11/17/2018
Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and Parental Alienation (PA) are commonly raised to combat a mothers allegations that a father is abusive and that his access to the children should be restricted. While PAS and PA are sometimes used interchangeably, they have separate origins, and are pointedly distinguished by their originators. They are also not equally subject to legal challenge.
PAS was invented by Richard Gardner in the 1980s to explain what he considered to be an epidemic of child sexual abuse allegations in custody litigation. Gardner claimed, with no empirical basis, that the vast majority of such allegations are false, but were fabricated by vengeful or pathological mothers. Credible and extensive empirical research has demonstrated that the assumptions underpinning PAS, including that child sexual abuse allegations are rampant, and generally false, are themselves entirely false. Over time, the strange assumptions underlying Gardners theory have been critiqued and the validity of a scientific syndrome has been roundly rejected by numerous legal and psychological professional and expert bodies and researchers. Gardners apologist attitude toward pe******ia has contributed to the discrediting of PAS. While this has not ended reliance on PAS within courts and policymakers, it has reduced its use. To date, the only published opinions addressing the admissibility of PAS have ruled against it.
However, Parental Alienation has risen from the ashes of PAS. PA (or child alienation) has been defined by leading well-regarded researchers, many of whom have rejected the validity of PAS, as addressing cases where a child expresses unreasonable negative feelings and beliefs (including fear) about a parent that are significantly disproportionate to that childs actual experience with that parent. The key difference between this definition and the way PAS has been understood is that PA recognizes the different factors that can cause a child to be alienated from a parent. These researchers have also found that the disliked parent often contributes to a childs alienation.
