"Parental Alienation"

In family law, "parental alienation" is the phrase used to describe where one divorced parent systematically turns the children against the other parent. Some Canadian courts have, in the past, viewed the concept with some suspicion; there is caselaw out there where the courts have said, in effect, that trying to bend the children back towards the alienated parent is not in their best interests because the damage is done. There is also caselaw rejecting such conduct as an independent tort where the alienated parent can sue the alienating one. On the other hand there are other cases where the courts have held that the views of the children should not be given too much weight where those views have been created by an alienating parent.

Is this changing? In a surprising and newsworthy decision, one Superior Court Judge has decided that one mother's "consistent and overwhelming campaign, for more than a decade, to alienate [a father's ] three children from him" -- a campaign which was harsh and pathological and included ignoring assessments, the Children's Lawyer, and misuse of the police -- merited the switch of custody from mother to father. (The full text of the decision is very much worth reading, especially the table where alienating behaviours are listed and detailed.) Custody of the children was awarded to the father, even though the mother had been the custodial parent for about a decade:

The three children of the marriage have been alienated from the Applicant [the father] over a long period because K. D. [the mother, the Respondent in this case] is unable to accept that it is in the best interests of the children to have a relationship with their father. She has been given several opportunities to change her behaviour over many years, and refuses to do so. I find that her unrelenting behaviour toward the children is tantamount to emotional abuse... [...] [F]or the children to have any further contact with the Respondent, significant therapeutic intervention is necessary. [...] It is now time for [the father's] and the children’s fates to be free from K. D’s control. She has shown that she cannot be entrusted with it.

This is only one Superior Court decision and has no binding force on other Superior Court judges, who are free to accept it or reject it. Only an appellate-level decision (from the Divisional Court or the Court of Appeal) can bind lower courts. Further, the mother's behaviour in this particular case appears to have been so unbalanced, self-centered and obsessive that it would have been bizarre if the court had not intervened. (The Barbara Kay piece in the National Post, noted below, asks very valid questions about why this behaviour was tolerated for so long and whether any but the emotionally strongest and wealthiest alienated parent could get to this winning point.) It remains to be seen, therefore, whether this holding will be applied in other cases where the facts are less shocking, and whether or not the decision of Justice Faye McWatt will be adopted by other judges in general or approved at an appellate level.


Further Reading:
Full text of the decision in A.G.L. v. K.B.D.
"Mom loses custody for alienating dad: Ruling a 'wake-up call' for parents who use kids to punish ex-partners" - Tracy Tyler, Toronto Star, January 24, 2009
"Brainwashing the kids to spite the ex" - Barbara Kay, National Post, January 30, 2009
"The Cult of Parenthood: A Qualitative Study of Parental Alienation", Amy Baker, Ph.D - [in PDF format, and in HTML format].