“One of the misperceptions around this is that it’s meant to shift allegiances from one parent to the other,” says Horowitz. “The idea is to balance the family – to pull them together. Both parents need to be part of the treatment, and the children need to see their parents working together.”
The team at Family Solutions, which helps families move past bitter and angry divorces: (from left) Barbara Fidler, Helen Radovanovic, Linda Chodos, Jan Schloss and Ted Horowitz.
How to deal with ‘toxic’ parents
March 14, 2009
LIVING REPORTER
When Toronto lawyer Brian Ludmer speaks about the suffering caused by parental alienation, the words come from his head and his heart.
He’s a lawyer, the words come from his mouth and directly affect his wallet.
He’s seen the devastation of a mother’s orchestrated campaign to make her children hate their father, or how a dad can use a 4-year-old as a weapon against his mother in the ugly aftermath of divorce.
It’s always the mother, but they will throw in an occasional dad who didn’t pay off the right people to try to make it look like it’s not just about Father’s Rights.
Ludmer is, by training, a corporate lawyer. But he’s being “swamped” by desperate parents looking for help reconnecting with their children. “Experts in this field will tell you that they’ve never met a lawyer who understands this the way that I do,” says Ludmer.
Maybe those other lawyers have some ethics. Why would a corporate lawyer be advocating for Parental Alienation Syndrome? Is he divorced himself and now has a vendetta against women like many of these PAS lawyers do? Or is it the huge amounts of money that these people will pay for a fraudulent custody change? something doesn’t sound right about this…
That’s because he’s also lived it.
That explains it…he is a divorced dad with a vendetta who is a lawyer. He must take out all of his anger on his opposition.
“Parental alienationis a plague. It’s rampant out there,” says Ludmer, 48, who declined to talk about his own case for fear of upsetting his children. “This stuff has been going on for a hundred years. It’s just that now it has a name.”
Partially right – It is a plague of the USE of the phony Parental Alienation Syndrome as a legal tactic against Battered Mothers to take their children away and inflict Maternal Deprivation that must be eradicated.
Later this month, Ludmerwill address the first international conference on parentalalienation in Toronto. He’ll join the growing chorus of parents, judges, lawyers, social workers and mental health professionals who believe the courts are ill-equipped to deal with “toxic” parents.
He will be joining the swarm of unethical presenters who are engaging in an unethical cross-referral network to get lots of business and make lots of money profiteering by falsely accusing (mainly) women of child abuse by making false allegations of a fictitious syndrome for money.
“Canada seems to be a hotbed of parental alienation court activity,” says Amy Baker, a New York-based researcher who’s written two books, one chronicling the emotional suffering that travels in parental alienation’s wake.
Hotbed…of unethical conduct that is largely going unchecked.
“I think there are some very brave judges who are willing to really think through the implications of alienation and really try to deal with it.
She is complimenting the judges into thinking they are doing the right thing by believing this phony theory. Maybe the judges aren’t “brave”, maybe they are getting paid somehow in this scam. Certainly the lawyers, evaluators, therapists, mediators, therapists, et al are making lots of money. Anyone associating with these PAS people needs to be scrutinized for ”Buying Into” this theory that has never been accepted by any ethical scientific organization ever.
“The bottom line is that to turn a child against a parent is to turn a child against himself.”
The bottom line…really it’s about the bottom line financially…These charlatans are selling custody change fraud by using phony rhetoric and propaganda.
Two months ago, a Toronto judge stripped a mother of custody of her three daughters after a decade-long campaign to keep the kids from their father. She was ordered to pick up the tab for a U.S. program aimed at helping the girls, ages 9 to 14, reconnect with their dad.
This is typical for a mother to lose custody of the children and inflict severe Maternal Deprivation upon the children. It was more like a decade long attack on the mother and children. Anyone doing this is inflicting child abuse. They add insult to injury by adding court ordered extortion to this terrible unethical treatment and the infliction of financial abuse.
This week, an 18-year-old from Mississauga asked to be awarded custody of his two younger brothers caught up in a decade of family “warfare.” He also asked that parental alienation experts, such as psychologists Randy Rand and Richard Warshak, be forbidden from further contact with the boys. He called programs, such as their controversial Family Workshop for Alienated Children, “voodoo science.”
This boy is a hero for sticking up for his brothers and exposing this terrible mistreatment of children.
But there’s so much concern about the snail’s pace of the overloaded family court systemand the lack of treatment facilities in Canada that Ludmer has been working with a group of professionals on plans for Toronto’s first Family ReunificationClinic. They hope to have the facility open within a year, offering treatment based on the work of Rand and Warshak.
Here is some info on Richard Warshak – he is willling to give any man Father’s Rights- even one who isn’t biologically related as long as his bill gets paid. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/warshak.html
And Warshak causes harm to more children here: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/site-index/site-index-frame.html#soulhttp://www.thelizlibrary.org/lamusga/
And he pushes his own phony theories in his own books, following in Gardner’s footsteps. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/poison.html
“The most important part (of undoing alienation) is the after care,” says Ludmer, who’s handled more than 50 parental alienation cases in the last four years. “We don’t want to be bundling kids on a plane and sending them off to the United States. This will make it easier and less disruptive to get the whole family the help they need.”
So this Ludmer is the kiss of death to a mother using his tried and “true” unethical attacks on Motherhood. He wants to keep the profits right where he lives, maybe even for himself. Claiming he is helping while inflicting great harm is really sickening.
The planned centre is sure to set off a storm of controversy among those who consider Warshak and Rand’s work cult-like “deprogramming” and question whether Parental Alienation Syndrome isn’t just an excuse for bad, or even abusive, parents.
Right! This “reprogramming” center like they have in the dystopian stories like 1984 and Brave New World should never be allowed to be built. And for the umpteenth time, PAS is most often used to shield abusive men.
“I think the therapy often does way more harm than any so-called parental alienation could do. It demoralizes kids, it makes them feel like they’re not being listened to and involved. It demeans them,” says Joyanna Silbergof the U.S.-based Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence, a group of health professionals.
For more on this see: Ethical Scientific Experts Denounce “PAS” Reprogramming
“One of the reasons this is so controversial is because it’s become an industry – a money-making industry – where purveyors of these so-called therapies and evaluation procedures are using things that the scientific community doesn’t automatically accept, but know that judges are accepting in court to affect children’s lives in an extreme way.”
Right!!! Now you got the idea!!! a money-making industry…and it ADVERSELY affects children, for example, causes them to be hopeless and suicidal when they are kidnapped from their custodial parent.
Veteran family court judge Harvey Brownstone sums up the growing debate best: “The jury is still out on the whole issue of parental alienation. When a child adamantly refuses to see a parent, it is not easy to know why. It could be they’re bored, or that they don’t like the parent’s new partner. The situation is usually layered and complex.”
The jury shouldn’t be out. These children need to be rescued from these unethical doctors.
If there is a growing certainty about one thing, it’s that these cases need to be dealt with quickly.
They want things to be done quickly, so no one realizes what horrible things the PAS Purveyors are doing.
“Time is the enemy of the alienated parent,” says Baker, whose book Breaking the Ties that Bind, chronicles the difficult lives of 40 adults who were alienated as children. Since the books, she’s met hundreds of others, including one who went as far as plastic surgery to wipe out the shame of looking like his father. “These cases should be fast-tracked because alienating parents exploit the ability for the courts to delay things to their benefit. The more time they have with the kid, the more time that kid is going to resist reconciliation.”
Breaking the Ties that Bind is exactly what they do to the custodial parent. Reconciliation with someone that a child says abuses them IS MORE ABUSE!
Veteran family law lawyer Jeffery Wilson – who was involved in Ontario’s first court case around alienation in 1981 and is representing the Mississauga teen fighting for his brothers – believes it’s time for more drastic measures. It’s been estimated that some 60 per cent of litigants in “high-conflict” divorces suffer from personality disordersthat can turn a discussion of “Who gets the kids for Christmas?” into a months-long power struggle marked by what Ludmer calls “bad messaging and bad-mouthing.”
What would really work and wouldn’t cost any money would be to let mothers raise their children in the first place. If they want to live with dad and have valid reasons, then ok. Just stop torturing these kids.
Wilson is calling for a government-funded “High-Conflict Response Team” that could step in before these cases hit the courts. They would have the power to sort out complex disputes, impose binding judgments and get the kids – and their parents – counselling and treatment.
Sounds really horrible and also unethical and violating due process. Victims of domestic violence don’t need to be subjected to more of this torture.
Family Solutions is a North York-based team of well-respected psychologists and social workers who started meeting five years ago to compare notes on difficult cases. Now they offer everything from mediation to intensive counselling in high-conflict divorces. They’ve seen a significant growth in parental alienation and have had some success with clients who’ve worked with Rand and Warshak.
Sure they see significant growth, they advertise, and have symposiums pushing there fraudulent theories, making lots of money.
“There’s a lot of work we still need to do,” acknowledges Linda Chodos, a social worker with Family Solutions. “We don’t yet have a lot of evidence-based research that shows what kind of intervention works best.”
Right – they don’t have evidence based research – they have admitted it. So anyone subjected to this bullcrap is being subjected to experimental social engineering. The APA says that there is lack of evidence to support the theory, so anyone engaging in this fraud should be prosecuted.
Rand and Warshak are based in California and Texas respectively and, in the first phase of their workshop, meet the children and the alienated parent for “educational” sessions that can include simple outings where they start to get reacquainted. (Rand apparently travelled to meet the siblings of the 18-year-old in a Montreal hotel room, but their mother, who claims to have been alienated by the father, gave up a day later when they refused to participate in the four-day session.)
Thank god, the mom didn’t torture the kids. Who in their right mind thinks that people can be forced to have a certain type of relationship. If it is forced, it is fake, and not of their own free will. The locations in California and Texas could explain why there are so many horrible cases in those area. Every time these guys appear in a case it is a nightmare for the custodial parent and the children.
“It’s to give the child a break – a chance to catch his or her breath and to give them just a few days not to be torn between the two parents,” says Ted Horowitz, a veteran social worker with Family Solutions.
So what does this mean, taking the kids away from both parents. How awful and unethical!
The alienator is brought in as part of the second part of the program, all of which is aimed at making them aware of the damage they are doing and the need to form a new partnership around parenting.
The alienator - they try to force women who are victims of abuse to say they are the abusers – these people are a bunch of sadistic twisted freaks.
“There is no deprogramming and never has been,” says Jacqueline Vanbetlehem, a mental health therapist with Family Solutions. “You have to really look at the circumstances of the family before you even recommend such a program. Sometimes the court intervention is a relief to these children because they don’t have to choose (between parents) anymore.”
This is an outright lie. The Centers are set up for “deprogramming”. They use threat therapy and wrongfully imprison children against their will. See the Rachel Foundation Lawsuit: http://rachel-foundation-lawsuit.com/
Warshak told the Ontario Bar Association’s annual meeting last month that 17 out of 21 children who have completed the “expensive” program have forged good relationships with the other parent that continue more than two years later. The results are currently undergoing peer review.
Warshak is sellign his program to the Ontario Bar forming unethical cross referral relationships. They destroyed the free will of 17 children and declared it a success. The peer review will undoubtably be a “sham peer review” conducted by others who are in on the scam.
“One of the misperceptions around this is that it’s meant to shift allegiances from one parent to the other,” says Horowitz. “The idea is to balance the family – to pull them together. Both parents need to be part of the treatment, and the children need to see their parents working together.”
How is it a misconception when children are ripped away from their custodial parent and forced to have a relationship with a person who likely mistreated them and is lying about it? Many of these children never see their mother again while they are under 18. They suffer from Maternal Deprivation. Some model the behavior of the father who claims to be alienated against, but who is actually abusive to the mother. In these cases, some of the children grew to abuse the mother too, badmouthing and even being physically abusive. The whole legal tactic is a fraud.
