Legal Experts Wary of Calls to Ban ‘Parental Alienation’ Claims From Canadian Courtrooms

Some researchers and legal professionals are concerned over a united effort by feminist organizations in Canada to have the use of ‘parental alienation’ claims banned from Canadian courtrooms.

“Courts and custody evaluators consider that reporting family violence or asking for reduced contact between the father and the child are signs of ‘alienation’, that is, brainwashing by the mother to make the child reject the father,” the letter said. “This concept is leading courts across the country to separate children from their mother and force minors, against their will, to live with their father – even when there is a documented history of family violence.”

Director of Legal Affairs for NAWL, Suzanne Zaccour, told The Epoch Times the organizations involved are calling for changes to the Divorce Act that they believe will alleviate the issue.

“Further reform is needed to explicitly ban the use of parental alienation accusations in family disputes, through an amendment to the Divorce Act,” she said in an interview.

Christine Giancarlo, Mount Royal University professor and author of “Parentectomy: A narrative ethnography of 30 cases of parental alienation and what to do about it,” argues that the claims made by NAWL are not supported by the research.

“Parental alienation is, in fact, real and proven,” she told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Recent attempts by domestic violence advocates perpetuate the myth that allegations of parental alienation are done by abusive fathers. In fact, parental alienation is non-gendered and about one-third of alienated parents are mothers.”

Ms. Giancarlo said that researchers of parental alienation consider it to be a form of domestic violence.

“Parental alienation researchers are not diminishing the importance of eradicating domestic violence. Instead, we are including parental alienation as a form of domestic violence and its victims can be mothers or fathers, and always, their children,” she said.

Ms. Zaccour disagrees, saying the idea of parental alienation was designed to disempower women and needs to be eliminated.

“The concept was designed to distract from allegations of child sexual abuse and family violence,” she said. “So for us, it’s problematic even by design. “

“Given that two replication studies have not found support for Meier et al.’s (2019) argument that her data indicates there is ‘widespread gender bias in courts’ handling of..abuse claims’ (p. 26), we are concerned that some court professionals in states that enact Kayden’s Law may receive mandatory training that presents a gender-biased perspective on family violence and lacks a broader scientific foundation,” Ms. Giancarlo, Jennifer Harman, Demosthenes Lorandos and Brian Ludmer wrote.

She said she understands the concerns that the term parental alienation may be misused by a parent to gain favour with the courts, but banning claims may not be the answer.

“When we’re considering a ban on claims of parental alienation in family court, we have to ask what kind of consequences could we be bringing to children,” Ms. Smith said. “And by that, I mean, when there are real cases of parental alienation, if we were to ban these claims, what does that mean for these children?”

She said the well-being of children needs to come first and the conversation needed to include input from a variety of voices, including survivors of domestic violence, fathers, mothers, clinicians, legal professionals, and children who have survived alienation.

“And I think we need to sit down together and look at what is a solution to this,” she said.