History
The #1 Defense Tactic AND LEGAL STRATEGY of Abusers in Family Court Since 1985: history of the debunked concept of "parental alienation"
The term "parental alienation" or "parental alienation syndrome (PAS)" was created by Richard Gardner in 1985 for the purpose of deflecting the court's attention from child abuse claims against fathers. This is a debunked concept, based on Gardner's clinical observations, not scientific data, and is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the World Health Organization (WHO) or the American Medical Association.
Prior to his suicide, Gardner was an unpaid part-time clinical professor of child psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He made his money mainly as a forensic expert on a foundation of disturbing views, discrediting women and children on the basis of his debunked parental alienation theories.
Richard Gardner, explaining how a mother should respond if her child discloses sexual abuse by a father.
“At the present time, the sexually abused child is generally considered to be the victim,” though the child may initiate sexual encounters by ‘seducing’ the adult.”
“Sexualizing children can have procreative purposes, because a sexualized child is more likely to reproduce at an earlier age. “The younger the survival machine at the time sexual urges appear, the longer will be the span of procreative capacity, and the greater the likelihood the individual will create more survival machines in the next generation.”
Elizabeth Peterson is a Family Court Reform Specialist and in this video, she describes the history of "parental alienation syndrome.”
Video shared with permission.