When evaluators get it wrong: False positive IDs and parental alienation.

Abstract

Allegations that a parent has manipulated a child to turn against the other parent raise complex issues challenging child custody evaluators, expert witnesses, and courts. A key issue relates to false positive identifications of parental alienation-concluding that parental alienation exists in cases where it really does not. Such mistaken conclusions fuel concerns about the application of parental alienation in family law cases and contribute to skepticism about the concept. This article discusses mistaken conclusions that a child is alienated and that a parent has engaged in a campaign of alienating behavior. The article emphasizes that evaluators should thoroughly investigate reasonable alternative explanations of the children's and parents' behaviors, including attention to seven criteria that distinguish irrationally alienated children from children whose negative or rejecting behaviors do not constitute parental alienation. Evaluators should also investigate various reasons for a child's preference for one parent. Further, alienating behavior-seen in different degrees of intensity, frequency, and duration-can reflect different motivations. Evaluators, experts, and judges who do not attend to the nuances of alienating behaviors are likely to reach false conclusions about the significance of the behaviors and make recommendations that do not serve children's best interests. Finally, evaluators should attend to their overt and covert judgment biases and to the complexity of parental alienation issues in order to reduce the likelihood of faulty opinions that a child is alienated, or that a parent has engaged in alienating behaviors.

Concepts, Controversies And Conundrums Of “Alienation:” Lessons Learned In A Decade And Reflections On Challenges Ahead

“…Notably, and not without challenges, professional consensus is developing on various aspects of PCCP cases, including concepts, definitions, and differentiation of types and severity of cases, the need for screening for violence and abuse, the importance of evaluation, prevention and early intervention, and the application of differentiated and appropriate legal and mental health responses. Professionals share in their concerns about false positives identifying children as alienated when they are not, and identifying children as abused when they are not (Warshak, ). There continues, however, to be controversy as to the state of our scientific knowledge pertaining to the reliability of alienation behaviors and the extent to which the court should rely on expert opinions.…”

Perspectivas y tendencias actuales del concepto de alienación parental: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

“…En este sentido, la alienación parental ha sido estudiada tanto en muestras compuestas por niños, niñas, adolescentes y adultos/as que experimentan o experimentaron estas dinámicas en su infancia, como también por adultos/as objetivos de la misma (Aloia y Strutzenberg, 2019;Baker y Verrocchio, 2016;Balmer et al, 2018;Bernet et al, 2018;Bernet et al, 2020;Harman et al, 2016;Rowlands, 2019;Verrocchio et al, 2018;Verrocchio et al, 2019) participación de hijos e hijas y familias extensas, y por último, la estimulación del conflicto por parte de profesionales terceros (jueces, psicólogos/as, abogados/as). Ambas perspectivas parecen coincidir en la necesidad de otorgar una mirada mayormente ecológica a este fenómeno, aspectos que también ya se han explicitado por otros/as investigadores de habla inglesa (Johnston y Sullivan, 2020;Warshak, 2020).…”

Harman & Lorandos (2020). Preprint of Allegations of Family Violence in Court: How Parental Alienation Affects Judicial Outcomes

“…Recently, advocates have been trying to draft legislation that prohibits evidence related to parental alienation being used in court (Warshak, 2019). In the Spring of 2020, the first author learned from an inside source of a domestic violence group ("Mom's Fight Back") about the language of a bill being pushed by advocacy groups around the U.S.…”

“…Certainly, there are parents who claim they are being alienated from a child when they are not, just as there are parents who claim they are being abused when they are not. Some professionals working with families make false positive findings of parental alienation (Warshak, 2019), and domestic violence or child abuse may be missed or overreported due to a poor understanding of the problems and insufficient efforts to reduce biases. Fortunately, our findings indicate that appellate courts do not take all claims of parental alienation or domestic violence/child abuse at face value.…”