(18) In a stunning and unusual family law decision, a Toronto judge has stripped a mother of custody of her three children after the woman spent more than a decade trying to alienate them from their father.
The mother's "consistent and overwhelming" campaign to brainwash the children into thinking their father was a bad person was nothing short of emotional abuse, Justice Faye McWatt of the Superior Court of Justice wrote in her decision.
The three girls, ages 9 to 14, were brought to a downtown courthouse last Friday and turned over to their father, a vascular surgeon identified only as A.L.
Their mother, a chiropodist identified as K.D., was ordered to stay away from the building during the transfer and to have her daughters' clothing and possessions sent to their father's house.
McWatt stipulated that K.D. is to have no access to the children except in conjunction with counselling, including a special intensive therapy program for children affected by "parental alienation syndrome." The mother must bear the costs.
Harold Niman, the father's lawyer, said the decision serves as a wake-up call to parents who, "for bitterness, anger or whatever reason," decide to use their children to punish their former partners.
"Maybe if they realize the courts will actually step in and do something and there is a risk of not only losing custody, but having no contact with their children, they'll think twice about it," Niman said in an interview.
McWatt's judgment was released Jan. 16 and published on legal databases this week. By yesterday, it was a hot topic within the family law bar.
The judge said awarding A.L. sole custody was the children's only hope for having a relationship with their father, given their mother's long-running transgressions.
These include ignoring court orders, shutting the door in A.L.'s face when he came to collect the children and refusing to answer the phone when he called to say goodnight. (He was granted telephone access to say good night on Monday, Wednesday and Friday). At times, she also arranged for police to show up when her daughters had overnight visits with their father.
Eventually, K.D. cut off contact altogether, refusing to allow A.L. to see or speak with his daughters. He was reduced to shouting goodnight to them through the door of their home, often not knowing whether they were there.
"It is remarkable that A.L. has not given in to the respondent's persistence in keeping his children from him over the last fourteen years and simply gone on with his life without the children as, no doubt many other parents in the same situation would have and, indeed, have done," McWatt said.
The mother squandered several chances to change her behaviour and is unable to accept it is in her children's best interests to have a relationship with their father, the judge said.
Nicholas Bala, a Queen's University law professor who specializes in family law, said "badmouthing" or negative attitudes by one parent toward another is quite common among separated couples. But in recent years, the justice system has begun to understand the harmful effects of the worst form of this behaviour.
In most cases, the problem is resolved through counselling, where parents are encouraged to accept they'll both always be in their children's lives, said Bala. "I tell them, `... if you're the survivor, you'll be going to the other's funeral, not because you love that person, but to support your children.'
"Having said that, there are some people – and I think some of them are suffering from personality disorders – who will not respond to therapy and will not respond to directions from judges."
Transferring custody is a last resort, because "it can be quite dramatic and traumatic" – yet sometimes better than the alternative, said Bala.
"We often talk about the best interests of the child, but often it's the least detrimental alternative, really."
Bala said courts are unlikely to take such a drastic step without hearing expert testimony about what's happening in the family. A child may be avoiding a parent for legitimate reasons such as physical or emotional abuse.
McWatt heard testimony from Barbara Fidler, a Toronto mediator and clinical psychologist who predicted eight years ago the three girls were at risk of becoming alienated from their father.
The Office of the Children's Lawyer argued the family dynamics could not continue.
Fidler said research points to long-term damage in people alienated from a parent in childhood.
Children are more susceptible at about age 10 or 11, after their brains have developed to the point where they can hold positive and negative information about a parent.
If what one parent is saying about the other doesn't accord with their own perceptions, they can become confused.
In some cases, the only way out of the emotional conflict is to take one parent's side. The child can even begin inventing his or her own reasons for hating the other parent, the court was told.
Early intervention is best, Niman said."Really, parental alienation is a process. If you can nip it in the bud, that's the best advice I can give to clients.
"Because the longer it goes on, the more difficult it can be to undo."
| An Ontario judge has ordered that three girls be seized and sent to a parental alienation centre for deprogramming after their mother waged an unrelenting campaign to alienate them from their father. The children - aged 14, 11 and 9 - were transported several days ago to the U.S.-based centre. After being treated, they will live in the sole custody of their father, a 56-year-old vascular surgeon. "It is now time for his and the children's fates to be free from [the mother's] control," Madam Justice Faye McWatt of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said in her ruling. "She has shown that she cannot be entrusted with it." The judge said the children had become so poisoned toward their father by the mother's "emotional abuse" that they had lost the capacity to make independent decisions about interacting with him. Judge McWatt ordered the 42-year-old mother - a chiropodist identified only as K.D. - to turn over all the children's clothing, passports and possessions. K.D. was also ordered not to harass the children or go within 300 metres of them. The judge also gave the father, A.L., the power to confiscate the children's cellphones, pagers, computers and BlackBerrys to prevent their mother from contacting them. "Hopefully, this decision will send a message to other parents of like mind that, if they alienate children, there is a huge price that will be paid at the end of it all," the father's lawyer, Harold Niman, said in an interview last night. "This order was child focused and designed very sensitively to ensure that children emerge from this process as healthy children," Mr. Niman said. "My client is a very decent guy who tried resolutely, under very difficult circumstances, to have a relationship with his children. Here, the system worked." Soon after the couple met in 1993, K.D. became pregnant. K.D attempted to keep A.L. from seeing his first daughter, but nonetheless eventually agreed to marry him. The relationship became more dysfunctional. K.D. closely regulated her husband's interactions with his child and accused him of sexually abusing the child. Judge McWatt said K.D. appeared to be dominated by her mother, a vindictive woman who had regularly beat her children when they were young. K.D. and A.L. soon split up, but had two more children during brief periods of reunification. Judge McWatt found that K.D. - whom the judge described as immature, evasive and completely lacking in credibility - on several occasions precipitated physical confrontations with her husband and berated him in front of the children. K.D. also refused repeatedly to comply with court orders granting A.L. visitation rights, and invented excuses to thwart them. Judge McWatt said a psychologist who assessed the family noted that K.D. was obsessive about observing the children when they were with their father, retained an unreasoning belief that he would harm them, and "overprotected the three children to the point of infantilizing all of them. "Eventually, he was not allowed to see or speak to the children - but was left shouting good night to them through a door of K.D.'s home," Judge McWatt added. "Most times, he was not aware whether they were in the house. He did this for up to two years during this period." The degenerative series of events ended in the children withdrawing from their father and refusing to see him. |
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