A petition to bar the use of 'parental alienation' in custody cases would make it easy for deceitful mothers to deny fathers their parental rights

You may have friends — as I do — who, as parents following a separation, have suffered the anguish of seeing beloved and formerly loving children turn into hostile strangers for no apparent reason, or through no fault of their own. All too often, the child’s hostility never abates, and the bond is irreparably severed.

Parental alienation has been defined as, “A mental condition in which a child — usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict separation or divorce — allies himself or herself strongly with the preferred parent (the alienating parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the targeted parent) without legitimate justification.

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“The mental component of this condition is the false belief that the rejected parent is evil, dangerous or not worthy of love. The behavioural component of parental alienation is the firm, persistent rejection of a relationship with the targeted parent.”

Having read dozens of parental-alienation cases, all joined by the common threads enunciated in the definition above, I understand this phenomenon to be a sadistic genre of former-partner punishment and a repugnant form of child abuse.

I was therefore incredulous to learn that a coalition of 250-plus Canadian feminist organizations recently called on Justice Minister Arif Virani to reform the Divorce Act, with a view to banning accusations of parental alienation in family law cases.

Suzanne Zaccour, director of legal affairs at the National Association of Women and the Law........

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