Parental alienation has detrimental effects on both minors and adults, and while according to a psychologist targeted children are prone to long-term mental health issues, a lawyer believes that the courts should be doing more to address the growing phenomenon.

The Malta Independent on Sunday reached out to lawyer Mark Said and clinical psychologist Roberta Farrugia Debono, both with a special interest in parental alienation from the legal and psychological perspectives, to find out more about parental alienation.

According to Farrugia Debono, it is a controversial and “highly complex family dynamic” and, from Said’s end, it is a term denoting a “process by which one parent tries to cause the child to reject, fear or avoid contact with the other parent”.

Farrugia Debono said that in her practice she has encountered situations where a child would refuse to have contact with one of the parents. She added that usually this was in the context of a heated separation and divorce.

A distinction must be made between “justifiable estrangement” and “parental alienation”, Farrugia Debono pointed out. “Justifiable estrangement” is when the child’s refusal to maintain contact with a parent is justified due to their previous relationship with said parent. This is often an abusive relationship, she added.

“Parental alienation”, on the other hand, is when one parent, known as the “alienating parent”, “struggles to understand” that the child should maintain contact with the other parent even though the marriage has ended, said Farrugia Debono. This may be an “act of coercive control” used by the alienating parent in their struggle to accept the separation, she said.

Parental alienation may take the form of “extreme over-protection” of the child, due to the alienating parent being anxious, or it may be the continuation of an abusive relationship in which the abuse to the child is done by preventing them from having contact with the other parent, Farrugia Debono said. Indeed, many researchers consider this to be a form of “family violence”, she added.

From his end, Said added that parental alienation is by no means a new phenomenon. Indeed, the term was coined in 1985 by child psychiatrist Richard Garner who referred to it at the time as “parental alienation syndrome”.

Garner had described this “disturbance” as an obsession, on the child’s behalf, with unjustified or exaggerated criticism and putting down of a parent, Said added. This vilification is due to influence on the child’s perception by the other, alienating parent’s conscious or unconscious behaviour, he said.

Said pointed out, however, that this alienation is not restricted to a parent. The reality is that there are even grandparents who are held back from maintaining a healthy relationship with their grandchildren by the parents, he said.

Supporting Farrugia Debono’s description of the act as being “coercive control” and abusive, he said that by this act, both the grandparents and grandchildren are “punished by” their denial of a “unique relationship” that offers benefits to both parties.  

The effects of parental alienation impact children very negatively, according to the body of research, Farrugia Debono said. Targeted children are prone to long-term mental health issues and can also struggle with relationships, both in building and maintaining them, she said.

Farrugia Debono said that when the alienating parent is abusive, that influence teaches the child the same coercive behaviour. She said that the child may themselves become abusive towards the alienated parent as well as in future relationships. She added that there is also research pointing towards a “transgenerational transmission” of the parental alienation, meaning that parental alienation is carried from one generation to the next.

On the other hand, the targeted, “alienated” parents face an ongoing struggle with a feeling of helplessness when their child continually rejects them, Farrugia Debono said. They experience what is termed “ambiguous loss” meaning a “feeling of profound grief that one experiences when a loved one is still alive yet missing from your life”, she said.

Said further mentioned that due to the lack of support, they endure unjust treatment, feeling labelled as "criminals" despite their innocence, and facing stigma, which leads some parents to perceive suicide as their sole means of “escape”.

From the legal perspective, Said claims parental alienation is a violation of human rights. He said parental alienation is a violation of the best interest of the child, “a core principle of modern family law and of international law concerning children”, citing this as a “fundamental principle” of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Farrugia Debono highlighted the danger to the child when the law courts do not take into consideration domestic violence in the proceedings, as this may lead to the child being forced to visit an abusive parent. She added that this may occur despite the fact that research, both international and local, has found that the child would choose the parent they feel safer with.  

Said further elaborated on this saying that only if a child has a history of difficulties or maltreatment with a parent, their refusal to see the parent would be legitimate.

Said went on to say that the criteria defining abuse are significant human injury as a result of human action. He added that parental alienation fits this definition for both the child and the alienated parent.

Said added that the Family Court can make parental alienation worse by not guaranteeing equitable parental custody of children in the event of unilateral divorce. Compounding the issue is the blatantly sexist conceptualisation of domestic abuse that steers court protocols. These presumptions enable mothers to use abuse accusations to make the court “protect” them from abusive spouses/fathers, but no one knows what proportion of those protective actions are prompted by false/deluded accusations, he said.

When allegations of parental alienation are made in court, “generally speaking”, they are not “uncritically” accepted by the court, Said said, and oftentimes the father will raise the allegation. But “generally speaking”, once again, the courts remain “very hesitant” to accept the claim, he said.

The abusive parent may even claim that the other, innocent parent is carrying out parental alienation. Said elaborated that when parental alienation takes the form of “brainwashing”, children become unreliable sources for communicating their experiences. Consequently, there's a risk that allegations of abuse might be dismissed as a result of parental alienation influencing the child's perspective.

Said said that “identifying the authentic voice of the child has become an issue”. He said the issue of authenticity is not always considered and their voice is taken “at face value”.

From Said’s experience, the alienating parent’s lawyer will encourage the alienating behaviour as it is a “winning strategy” from the legal perspective. Furthermore, most judges do not sufficiently understand the issue of parental alienation and “are often swayed by emotions”, he said.

Farrugia Debono also shed light on the “reality” that the term “parental alienation” is misused in court, both locally as well as internationally.

Off the back of an opinion piece on parental alienation, penned by Said on The Malta Independent in June 2022, he believes that the situation has taken a turn for the worse. He believes the “core problem” to be at the heart of the Family Court “set-up”.

Said emphasised the need for the judges presiding over this court, and the child advocate on the case, to receive specialised training and make use of child psychologists in proceedings. The benefit and avoidance of long-term harm of a child psychologist cannot be understated, he said.

The national consultation on reforms to the Family Courts, which is taking place, with parental alienation being part of the subject matter, is “a step in the right direction”, Said added. However he believes that the growing problem of parental alienation should be treated separately to the other issues with the Family Courts. He added even if the reforms come through, by the consultation, the improvement of the situation will only be “peripheral”.

According to Said, the way forward is all about overcoming “roadblocks” in cases of parental alienation, and they can be overcome.

Said proposed the following points to do this. To begin with, the targeted parent must bring on board a “forceful” lawyer and a mental health expert, with necessary experience, into their defence team. He added that both are necessary and are not mutually exclusive if the case is to be won.

Said believes that proper documentation and a detailed timeline can be “extremely compelling evidence” in cases of parental alienation and said that “judges pay attention to such evidence”. He further advised that false allegations of abuse must be confronted “head on” as they can be used as weapons by the alienating parent but may also serve as a possible “red flag” for fabrication, particularly in the case of multiple allegations of abuse.

Interventions are necessary by the mental health expert and the lawyer of the targeted parent; specifically, the alienated parent must receive therapy, the alienated parent’s lawyer must guarantee the cessation of the abuse and the child and alienated parent must undergo reunification therapy, Said insisted.

He went on to say that this should be the “treatment template” for all cases of parental alienation. Said added that reunification therapy would fail if the abuse isn’t stopped and in severe cases, removal of the child from the alienating parent can give “excellent results” according to research and experience.

Ultimately, cases of parental alienation can be managed effectively through the use of experienced and assertive mental health experts and lawyers as well as a “truly interested” judge, Said added. He believes that overcoming parental alienation is within grasp.

From the psychological perspective, Farrugia Debono thinks that education and awareness is the way forward. Currently, the Technical Committee on Parental Alienation, a joint initiative between the Ministry for Social Policy and Children’s Rights and the Ministry for Justice, organises seminars to brief professionals on the matter, which she herself conducts.

These seminars are aimed to raise awareness on the complexities of parental alienation with the hope that referrals to psychosocial support are carried out earlier in the parental alienation process, Farrugia Debono said. She added that all research points to specialised family therapy working best when the parental alienation process is in its early stages. The seminars in question have so far been attended by nearly 150 professionals that are instrumental in supporting families during separation proceedings, she said.

Said raised the question of why parental alienation is not presently regarded as a criminal offense, given that the process can be considered, "at best", a form of emotional abuse. He compared the act to kidnapping the child, grossly, and said that the more subtle, yet “equally harmful”, act of turning a once loving child against a loving parent should not be tolerated in a society that prides itself on its justice.

Yet, Said added, despite our firm belief in our ideals “our judicial system would appear to do nothing to right such wrongs at the present time”.