Gender bias evident in parental alienation cases

Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2009-03-30 01:12

Article here. Excerpt:

'JUSTICE REPORTER — A study of alienated children has found that mothers were significantly more likely to be the parent who emotionally poisoned their children than were fathers.

Toronto family lawyer Gene Colman told a Toronto symposium yesterday that of 74 court rulings that found parental alienation since 1987, the mother was the alienator in 50 cases. The father was the alienating parent in 24.

"I'm not trying to dump on moms," Mr. Colman told about 150 psychologists, family lawyers, mediators and activist parents. "I'm just saying, that is what the data reveal."

In parental alienation syndrome, an estranged parent systematically brainwashes a child into hating the other parent. The profile of the syndrome escalated over the past year, after three Ontario judges ordered that children be removed from an alienating parent and taken to U.S. clinics for deprogramming therapy.'

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[note: "Valere P" is a commenter there whining about problems she has with the study discussed in the article. She's no doubt a feminist and may well be a participant within the child support industry]

"Since PAS is a relatively recently discovered, and therefore somewhat unstudied, phenomenon, I shall attempt to address Valere P's objections from a "different angle": there is undeniable, rampant, well-studied gender bias and discrimination perpetrated against men by the family court system, both in the U.S. and Canada; and it stands to reason that since there exists a general bias, then it should apply to PAS as well, as what we are talking about here is primarily the issue of court decisions regarding PAS.

"In the book "Legalizing Misandry" by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, Ph.D.'s [2006, McGill Queen's Press], there is stated on pages 125-126, at the beginning of chapter 6, the following:

"Controversies over the rights of children often involve controversies over the rights of women and men, and the former usually take precedence over the latter - even if children are deprived as a result. Discussion has been heavily dominated by a galaxy of interconnecting "interests": feminist advocacy groups lobbying for the economic betterment of divorced mothers, specialized government bureaucracies that rely almost exclusively on feminist analysis, collection agencies with vested interests in getting more money from noncustodial parents (that is, by and large, from fathers), and assorted academic experts, clinicians, lawyers, and journalists. Collectively, they have been called the child-support industry.

"Because some participants are government or social-service bureaucrats not engaged in commerce as such, this phenomenon is industrial in a derived but interesting sense. Many thousands of these people now earn their livings, after all, by catering to needs created within their own bureaucracies. Despite the differences between Canadian and American law, the situation in one country is basically the same as that in the other."

"I now invite Valere P. to ask of me, proof of the above regarding any particular issue(s), say, child-support payments, custody..."

-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Mon, 2009-03-30 04:34