Report comment

I am pleased to see this official recognition of Parental Alienation in your journal. As a professional working with families I have seen the dynamic too many times to count, both in custody matters and child-protection-related matters.

As a psychologist, I advise my legal colleagues that it is important to be aware that your expert witnesses need to be up-to-date with the DSM5 language that captures what is happening. Recently in Australia a report writer was sanctioned for using "Parental Alienation Syndrome" without pointing towards the correct diagnostic categories. There is still much opposition to the term from political factions, and the will to use official complaints to undermine experts is strong. This is despite numerous citations now in the HUDOC database where failure to allow evidence of PA has been at issue, and recognized as a breach within the EU. PA is well-ensconced within the legal framework under terms that are more tenuous from the pure scientist-practitioner perspective.

In addition, I have to refer to professional experience wherein elements I have observed within Child Safety and/or Foster Carer services may themselves engage in alienating tactics, inappropriately turning children against parents even when no firm case has yet been established. CAFCASS and organizations like it sometimes harbour individuals who place the ends over the means and are willing to break the law to ensure that children are kept from parents they don't like. I myself have been pressured by such individuals to remove positive statements about a parent from a purportedly 'independent' report. I had no hesitation, upon subpoena, to provide versions A B and C of same, that had to be explained in open court. That same parent found, through the child much later that foster carers had been badmouthing her to the chlid, resulting in much more difficult reunification than was necessary.

PA is a scourge, and as you note, formally sanctioned in Brazil. It is a form of psychological abuse of a child, and anything but in their best interest. Children *are* distressed by parental relationship conflict, in direct proprotion to the degree to which they are exposed to it. Tragically the truly protective parent is often the one removed from a position where they can insulate and protect the child, because of the allegations of the alienator who is more than happy to spew their bile to all who will listen, most commonly a magistrate who hears domestic violence matters. All of this is interlinked in a system that can support and facilitate this pathological process, rather than inhibit it.

Again, congratulations on your article and your recognition that this is a scourge to be stamped out, in the best interests of the children.