A contentious access battle playing out in family court made news last week when a B.C. Supreme Court judge made the highly unusual decision of barring a mother from seeing her daughter for one year.
The ruling, which the father’s lawyer called “historic,” was made after the mother, known only as Ms. A, alleged that the father had subjected the teenager to severe emotional abuse which she said endangered the child’s safety.
Citing Ms. A’s extreme parental alienation toward the father, Justice Donna Martinson said she was satisfied that Ms. A’s allegations were unfounded and that the mother “continued to undermine the relationship between M and her father and has acted in ways that are detrimental to M’s psychological healing.”
Classed as a syndrome, parental alienation occurs when divorcing parents use their children as pawns and attempt to turn them against the other parent.
“When we get into parental alienation, really what is happening is that the child becomes a weapon,” says Justice Harvey Brownstone, a family court judge in Toronto.
Warring parents tearing their children apart is something Brownstone sees all too regularly. Brownstone believes family court is “a terrible place” for parents to use to resolve their custody and access issues.
“The whole justice system, including the family court system, is adversarial and is based on a win-lose mentality. But in family court there’s no winning, there’s only different degrees of losing, and the biggest losers are the children.”
This adversarial approach is “designed to make war not peace” says Brownstone, and more often than not parents come out of the family court system “more angry with each other and more unhappy than they were when they started the court case.”
The ruling, which the father’s lawyer called “historic,” was made after the mother, known only as Ms. A, alleged that the father had subjected the teenager to severe emotional abuse which she said endangered the child’s safety.
Citing Ms. A’s extreme parental alienation toward the father, Justice Donna Martinson said she was satisfied that Ms. A’s allegations were unfounded and that the mother “continued to undermine the relationship between M and her father and has acted in ways that are detrimental to M’s psychological healing.”
Classed as a syndrome, parental alienation occurs when divorcing parents use their children as pawns and attempt to turn them against the other parent.
“When we get into parental alienation, really what is happening is that the child becomes a weapon,” says Justice Harvey Brownstone, a family court judge in Toronto.
Warring parents tearing their children apart is something Brownstone sees all too regularly. Brownstone believes family court is “a terrible place” for parents to use to resolve their custody and access issues.
“The whole justice system, including the family court system, is adversarial and is based on a win-lose mentality. But in family court there’s no winning, there’s only different degrees of losing, and the biggest losers are the children.”
This adversarial approach is “designed to make war not peace” says Brownstone, and more often than not parents come out of the family court system “more angry with each other and more unhappy than they were when they started the court case.”
