NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: Families at war - the agony of children weaponised by their parents

KATHLEEN was 29 when her marriage collapsed. She had long suffered with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. When she and her husband split up, the stress was too much, and her children – who were five and six – went to live with their father.

It was meant to be temporary. Kathleen wanted to get back on her feet and then sort out shared custody.

“I wanted to be fair,” she says. “I never wanted to deprive my children of their dad.” However, her husband had other plans. He wanted full custody. After ugly legal battles, the courts awarded Kathleen decent access every week. But each time her children came to see her, they were distant. “It seemed as each week passed they loved me less,” she said.

By the time her children hit their teens, they no longer wanted to see Kathleen. She’d remarried and her ex, she says, told the children she abandoned them for another man.

“He told them I was insane – that I’d neglected them when they were babies, that I was a whore, a bad mother.”

Today, Kathleen’s children are now in their 20s. She’s hasn’t seen them for two years. She prays one day they’ll learn the truth and be reconciled.

Alexander’s story

ALEXANDER is 50 and a teacher. This year, he spoke to his father for the first time in decades. His parents separated in the 1980s. “My mother hammered it in to me that my dad was a monster,” he says. The family split when Alexander’s father had an affair, and he moved to the other side of the country with his new partner. “It was painful. I felt rejected,” says Alexander. “However, he did want to maintain access but my mum didn’t let that happen. She told me he was a serial womaniser, and a drunk. She said he’d bullied her and didn’t love me. So I wanted nothing to do with him.” Years went by and Alexander and his father never spoke.

Recently, Alexander’s father summoned up the courage to contact him. “A very different picture of the past emerged,” Alexander says. “He admitted he hadn’t been a good dad and that he regretted his mistakes, but he swore that he’d never done any of the things my mother claimed.”

In the process of reconciling with his father, Alexander confronted his mother. “I asked her to tell the truth and she said she did what she did for my own good. I think she poisoned my mind against my own dad.” Today, he and his mother have now drifted apart.

Louis’s story

Louis is a musician in his late 30s. He split from his wife 10 years ago after she had an affair. He accepted that their children – then aged two and three – would live with her. “I just wanted to see them as often as I could –weekends, holidays. I wanted it to be amicable,” he says.

His ex closed down all access to the children, however. “She told them terrible things about me. She told the kids I was a drug addict, and I hated them. She said our marriage broke up because I was sleeping around,” Louis says.

The children are now in their teens. Neither will speak to Louis and he can’t afford to fight for access through the courts. “My ex killed my relationship with my children. I feel like they’ve been brainwashed. I just hope that when they’re adults I can tell them the truth. I cannot understand the cruelty of someone who’d shatter the bond between child and parent.”

The debate

Kathleen, Alexander, and Louis all see themselves as victims of what some call “parental alienation” (PA). It’s a hotly disputed concept that divides many psychologists and lawyers. This isn’t just the pain of divorce, the type of heartbreak seen in movies like Kramer vs Kramer or Marriage Story.

To those who believe in PA, it’s about one parent making it impossible for the other to maintain a relationship with their children. Tactics involve blocking access or manipulating children, usually by lying about the behaviour and character of an ex.

PA isn’t yet recognised as a diagnosable mental illness. Lawyers debate its role in family courts.

However, it’s increasingly coming to prominence around the world. In 2010, Brazil became the first state to prohibit PA. Israeli courts are investigating the issue. In 2020, the first judge in Ireland described a parent’s action as “parental alienation”. Thirty of Ireland’s 31 councils have asked the government to investigate PA. In America, no laws have been passed, but some courts recognise PA.

In England, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service recognises the possibility of PA. In Scotland, there’s no direct reference in law but the 2018 Domestic Abuse Act describes making “use of a child in directing behaviour” as an aggravating factor in criminal offences. However, manipulation and lying aren’t crimes.

PA hasn’t been recognised as an official “syndrome” by psychologists although many support that notion. Broadly, the feeling is that relationship issues aren’t mental disorders.

Irish psychotherapist Brian O’Sullivan, a PA expert, says harm is done to both the alienated parent and child. There’s a false perception that women are more likely to be the perpetrators.

However, Sullivan says both men and women are “equally likely to be victims and perpetrators”, and believes PA should be considered a form of psychological and emotional abuse.

The issue is caught up in battles between men’s and women’s groups – with men’s groups claiming the lack of recognition of PA means that fathers are at a legal disadvantage and women who have manipulated children are let off the hook. Women’s groups, meanwhile, claim PA is used to denigrate women and allows abusive men back into the lives of vulnerable children.

Debbie and Simon’s story

DEBBIE and her new partner Simon say PA is destroying their lives. Debbie is a high-flying Scottish journalist, Simon is a police officer. Simon split from his partner Karen four years ago after a 10-year relationship. They had two children -–Eilidh, six, and Teddy, four.

Although there was no history of abuse or adultery, the break-up was intensely hostile. Karen moved from Glasgow to the Borders to live with her parents, taking the children with her. She started a new relationship shortly after the separation. Eighteen months after the split Simon met Debbie.

Before access arrangements were in place, Simon travelled from Glasgow to see the children on his days off. However, Karen began routinely cancelling visits, and Simon found himself seeing the children no more than a few hours a fortnight. Karen wouldn’t allow Simon to take the children to his home.

“It became clear that I wasn’t going to be allowed any meaningful relationship,” he says. As a result, Simon took Karen to court and an interim order granted him access overnight once a week. Simon used a relative’s home in the Borders as a base for the children to stay with him when he visited.

Soon Karen made an allegation that Simon’s relative behaved inappropriately around Eilidh, then aged two. However, on the day in which Karen alleged the incident took place, Simon’s relative was overseas. “It was an obscene, horrible allegation and demonstrably false,” Simon said.

As soon as Karen learned that her allegation couldn’t be stood up, she backtracked. “She was outraged that I had now the right of access to my children. The aim of the false allegation was to terrorise my family into being so scared that they wouldn’t offer me a base to see the children,” Simon said. “In hindsight, I wish I’d allowed her to escalate it and then be caught by the police for making a false statement.”

Another court hearing upped Simon’s access to each weekend. However, Karen continued blocking access despite court orders – also stopping the children seeing their parental grandparents at the time Simon’s mother was dying. “She was weaponising the children,” Simon says. Another court hearing increased Simon’s access to 10 days a month plus all holidays at his home.

Karen was furious and continued to block access. By now, Simon’s children had started to tell him he was a “bad man” and a “dangerous daddy”. When the children were asked why they said those things, Simon and his new partner Debbie were told “mummy said so”.

Debbie had covered family court issues during her media career. “I began researching what was happening and stumbled onto this issue called ‘parental alienation’,” she says. It seemed a classic PA case to Debbie. Karen was also making the children feel guilty if they showed affection to their father. “She puts them in a position of conflicting loyalties,” Simon says. Debbie adds: “Just this morning, Teddy said ‘I really want mummy to come here but she says she can’t because my daddy is dangerous’. He’s four. I don’t want to do what Karen does and make her out to be a bad mother and liar in front of her kids, so I just asked ‘how is daddy dangerous? Has he ever hurt you?’. Teddy said, ‘No, I love my daddy’. It’s heartbreaking to watch this happen.”

With Karen continually blocking court orders granting access, the couple ended up in a protracted war through solicitors, with letters flying backwards and forwards and more than a dozen court hearings. To date, Simon has spent £85,000 on legal fees – soaking up his life savings and all of his inheritance from his mother’s will. “It’s a lawyers’ gravy train,” Debbie adds.

Debbie and Simon visited a psychologist who told them it seemed a PA case. However, during a family hearing a sheriff told the couple they “wouldn’t have parental alienation raised in this court”. The pair felt trapped – a mental health expert was saying it was a case of PA but the court wouldn’t recognise it.

“Karen has created this whole narrative for the children that their dad is unsafe,” says Debbie. “It’s relentless and frightening.” Karen also changed the children’s names.

Simon adds: “Karen has flouted court order after court order – it doesn’t matter what she’s told by a sheriff. She won’t stop and the courts won’t make her stop. It just keeps happening and all the while she’s turning the kids against me.”

Simon believes family courts need a “massive overhaul”. He says there should be a similar approach to Belgium where the intention is equal access for both parents. “Unless there are safeguarding issues,” says Debbie, “it should be 50-50.”

Debbie says when she first began dating Simon she felt compassionate towards Karen, seeing her as “a woman struggling with a break-up”. “We’ve all been there but it’s way beyond that, this is a campaign of destruction. It’s evil. She’s destroying the relationship between a decent man and his children who love him. Eilidh will say things like ‘mummy says daddy is a really bad man and that makes me sad’. I try to tell the kids he loves them and never forget that, and to think about their experiences with him and that he’s always shown them he loves them and has never done anything to hurt them.”

Although his children are still young, Simon says he sees them growing more distant and fears that as years go on, Karen will successfully convince Eilidh and Teddy not to see him. “So far Karen’s hate campaign has been unsuccessful as my access has increased. But now the children are her weapon as the courts aren’t working for her. So I’ve little hope for the future. I really fear she’ll successfully turn them against me and there’s nothing the courts will do to stop that. What can I do?” Simon asks. “I’m a cop and if I see evidence of a crime I have to act – the courts are seeing clear evidence of me being prevented from seeing my children but nothing basically happens.”

Debbie broaches the subject of opposition among women’s groups to the term “parental alienation”. “I know many see this as an offensive term, but I’m a feminist, and this is real – I’m living it. If the term is offensive then let’s call it something else – abusive parental control or something – but we cannot deny this is happening. Believe me, I’m no friend of the patriarchy, but it’s infantilising to women to say they can’t be as mean as men.”

Simon says: “We need to recognise this is happening. Otherwise we’re just using a huge net to scoop up all the good, loving dads with all the rotten, abusive ones. As soon as there’s one parent blocking a relationship with another parent, there should be full psychological assessments of everyone involved.” Debbie adds: “The bottom line is this isn’t about men and women, it’s about children. Gender politics isn’t needed. Karen is doing things no person, man or woman, should do. It’s abhorrent, and it’s all so unnecessary – but Karen is out to destroy Simon and everyone around him, and she’s happy to use her children to do that.”

Ellen’s story

ELLEN was wrongly accused by her ex of conducting a campaign of parental alienation. Her ex had been verbally abusive throughout their relationship and a domineering parent. When they split, the children lived with Ellen, but her ex pushed for greater access. Ellen wanted the children to see their father but under strict conditions because of his previous behaviour.

Angry at the limits put on access, Ellen’s ex began claiming she was “manipulating the kids against him”. He claimed Ellen had lied and told the children he’d beaten her. “He didn’t hit me and I didn’t tell my children anything of the sort,” Ellen says. “The children were very uncomfortable around him. He was nasty to them frankly – I didn’t need to say anything for them to not want to see him.”

Ellen, however, encouraged her children to see their father under the limits she’d managed to put in place. But her ex ensured that during any negotiations she was accused by his lawyers of being manipulative, a liar and had embarked on a campaign to alienate their children. Ellen believes her ex was “egged on” by men’s rights groups.

“The claim of parental alienation can be used by an abusive or controlling man to get back into the lives of his children, and keep his clutches on his ex partner, as well as undermine the intention of the courts,” Ellen said.

“Thankfully, the courts saw what kind of a person my ex was.” Today, Ellen has full custody and her ex limited access. “Anyone can be a liar and a manipulator,” she adds. “As my ex partner proved.”

Names and some other identifying information have been altered to protect the families and children involved.