Family Law

A state bill that would set guidelines for child custody cases has highlighted a nearly 20-year-old dispute over a theory used by psychological evaluators.

Assembly Bill 612, which failed to pass into law in 2007, targeted the controversial theory, called Parental Alienation Syndrome. The syndrome describes behavior in which one parent turns a child against the other, convincing the child the parent has treated him or her badly, even when they have not.

Dr. Philip Stahl, a California evaluator and member of the state's Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, says evaluators are split in their beliefs about whether children can be alienated.

"You have evaluators who really don't understand alienation, and people who want to apply it in every case," Stahl said.    

Evaluators are not the only one with differing views on the issue: There are stalwart advocates who believe that hundreds of people have suffered because of parental alienation, and those who believe just as many have suffered from false charges of the syndrome.

Women's advocates say the theory has been used by courts to place children with abusive fathers.    

"It's junk science used to target women and take their custody rights away," said Karen Anderson, a spokesperson for the California Protective Parents Association. "It's a problem in courts all over the country."

Julia Cotton, a mother from Los Angeles County, said that a custody evaluation in her divorce case accused her of alienation and led to her young daughter being placed with her husband full-time.    

"Her recommendation led to me only getting my daughter for supervised visits," Cotton said. "When I saw her she acted traumatized, and seemed totally out of it."

Cotton said she suspected that her ex-husband was abusing her daughter in some way but didn't know what to do about it.    

"I knew that the more I tried to do something about it, the more I would be accused of alienation."    

While women's groups tout Cotton's story as a typical one throughout California, father's- rights groups have the opposite view of custody courts and alienation.

"Ninety-eight percent of the time that you see abuse charges that have not been verified by police, those allegations are coached," said J. Michael Kelly, a lawyer and a member of the United Fathers of California law group.

One father in the middle of a custody battle who asked to be called Norm said his two teenage daughters say they don't want to have anything to do with him, and he can't figure out why.

"They call me a violent man, they say I am aggravating," said Norm. "I had a bad custody evaluator, and now I barely see them."    

Norm said he believes his wife is genuinely convinced that he does not treat their children well.    

"I don't think she is trying to be vindictive," he said. "I just think in her mind there is some deeper mental problem that is convincing her I'd be bad for the kids."

The text of the 2007 version of A.B. 612 was drafted by the CPPA and explicitly banned the use of Parental Alienation Syndrome, or just the term alienation from use in evaluations. It also aimed to minimize the use of custody evaluations.

The family law section of the State Bar and the several psychologists groups banded together to oppose the bill.     

The 2008 version of the bill is much vaguer than its predecessor, stating evaluators will be forced to conform to "standards generally accepted by the medical, psychiatric, legal, and psychological communities." The bill does not specifically mention Parental Alienation Syndrome.

"The thinking was that if you mentioned specific syndromes or disorders, people who would use them in evaluations would just start calling them by a different name," said Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, who introduced the bill.

But Karen Anderson, who helped draft the original bill, said the new version, A.B. 2587, is not strong enough.    

"It's not an unusual process for a bill," said Anderson. "It starts out strong, and then it gets watered down, and a lot of the great stuff gets thrown out."

Stahl said that although the bill provides more guidelines for judges in what to expect from evaluators, the judges themselves still bring their own expectations about alienation into the courtroom.

"Courts are ruling in favor of people unfairly accused of alienation, and they are ruling against people who have been alienated," Stahl said. "Problems described by advocates on both sides on the issue are happening."

An additional problem, evaluators say, is that even with the right training, it is not always possible for them to tell when talking to a child, whether the abuse the child describes is really happening.

"There are real cases of abuse and false allegations," said Dr. Mitch Eisen, a Cal State Los Angeles psychologist and professional evaluator. "Both happen, and it is often impossible to differentiate between the two."

Stahl says that in some cases, the children themselves aren't even sure if what they are saying is true.    

"You've got kids who don't know what to believe," said Stahl. "It's hard to tell what is and isn't real."

From the San Bernardino Sun.