Otuđenje djece kao tri oblika nasilja Family violence - Intimate partner terrorism - Child abuse

Jedan od najvećih problema shvaćanja otuđenja djece od roditelja u Hrvatskoj, zemlji u kojoj živim, je taj da se za tešku situaciju otuđenja djeteta optužuju podjednako oba dva roditelja. Da se smatra da se oni svađaju te da obadvoje emotivno pustoše svoje dijete. Nema razlike u ponašanju između njih. Jednako su zli i naopaki!

Kako krivo! Kako stravično krivo!

U otuđenju djece od roditelja radi se o teškom obliku obiteljskog nasilja jednog roditelja nad drugim. Do totalnog istrebljenja. Ovog drugog roditelja.

Ovdje se ne radi prvenstveno o djetetu.

Ovdje se radi prvenstveno o akciji jednog roditelja protiv drugog roditelja. I da, ovdje se radi o tome kako se jedan roditelj nosi s pojavom neke stresne situacije za njega / tzv.okidača / koja se pojavljuje. Te kako ta situacije / okidač / na njega djeluje i što u njemu izaziva. Pa onda on krene u napad na drugog roditelja. Kroz tu djecu. I da, ovdje se radi o tome da jedan roditelj u datom trenutku stresne situacije, ima svu moć i kontrolu u čitavoj obitelji a drugi nema ništa. Dakle, radi se o disbalansu snaga. Nesrazmjeru snaga. Pa onda taj roditelj koristi svu svoju moć i kontrolu nad drugim roditeljem koji je bez moći i bez kontrole za ikakav osobni ishod pa onda i za ishod sa svojom vlastitom djecom.

NORMALNO KONFLIKTAN RAZVOD nasuprot PATOLOŠKOG KONFLIKTNOG RAZVODA S OTUĐENJEM DJECE

Normalno konfliktan razvod

Ako se roditelj nosi s pojavom tog okidača stresno, dolazi do svađe i razilaženja oko nekog pitanja s drugim roditeljem. Akcija jednog roditelja ide prema drugom roditelju i eventualno reaktivna reakcija drugog roditelja no ona se tiče samo njih dvoje. Dakle, u tu svađu roditelji uključuju samo sebe, kao odrasle ljudi. No i jedan i drugi dozvoljavaju djeci da i dalje putuju između njih te djeca smiju i mogu imati voljeni odnosa i s jednim i s drugim roditeljem. Mogu imati svoju mamu i svojega tatu. To su normalne situacije konfliktnih razvoda. Nema štetnog utjecaja na djecu da ta djeca moraju odbaciti svog drugog roditelja kako bi on bio kažnjen.

Patološko konfliktan razvod

No ako na tu stresnu situaciju jedan roditelj ne može odreagirati samo normalno stresnim obrascima ponašanja, već želi nanijeti direktnu štetu drugom roditelju, unovačujući za to zajedničku djecu  ispirući toj djeci mozak protiv drugog roditelja ( brainwashing) taj čin takvog nasilja ima za posljedicu otuđenje djece od tog drugog roditelja.

Čin nasilja jednog roditelja obuhvaća čitavu obitelj – kako drugog roditelja tako i djecu. Dakle, radi se o obiteljskom nasilju jednog roditelja nad drugim, kroz djecu. No to je prvenstveno čin intimnog nasilja jednog roditelja prema drugom roditelju. Gdje je cilj nasilja drugi roditelj. A otuđenje djece je nus pojava. Side effect. Glavni razlog akcije i napada je bol drugog roditelja. Djeca su samo municija. Pa je samim time otuđenje djece samo dio ovog obiteljskog nasilja. A glavna priča odnosi se na intimno zlostavljanje drugog roditelja koji onda postaje otuđen od svoje djece.

Kako izgleda intimno zlostavljanje drugog partnera koje ima oblik intimnog terorizma, prozvano tako zbog svoje snage i učinka, najbolje je poslušati prof.Jennifer J. Harman sa državnog sveučilišta Colorado, SAD. I članicu uprave jedne od najvećih udruga otuđenih roditelja u SADu – Simply Parent.

Prof.Harman zagovornica je pojma INTIMATE PARTNER TERRORISM.

Vrlo jasno i jednostavno predavanje o intimnom nasilju jednog partnera protiv drugog kroz djecu koje onda vodi u otuđenje te iste djece te zašto i kako ta otuđena djeca onda posljedično reagiraju, možete pronaći na linku kao i u nastavku kao *transkript dotičnog predavanja prof.Harman.

Brzinski prilažem samo nekoliko citata prof.Jennifer J.Harman, PH.D , Državno sveučilište Colorado, SAD;

“In a recent paper that I published with Edward Crook that he referred to in his talk, we stated that parental alienating behaviours are a form of family violence because they can be both – child abuse and intimate partner violence…

Therefore family violence is an umbrella term that we use for these two forms of violence. I am gonna focus now mostly on intimate partner violence in my talk…

When we think about intimate partner violence we often think about intimate terrorism where there is a powerful perpetrator of abuse who uses psychologically and physically abusive behaviours to control and dominate the less powerful person. This type of abuse is not likely to be reciprocated. We might see some aggressive behaviours of the target of the abuse out of self-defence or anger but abusive behaviours are typically seen in a more powerful partner and it’s a large strategy of that partner to maintain control of the other person.”

Još par riječi o obiteljskom nasilju kroz otuđenje djece…

DR JENNIFER J. HARMAN, PhD “Despite affecting millions of families around the world, parental alienation has been largely unacknowledged or denied by legal and health professionals as a form of family violence. This complex form of aggression entails a parental figure engaging in the long-term use of a variety of aggressive behaviours to harm the relationship between their child and another parental figure, and/or to hurt the other parental figure directly. Like other forms of family violence, parental alienation has serious and negative consequences for family members, yet victims are often blamed for their experience”

( http://fad.lu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/pas-uk-study_295.pdf )

DR CRAIG CHILDRESS, Psy.D “This is a severe form of emotional-psychological domestic violence perpetrated on both the targeted parent and the victimised child. It is the most brutal and savage form of abuse. The pathology is a shared persecutory delusion (ICD-10 F24) created in the child by the pathological parent who is weaponizing the child into the spousal conflict. Creating a delusional disorder in the child that then destroys their attachment bond to their other parent, which is child psychological abuse (DSM-5 V995.51

( http://fad.lu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/pas-uk-study_295.pdf )

prof.Jennifer J.Harman, Konferencija o otuđenju djece od roditelja, “Intimate partner violence”, kratki intervju

*TRANSKRIPT

Prof. Jennifer Harman: Parental Alienation as a form of family violence.

The presentation of Prof. Jennifer Harman at the Day Conference of March 3rd 2019 at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKuUnq4rcpo

TRANSCRIPT done by JR Jasmina Radulj

Speaker: I have to pass now to mrs., to professor Harman and present her own presentation. Thank you. Okay.

Prof.Harman:

I want to thank the sponsors to make it possible for me to be here today. I came a long way as Edward wanted to be here too. I am glad to could come and talk to you. I am thankful that Edward was able to speak to you a little bit about child abuse first and how parental alienation is a form of child abuse and the protection of the child is the most important so it is imperative that we understand the way that parental alienating behaviours harm children. Now I would like to build on his talk by arguing that parental alienating behaviours are also what is considered intimate partner violence. This is an argument that I have been making for a long time and it’s driven much of my research in this area. Now, we could exclusively focus on the behaviours of alienating parent towards the child and their associated outcomes. However, that only captures part of a much larger picture. In a recent paper that I published with Edward Crook that he referred to in his talk, we stated that parental alienating behaviours are a form of family violence because they can be both – child abuse and intimate partner violence. Therefore family violence is an umbrella term that we use for these two forms of violence. I am gonna focus now mostly on intimate partner violence in my talk.

When we think about INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE we often think about intimate terrorism where there is a powerful perpetrator of abuse who uses psychologically and physically abusive behaviours to control and dominate the less powerful person. This type of abuse is not likely to be reciprocated. We might see some aggressive behaviours of the target of the abuse out of self-defence or anger but abusive behaviours are typically seen in a more powerful partner and it’s a large strategy of that partner to maintain control of the other person. This form of intimate partner violence has predictable cycles of abuse with increases of intention and strain followed by aggressive behaviours followed by the honeymoon phase. And the cycle repeats. The perpetrators of intimate terrorism often have severe personality disorders and/or a history of abuse in their family of origin. A more common form of intimate partner violence is called SITUATIONAL COUPLE VIOLENCE. This violence is used by people to put an end to the conflict. Both partners typically have a similar level of power and they use aggression as a way to stop argument or conflict such as pushing or throwing something at the person to get them to stop yelling. This form of violence is not predictable. It usually comes about when there is an escalation of an argument or the person’s upset or tired and it’s often born out of poor communication skills conflict resolution skills or anger management problems.  The perpetrators of situational couple violence are comparatively healthier than perpetrators of intimate terrorism and they fall under the normal range of personality measures. Now the distinction of these two forms of violence is very important to make. Because it has implications for our understanding of why people perpetuate these forms of violence and what we need to do about it. So which of these types of violence are parental alienating behaviours? You can probably guess…

This is the question I have devoted a lot of time to trying to understand and I will argue here that it’s intimate terrorism. And here is why. Researchers and mental health practitioners have long documented personality disorders among parents who engage in severe parental alienating behaviours. These parents usually have narcissistic personality disorders, borderline personality disorders, and psychopathic tendencies. In my own work, we are seeing other characteristics which are known as a dark tetrad of personality – narcissism, machiavellism, psychopathy and sadism. Researchers have also found the evidence of intergenerational transmission of parental alienation. This means that some parents who are victims of perpetrators of parental alienating behaviours were raised in homes where they were child victims of parental alienation. In other words, they were abused as children and now are reliving the abusive dynamic as adults. Next, we know that there are predictable patterns of parental alienating behaviours. Approaching court date increased claims of abuse. The introduction of a new romantic partner, spouse or half-sibling poses a threat to the alienating parent resulting in increases in parental alienating behaviour perpetration and intensity correlating behaviours such as this help us to contextualize and understand this violence and demonstrate that it is not random. The behaviours are predictable and intended to get and maintain control over the child and the targeted parent. Particularly when the alienating parents perceived control is being threatened. And finally, my own research shows that there are extreme power control imbalances in families where there is parental alienation. These power imbalances are exasperated by child custody practices that put primary custodial care into the hands of the preferred parent leading to more serious parental alienation of the children of the targeted parent. In my research lab we have been examining whether the power dynamics in families affected by parental alienation are equal which would mean the families are like situational couple violence or we look to see if they are unequal or imbalanced which would be more like intimate terrorism. Using interdependence theory as our framework we have been categorising situations described by targeted parents. The data set were transcripts from nearly 80 interviews we conducted with parents who are the targets of parental alienation around the world. What we have looked at is the level of interdependence that each parent has with each other when they describe the experiences with parental alienation. And according to this theory the more dependant the person is on someone for an outcome the less power they have. And what we found let’s support our hypothesis that these families have notable power imbalances. Overwhelmingly most parents described the situations in which they were unable to influence the outcomes of the alienating parent. In addition, these parents have very little control over their own outcomes. They are completely at the alienating parent’s mercy. This situation is called ASYMMETRIC DEPENDENCE and there are two pure variations of this type of dependence. One is where the more powerful person has all control and will try to erase the other person. Or push them out of their life entirely. The other is when the powerful person tells the other one to comply with them to follow their orders. And if they are not, they are punished. The alienating parent has the allegiance of the child. They have their loyalty and this gives them a lot of power. They have all the power and control but yet that’s never enough for them. Even when alienating parents have the power they keep doing things to maintain it because they are constantly threatened to lose it. Obtaining custody and controlling the targeted parent with gatekeeping behaviours is a goal for most parents who alienate their children and giving them all custody does not stop parental alienation. Targeted parents are not able to reciprocate alienating behaviours in this situation. The children will use anything to they say or do to justify to pushing them away. The only recourse the targeted parent has is to help others to help them. Or get others to help them. They seek legal action to get more control to see the child. Another common situation described by targeted parents is called a threat. Here are both parents affected by the behaviour of each other but one parent has more control over the outcomes and how they were divided up. This person can react in ways that benefit both of them or only benefit themselves. In this case, a parent may be given temporary or permanent primary custody of children and the other parent is largely dependent on them to have a good relationship. This parent can either promote it and have a healthy relationship or they can act selfishly and promote the allegiance of the child to them. In that case, the targeted parent has only two choices. They can watch the relationship with their children slowly deteriorate or they can threaten and challenge the powerful parent to act in the child’s best interest to have the relationship with them. The threat will usually take the form of court action in order to get greater access to the child. Again, this parent has very little power. They cannot reciprocate the alienating behaviours effectively even if they wanted to. A third common situation described by parents is called chicken. This is named after the deadly game of two driving on a collision course towards each other. In this case, one parent will challenge the other and the other parent has two choices. They can take the safe choice and swerve out of the way at which will ensure their safety but they are negative consequences like being called the chicken. Or coward.

The other more risky choice is to rise to the challenge if the other parent swerve away they win and they are the victor. If they both continue straight they face mutual destruction. This strategy is often used by alienating parents to gain control of the relationship and with the children such as to get the custody advantage. They will make a false accusation of abuse. They will provoke the other parent at parenting time exchanges. They will make many actions against the targeted parent and the targeted parent has to defend themselves. If they walk away they risk losing everything. And the child is told that they are abandoned. If they defend themselves that can also end badly because the third parties, observes, will think that they are just as responsible for the conflict. But to assume that the targeted parent is responsible for the Chicken is false. The alienating parent is trying to obtain control and to create a dynamic where they will have all of it. Now, I do not have time to cover the other situations have heard described by parents but I can tell you that they are all imbalanced. Therefore there is considerable support for the argument that this intimate partner violence is more like intimate terrorism than situational couple violence. Now when children, our parents, are in distress, we use this term, you have seen the other speakers mentioned child affected by parental alienation distress it’s a term in Diagnostical and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association and it characterizes how distress affects children and there are four general situations described by Will Bernet and colleagues, two of which are loyalty conflicts and parental alienation. LOYALTY CONFLICT refers to when a child tries to have positive feelings for both parents even though both parents are very hostile and angry towards each other. The child has divided loyalties, they are triangulated, and they feel stuck in the middle and pulled in all directions. Loyalty conflict currently occurs in divorced families but they reflect the situational couple violence. These parents can co-parent ok. They just have conflicts now and then and they do things that are not great for the child but this is not parental alienation. These families have more equal power and they will sometimes put their own needs aside for the sake of the child. In comparison, parental alienation refers to the child’s rejection, a refusal to have a relationship with a parental figure for no justifiable reason. There is unequal power between the parents with one having more power due to having the loyalty of the child. Or they have been given primary custody. In this way, it is more like intimate terrorism. What do we know about interventions for those two types of violence? They are very different. Because they are very different types of power. So when a family is labelled “high conflict” they tell them to work it out, to go to mediation, to make nice to cooperate, for your child. That will work for these families – the loyalty conflict families. They have more equal power; they are willing to put their own needs ahead of the child. They are not pathological. Okay, they do not have personality disorders that are causing some of these problems. So in this case you can use family counselling, psycho-education, other types of approaches to help these families. But what about intimate terrorism? Do we ask victims of battery or bullying to sit in the room with their perpetrator and work it out? Do we find a way to cooperate with this person who is abusing them? No, we don’t do that. But we, unfortunately, do that for parents who have been alienated from their children. So where there is parental alienation, we cannot ask the parents to sit in their room and negotiate with each other. You are party to the abuse that is happening and you are just as responsible for the outcomes and the child. To further make my point I am going to end by talking about a recent book chapter that I have published. Mandy Mathewsen and we are going to look at the behaviours that the alienating parents to damage the relationship with their child and other parent. In the psychological bulletin paper I mentioned earlier that I have published with Edward Crooked we outlined all of the behaviours and I can share that article if you are interested and we mapped on to the child abuse in partner violence categories. But for here I am going to simplify this. I am going to simplify it and make it very simple for you. This is a power and control wheel that may be familiar to some of you. It is used wildly in the treatment of intimate terrorism. So we adapted this wheel to understand the behaviours of alienating parents. And we made it gender-neutral because this original wheel is designed with the perpetrator as male in mind. But with parental alienation perpetrators are both man and women.  They are equally likely to be perpetrators so we adapted this. We changed it and we used these categories. They are not distinct, they overlap a lot but I think it is a useful framework to understand what these parents are doing. And in the original wheel, we see here intimidation, coercion and threats. We have altered this a little bit in our wheel we have emotional abuse, isolation, using the children, using privilege and economic abuse and we added physical and sexual abuse. Excuse my graphic designs skills I am not great with that but you can see here an adapted wheel that we are using for these behaviours and before I go over these I want to emphasize if a parent does one or a few of these behaviours these does not make them an alienator. It is the consistent use of these behaviours and patterns of behaviours over time with the intent to harm the other parent that makes them parental alienating behaviours. Okay, so we are looking for a cluster of behaviours over time with the intent to harm.

So emotional abuse is the first category I will describe. It involves verbal aggression, emotional manipulation and the aim of an emotional aggressive person is to humiliate, belittle, shame and diminish self – worth. So here we see alienating parents saying horrible things about the target parents to make the child and others hate them. They will try to depict them as unsafe and unfit and this form of abuse also includes verbal attacks on the targeted parent, often in front of the child. Alienating parents will use gaslighting techniques which is when you present false information with the intent to make the person doubt their memories or their believes. Alienating parents are very good at distorting facts, they are very manipulative. So they can take an innocent interaction and make it look very dangerous. For example, targeted parents might engage in a tickling game with the child and that is reinterpreted as sexual abuse. These mind games are very effective at damaging a child’s love and respect for the targeted parent and turning others against the targeted parent. And over time the child is brainwashed. And the parent will do things to minimize the role of the targeted parent. They will say to the child to call them by their first name, they will change the last name; they will try to erase any sign of the targeted parent. Coercion includes a lot of different tactics designed to minimize the power of the victim and control their behaviour. Alienated parents are primarily motivated to maintain absolute control over those close to them. So loyalty inducing behaviours and manipulation of others are used a lot to accomplish this goal. Alienating parents will indoctrinate an absolute belief system and will reinforce these beliefs with the child. They will discredit any view that is different from the one they have about the targeted parent. They will discredit and critical thinking skills the child engages in. In order to achieve control, the alienating parent will present themselves as a devoted and consistently stable parent while at the same time they undermine the relationship between the child and the targeted parent. Complete loyalty is demanded from the child. And if the child does not adapt to the alienating parent’s belief system and demand unveraiwering allegiance, the child is punished or rejected. So alienating parent will withdraw love and affection, belittle and shame the child, even physically punish the child and reject them if they decide to have a relationship with the targeted parent. The child is coerced into the impossible position and they have to comply or risk losing the relationship with the alienating parent which is in their mind the only relationship they have left. The alienating parent will treat the child as an equal giving them an unhealthy power for their age or treating them as a child younger than their own age to promote dependency. They will also block access to the child or lie and manipulate others on their behalf to harm the targeted parent. To be mindful of the time I can go on and on and on about the behaviours these parents do but to give you an idea of your knowledge…

Another speaker: (Please don’t)

Prof.Harman:

Okay, you know, I could go but…I can do that over the break but they use a lot of threats and intimidation. They will stalk the targeted parents and will have others to stalk on their behalf. They will create fear in targeted parent for their safety and the safety of their child. They will stage the events to look like targeted parents hurt them in public even though they did not. And they will also challenge them in every way possible and threaten them to take them to court, threaten them with accusations of abuse. Many, many behaviours scare the targeted parent and keep them away. They will often use isolation. They isolate the child and the targeted parents from social supports. They will isolate them from extended family members, school. They will take them out of school; move them to a new one, away from their peers. They will homeschool the child. They will move interstate or abduct the child and move them to another country. The alienating parent will also isolate the targeted parent from all their social network in order to take away their power. Alienating parents will most of all refuse to acknowledge the impact of their behaviour. And they will not take responsibility for it. They will blame everyone except themselves. They will justify their behaviours claiming that they are simply trying to protect their child from the other parent and that the other parents, the response the at fault for the child’s rejection. The alienating parent will argue that they are the stable parent well-adjusted parent and they will externalise the problem and blame the other parent for it. And they will often argue that their abuse is better than the alternative if they do acknowledge that they are acting badly. They will say it’s ok because I need to protect them from that more abusive person even though their beliefs are not substantiated. And of course, I have been talking a lot about the use of the children we see them using children all the time as a weapon against the targeted parent. They have them spy on them, they encourage them to attack or verbally attack the targeted parent, destroy property, lie to authorities in order to get the targeted parent in trouble and away from them. They will neglect the child’ needs, they will take them to doctors repeatedly to try to show that they are sick and that they are the only ones who can take care of them. That the targeted parent is incapable of doing that so that they can have the power to control everything about that child. We also can see physical and sexual abuse that can happen. This is often the reason why targeted parents leave their relationship. Mother and fathers leave the relationship because of physical or sexual abuse. Unfortunately, they lose their children when they do this. And in these cases, the alienating parent will use the physical intimidation and violence a parenting time exchanges in front of the child. They will often punish the child physically for showing loyalty to the other parent. Alienating parents will use the privileged role of the primary custodial parent or preferred parental status to gain power over the targeted parent and the child. They use stereotypes about being the better parent or a better provider and use that to bias the third party in their perceptions of the family. For example, mothers will say that they are the more nurturing parent that they are more caring than the father and fathers might say that they are a better provider and that the mother is crazy. These are the strategies that are used to try to get advantages.

Finally, we can see the ECONOMIC ABUSE. This is where parents will engage in financially abusive behaviours to harm the targeted parent financially so that they do not have power. Many of these involve withholding money or children as the way to coarse the other person. They will create financial debt, delay court actions to rack up attorney fees. They will spend lots of money or steal the money from the targeted parent in order to make them incapable of doing anything. So, in summary, parental alienating behaviours are a form of family violence that could be characterised as child abuse and intimate partner violence and I detailed for you here the specific form of intimate partner violence that parental alienating behaviours are which intimate terrorism is. To better address this problem we need a greater understanding of the kind of aggression that this abusive violence that is. Otherwise, we provide the wrong kind of services for families to make matters worse for child’s well-being. When there is physical or sexual abuse in a family it is a child protection issue. My colleagues and I have been arguing that parental alienation needs to be treated as child protection as well with tailors interventions designed to minimize the abusive behaviour of alienating parent. The most effective interventions we have for treating parental alienation treat this as child abuse and intimate partner violence.

Finely my colleagues and I have argued that a presumption of SHARED PARENTING could potentially mitigate some of the damage that alienating parents do as long as both parents are normal and healthy and have shared custody parenting time can provide the child with ample quality time with both of them.  And that has many beneficent outcomes for the child. And can provide the child with experiences with the less preferred parent that could negate or offset the negative things that the alienating parents say or the falsehoods that they try to tell the child to the other parent. Having time with the targeted parent can help the child combat this and mitigate it. It will not solve the parental alienation it won’t stop it entirely but it has the potential to minimize the effect it on a child. Thank you.

N.B.

Predavanje prof.Harman skinula sam sa YouTube kanala