April 25 was Parental Alienation Awareness Day.  This is an important day to be promoted to help the family courts and lawmakers to recognize the injustices being done in the family courts in order to improve the fairness to both parents and their children.  Most people do not know about Parental Alienation until they experience it.  This is how I learned about when I experienced ex-wife unexpected separation from me and my children acting out against me after this happened.  At that time, I still did not know why such a change was happening.  About three months later, I only come to discover that this was a documented issue with divorces through some searching on the Web and a book store about divorce problems with children.  I discovered at the book store a booked called "Divorce Poison" written by Dr. Richard Warshak.  By reading this book, it had helped me to realize my problems were being described there.  I was able to validate my problems with Parental Alienation by sharing them with a family therapist who was also working with my children.

Here are some key aspects involved with this horrible problem:

1) Loss of parenting by a victimized parent.

2) Children being wounded emotionally by a damaged and abusive parent.

3) Extended families becoming disposable, forgotten victims of alienating behavior directed at their parenting son or daughter.

4) The failure of those with the responsibility and authority (Family and Children Services, Family Courts, etc.) to intervene ‘early enough’ with a directed and ordered program  with counseling support.


I would like to reflect on my situation to share the state of my case as a victim of Parental Alienation to help others become aware of my problem which is being repeated by many others through my research of this issue.  This may also help to support others who are also facing this horrible problem.  

 It has now been over seven years since the separation happened in January 2005 and I have no relationship with my 20 year old son, 18 year old son, and now only a couple court ordered visits with my 17 year old daughter.  Since the divorce date of January 2007, I do not get updates from the mother about my children from medical to school information.  The court ordered the mother to provide me this information but it has not been provided by the mother.  The mother has made it difficult for me to make visits with my children and the court has not provided me any scheduled times until now.  The court has ordered the mother to take my children to counseling to help my children develop a relationship with me but the mother has done very little to follow this order.  The major problem with all of these orders is that there is no one from the family court monitoring these kind of orders and the orders are not very specific.  The only thing being monitored is the child support payments.

This is injustice to parents who are victims of this terrible problem.  This is a form of abuse to both children and the victimized parent.  Recently, the news media has brought the attention to the abusive behavior of "bullying"  in schools to cause this issue for state governments to recognize the addition of new anti-bullying laws are needed to help deter this problem.  Where are the laws to deter Parental Alienation?  I ask you to consider this issue to be just as important to each of us, children and families.


Abe C. Fathers


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