3. Once abuse is found, alienation claims by the accused abuser should not be considered.
Virtually every article about alienation and abuse, including Gardners', gives lip service to the principle that if abuse is real, then alienation is not. However, the current trend propounded by both Johnston and Kelly (2004a, 2004b) and Drozd and Olesen (2004) toward a "multivariate" approach, which evaluates both abuse and alienation simultaneously, unavoidably gives too much attention to alienation claims. This approach undermines recognition of the validity and impact of real abuse claims (Meier, in press). Alienating conduct bound up with a batterer's pattern of abuse should be identified as part of the abuse.Okay, so upon discovery of real abuse, a parental alienation claim should be dumped, right, even according to Gardner? But the reality is, and has been, that it is not.
Think about it. How many times do parental alienation evaluators come into a child custody case and say,
Gee, you know what, this ain't even parental alienation. You've got it all wrong. This child and mother have been abused.?????
In order to make that determination, we would have to go back to # 2, Requiring evaluators to have genuine expertise in both child abuse and domestic violence.
A parental alienation evaluator will lose money in this case because he/she won't be allowed to "treat" the child. So instead, the abuse is ignored, parental alienation is substantiated, and the profiteer can "order" "deprogramming therapy."
Lip service is an understatement of what is going on here. This is a malicious pseudoscientific and legal diversion of father-abuse and blatant victim-blaming that has been clearly demonstrated throughout herstory.
