Slam the Gavel
Slam the Gavel
Petra Deeter, Ph.D., filmmaker is passionate about creating social impact to advocate for victims of Parental Alienation and discusses Texas HB 2153
Dr. Petra Deeter is an award winning film director and social impact builder. As a filmmaker, she has made films in many genres, focusing on using the visual story medium to tell the stories that matter.
In one of her films, Reborn, which is about domestic violence, premiered at the legendary Chinese Theatre in in Hollywood that won over 2 dozen international awards and screened at festivals and theaters around the world.
As a survivor of child abuse and domestic violence, she is passionate about creating social impact to advocate for victims. She is the founder and a Parental Alienation strategist at VictimToHero.com where she provides resources and support for victims while raising public awareness.
Dr. Deeter joins us on Slam the Gavel to discuss misinformation on Parental Alienation and the need for social responsibility in journalism and media and the need for legislative reform to eradicate this form of hidden child abuse.
In her up-coming feature-length documentary film, "At All Cost," Dr. Deeter examines a five year custody battle and the system failure that led to the murder of a ten year-old child by his Father.
To reach Dr. Deeter: https://victimtohero.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/PetraDeeter-MediaKit.pdf
My media kit is here: https://victimtohero.com/media-kit/
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Good evening and welcome to Slam the Gavel, the show that tells it all regarding family court and CPS issues. I'm your host, Mary Ann Petrie, and to honor alienated parents next month on International Parental Alienation Awareness Day, Epiphany Awaits is offering a faith-based retreat for alienated parents with both in-person and a Zoom option on April 23rd through the 25th, 2021, at the Resolution Center in Jacksonville, Florida. Only$100 for a weekend of support for the journey, with speakers including Dr. Mark Roseman and other professionals focused on guidance, friendship, and compassion. CD is limited and discounts apply to registration before March 15th. And after March 15th,$125 registration fee. Scholarships are available. E-mail requests for application and registration form to EpiphaniesOwait at gmail.com. That's E-P-I-P-H-A-N-I-E-S, A-W-A-I-T at gmail.com. And right now I'm going to introduce Dr. Petra Dieter. She is an award-winning film director and social impact builder. As a filmmaker, she has made films in many genres, focusing on using the visual story medium to tell the stories that matter. Her film, Reborn, about domestic violence, premiered at the legendary Chinese theater in Hollywood, won over two dozen international awards, and screened at festivals and theaters around the world. As a survivor of child abuse and domestic violence, she is passionate about creating social impact to advocate for victims. She is the founder and a parental alienation strategist at victimtohero.com. That's victimtohero.com, where she provides resources and support for victims and raises public awareness. Today she's joining me to talk about the misinformation on parental alienation and the need for social responsibility in journalism and media, and the need for legislative reform to eradicate this form of hidden child abuse. She will also be talking to us about her upcoming feature-length documentary film that examines a five-year cuspi battle and the system failure that led to the murder of a 10-year-old boy by his father. So I welcome you, Dr. Dieter. How are you this evening? So we have a lot to talk about, and um there's so much to talk about, especially with um the misinformation of parental alienation in the courtrooms between parents. You know, everyone has questions, I'm sure. How are you seeing it?
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, it's very unfortunate. There's a lot of misinformation out there, like you said. And when I started um in this field, I mean, just like a lot of parents, when you hear this thing that being spread around that said that, you know, when mothers go into court and you know try to protect their children from abusive fathers, and then because she try to protect the children, she are more likely to lose custody in court. Now, when you hear that as a as a victim and as a mother, you're you're very scared and it just makes you feel helpless and it's terrible. But then later, when I started to look into this field and I start to look into the research, I look into the data, and then I realize that there's a lot of misinformation out there, and that's not true at all. Um, I wanted to be clear because um there there is a study out there that is um let's just say that it's very misleading. There's a study out there that leads to this claim that's being spread around, that like you mentioned, where it said parental alienation is only a legal tool that abusive fathers is using to take custody away from mothers. And and when the tool is being used, the court is completely blind and to take the children away from mothers and give the children to the abusers. And that's just not true. So recently in 2020, um, which is only in October, which is not long ago, Dr. Hammond from Colorado State University and Dr. Laurent's have done a lot of research into this. They spend a lot of time and effort to look into 10 years of appellate court data, which is the same set of data, the same source of data that the other studies supposedly have taken. And they look into this data and they found that the result is completely different. That's not the case at all. Um, the court does recognize when there's alienation, when true alienation happens. The court does recognize when there's abuse, real abuse happens. So when there's a situation, when there's a domestic violence situation, when there's an abuser, the court doesn't just give the child to the abuser. That's just a completely false claim. Unfortunately, um there's different activist groups that either because they are misinformed, or I don't know if there's any other motives, but they spread this information around. And unfortunately, also in the media, you see articles on Forbes that also spread this information. You see other places, major media networks that are sharing this information. And what is interesting to me is that when you when you're looking at, for example, you're looking at an abusive relationship, you see this in a in a kind of personal level. You see in an abusive relationship, you will often see that the abuser will do what they call gaslighting, meaning that the abuser will make the victims feel like something is wrong with the victim. They deny the truth. So the victim will start questioning their reality. This is kind of the same thing that didn't play out in the macro scale. What you're seeing is that people are saying parental alienation is not real. So we are essentially silencing the victims. We have so many victims, more than 3.9 million children who are victims of this form of abuse. 3.9 million moderately to severely alienated children. And I am one of those adult children of parental alienation. I'm the chair of the Hero Circle, which is a member-based organization that just entirely consists entirely of adult children of parental alienation. Now, as children who are now adults, we have no motives. We are not fighting for custody, we're not trying to raise or reduce child payment, we're not trying to get back at our exes or get even with our exes. There's none of those motives. We just want the world to know that the kind of abuse that we have suffered and the kind of impacts that it have done to our lives, and there's so much research in these fields. There's over 10 years of clinical, scientific, and legal research and data into this. There's over a thousand scholarly papers that published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. And then there's this single study that was misleading. I mean, there are over 30 problems that was identified for this paper, um, from you know, lack of transparency, misrepresenting information, cherry-picking data, um, you know, there's so many things that's wrong with that paper. And it's not peer reviewed. It was posted on a particular university website, and then now it's being spread around and being used everywhere, and it's it's being used in the media, and that's a huge problem. Another thing is um, another thing that you see in the personal abusive relationship is that you will see victims, um, I mean, abuser will often what they call do what they call projection. Projection is when an abuser will blame the victims for what they do. So, you know, the abuser will, for example, hit you and then claim that you hit them, right? So this is kind of the same thing that you see in the macro scale, where you see um that people that claim that parental alienation is just science, yet it's being claimed by non-scientists who publish paper in a non-peer review uh journal and then spreading this information around, and then when they're being questions for their you know unethical practices, they refuse to address these questions on the scientific forums. So none of the rebuttal was posted in any of the peer review journals. So that's the problem that I'm seeing. And unfortunately, like major journals or media outlets are not looking at this correctly because they are not doing thorough research. So they just take the matter as it is and and then start spreading around, and that's a huge problem for victims.
SPEAKER_01:When you're in the courtroom and a lot of parents don't know what to do, you're sitting there listening to these lies unravel, and the opposing side is just getting away with it, and there's no way to stop it. I think that's a lot of pro a lot of um frustration with a lot of parents is how do we stop it?
SPEAKER_00:Right. So, I mean, this is um, I'm not saying this is easy, and for a lot of parents, it feels like the system fails them. And when you think about the system, I mean there's some truth to this because obviously you have um you have a system that is lack of awareness, right? We we have um we have the law, so when you're looking at the system, you have to look at the components of it. You have to look at the the existing law that is in place, right? So the law is definitely need reform because it doesn't recognize this form of abuse properly. And there's this debate, like like you said, that's going on, and people saying, oh, this is just for abusive fathers, this is about the mothers, and it's while we're having this whole debate, we forget that this is not about the parents, this is about the children. The children are the true victims here. So the system needs to have law in place that explicitly recognizes that this is a form of child abuse. And and there's a bill right now coming into Texas that is introduced uh by um by the House Rat Um, I think his name is Harold Dutton. It's a it's the bill HB 2153 in Texas, is right now being reviewed in the House Committee of Juvenile Justice and Family Issues. Um I want to talk about that bill in a second, but I want to go back to your question about how do parents get justice in court. So you have you have the law that needs to be reformed, and then once the law is in place, you have the judges and the professionals, like the lawyers, right, the custody mediator, the custody evaluators, and all these people get in enlightened. All these people also need to be informed. So we need public awareness and we also need education for the professionals. Um so it's a mix, right? You have judges that do get this, and then we have judges that don't get this, and we have professionals that do get this and professionals that don't. Unfortunately, with parental alienation, is that it's so counterintuitive. Um, when you're looking at a situation where you see a child has rejected a parent, your natural tendency and assumption is that this parent has done something wrong. This parent must be bad for the child to reject the parent. And often in alienation, you see a child that rejects a parent very strongly. You know, it's not just like a little bit of resistance. Most of the time, especially in severe cases, the alienated children will reject their parents very strongly. And so, if people that just follow their intuition, they will get this wrong. They will think that the alienated parent, the targeted parent, is to blame. So you need education for them, for the professional to know how to diagnose this, how to understand this properly. And then the third piece into this is the parents, the targeted parents. You go to court to look for justice. Now, the court is a system, it's a set of tools. So, in order to get your trusted, you need to know how to use your tool properly. Right? So if parents go to court and trying to get trusted and they don't understand the system, they don't get the right representation, they don't have the right strategy, then it's very difficult for them because it's just like you go to me and you talk in a different language that I don't understand, I cannot help you. It's the same with the system. So there's all these different elements, and we need we need to change the law, we need to get education for the professional, and we need to get education for the parents. And we also need to provide the right support network for the parents so that they can get the right legal representation, they get the right strategies in place, they get the right mental health support in place so that they can go and get the right justice for their children. So, yeah, as far as the system is concerned, there's a lot that needs to be done. Um, but overall, though, um, like I mentioned the study by Dr. Hyman and Dr. Laurentus, um, actually on um on Thursdays this week, I'm going to be interviewing them about that particular study. But the outcome of their study showed that according to the appellate court cases in the last 10 years, I think they pulled a thousand cases from this set of data, and they found that the court does get it. The court, when you see that there's an alienation claim, and the court has done proper investigation and found that there's alienation in place, the court does take the right approach to reunify the family. So it's important to not have, I think that message is actually actually really important because if you just say that the system failed and that there's no hope, then it leaves this sense of helplessness and hopelessness for parents. And when, and you know how important hope is, because if you if you can keep that hope in mind, you have so much more strength to fight for your children. So that's really important. Uh, back to the piece about the the legislative reform. Um, so like I mentioned, there's a bill right now being introduced by uh rep, the house rep Harold Dutton, and it's called the HB 2153, and um it's essentially saying that parental alienation is child abuse. It's gonna change the family code to recognize that if you engage in conducts that results in a child reluctance or refusal without a good reason to have a relationship with one of the parents, then it's considered a form of child abuse. Now, right now, unfortunately, um we are not getting a lot of feedback in the committee. Right now, it's been in the House Committee of Juvenile Justice and Family Issues, and we've been trying to reach out to all the reps within this committee, um, the committee. So uh this committee is chaired by uh rep Victoria Neva. Um I'm not sure if I say her last name correctly, or Leave. Um, and she's a chair, and it is in the Texas law, she has the absolute um discretion to choose if this bill died without anybody hearing it or not. What we're trying to do is to ask the community to give this bill a chance so that it can be heard. Because, I mean, we have some 30 organizational and advocacy groups, and also over a hundred parents and adult children of parental alienation in Texas who are waiting to testify, to tell their stories to the lawmakers. So we just want this bill to be heard. We don't know if it's gonna get voted, whether it's gonna make into the law, but at least if we can get a chance for it to be heard, that would be amazing. But right now it's still sitting in review by the house committee there. And um, if what we really need is a lot more public awareness to get this bill to be heard. So if we have parents out there that are in Texas, or you have adult children of parental alienation who wanted to help, please contact us. We want you to reach out to all of your reps and asking for meetings, asking for their support. We need to have more co-author on this bill. Um, we need to, you know, we need to get um the rep Victoria Lee to have meetings with us and to allow this bill to get heard. So that's that's where that is with that bill.
SPEAKER_01:It's very hard to get these bills um passed. Do you think that unfortunately, do you think it could take years? Is that one of your fears?
SPEAKER_00:Well, of course it is difficult to get the law passed. Uh, any any law, right? Um, and of course there's always gonna be uh opposition, there's always gonna be different directions. Um, so one of the push, like I said, that um particular paper, um, and then it's being used all around the country and around the world and spread around by media to say that parental alienation is junk science, that it is um uh only a tool and abusive father will use it to take test it away. Now I wanted to to point out that that, like one, that it's it's like the the research on um on parental alienation is very scientifically sound. It's like I said, a lot of research has gone into this. But the other thing that I wanted to say is that um the fact that you you see that something is being abused, like for any form of abuse, right? You're gonna have an abuser that's going to try to take advantage and pretend to be victims, right? You you don't even talk about parental elimination, any form of abuse. You're gonna have someone that's gonna claim to be a victim when they are actually the abuser. So just because you notice that there are cases where the abuser may have misused this term, what you need is not to shut this down, because when you shut this down, you're gonna shut down all the real victims of this form of abuse. Instead, what you need is to introduce and lobby for better diagnostic tools so that professionals and so that people can truly recognize who is the true abuser. Um, and that's the problem, is that the lobbyists, the activists are pushing for shutting down the recognition of the term parental alienation when they should be lobbying for better tools to diagnose, to recognize parental alienation. Um, by the way, I just wanted to mention today we just released a workbook. It's available on Amazon, it's free on Kindle, and it's called Diagnosing Parental Alienation. It's a five-factor model workbook. You can find that on Amazon. Um, and it's a simple workbook that will walk you through how to structure your case, how to document your case. We have a lot of lists of criteria and examples that parents can go through and try to figure out how to structure their case and understand it better. Um, yeah, there should be tools like that. If you think that a term may be misused, then you need to push for better diagnostics, better training for professionals, things like that. You should not say, oh, because someone is gonna claim that they are, for example, um a physical abuser, therefore, we should never recognize a form of physical abuse. It doesn't make sense at all. Another problem that wrong that that is wrong with this um misinformation out there is that they um they're saying, oh, there are fathers that are abusive and misuse this information, therefore, they're implying that all fathers are abusive. Now that's horrible. It's kind of like saying, um, you know, my cat is is a mammal and my dog is a mammal, therefore, my dog is a cat. Like it doesn't make sense at all, right? So that's a problem with the misinformation out there, and it's very important that we bring a lot more public awareness to this, and we need to change this at all levels.
SPEAKER_01:Um, Dr. Deer, what is the name of that workbook for people that want to find it?
SPEAKER_00:Um, it's called Diagnosing Parental Alienation, the five-factor model workbook. It's free on Kindle. And tomorrow, actually, I'm gonna do a live event where I'm gonna walk through the workbook and explaining how parents can actually use the printable worksheets on there that parents can use to document their kids and you know what's important and how do they categorize their evidence and things like that.
SPEAKER_01:Some parents have questions about uh the opponents being narcissists, for instance. And once you get one of those on the stand and they're they're exceptional liars, they're they're better at it than anybody. And then you've got a judge that is uh possibly believing them. And and as a parent, you sit there and you're watching this play out, and there's No way to stop the narcissist going on and on about something that kind of didn't happen. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's actually unfortunately very common. Like uh most of the alienators are either borderline or diagnosed or covert narcissistic. Um, so it is a unfortunately a very common situation. And a lot of especially severe parental alienation cases will involve false allegations and will involve drag out, hostile custody battles. So that's a very common situation. So one of the things, uh, for example, you will find in that workbook that I mentioned, and we talk about a lot in a lot of our events and programs at Victim to Hero is that you have to look at these different facets in your case. Um, what we propose is that there are five facets in handling a parental alienation case. Um, one is yourself, uh you. You need to be well and you need to be well educated, well educated about parental alienation. You need to be mentally strong, you need to thrive in your life, you need to heal, and you need to be whole. So that's one facet of it. Another facet of it is your child. Now, a lot of the time when parents are faced with parental alienation, they are usually in shock because you know they had this loving relationship with their child, and then suddenly, it just seemed like just suddenly your child suddenly turned into this cold and defiant and rude and disrespectful child. Um and and you are so shocked, and and the natural tendency is to react to that, right? You'll start screaming or you discipline the child, and I prohibit you from doing that, you cannot do that, but how dare you? But right, things like that, right? And that's the worst thing that you could do. Because unfortunately, a lot of parents, because you don't know what you're dealing with, so it's a natural thing for you to react. The problem, though, you don't recognize, and you need to recognize, is that in parental alienation, your child is a victim. Your child has been brainwashed into and has been conditioned into hating you to reject you. So your child is a victim, that's one. The second victim of manipulation. The second thing is that your child is a victim of trauma. Now, a victim of trauma, the way that they handle things, the way they understand things is very different. So you can you can attack your child because your child is a victim. The real abuser here is not your child, it's the alienator. So how you handle your children is a very important facet of handling this parental alienation situation. Because a lot of the time it's not about what you do in court. There are parents that want in court that still lose their children emotionally, right? And then there's parents that don't have to fight in court and still win their children back. So the key here is changing your parenting skill. You have to learn your reattachment parenting skill and learn how to deal with a trauma victim, right? So that's another facet that the parents have to pick up. And we we're working on all of these facets and bring information from parents. This the third facet is the alienators. Like you said, the alienators is narcissistic or at least abusive in some way. They're using psychological abuse, they blame you for this thing, they made all these false allegations, they think that they're above the law and they will get away with anything, right? So you need to truly understand this. This abuser, unfortunately, is someone who understands you. And very often you were the victim of abuse before the separation or the breakup happened. A lot of parents think that parental alienation happened after the divorce. Um, no, a lot of root cause started way before that, even before the child was born. The reason the abuser is getting you now is because the abuser is abusive by nature. And so while you were in the relationship, you may not notice it, but you were probably the victim of abuse already. And that's a problem with psychological abuse because the abuser gets you in your mind. They have conditioned you into accepting controlling and abusive behavior as normal. And they also often condition you into feeling inadequate, that you are somehow deserving of this male treatment. So you got used to that and you don't even recognize that you are victims of psychological abuse. Now that it's being transfired into your child, it's sort of more visible to you. And now you start seeing this, and now that you detach from this abuse, you can see it a little bit better. So now that you see it, you need to pick up another set of skills, and that's the that's the third facet that we're talking about, how to handle this narcissistic or abusive personality. And there's there's a there's a method out there that's sort of well recognized that talking about you know, grave rock method. Now that's okay, but it's really not enough because grave rock method is how do you interact with a narcissistic personality who you still have to interact with. So that's kind of okay-ish because you do have to interact with this person to discuss about your child and things like that. But it's beyond that because you are dealing with the narcissistic that are currently, continuously attacking you. So handling that is not just about great rock. You have to still set your boundary, you still have to set your stand up, you know, stand your ground and all that kind of thing. That takes a different skill set. And that's another thing that I find challenging with this field is that there's not enough information out there to educate parents, and that's why we're working so hard to bring all these different aspects of the field to help parents. That's the third facet. The number facet is to deal, how do we deal with other people, right? So because you are not in isolation, you have a community, you and your children, and and the alienators. So you need to look at how do you deal with this community of people. You know, you have school teacher, you have doctors, you know, you have people that are dealing with your child, and and then you have, you know, like maybe church, you may have neighbors, friends, extended families, right? All of these people are going to have some role in how this parental alienation plays out and how your children see you. And unfortunately, like you we talk about, there's such a lack of public awareness that people will misunderstand parental alienation and they will take the role of the alienator because they will assume that you have done something wrong, that you are bad. So, how do you handle them and bring public awareness, bring awareness to these people? How do you handle them so that they can be your allies instead of becoming a part of the alienators' airline? Um, so that's another facet of fighting parental alienation. Now, the fifth facet, the fifth uh facet is how do you deal on the legal ground? You know, how do you fight in court? How do you fight when you're when you're being uh accused with child protective agency, when uh the police are involved, when the district attorneys are involved, that's another facet, very challenging. I'm not saying this is easy, I'm just saying that there's a lot that parents have to do. Unfortunately, when you look at this whole landscape, the only person that can save their child is you. So even though it's very challenging, you have to be strong. You have to gather yourself together, you have to build the right team around you so that you can rescue your children. And this is always gonna be a long-term thing. It's not a button that you can press, like an easy button, go, oh, or a pill that you can just take, and then it's gonna so it's not the situation. You have to be prepared for a long, long, um, long game. And also the other thing to recognize is that things are not gonna be back the way it was. Um, a lot of parents get sort of held back and keep sort of like missing their past, you know, the old memories of how things work. Things will never get back to that. Things can be a lot better though. It doesn't mean that you things are always gonna be worse. If you do this right, things can be a lot stronger, it could be a lot better. So I'm trying to say there are tools out there, be strong, and you know, you're not alone, you're not helpless, you're not hopeless. You can you can save your children.
SPEAKER_01:There's people that offer court advice on how to behave in court when you're up against these people, uh hence the narcissist. And um a lot of the issues that I'm hearing as well, the judge was uh overbearing a narcissist along with the opposing attorney, and of course the other your your ex. And uh it just uh it's like you you can't control it when you're in the courtroom. You can object, but the judge just steamrolls over you. And it's very difficult. I mean, even as even when you have attorneys, but even as a pro se you cannot you are all I'm sorry, but you're powerless to stop these people uh railroading you and taking your children based on false allegations. And um I I I I don't know where I was trying to go with.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, I understand, I understand that you are raising a very valid point about how challenging it is for parents when they're dealing with this type of narcissistic personalities in court, and then especially if you have professionals like the judges or the lawyers or the get-in adlightans that are involved that have very vital roles in your case and yet they don't get this, or worse, if they themselves are narcissistic. I understand that situation, and so that's why I was saying about how we're talking about building the right team because you have to be prepared that when you go and find this, it's not gonna be easy. So you need to build the right team around you. So you need the uh the lawyer or the legal team, or if you are pro se, you better educate yourself that are very good and very specialized in litigation that to do with false allegation, to do with parental alienation. And then you also need outside of the courtroom, you need a mental health professional who can give you the right type of tool so that you can heal and so that you can so that you can be okay because you need to be prepared that you're gonna be dragged through mud when you go and fight this. It's gonna be the most horrific form, and when you reap and listen to this, you don't even know who they describe because that's not you at all. All these things are just unbelievable. And it doesn't matter what you did, it's gonna be considered wrong. It's either because you love your children, pay too much attention to your children, or you don't pay enough attention, you're giving too much food, or you're not giving enough food, you're buying too much clothes, you're not buying enough clothes. It doesn't matter what you do. You you live in a too big a house, or you live too small house, or you live, you know, whatever it is. This because they are out there to get you. This is not about parenting issues. When it comes to parental alienation, it's not about parenting issues. The alienators alienators have a problem with you. They are out there to get you. They're trying to use the children as a weapon. So even when there are things that they they agree with you on principle, but they are gonna upfront, create a problem with that. That's gonna be a big problem, no matter what it is that's gonna be discussed. Anything is gonna be so for parents, they need to have, before going into court, they have to have the right team, they have to have a strategist that can help them determine the right strategy on how to present their case, how to fight their case, whether they should fight in court. And if they do fight in court, there are so many remedies on how to go in court to go after this. And if they are defenders, how to defend their case, and then and then, like I said, you need a mental health professional to prepare you. How do you deal with being under attack while you still have to hold it together and to fight it? And then you know, you need a good legal, uh, legal team to help you to fight this. But the other thing is to recognize that um judges are not completely uh free of, you know, they're not free to just do everything they can. So if you do understand and if you have the right legal team, you can hold the judge of um accountable. So, you know, there's the procedure, and that's what I'm saying is the law or the system is a tool, and it's about using the right tool and knowing how to use the tools. And unfortunately, a lot of parents don't know how to use the rule, the tool, and don't have the right uh representation, legal representation who help them with this. A lot of lawyers, unfortunately, are not at all experienced with parental elimination, and they give really bad advice. They will get parents to settle when for when they be claimed for you know abuse and things like that, and then it leads to the implication that you acknowledge that you did abuse the child, or they will get you to do this. There's a lot of bad advice out there, and it's horrible. So you need the right team. And then and and I wanted to say they are not completely immune. I mean, uh recently we had a client that we helped, and um she lost her case, and we ended up going through appeal in different ways, and the guardian at lightum now has been sanctioned, and the guardian at lightum now has to pay her over$300,000 on for damages. Um, we are going to be sharing information on this case soon. Right now, we're not ready yet to share this information, but we want parents to know that they are not helpless. And these people are not just beyond control, they're not God. There's this rules, there's a system out there, and if you know how to use this tool properly, you can defend yourself. But it takes a lot. You either have the right team or you yourself have to educate yourself to do it for yourself, especially for parents that are pro se. I know it's very challenging, but it's possible. We've seen, we see in many cases. I mean, we we we have even have events where we have parents coming in and share about how they won their cases and how they reunite with their children. And I want to say that court is not the only place that you can win this. Um, you know, you can win your children back outside of court. And then also with court, it's not just the family court. You need to look at your strategy because you could get, there's things that there's ways that you could get the district attorney office to to enforce it. So you can go after this in the civil court, you can go after this in the criminal courts. So there are different strategy, and even, you know, in particular court, there's different ways of going after this. Do you go with contempt, do you go with custody modification, or you know, there's there's different ways of going after this. So it's about recognizing that there are a lot of tools out there and picking the right tools and understanding how to use that tool properly. But yeah, I do understand, I do agree, it's very, very painful. You're already dealing with um, this is this is really a multi-level attack on you because you got an alienator that attack you personally as a human being and attack you in your role as a parent. And an alienator that you're looking at destroying your child, this lovely, you know, loving child, wholesome, now turn into this child that have just so disrespectful and have all these other problems that come with it. Right? So you you're and you're helpless, you're not being able to help your child. So there's that level of attack, you're losing and you're grieving for this child that you lost that's still alive. And then you're also being attacked by, like you mentioned, all these professionals that don't get it, and then the the judges that don't get it, and then the alienator is never alone. The alienators are always gonna have airlines, they're gonna have their extended family, the step parents, the new partners, the friends, and they're gonna pull the school and you know, all these people to go against you. So it's definitely a multi-level attack on you. So I I totally agree, it's very, very tough. That's why having the right team around you, having a good strategist, having a good mental health professional, having a good legal advisor around you, and a good support network is very critical of the parents.
SPEAKER_01:As far as the non-custodial parent and the school system, you know, um, once that alienator goes into the school system and says, no, here's a court order, and then they talk to the principal, and God knows what they're telling them. And then when you come in, they're looking down on you like, well, you did something wrong to have these kids taken away. You're you're already mud in their eyes. And and how does a parent get that back or try because I I mean I tried, I even showed a document. Look, this is not true. And the principal, well, he said, Well, I don't want to get involved. It's like Paul, I think you already are. But um he they they just don't want to hear it. As far as they're concerned, they've sided with the alienator, and God help all of us non-custodial parents.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I agree, and I totally understand. We have situation, I mean, we interview hundreds and hundreds of alienated parents and alienated adult children cases, and and we we have cases of you know, alienators go into school and even said things like, oh, you know, the child doesn't have a parent because it's the sperm donor, or that the parent died, or the parent had left, or the parent uh have is in jail, or the parent has lost custody, and they would bring in false documents or expired, you know, uh restraining order, and it's just uh it's it's outrageous, it's ridiculous. And um, so uh of I think maybe two months ago we did an event where we talk about um, yeah, I think it's on Thanksgiving, we did an event where we talk about how to handle um those people, like school and um doctors and those people that are involved with your case and yet on the alienated side. Um so it's a long seminar, but I'm gonna just kind of highlight a few things is that recognizing that one, again, they are victims because they have been misinformed. So uh you need to look at them with a little bit of compassion because how you approach it can change your attitude, and your attitude can result in different outcomes on how you approach them. Second thing is that you need to understand that they belong to a system. So, in the system, there's hierarchy. So they are held by certain set of rules. So if you understand that structure and use that structure to hold them accountable, that's another thing you could do. And you have to set boundaries and all that kind of things. I don't remember all the details of that. Uh, we're probably gonna do that event again in the future, but we did that event where we go in depth into how to handle that for parents. But it's really, really scary. Um, you kind of mentioned at the beginning, we are working on a feature-length documentary film about parental alienation, and in this case, it was horrible. We have the most horrific manipulator um as an alienator, and this guy um, over a period of five years, dragged his mother in and out of court, and so many really like all different agencies that got involved, from you know, and school system that got involved, multiple schools because the child, you know, the he ended up moving the child to a different school without talking to the mother, uh, even though he's supposed to, and you know, he filed false claims in multiple states, and you know, you have child welfare that got involved, we have district attorney that got involved, we have probational authors that got involved, um, police that got involved, um, and multiple courts, right? You got civil courts and family courts and criminal courts. So we got all those people involved, and they got it wrong. And you know what? Five years dragged out. And this little boy got caught in the middle. He loved his mother, but he had to reject his mother because he was brainwashed and forced to choose. So he had to be loyal to his father, so that's what he did. And now we've got went through this whole situation. Eventually, at the end of that five years, they had a hearing where finally we have finally had one judge that heard this case and said, Oh my god, this is the worst case of parental alienation I ever seen. And it's shocking that you and your new wife are doing this irreparable damage to your child. This is not acceptable. And I'm gonna think about this, but I'm probably gonna give the child some makeup time with the mother. And guess what? That night the father killed the child. This 10 years old boy was his life was ended by his father, the alienator. And this is a system that when we look at, I mean, we poured through thousands and thousands of documents. You know, we got all the documents from the police, we got all the documents also from the court, multiple court we interviewed, we did a map out uh on this case of hundreds and hundreds of people, and we've been interviewing hundreds of people, and this is multiple states and multiple countries case because this boy was born in China by American parents, and so you know, there's people involved over there, there's people over here. Uh, we we went to multiple places to interview people, so yeah, we interview everybody involved, you know, family, school, um, you know, professional, you know, we and police, you know, the police department was very Helpful, they share with us, and they themselves we look at the police report, even the police recognize that this is the worst case of parental alienation, even the the child welfare agency recognized it, and yet the system still failed to protect this child. So it was a horrible case, and and that's I definitely uh my heart is definitely with the alienated parents because you are suffering so much, and we have this, and the case that we are working on with this documentary film is not this isolated case, not at all. It's barely, badly just one out of so many cases out there, and tragic, tragic outcome. What else do we have to wait for? When can the system change so that children don't have to suffer? We need to change this.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's hard to um uh you know I know people want 50-50 shared parenting. And uh that can be all well and good. In fact, that's how I started out with my ex until the third party inserted themselves in between the relationship I had with my ex and my children. And uh there's gotta be something included in a bill where a third party, there is no third party intervention. Because once that happens, then uh they start dragging you through court and 50-50 goes out the door. And then you're fighting for your child just just to have time with your child, and they totally turn the tables on you because they know how to do that, as you said. So uh you know what are your thoughts on shared parenting? It just seems like it's just not doable when you've you're working with a narcissist.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I mean, 50-50 does not work when you have an abusive parent. So it doesn't have to be psychological, it's physical, sexual, psychological, any type of abuse. If you have one abusive parent, then 50-50 does not work and should not be the case. But 50-50 is a good start when you just have a divorce or separation, and when there's no, there's an absence of abuse, then 50-650 is a good start because it put an equal footing for both fathers and mothers so that you're not already debating over who is what. But definitely I agree with you, if you start to have um an abuser in in place, then you cannot have 50-50. And I don't think any of the advocacy groups that are fighting for 50-50 are at all trying to advocate for an abused parent. They all agree that if you have an abuse situation, then you cannot have 50-50. All they're trying to do, I believe, is that 50-50 is just create an equal footing at the start. And then we have to see how things go. And if we anytime there's a there's a situation of an abuser in place, things have to change.
SPEAKER_01:It would be nice, maybe when you're co-parenting really well, um, maybe perhaps sign a document, um, maybe have it notarized that a third party, whoever you meet, does not interfere in the relationship either parent has with their children. I I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there because I you just rack your brain as to how this all happened to you and your children.
SPEAKER_00:I I I I hear what you're saying, yeah, because um I I definitely understand where you come from, but it's it's definitely a mix. So you have situations where you have uh step parents that are horrible to your children, and but you also have situations where step parents aren't good that have that can be beneficial to your children. So definitely at the end of the day, the system have is well intended, which is you have to determine what is in the child's best interest, right? So if you have good step parents, you know, they should be included in the child's life. But if you have parents that are not, the stepparents that are not, then they should not be, right? So it's not a uh, I don't feel like if the if the one sign fits all. And the other thing I want to point out is that you're saying, okay, let's sign this document. But when you when you're talking about an abuser, they don't care what you sign, right? I mean, we have court orders out there that alienators completely blatantly ignore and violate. So at the end of the day, it's about um determining what's best for the children, but the system also has to have a way of holding these abusers accountable. That's the big problem right now, is there's no accountability. These people are just getting away with. The court doesn't put sanctions, doesn't put any, like putting them in jail, doesn't, you know, they are not being held accountable for false allegations, for perjury, anything like that. And that's a huge problem. We need to push for more accountability because once we have done some accountability, real accountability, then it's gonna give real lessons to people out there to think twice before they continue doing these sort of things.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I agree with that. That was excellent. Um, the false allegations, all of that has to stop. And I've always said, you know, if you're gonna call in a false allegation to CPS, I think you should be forced to give your name and face your accuser. I mean, it's just only fair. I I mean, I would never dream of lying about someone to get my child. I mean, that never even crossed my mind.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I agree, for example, in California, there's a penal quote for you know false allegation. But um a couple of things. One is there's a lack of enforcement, like we were talking about, this lack of accountability. They don't enforce this law, and that's a huge problem. And and in California, you do have to um disclose your name when you report to CPS, to child protective services. And I don't know about the rest of the country or around the world, but but that's just part of the problem. The other problem is that abuser will get pretty creative. So we have what they call mandate reporters, right? So, you know, teachers, school nurses, um, council, school counselor, doctors, right? So even a child complain about an abuse, they have the responsibility to report, right? So, abuser will sometimes get away with it by uh forcing the child to make this false allegation to the teachers. So then you end up with the teachers or the doctor that makes this this claim to the CPCS. And in the meanwhile, the abuser sitting back and said, Well, it wasn't me. I didn't say anything. It's the school teacher that reported. So when eventually, you know, after two years of investigation or whatever it is, and and you know,$70,000 later, uh, we found that this claim is false, but nobody's being held accountable because abusers said, Well, I didn't make the phone call, my hand's clean. It's my child that reported this to the teacher, and the teacher by law is a mandate reporter. Then call the the CPS, right? So that's the situation that we have. So there's a lot of challenge in how the system works that need to be fixed.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, sometimes CPS inserts themselves where they really don't belong. I I agree. Oh, and um that then once they're in your life, they don't get out for a long time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a discussion there about um how these um agencies um are involved. Sometimes they are appropriately involved because they need to be involved. Sometimes they are involved and yet they don't recognize parental alienation or psychological abuse because you know, you don't see bruises, you don't see bombs, you don't see, you know, it's not sexual abuse. So they can't, they they don't know how to handle it. So that's another problem with it, is that they need to have good training and to recognize that should be properly recognized as a form of abuse. I mean, for example, the case that I was talking about with our documentary film, after the child died, the um the child welfare agency did spend a whole year to do an investigation into like they call the child fatality investigation. And they found like um, I don't remember the exact number right now, but something like 30 or 40 reports that they completely ignore because it doesn't fit in the categories of abuse. Because, you know, there's no bruise, there's no bomb, you know, um psychology, yeah, uh the child was brainwashed. Well, how do I, you know, they are not trained, they don't have the right tool. So that's the other thing. They need to have the right tool. And then the other part of it where you're saying, you know, they're inserting themselves when they shouldn't be. Um, I also have seen and this discussion out there where people talk about how these agencies are being funded in a way that they are incentivized to get involved. The more cases they are involved, the more funding they get. And they have a certain quota, and the more they're involved, and you know, if they get the children into foster care, the more number of foster care cases, the more funding they get. Things like that. So unfortunately, the system, um I I will say that I personally haven't looked into those data. I can I I look at those and I do think I do kind of see I can understand it, um, but I haven't investigated to see the actual number or whether that's true. But I can see that, yeah, the system is is wrongly incentivized these agencies. Because I mean the same thing when we're looking at, for example, uh police officers who uh have a certain quota to get the number of traffic tickets, for example, right? By a certain month, by the end of the month, they have to have X number of uh traffic tickets, and if they don't, then they haven't done their job. Well, that's completely wrong way of incentivize. We should incentivize the police to help people to follow traffic law, and therefore you should expect a better society. So you should have less number of traffic tickets over time. Not but but instead we now incentivize the police to make sure that the numbers still keep up to the same number. And so that's a wrong way of incentivizing the agency. So we definitely need legislative reform in that way.
SPEAKER_01:It's gonna take years and years to get there, and this is what's frustrating a lot of parents, because as you said, you know, these judges are not held accountable when uh a parent disregards visitation time that was ordered, and they just get a slap on the wrist in the courtroom.
SPEAKER_00:Right, I I totally agree, and that's that's why we are working on multiple things, right? We are working on um trying to help changing the system. That's why we're pushing this bill in Texas, we we're supporting other advocacy groups on other places, um, because we we recognize the system needs to be changed. We support bills where you know there are bills that people are trying to propose that professionals should get more training, right? So things like that. We're definitely pushing for that. Um, and then we also want to raise public awareness because if we can raise the general level of public awareness, things can improve as well. So, for example, in the past, right, it's normal for parents to spank their children. We consider that to be okay, right? Everyone thinks, oh yeah, you know, and even you probably remember, some of us probably remember going to school and the teacher will have a ruler and they will spank your hand, right? And that's considered acceptable. It takes a lot of time. It's a whole because we're moving a whole system here. So it takes a lot of time, but with public awareness, we've slowly to recognize that that's wrong. You cannot spank your children. You know, corporal punishment is wrong. It's a form of abuse. You are hitting your children. So now things change. So it's the same with this. At one point, nobody wants to recognize parental alienation. We need to change public awareness so that everyone starts to recognize that this is wrong. It's psychological abuse. You're abusing the children, you're brainwashing the children. So if people, if we can all recognize this from the public awareness level, then things will change in the system and everywhere else as well. So that's another thing, another piece that we're working on all the time. So, for example, one thing that we are working on for public awareness is like I said, this documentary film that's going to be coming out before the end of the year. Another thing that we're doing is um there's an art installation that we're doing. So we're asking parents to send in heart shape cutout. So, you know, it can be a paper cutout, it can be some parents will do it from acrylic, some will cut uh get glass made, so you know, cardboard, anything, but it's heart shaped, about two inches in dimension, and it can be decorated whichever way they want, and it can write any kind of message as long as it doesn't have personal information. So no full name, no you know, phone number, anything like that, no photo. Um, so but other than that, you can decorate it however you want, whatever material you want. Um, and ideally, if you can have a hole on it, so we can hang it. But we're gonna do an art installation to bring public awareness, and hopefully, we're gonna be bringing this art installation to travel around to bring awareness. So that's another piece in our public awareness. We're doing some other thing as well. So that. And then the third piece into this is that we're bringing resources for parents because parents don't have the luxury to wait for the system to change. Our case is right now, our children is right now experiencing this. We need solutions right now, and that's why we're doing all these different programs because we want parents to have resources to figure out what they can do within the system that is not perfect, the system that is so inadequate. What can we do as parents? And that's why we're working on all these different aspects of information and resources to build this different facet for parents to be able to handle their case.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't want to keep you too much longer, but uh I have another question for you. The parents that have been so traumatized by family court, um you know, you're walking out of there with post-traumatic stress disorder. And even though you can function okay and you stay busy, uh it's just uh it's just a horrible feeling at all times. Even even when it's even when your case is over, you're still feeling like, you know, you should be like looking over your shoulder, or you just feel uh edgy. And do you have any suggestions for parents that are going through that?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I yeah, I understand, and and it's a very it's a horrible, it's the most sort of heart-wrenching situation to be in when the system has failed you and you have not done anything wrong, and the only thing you wanted is your birthright. You had these are your children, and yet the system failed you miserably, and my heart is absolutely with these parents. Um, I think, and and what you described, which is post-traumatic um uh syndrome, like the PTSD, is actually not even enough to describe that because this is a complex form of PTSD. You are so with PTSD, you're talking about um a trauma that happened in the past. It's post, right? So you're talking about something that happened in the past. So let's say uh you had a car accident, right? It's over. Now you go and deal with that. That's already difficult enough. But losing your children and your children still alive, you're dealing with that every day. It's ongoing, right? And alienators sometimes will keep poking at you with more false allegations and more accusation and spreading things on social media, and you're being attacked every day. And you know, everywhere you walk, you're looking at the little boy or little girl at your child's age, and you break down, right? So you get triggers everywhere, every day. So it's not so much post-traumatic, it's a complex form, and and I think there's not adequate medical diagnostic out there for this form of trauma. But I would say that there are tools out there for trauma healing. Um, so for example, there's a book out there called Um The Body Keeps the Score. For example, in that book, he talked about three uh methods for treating trauma. And and yeah, what you have gone through is trauma. So that's these three methods looking at um one is um trying to be so you have gone through this trauma, you you suffer a lot. So the first step of the trauma healing is to be able to revisit what you went through, but now with with understanding of why or what happened, right? So, for example, parents when they lost their children because of alienation, they are shocked and they just really hurt. Like, how did my child say this thing? So if you can go back and re-examine that and now you understand, okay, the reason my child did that is because the child was forced into you know choosing, there's this double bind, the child is now suffering, and the child is is had to choose. So therefore the child acts that way, right? So if you can revisit your experience and understand where things went wrong and why it went wrong, that's the first step of healing from trauma. Uh, the other method that he talked about is involved uh medication. So, you know, for situations where it's very serious, where parents have trouble to the point that they can't, your body responds in a way that like beyond the normal range of coping, like you lack your ability to cope. So obviously, then in those cases, you need to get medication. So psychiatrists will prescribe different types of medication, and the the goal in there is to help balance the chemical balance in your brain so that you can cope with the triggers better, right? Um, I'm not a big proponent for medication at all. I'm just bringing out these are some of the tools. The third truth that he's talking about this is about how to immerse yourself in vigorous um visual experience that rebuilding your sense of well-being. Because when you have gone through this experience, you lost faith in humanity. You don't trust people, you lost faith in yourself and all of that. So you need to rebuild that because you need to you need to heal and you need to be okay and you need to continue with your life. So you need to rebuild that by re-emerging yourself. And that's why we talk so much about building the right team. Is you know, you need to build yourself so you can trust again. You need to learn to trust. You need to trust yourself, you need to learn to be in good relationship so that you can understand and know that there are good people out there, that you still have faith in humanity, that life is worth living. So, but those are not, those are not just, you can't do that by, for example, reading or watching a movie. It it has to be visual experiences, meaning you have to emerge in it completely. So that's why building the right team or learning skill set to pick the right people to have in your life, because a lot of these traumatized parents actually are victims of abuse. So they end up stuck in this cycle of abuse. They will end up with one after another abusive person in their relationship. And so having the right tool to learn how to pick the right people in their life so that they can continue with a break out of that cycle so that they can immerse themselves in this good relationship and they can start to rebuild themselves, that's another way of building, of rehealing.
SPEAKER_01:Can I ask you one last question?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. I'm happy to answer as many questions as you have.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't want to suck up your whole evening, but you know, as far as kids in high school with psychology classes, you know, maybe they should be learning about, you know, narcissistic personality disorder, bipolar, borderline personality disorders, and um these type of people that they're gonna run into, whether it be a boss or you know, maybe a girlfriend's mother that's kind of whacked. I mean, these these kids have to be prepared to say, oh, there are red flags there. I'm out of here. And I wish I had been taught about these red flags of a relationship a long time ago, and it would have saved me a lot of grief in the long run.
SPEAKER_00:I absolutely agree with you that I think ultimately the long-term solution is education to our children. Children need to be taught critical thinking, need to be taught about attachment style, about all these things, you know, how to deal with you know personality disorders, how to learn about themselves. All these skills are very important, and that's actually one of the projects that we have not announced yet, but at the Hero Circle, that's one of the projects that we're working on, is trying to create uh a program that we can go out to school district. I mean, children now are being taught about bullying, right? They start to learn about oh, what is bullying, and and we didn't have that in the past. So that's the other thing that we're trying to change now. If we want to go into the school system and teach them about critical thinking and how to deal and what happened if your parents are divorced, what should you do? And how do you deal with someone that bad mouthing about one of your parents? And how do you recognize false from truth, right? Because there's a lot of fallacies being spread around to these children, and then um, I mean, we did an event where we talk about false memory and memory. Distortion. So it's all about critical thinking. How do we teach these children? And definitely, I agree with you. This is ultimately that's a long-term solution because we if we can educate the next generation, the future generations, the right things to do, then we can prevent all of this happening.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. I totally appreciate your time, Dr. Dieter. And I'd like to have you back on the podcast again when your film comes out, if you'd like. Oh, that would be great. Uh, do you have do you have a name for the film or not yet?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it's called at all costs. So yeah, at O cost. It's because really this alienator was gonna have to win at all costs, even if it was killing his child. And that's why we call it at all costs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. And uh I'll I'll come and uh get you back on in a couple of months and uh slam the gabbles a podcast to help the public understand what really goes on in the family courtrooms that in turn perpetuate parental alienation. I'm your host, Mary Ann Petrie, author of Dismantling Family Court Corruption, Why Taking the Kids Is Not Enough, and Cry Out for Justice, Poems of Truth. Please join us again with Dr. Deer and other guests. Thank you so much.