Caring for Men and Boys. In this episode I’m going to discuss a really painful issue that my male clients can present with; the issue is proceedings involving the CAFCASS agency, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. I’ll also be discussing how false allegations are at the centre of parental alienation and offer two definitions of the phenomenon.
The Good Guy of the Week story this week features Matthew O’Hanlon, a policeman with the Mount Laurel Police Department in New Jersey and a pit bull puppy.
Caring for Men and Boys. In this episode I’m going to discuss a really painful issue that my male clients can present with; the issue is proceedings involving the CAFCASS agency, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. I’ll also be discussing how false allegations are at the centre of parental alienation and offer two definitions of the phenomenon.
The Good Guy of the Week story this week features Matthew O’Hanlon, a policeman with the Mount Laurel Police Department in New Jersey and a pit bull puppy.
False Allegations in the Child and Family Law Courts
In this episode I’m going to discuss a really painful issue that my male clients can present with; the issue is proceedings involving the CAFCASS agency, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. According to their operating framework they deliver ‘a family court social work service to children and young people, their families, and to courts’.
Family Court-based social work is a crucial skillset, it includes negotiation with parties about what is needed and the gaining of all parties’ confidence in their proposals.
They aim to ‘strengthen the child’s world by seeing each case through the eyes and experiences of that child, and reducing factors that worry, disturb or upset them. ‘We find out’ they say ‘what is happening in a family and try to take steps to make the situation better for the child’.
CAFCASS may well look primarily through the eyes and experiences of the child in their service they may not always gain the confidence of all parties; as well as children’s contributions they take other sources of evidence into account., specifically from the child’s parents. In my practice I have sometimes noticed a hierarchy whereby CAFCASS looks through the eyes and experiences of a female partner in these cases, over and above looking through the eyes and experiences of a male partner. In such cases the time spent with, and information gathered, can be more heavily weighted in favour of the female partner.
Some of the men whom I have worked with have sometimes not even been included in the process in terms of fact finding, they haven’t had the opportunity to have their version of events and wishes taken into account or have been engaged only in a token or cursory way, one that certainly isn’t proportional with their partner’s involvement.
I just want to say, I’m sure many outcomes from the Family Law Courts do genuinely deliver the best outcome for children; what I am discussing here is the shadow side of these courts, whereby a gender bias operates; a bias which has been named Gamma bias, which I have discussed in more detail in episode 13 of this podcast. Gamma bias, a hypothesis developed by doctors Martin Seager and Dr John Barry, occurs when one gender difference is minimised while simultaneously another is magnified. Seager and Barry focus on how, for example, women’s being and achievements are celebrated, men’s being and achievements, not so much; and how men are assumed to have privilege and women are assumed to be victims.
In my opinion, these distortions originate in radical feminist ideology where women’s suffering is framed as a political issue rooted in the patriarchy, where men are perceived to have all the power. Paradoxically, in my experience, men can sometimes have very little power in the Family courts system.
I have supported such male clients in family law court processes where their being and achievements (particularly as a father, protector and provider) have been discounted at best and ignored at worst, and where they are assumed, without any or much investigation, to have been exercising male privilege and victimising their partners, or assumed to be the cause of any family problems; this is usually without proper investigation and usually on the evidence of an angry and hurt partner at best or a hostile partner at worst.
Just a little aside here, not long ago, a friend of mine who was a magistrate told me that her bench had been visited by Women’s Aid workers; these Women’s Aid workers came from the local women’s refuge, to talk to them about domestic violence. My magistrate friend was disappointed firstly that the workers assumed that all victims of domestic violence were women but then secondly, she said her jaw dropped and she could not believe her ears when one of the Women’s Aid staff members told her and her colleagues, in all seriousness, ‘you must always believe the woman’. Needless to say, my magistrate friend was hugely affronted to be told what she should and shouldn’t do on the Bench.
OK, so back to the family law courts; worse than a lack of respect for men’s being, achievements and version of events in this arena is the issue of false allegations, part of a ‘game playing’ exercise used to delay or frustrate one parent’s contact with their child. I have worked with a number of male clients who have been the subject of such seriously damaging false allegations; seriously damaging false allegations which, beyond disputing the evidence, an action which can be interpreted as being uncooperative or hostile, are usually impossible to disprove.
William Collins, a prolific blogger, researcher, author and conference presenter on men’s issues has investigated in depth, false allegations of domestic abuse in the Family Law Courts. I’ve provided a link to his world class blog, The Empathy Gap, in the episode notes. He noted that the use of two independent methods, based on national statistics alone, imply that about 56% to 60% of all allegations of domestic abuse made in private law cases in the family courts are false.
It has to be said of course that children’s safety is paramount; and any suggestion that children could be harmed by a parent should be taken very seriously. What I am suggesting here, based on my psychotherapy experience, is that false allegations are made quite frequently; they are most often in the form of exaggeration and are less often purely fictitious; these false allegations can stick because of gender bias, or because of a lack of proper or possible investigation, or because of a ‘no smoke without fire’ attitude.
In the best of these scenarios, children are separated from their fathers temporarily, only for as long as a useful fact-finding process occurs which then vindicates the need to keep father and child separated any longer.
At worst, there is no fact-finding process, and the false allegations stand unchallenged, or the fact finding does not sufficiently involve the father or take seriously his version of events and the father’s contact with his child is severely limited, has to be supervised by another adult, or not allowed.
False allegations prevail in parental alienation cases. An issue that I will be looking at in more detail in a future episode. While there isn’t a generally agreed upon definition of parental alienation, or indeed a universally agreed upon set of diagnostic criteria, several definitions of the phenomenon have been proposed.
CAFCASS defines parental alienation as ‘when a child’s resistance or hostility towards one parent is not justified and is the result of psychological manipulation by the other parent’.
Another definition comes from Karen Woodall, a psychotherapist and prolific blogger on the subject of parental alienation, please find her link in the episode notes; she says parental alienation can be described as ‘a deliberate effort to undermine and destroy a relationship between a child and a parent and is most often carried out by ex-partners who are hell bent on revenge.’
Further Woodall tells us that ‘a judge recently commented that the issue of parental alienation has entered into the mainstream consciousness and can be recognised as a bona fide problem that must be addressed’.
I have worked with several parents, including a female, who I believe to have been victims of this malicious process. These people are human beings, they are victims who, on top of the trauma and grief of being separated from their child or children, and often on top of the trauma and grief of their intimate relationship ending (whichever partner may have ended it) they experience another kind of trauma; a trauma that involves having their character misrepresented in the most distorted and negative way; having all their goodness as a partner, father and general human being, erased from their history, often having their mental health challenged and their motivations challenged all the while wondering if they will ever see their child or children again. It is a hellish experience which beggars belief.
On her blog, Woodall describes ‘the anguish of a parent experiencing estrangement from a child’; she says ‘it’s akin to a living bereavement’; that ‘our expectations of parenthood, on the day that our children are born, is that our love and our care will suffice throughout the lifetime of our little ones and that…we’ll go on to see them fully functioning and happy in their own parenthood’.
This is a devastating loss which comes about as a direct result of false allegations. Victims experience serious emotional and psychological symptoms which can lead to such depths of despair that suicide is contemplated or actually completed. These people are utterly traumatised, can be overwhelmed with grief, may withdraw deep into themselves or may behave in unpleasant ways, all are symptoms of trauma. Such people need us to take their version of events seriously, to take their pain seriously and they deserve the most empathy, compassion and support that we can muster.
Good guy of the week
This week, Matthew O'Hanlon, a policeman with the Mount Laurel Police Department in New Jersey found a young pit bull pup wandering around an industrial area with no identification and a wound on his head.
O'Hanlon scooped up the puppy and brought him to a local animal shelter for treatment. The pup had no tag or chip so couldn’t be quickly returned to an owner.
No one came forward to claim the injured animal; and no microchip was found on the injured canine.
Officer O'Hanlon decided to adopt the dog right away.He told Good Morning America, “I called the shelter 20 minutes after I dropped him off and told them that I wanted him." He said, “my fiancée and I were looking to get a pit bull puppy, so it seemed like we were destined to meet, a pit bull puppy with an injury was hard to pass up on."
Little Thor, named after the Marvel character, is healing up nicely and has found his forever loving home! Finally, Matthew told the reporter, “he’s going to be spoiled for the rest of his life."
https://karenwoodall.blog/2012/05/23/understanding-parental-alienation-part-one/