First it is important to know what does not constitute PAS.
Examples would include, the other parent:
- tells the children lies about you
- tells the children things about you that are true but only serve to hurt you in the
children's eyes
- tells the children all the bad things that happen to them are happening because of
something you did or did not do
- schedules the children's lives in order to eliminate your time with them
- making the children give up something to spend time with you
- indicates to the children that you are unimportant even harmful in their lives
- replaces you as a parental figure with another person
- acts angry or hurt when the children seem happy to be with you
- threatens to harm him or herself if the children want to be with you
- blames any shortage in the children's lives on your lack of love or financial support
What is Parental Alienation Syndrome?
Although all of these may be elements of PAS they are not in and of themselves PAS. It
becomes Parental Alienation Syndrome when the parent brainwashes the children long enough
for the children to actively participate in negative verbalization and actions toward the
other parent. To further aggravate the problem many professionals, rather than learn about
the problem encourage the courts to exclude PAS testimony. They see PAS as a theoretical
disorder in children that arises almost exclusively in child custody disputes. In most PAS
cases it is claimed that one parent (usually the one with custody) encourages the children
to hate the other parent - often leading to false allegations of physical and sexual
abuse. They say this assigns blame in an area that psychologists and courts recognize as
extremely difficult to prove.
These professionals feel there is no observational, factual data or direct sense
experience as evidence supporting the PAS theory. Because PAS has not been subjected to
long term extensive meaningful peer review or publication the professionals are reticent
to offer you help. In fact, some experts in the field have discredited the theory.
They argue that PAS is dangerous because its rapid wide dissemination in
the family law legal community, is lending an questionable aura to the theory. They seem
to feel that any disorder identified in some other profession has little validity. It is
as if we the people on the front line of the battle are too stupid to correctly identify
what is happening to our children.
The best weapon against PAS and other lies is documentation. We are here because when
we were forced into our custody war by lies, kidnapping and PAS. In 1991 we could not find
anyone who understood what was going on or anything to help us. Often we spent months
focused on assaults from the other side that the court didn't feel had any bearing on the
welfare of our child. The Win Your Child Custody War, manual will help you sort out the
incidents that cause you pain. Some do have direct impact on your child and must be
documented. It is critical that these incidents are removed from 'hearsay' that the court
will not consider to 'documented hard evidence' that the court will consider. Some do not
have any real impact on your child. You must learn to deal with those incidents in a
manner that will minimize the pain you feel from them.
As we learned about PAS we developed a process to make what was happening documentable,
visible and acceptable as evidence to the court. We began to help others in the parents'
rights group we belonged to. Within the first year we were receiving calls from all over
the United States, Canada and Northern Europe.
For the last six years we have worked with a network of professionals and lay persons
all over the world who are interested in doing what ever it takes to help the children
survive.
As we worked with parents and professionals they would tell us what they needed. We
kept researching and expanding "Win Your Child Custody War" to include the
requested information. At one point the manual had over 1700 pages. We reduced the size of
the print and triple columned the text to decrease the page count of the manual to its present size of
744
pages.
It became evident that some topics required a book of their own and our other books
reflect our efforts to meet the needs of parents who are facing the hardest longest battle
of their lives.
Finally, if custody decisions were only a question of law, hundreds of
thousands of families would not be in emotional limbo and under horrific financial stress.
But it is much more complicated than only a question of law. Yes, you can get answers for
the legal questions from any attorney in your state, what you can't get is someone to tell
you what is really going on. The information we offer is a compilation of experience from
children, parents who have battled successfully and unsuccessfully, attorneys, judges,
mediators, and grandparents. Learn from our experiences and share yours with us. Pale
Horse Publishing
