If it is decried and has no official scientific recognition, the “parental alienation syndrome” is nevertheless still used in court by fathers accused of violence.
When Rose* claims for the first time that her father “put a finger in her pussy”, her parents have been separated for more than a year. Until then, it was agreed that the father would welcome the little girl – 3 years old at the start of the affair, 6 today – every other weekend and half of the school holidays. But faced with these suspicions of sexual violence, Heïdi*, the child’s mother, decides not to entrust her to her father, who disputes the facts and has since turned against her.
Despite several reports and an expert report evoking “a state of post-traumatic stress compatible with the alleged incestuous sexual violence”, his complaint was closed twice – the prosecutor considered that the offense was insufficiently characterized. The family affairs judge, for her part, ruled on an alternating residence. Because throughout the procedure, a suspicion of “parental alienation” has continued to hover over the mother.
The social investigation thus considered that she was too fusional – “particularly protective”, with an “excessive” attachment between her and her daughter – and concluded: “The fears of Mr. relating to the manipulation of his ex-companion, prejudicial to the fulfillment and psychological health of (Rose) are understandable.”
The family affairs judge also considered that the attitude of Heïdi, “who seeks by all means to remove (Rose) from her father”, “really raises questions”.
“At each stage, the opposing party kept saying that I was manipulating my daughter,” Heidi indignantly told BFMTV.com. “He was believed, but not my daughter.”
A highly criticized concept
Cases like this, “I have plenty”, laments for BFMTV.com Christine Cerrada, the lawyer for the association L’Enfance au cœur.
Like Heidi, these women have in common to have been accused of “parental alienation” (SAP). Yet this “syndrome” has nothing to do with scientific truth. Invented from scratch by a controversial American psychiatrist, it would be a disorder in which a child manipulated and indoctrinated by one of his parents would belittle or reject the other “unjustifiably”.
Imported from the United States by the masculinist movements, the SAP has entered into mores and uses although it has no official recognition, it is rejected by the American Psychiatric Association – the reference on the subject – and the World Health Organization.
The Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse (Ciivise) called for banning the use of this “pseudo” syndrome, “particularly in the judicial decision-making process”.
“It contributes to the invisibilization of sexual violence against children, just as it makes it impossible to be a protective parent”, considers the Commission.
“A defense strategy for aggressors”
“The notion is used by violent men to deny or minimize their violence on mothers and children”, slice for BFMTV.com Pierre-Guillaume Prigent, co-author of a research on the social uses of parental alienation with the sociologist Gwenola Sueur. The two researchers detect in the use of this concept the resurgence of gender stereotypes and a form of machismo.
“It’s a defense strategy for the aggressors when the voice of women is often discredited,” said Pierre-Guillaume Prigent.
In one of their articles, the two researchers note that in the United States, out of more than 4,000 judgments analyzed, when parental alienation is invoked by the father, the probability that the judge recognizes acts of violence is divided by two – by four if it is is about violence against children. And when the mother accuses the father of violence, if he defends himself by evoking the SAP, the residence of the children is transferred to him in half of the cases.
“The SAP reverses everything”, is alarmed for BFMTV.com Isabelle Aubry, president of the association Face à l’inceste. “Mothers imagine they are protecting their child by filing a complaint, but it’s quite the opposite that happens,” says Djamila Allaf, director of the association L’Enfance au cœur. Charged with parental alienation, they are thus perceived as dangerous and “their complaint ends up being turned against them”.
A notion of “controversial nature”
Within of the Ministry of Justicean “information note” was published on the intranet site of the Department of Civil Affairs and the Seal of the Ministry of Justice to “inform the magistrates of the controversial and unrecognized nature of the parental alienation syndrome” and “the encourage us to look with caution at this plea when it is raised in defence”.
Cécile Mamelin, vice-president of the Union of magistrates (USM), assures BFMTV.com that the SAP is less and less mentioned, replaced by “something more measured”.
“Family court judges are still quite sensitized and when it is mentioned, they do not take it at face value,” she says.
Today president of the family chamber at the Douai Court of Appeal, this former juvenile judge and family affairs judge rejects the notion of parental alienation – “a concept constructed from scratch which is a form of sexism” – but admits cases of maternal influence. “It’s quite rare but these are situations that exist,” she says.
Maternal “grip”, mother who “dismisses the father”, wants to “control everything in the child’s life” or “instrumentalizes” him, builds a world that “could be harmful for the child” or even attribution of troubles from the child to “maternal functioning”… For Andreea Gruev-Vintila, doctor in social psychology and specialist in violence within the couple, these are all variations of SAP – which is not necessarily explicitly mentioned in the decisions of righteousness.
“It is the reign of the arbitrary”
This researcher denounces the same sexist ideology and questions a lack of training. If the police, magistrates and child protection professionals were sufficiently informed, “they would no longer confuse parental conflict and violence”, she is indignant.
“They would no longer interpret a protective reaction as fusional behavior,” adds the specialist.
According to the Civiise report, some 70% of complaints of child sexual abuse are dismissed. “The result is that justice takes decisions that are unfavorable to the safety of mothers and children,” continues Andreea Gruev-Vintila, lecturer at Paris-Nanterre University.
Some situations are “dramatic”, further points out the lawyer Christine Cerrada, also author of Abusive placements of children, a justice under influences. With, in some cases, children placed or even entrusted to the parent accused of assault and mothers limited to a few hours of visits per month.
“No zero risk” for magistrates
Magistrate Cécile Mamelin believes that it is sometimes “complicated” for a magistrate to sort things out in the case of a “conflict” between spouses. “The hearing of the child, the psychological evaluations, the social investigation give elements which make it possible to avoid errors”, she declares to BFMTV.com. “But there is no zero risk.”
She also sometimes felt helpless. “In what the mothers were saying, I sometimes had the feeling that there was a real problem behind this desire to cut ties with the father. But I did not have the means to verify the alleged, undetected violence , and psychological violence, not provable.”
This is the difficulty, according to Alrick Metral, member of the French Association of Family and Heritage Lawyers. “There is an essential legal and judicial principle: it is proof,” he reminds BFMTV.com. “But in situations where it’s all on the private family spectrum, it can be very difficult.”
The lawyer Christine Cerrada evokes for her part some of her clients who have “lost everything”. “Their situation, their job, their home, their child who has been placed… What interest would they have in lying? They risk while wanting to protect them.”
doomed mothers
In Heidi’s case, her ex-spouse filed more than twenty complaints for non-representation of a child – an offense punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros. Heïdi ends up being summoned to the police station, placed in police custody and taken to court to be tried in immediate appearance.
“I was handcuffed. I had three policemen around me, everyone was staring at me like I was a criminal.”
During the hearing, the case seems settled. “The judge said, and I remember her words very well, that I was depriving this ‘poor father’ of his daughter,” recalls Heidi. The mother of the family was sentenced last November to a suspended six-month prison sentence, a sentence associated with a parenting internship, a ban on moving, compensation of 5,000 euros for the father and the injunction to apply his visiting rights and accommodation.
Despite this condemnation, Heidi still refuses to hand Rose over to her father. “Out of the question to put her in danger”, she protests. “Already, before, every time he came to pick her up, she cried, screamed that she didn’t want to go, screamed ‘mom’ when her father took her from my arms. It was horrible.” Every other weekend, she therefore hides with her daughter. She even once considered escaping abroad.
Heidi appealed his conviction. She will be tried on June 7 and faces a year in prison. As for Rose, she will again be appraised as part of the criminal proceedings. “The examining magistrate ordered two expertises, psychological and psychiatric. In all, that will make four expertises for my daughter. And she will still have to speak.”
*The first names have been changed, at the request of the interested parties.
