Assessing for Alienation in Child Custody and Access Evaluations

Abstract

In‐depth child custody evaluations can be critical in forming an accurate understanding of families in which alienation of children is a concern. By integrating interview and psychological test data of parents and children along with collateral information the evaluator can differentiate an alienated child from children with other forms of parental rejection and can form a thorough understanding of the multiple contributants to the alienation. This comprehensive and integrated understanding is then used to develop a clear and specific intervention plan.

Parental Alienation Critics and the Politics of Science

“…The task force reformulated what they termed "Gardner's PAS," and developed their own model, which they called the "alienated child." In 2001, their work was published as a series of articles in a special issue of Family Court Review, a journal of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, to which many custody evaluators and family court mediators belong (Schepard, 2001;Johnston & Kelly, 2001b;Williams, 2001;Lee & Olesen, 2001;Sullivan & Kelly, 2001;Johnston, Walters, & Friedlander, 2001). These critics recognized that an indoctrinating parent may contribute to a child's alienation from the other parent, but preferred to de-emphasize the alienating parent's role.…”

The Chameleon Child: Children as Actors in the High Conflict Divorce Drama

“…The relationship pressures which bear on the child's position in the conflicted and changing family system can only be observed in the relationships themselves and as functioning at multiple levels within the family system (Bancroft & Silverman, 2004;Drozd & Olesen, 2004;Garber, 1996Garber, , 2004aJohnston, 2003;Johnston, Walters, & Olesen, 2005;Lee & Olesen, 2001;Ludolph & Bow, 2012;Waldron & Joanis, 1996). Thus, while interview and assessment of each individual member of the system provides critical history and perspective, the evaluator must seek to understand each dyad (Parent A-Parent B, Parent A-child, Parent B-child) and the entire system (Parent A-child-Parent B) as critical components of the overall analysis.…”

“…Alienation describes the child's experience of Parent A's negative emotions, words, and behaviors regarding Parent B, such that the child resists or rejects contact with Parent B without objective cause (Garber, 2004a;Kelly & Johnston, 2001). Estrangement or realistic rejection describes the child's resistance to or rejection of Parent B due to direct experience of Parent B's relatively insensitive, unresponsive, or inappropriate caregiving behaviors (Drozd & Olesen, 2004;Lee & Olesen, 2001). Enmeshment describes a corruption of roles and boundaries between the child and Parent A, such that the child is, for example, enlisted as that parent's ally or caregiver (Garber, 2011).…”

How Children’s Voices Were Heard ‘Above the Din’ in Family Court Proceedings in Cases Where There Were Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse: The Importance of Judicial Orientation and Professional Evidence in the Discernment of the Child’s Voice

“…This focus facilitates the investigation of the quality and nature of the parent child relationship and draws on family violence literature (Jaffe et al 2003). Family assessment research is also used in understanding dynamics before, during and after separation as well as any allegations made (Johnston and Roseby 1997;Lee and Olesen 2001). This approach allows the experience of the child to be centralised and it shares much with child's rights and feminist positions that privilege the analysis of the abuse of power within the family in relation to child abuse and domestic violence (Herman 1992).…”