Parental Alienation Syndrome
The Immediate Period After Separation
I address the issue of parental alienation syndrome already in the section "Root Cause" with the question:
"If we focus solely on the past, and do so mandatorily during the first hearing—which takes place within a month of filing the custody petition —does this not eliminate the time window during which indoctrination by one parent may occur, resulting in the child rejecting the other parent, a phenomenon that is highly emphasized in today's society?"
Based on my previous research activities, I believe that many children could have had a happy and fulfilling childhood through this method, instead of the suffering they experienced or are still experiencing.
However, there are also extreme cases where a parent manages to indoctrinate the child even within a very short period (e.g., the first example in the "Consequences" section).
So how can we prevent this?
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Initial assessment of the family situation – a questionnaire for parents
- A detailed description is available in the document "MPSV and MS" in the section "About Me". If parents describe the history of their relationship with the child differently, there is a risk of domestic violence. -
Proper communication between the social worker and the child
- That is, without prompting, manipulation, etc., from the social worker (i.e., without other interests, since the only interest is for the child to experience childhood in love, happiness, and understanding, with respect to the child's own perception).
- A proposed methodology for communication with children is available in the document "MPSV and MS" in the section "About Me".
And now let us face the past
It is not enough to say "we are changing our approach," or that we are stepping away from previous practices. There are many children who were not fortunate enough to have decisions made in their best interest—so that they could grow up in happiness, love, and understanding.
A child lived in a family where there was a loving parent. That child was torn away from this parent and placed into the exclusive care of a parent who did not show love to the child.
What happened to the child? Violence and trauma occurred.
And Mr. Petr Pöthe, in the section "Resonance," describes the experience of violence as follows:
"Essentially, you have a memory disorder, meaning you cannot quite arrange certain things from the past in a linear way, you don't remember them, but in fact you do remember them—just separately from your conscious memory. This is because dissociation is very common. That means the part of you that was abused becomes encapsulated and separated from your conscious self. Later, this part haunts you or resurfaces in certain situations, which could be compared to panic attacks. Then there are behavioral disorders—running away from home, self-harm, experimenting with substances that alter perception. And of course, there are depressive disorders, emotional disturbances, distorted self-perception, and very often auto-aggression, because you somehow blame yourself for what happened to you and at the same time want to deny it. So your personality is essentially fragmented."
And Mrs. Martina Petrovičová (police investigator of violent and moral crimes) says:
"Transgenerational transmission of violence in families—what small children see and experience in the home. If there is violence toward a partner or a child, then at that young age… the patterns become so deeply ingrained that many of them may grow up to take on the role of either the victim or the aggressor."
Such children may have "encapsulated" their pain and memories in order to survive, and many of them may later assume the role of either the victim or the aggressor in adulthood.
The syndrome is then characterized by the child denigrating one parent based on so-called "brainwashing" by the other parent, which leads to behaviors such as unjustified fear or contempt—similar to the behavior the influencing parent showed toward the other parent during the marriage.
Long-term violence in the form of brainwashing is carried out by the abusive parent during their period of exclusive custody (or shared custody, which later turned into exclusive custody due to the effects of brainwashing), during which the child is instilled with negative views about the other parent. In practice, there are confirmed cases where the child says things like the parent is "mentally unstable, a drug addict, homeless, left and doesn't care, abandoned me", even though the reality is that the parent loves the child, cared for them lovingly until the separation, and fought hard for the child during custody proceedings—while also testifying about domestic violence in the relationship. There are also cases of not only psychological but physical violence by the child toward the parent or siblings (for example, in situations where one child is in the exclusive custody of one parent and the other child is in the exclusive custody of the other parent). Finally, there have been identified cases where, over time, the child completely refuses to see the parent—even though it was that very parent who lovingly cared for the child in the past, and the child once wished to stay with them.
So what can be done?
When a child is repeatedly told that the parent is "bad," they begin to reject contact (If the child does not remember or has "encapsulated" what he once remembered—such as the boy in the first example in the "Consequences" section who did not encapsulated the past but the younger brother encapsulated it).
Some loving parents haven't seen their children for years.
What if we launched a public initiative like "Talk to Mom/Dad", where parents who lovingly cared for their children during the marriage could participate? They would submit photos/videos from the child's early years showing their care, along with evidence of domestic violence and information about the breakdown of the marriage and the custody proceedings—identifying the reason why the child was placed in the exclusive care of the other parent. A major red flag indicating violence is the justification: "failure to respect the other parent." These parents would be offered psychological and mediation support to help re-establish contact with their child. The same psychological support would, of course, be needed for the child—provided by a child psychologist who would first open up the topics of childhood, the breakdown of the marriage, and the time spent with the other parent.
Or have we closed the door forever on loving parents who haven't seen their children in many years?