promoting this unscientific theory that is very, very harmful to children in family court.

Barry, did you have anything else to add about the cottage industry?

speaker-1 (49:17.25)
No, I think you covered it. we have found and what we've been doing more and more when the court is constrained or is imposed on harmful outcome case is we've been talking about exactly the last two slides that there are very few entities that support harmful outcome cases and they're ones that have basically zero credibility.

On the other hand, there are many highly credible organizations that oppose people outcome cases because they are so harmful. For instance, the American Psychiatric Association twice rejected requests to include the biased alienated theory, the DSM, because there's still no research to support it.

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court judges seeks to train other judges about ACE and Saunders, which specifically tell us that we shouldn't be using harmful outcome cases. The CDC is where ACE came from. They're opposed to harmful outcome cases.

the Institute of Justice in the US Justice Department is against these harmful outcome cases. I want to talk about the American Heart Association for a second. We spent a lot of talking about them in the Cancer Society in our book because we want to do the same thing with smoking for

domestic violence and child abuse because we could prevent cancer and heart disease by reducing domestic violence and child abuse. And January of 19, of 2024, the Heart Association came out with new research and with a press release. And they said, children exposed to domestic violence and child abuse are at

speaker-1 (51:45.102)
increased risk of heart disease. And at the same time, children who have a nurturing parent, which is usually their primary attachment figure, which is usually their mother, that that is a protective factor that can reduce heart disease. So you know what that means? That means

When some evaluator is recommending a harmful outcome case, they're recommending exactly the opposite of what the American Heart Association says is best for children. We think that's a really strong argument and we'd like to hear that more often. We'd like judges and other court professionals to understand that there should never be a harmful outcome case.

And what we like about wanting to work with the Cancer Society and Art Association is they have a very high credibility. They're very well respected. And to be able to quote them is really helpful. Finally, as Veronica mentioned, we have cadence law. And cadence law specifically says never

deny children a relationship or interfere with a relationship with the attached parent in order to promote the relationship with the parent. So that's exactly what harmful outcome cases did. And it's important to remember that Cadence Law is based on good scientific research, unlike the alienation theories that have so harmed the courts. Veronica?

speaker-2 (53:41.538)
Yeah, and I just, looking at this, I wanna add one more group of people who oppose harmful outcome cases. And that group of people are good fathers. In my chapter about fathers' rights in my book, I talk about good fathers and how they would understand that taking a child away from their mother is not good. It doesn't take an expert to understand that. And...

know, good fathers are providers and they put their children first and they're never going to ask a court to take their child away from a good mother. And the context we see in in cases that we work on all the time is that when the father and the mother were together, the father wanted the mother to do all the childcare or demanded it. And that means that he thinks that she's a good mom.

And that doesn't change when the relationship ends, but yet they always try to say, she's alienating my children now, and she's a bad mom, she's unfit, she's crazy. And good fathers don't do that. Okay. So let's talk about solutions now. Let's talk about what we can do. We talked about a whole lot of bad things that are going on with the alienation, cottage industry.

What can we do in regards to alienation now moving forward? What's the best way to approach it? And again, that's to consider the behavior of both parents. It just takes the bias out of just focusing on what mom's doing and not focusing on what dad's doing. Let's focus on what both parents are doing and explore the causes of the child's strange relationship. So if a child is refusing contact with a parent, let's look at the behaviors of that parent.

not the parent who is trying to protect that child by exposing abuse. Let's look at the behavior of the alleged abuser, okay? And if we look at the behavior of the alleged abuser and that alleged abuser is being aggressive and intimidating and, you know, saying all manner of horrible things about the mother, then it's probably likely that that's what's causing the bad relationship.

speaker-2 (56:03.822)
And I mean, saying it out loud, just sounds so obvious, but courts do not do this. And it's obviously causing all the bad decisions that we're seeing in family courts. The effects on the child are important rather than the effect on the father's relationship. So let's focus on the child's behavior. Let's focus on what the child needs rather than.

what the father is entitled to just because he fathered this child. Just because he is the father biologically doesn't make him a good father to the child. The behaviors of the father need to be scrutinized. Is he supporting the relationship with the mother? Is he being kind to the mother? Is he being kind to the child? These are just very obvious things to look at.

And the ideological approach is how to promote the father's relationship. It's all about how do we make the mother promote the relationship with the father or how do we make the child want, how do we tell the child to just get over the abuse and go with the father and don't think about it anymore? That doesn't work. That doesn't work at all.

How is the father's behavior affecting the child? That's an evidence-based solution. So ideological is, let's just try to force a relationship. That's an ideological approach with no scientific research to support it. And then there's an evidence-based approach that all the research supports that says, let's look at the father's behavior and how is his behavior affecting the child? So if we're gonna do any kind of reunification therapy,

then we need the father to be in therapy that talks about his behaviors and how to change his behaviors and accountability. Because if we focus just on trying to reunify a child and a father who they don't want a relationship with, that's not gonna work. In fact, the laws in Kayden's Law say that we shouldn't put...

speaker-2 (58:24.238)
a child in a therapy type situation with an abusive parent at all. That's not appropriate. In fact, we need to focus on the father's behavior and his accountability. Is he taking responsibility for his behaviors? Does he understand the harm he's causing? Is he promising not to do it anymore? These are the questions we want to ask about the father's behavior. This is what's in the best interest of the child. Of course, the cottage industry says,

we wanna focus on the best interest of the father and his entitlement. We're not focusing on the best interest of the child. We're only focusing on what the father is entitled to. And when you see that dynamic, then you know you're dealing with unscientific alienation theories. So again, the solution is evidence-based. It's following the research, it's supporting the child and not supporting the entitlement of the father.

theory.

speaker-1 (59:20.3)
Okay, so the next part of our solution is using an evidence-based approach. And let me just give you one example based on ACE. ACE tells us that courts have the power and authority to force a child to interact with an alleged abuser, but courts do not have the power or ability

to remove the fear and stress that the abuser caused. What that means is if the court seeks to force contact, it pushes the fear and stress deeper inside the child where it will inevitably come out later in much more harmful ways. And we've had a number of really tragic cases where the courts blame the mother because the

child refuses to go with the father and they force it. If the court could use the research that's available, they would know that that approach is again, always wrong. And it's amazing how many cases we have where courts are taking the choice that is always wrong.

The next thing and we've talked about it a bit is gender bias. There's a lot of gender bias. We're not making progress on gender bias because people are afraid to talk about it. Too often courts just respond in a defensive or even retaliatory way. We have to find a way to openly about gender bias and to avoid making that mistake. Finally, we want

to evaluate all the actions in context. Context is critically important in understanding domestic violence. It's a standard abuser tactic to try to decontextualize things. And so that's why courts should not be using shortcuts in DV cases because DV cases are the most dangerous. And to understand DV cases,

speaker-1 (01:01:45.422)
you need the full context. So that's what we're saying is using a new approach to alienation that's based on the research, based on what works best for children and is a fairer approach that would, I think, the courts avoid a lot of the mistakes that we constantly see. Veronica?

speaker-2 (01:02:12.724)
Okay, so this is our last slide before we get into questions. So if you have questions, make sure you put them in the chat or the Q &A and Barry and I will try to get to them today. But this

Next slide is about our book that's coming out. It's available now. We have it in hardback and paperback. The book is full of new and exciting research and not only about what we've been talking about today. This is just one chapter in our book about the alienation, but we have, you know, legal professionals, medical professionals and social sciences professionals and faith based professionals who have contributed to this book.

And we are really excited about the opportunities that this book presents in not only educating professionals who are in child welfare, but for giving hope to mothers and even fathers who are in abusive situations and a step forward in changing how domestic violence and child abuse is

responded to and recognized in family court settings so that we can protect our children better and our victims of domestic violence better in family court. I think we might have a link to how to purchase the book. Maybe we can put that in the chat. Our publisher, Civic Research Institute, is a publisher that

requires all of the information in our book to be cited. So this is more of a kind of a textbook type of book, but Barry and I are gonna be working on another book that is going to be more of a type of book that you could purchase on Amazon. That's more for everyday person. And hopefully we'll have more information about that book in the coming year or so. But this book is available now and...

speaker-2 (01:04:23.895)
Again, we're really excited about the opportunity that it presents for needed reforms. And I'm going to let Barry talk a little bit about those needed reforms.

speaker-1 (01:04:37.71)
Okay, and I must also mention that this book and the next book, we had the privilege of working with the leader of the mothers movement, Dr. Mocherice Hanna, who has done so much to help protect the mothers. And we were very honored to again, work with her. We are

very excited about this book because we think there's a chance to fundamentally change everything. know, if you think about the research, particularly something like ACE, it says that harm from domestic violence and child abuse is far greater than previously understood. And that could be really impressive.

but it's also an opportunity.

We have the ability, if we make the change, if we do the reforms, to change society in wonderful ways. And what's exciting is, you know, we're part of the protect the mothers movement and we would pay extra to end domestic violence and child abuse. But of course, most people aren't like that. Most public officials

that's not their priority. But what the research in our book demonstrates is that there is a huge cost economically, health-wise, on crime. And the benefits from using best practices to prevent domestic violence and child abuse are enormous. We think that can be the incentive.

speaker-1 (01:06:37.07)
for the reforms that are needed. And in our book, we spend a lot of time with how the anti-smoking movement came together and the huge benefits that came from that. And we think we can do that again. The ACE research, ACE for Adverse Childhood Experiences, it's mental research.

It was initially used to diagnose and treat patients. But I had the privilege of working with Dr. Vincent D., who was the lead author of the original ACE study. And he now says that prevention is the best use for his research.

speaker-1 (01:07:32.014)
particularly in family courts. And so we want to do that. The basis of our book is that the ACE research is very similar to 1964 Surgeon General's report, Dealing in Cancer and Smoking, because as a society, all different parts came together.

to reduce smoking, saving millions of lives and trillions of dollars. And we think we can do the same thing with domestic violence and child abuse. And we found out that one third of the domestic violence homicides, one third of domestic violence crimes are caused by the failures of the custody courts.

And I think if that is better known, it will create the pressure that's needed for the reforms that should have occurred a day ago. And so we're looking forward to speaking more about this and to work together with others to create the reforms. And we're excited that the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, which were leaders

in the anti-smoking movement and did that because it would reduce cancer and heart disease, we think they can do the same thing for domestic violence and child abuse. And they have the same research. They agree with us that we can reduce cancer and heart disease by reducing domestic violence and child abuse. if, imagine if we go for reform legislation, if we try to...

past the Safe Child Act and the Cancer Society and the Heart Association are on its side, that could make a huge difference. And that's what we're gonna be working for. So we appreciate your time. We're looking forward to answering the questions and we will join us in a movement to create the reforms that could make such a difference in everyone's life. Thank you.

speaker-0 (01:09:56.302)
Thank you, Veronica. Thank you, Barry. Yes, and thank you for sharing your contact information. Feel free to leave that up so everyone can jot that down. We have, as you can imagine, lots of questions that have come in. So we have about 20 minutes left. We'll try to get through as many as we can. Thank you to Hannah for organizing the questions that have come through the Q &A box. Just a reminder that if you do have a question, please use the Q &A box so we don't miss it in the chat. I'm going to go ahead and start with this question.

has a wide audience of domestic violence advocates on this call. So that's a lot of the people who are joining today would recognize themselves as being a domestic violence advocate. So what can we do as advocates to better assist victims and survivors in such situations? The question also goes on to say, I often feel helpless as I watch the train wreck unfold in slow motion. what are some practical things that the advocates can

can do to support survivors.

speaker-1 (01:11:01.912)
Well, if I could, very often we have been disappointed with some parts of the domestic violence movement that have not made child custody a priority. Research in the book, as I was just mentioning, demonstrate that there has been a huge increase in domestic violence homicide.

because the custody courts are allowing abusers to manipulate the courts to regain power and control. What that means is that it's really harder for victims of domestic violence to escape their abusers. And if we think about advocates, what is more important than to prevent domestic violence homicide?

And I want to be clear, there are some degencies that do a wonderful job supporting protective mothers. We've also heard of many that have not made custody a key issue. And I say something publicly, because one of the people who is active in the Alliance for Hope and the domestic shelters is our good friend Reader Smith.

When Rita was the head of the NCDV, the Protective Mothers Movement got anything we asked for. It was such a help. And when she was no longer there, we lost that. We weren't getting the support that we deserved, not that we deserved, that Protective Mothers deserved. And so that's one way of saying we need advocates to

focus on the custody courts to be supporting, protect the mothers, to be advocating, to be trying to get legislation, particularly the Safe Child Act, to reform the courts, to educate the courts. And one other thing, when we were talking with the Cancer Society and the Heart Association, we were advised by them to have

speaker-1 (01:13:26.85)
local organizations and people contact the local affiliates of the Cancer Society and the Heart Association to ask them nationally for the Cancer Society and the Heart Association to make preventing DV and child abuse priority. what I'm really looking is a coalition of domestic violence agencies

with the Cancer Society and the Heart Association to approach national government as we did in the 1960s to have an all out campaign to end domestic violence and child abuse as we did with smoking.

speaker-0 (01:14:14.446)
Veronica, anything to add?

speaker-2 (01:14:18.778)
I was just thinking, yeah, I mean, I get it when you say you're kind of watching it unfold and it's just you feel helpless. I get that. That is true. And it happens a lot. And I think, you know, as to add on to what Barry was saying, you know, advocates are the, always say that advocates are the ones who are most

knowledgeable about domestic violence and the dynamics thereof, even when it goes into child custody cases. And so if more advocates could go to court and testify and, you know, we're hoping to come up with a program to help advocates become expert witnesses. Even if you're not an expert witness, we always often use the fact that when a mother

because a lot of times abusers just deny their abuse. And so we say that we look for other information to make it more likely that she's telling the truth about abuse. And one of the things we always say is that if a mother has been given services from their local domestic violence shelter, shelters are underpaid, they're underfunded, and they screen.

you know, before they provide services. And if the local experts in their community decided that they are actual victims of domestic violence, that should make it much more likely to the court that she's telling the truth. And so that is something that advocates could absolutely help with.

speaker-0 (01:15:54.306)
Yeah, and you bring up a great point. mean, really, we're talking about the court system, right? So who has kind of ultimate jurisdiction about what happens there? It's the judges. So one of the other questions was talking about, you know, are judges receiving this training information? And if not, you know, what are the pathways to getting this information in the hands of judges so that they can make better decisions based on, you know, the whole picture, maybe not just one that the cottage industry is pushing.

speaker-2 (01:16:21.206)
Yes, so the laws are trying to get judges training. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court judges is trying to get judges training. Barry and I serving as expert witnesses. We're trying to educate judges as we go in and testify in different states. So we're trying to come at it at all different angles. But ultimately, the judges, the ones who are good judges and are open to hearing the research, we just need more. We need more people going in and talking about.

the dynamics of DV and how it affects child custody.

speaker-1 (01:16:56.558)
If I could add that we're doing a couple of things that I think are exciting. We have put together a proposal, the National Judicial College, and they were interested in our doing training of judges. And our proposal was put together with two judges, a petition and evaluator, and Veronica and I, and we're really excited that could be an opportunity.

to present this information to judges. The other exciting thing is that we were contacted by Judge Michael Peterson in Arizona, who was working with the Arizona Supreme Court Committee. And the focus was, what do we do when there has been a father who has committed domestic violence? How do we respond?

We came up with a model for practices to do that. Judge Peterson liked that, submitted it to the Supreme Court, and we're having ongoing meetings and discussions to see if we can get the kind of forms that we're looking for. So there were a couple of things in the proper that could be really exciting. The other side, I just want to say out loud,

is that a lot of judges don't want to be trained by anyone but other judges. And very few judges have the domestic violence expertise that's needed. And as I think Veronica said earlier, the Saunders study recommends a multidisciplinary approach. And that would include domestic violence experts. And so judges need not just training,

but training that includes DV experts.

speaker-0 (01:18:57.612)
Yes. Absolutely.

speaker-0 (01:19:04.551)
One moment here. I the question that I was going to ask.

speaker-0 (01:19:12.662)
you had mentioned at the beginning, which I really appreciated that you kind of brought up the fact that there is such thing as alienation, right? That is a real thing that happens. So curious if you could kind of just elaborate a little bit more on what does legitimate alienation look like and what are kind of the implications that advocates and other professionals should be aware of to help educate judges and survivors and everyone that's in this process.

speaker-2 (01:19:44.322)
Yeah, man.

speaker-2 (01:19:48.654)
Well, I was going to say the first thing is that abusers are the alienators. So first we need to identify who the abusive parent is.

because when there's alienating dynamics in a custody situation, it's the abuser who is the alienator, not the protective parent. So if the abuser, alleged abuser, and they're both going to allege abuse against each other, I get that. But that's why you need to have domestic violence advocates or experts who can first do that. The first thing is to decide who is the perpetrator and who is the victim, because we know there's no such thing as mutual abuse, right? There is a perpetrator, there is

victim. So who's the perpetrator and then we know who the alienator is. Okay and alienation is what abusers do to undermine the relationship between the child and the parent. It is disparaging the other parent to the child. It is getting the child putting the child in the middle of adult situations and topics. It is using that

you know, that child to gain an advantage in the litigation or gain an advantage and control over their partner. That's what real alienation looks like.

speaker-1 (01:21:02.814)
And if I could just add one thing, historically, what abusers have one courts to do was to assume alienation. In most cases, the parents are living in separate homes, so the alleged abuser has no personal knowledge of what the mother is saying or doing. And courts would never allow speculation or assumption

in any other type of issue. But they've repeatedly allowed it with alienation. And so part of alienation has to be actual evidence, not assumptions.

speaker-0 (01:21:49.644)
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting how the burden of proof and evidence changes depending on who's being targeted with the charges. Someone asked this question as a kind of a very practical question of if a parent, and this may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but can a parent who has already accepted that 50-50 custody that was likely pushed on them maybe due to the laws stating as such, but

Is there anything that can be done to change that arrangement that you're aware of?

speaker-2 (01:22:27.224)
Go ahead,

speaker-1 (01:22:30.582)
Yes, any parenting arrangement can always be changed if there is a change of circumstance. So if you agree to 50-50, it's sort of, the assumption is that both parents are gonna cooperate and it's gonna work, et cetera. So if it's not working, if the father continues his abuse, if there's not cooperation in terms of

taking care of the children and the communication and all of that. That is a basis for changing the arrangement. We often suggest to our clients that if you take factual images and you also put together this new research that says that the original this was mistaken, put the research and the new facts

together, that is a stronger argument.

speaker-0 (01:23:39.764)
can you-

So another kind of practical question of just like, do parents proven to be abusive? So in those rare cases where, you know, the evidence of abuse is actually accepted, do they still have rights for child custody? Are the laws preventing that? So once abuse has been proven, have they lost parental rights?

speaker-1 (01:24:07.566)
actually just the opposite. That was sort of the first question that Judge Peterson was asking, because there are Supreme Court decisions that very much limit or prohibit just taking a parent out of a child's life, even though we often see courts do that to mothers. So even where the parent is abusive,

they would tend to have some contact. It could be supervised and you know, it should be if there's a history of use. But it usually takes a lot more before they can totally remove the parent from the child's life. They have to show that made some efforts. can get the proposal that we made in Arizona was.

If the abusive father has been found to commit domestic violence, any visitation should at most be supervised. He should be required to complete a 52-week accountability program. And we're working with the National Organization of Men Against Sexism, which the programs in Arizona to use best practices for a program.

When he completes the program, he can ask for unsupervised visitation. And in order to get that, the court needs to consider, does he take sole responsibility for his abuse?

Is he committed to never abuse anyone again? Does he recognize the enormous harm that he's caused? And does he understand that if he abuses anyone, that would be the end of his relationship with the child?

speaker-0 (01:26:11.118)
got a little bit less than four minutes left. So I'm gonna ask a question I think probably has a pretty big answer. And so the question is, I mean, do you think education and training is enough to change the family court system or is there more needed like a complete dismantling or rebuilding? Any thoughts on that question?

speaker-2 (01:26:33.934)
The answer is no, training is not gonna be the answer completely. And yes, we do need to dismantle a lot of the current court practices that have been kind of concocted in the last 50 years. And it's taken over 50 years to get it to the horrible point that it's at today. I hope it doesn't take another 50 years to correct it, but...

Training and education is the foundation, okay, because without that, we can't change anything. And it's going to take, like Barry in our book suggests is, or Barry said earlier in our book suggests, is that it takes a whole community effort, a community response, coordinated response, everything from legal to social to medical to...

advocates and everyone kind of getting on the same page as to how we are going to prevent this from continuing moving forward and how just, and that's why we compare it to the Sergeant General's report on smoking because everybody in the country knows smoking is bad for you. And we know that domestic violence is bad, but smoking is not illegal, but domestic violence is. And so,

I just don't think there's enough community coordinated response in domestic violence with the right information yet. I think we still have a lot of work to do with the correct education and narrative and to move forward because still there's still a lot of false information and false narratives that are being used and that are being believed and acted upon at this time.

speaker-1 (01:28:28.078)
You know, if I could, Dr. Diane Bartlow wrote two chapters in my last book with Dr. Hanna. And the second had to do with what do we do differently. And we came up with some needed reforms. And one of the first ones was the court officials needed to think that the past practices

or a failure. And when we then offered that as just to some of the court officials, they didn't like that idea at all. When we try to get legislation, we need comprehensive legislation. And what we wanted to say is that the past practice are working poorly for children. So part of the purpose

of the reforms is to stop doing the outdated practices that are harming children. We need to say that directly. And until we do that, until the courts recognize that even though they're comfortable with the old practices, they're not working for children. I think a lot of the practices work in terms of managing caseloads. They work in terms of keeping court professionals

you know, actively involved in making the good income, but our practices don't work for protecting children. That's why they can't.

speaker-0 (01:30:09.122)
Yeah. Well, thank you both so much for the work that you're

doing in this space. I know that you are all very dedicated to understanding every facet of it and doing everything within your power to kind of start those wheels of change. And I know they've already made changes as well. So thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who attended today. As we've mentioned, we did record today's webinar. So we'll post that within a week, along with sharing a transcript, a certificate of attendance, and any resources that were mentioned in today's presentation. But yes, thank you again, Barry. Thank you.

much, Veronica. Lovely to have you back and congratulations on getting this book across the finish line. I know it's been a labor of love for many years, so thank you once again. But everyone have a great rest of your day and we'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.

speaker-2 (01:30:59.657)
Thank you.

speaker-1 (01:31:01.006)
Bye.

