by Peter D’Abrosca at American Greatness
“We used to be cautious about alleging corruption in the court system, but after 16 years of doing this work, I can say that it’s almost like a form of judicial child trafficking by the family courts.”
— Kathleen Russell, Executive Director of the Center for Judicial Excellence
There is a quiet, and largely unreported, epidemic unfolding in the American family court system. More and more parents, mostly mothers, are experiencing firsthand the cottage industry that is “parental alienation therapy.” Those who have experienced it describe an utter, almost incomprehensible hell.
Richard A. Gardner, M.D., a child psychiatrist, was the creator and main proponent of a theory called Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). He promulgated the idea in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
His “research” was criticized as largely anecdotal, and indeed was mostly based on his testimonies as an “expert witness” in child abuse trials.
The theory of parental alienation is now almost totally discredited by academics. It has never been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), or any other academic association. It has never passed the scrutiny of peer review.
Further, Gardner was sympathetic towards child sex abusers, saying “there’s a little bit of pedophilia in all of us,” claiming that children sometimes seduce adults and excusing pedophilia by saying it was normal in many cultures.
He died by suicide in 2003.
But lurking in the shadows, there are still practitioners of the “parental alienation therapy,” and a few of them run programs based upon the theory. Even though it is considered junk science and totally discredited in academia, and even though it has never been proven to work, American judges—wittingly or unwittingly—are still sending children to “parental alienation therapy.”
One of those practitioners is Linda Gottlieb, who runs what she calls…
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