Mick Hartley

It's the latest psychiatry-speak syndrome used by abusive men to maintain control and undermine their partners – and the courts seem only too keen to play along. A grim BBC report:

Five mums have died after family courts allowed fathers accused of abuse to apply for contact with their children, a BBC investigation has found.

Some took their own lives, another had a heart attack outside court.

One mother, whose child was ordered to live with a convicted child rapist, would no longer eat and drink and "gave up living", friends say.

A separate study has found 75 children forced into contact with fathers who had been previously reported for abuse.

In some cases, in the England-wide study carried out by the University of Manchester and revealed for the first time by the BBC, the fathers were convicted paedophiles.

All the fathers in the study had responded in court to allegations of abuse with a disputed concept known as "parental alienation", in which they claimed the mothers had turned the child against them without good reason.

Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, who led the research, says the concept is a "handy tool for abusers" and its acceptance by courts is a "national scandal".

Three case studies:

Grace was madly in love with her partner at first – friends told the BBC – but later she discovered he had previously been jailed for raping a child. The friends said she was also abused by him.

After Grace and her partner separated, he refused to return their child and accused her of being mentally unwell. He said there was a risk she would "alienate" them from him.

The family court was aware of his conviction but believed the risk to the child could be managed.

One friend said Grace felt disbelieved throughout the court proceedings and "her soul just completely disappeared".

In one of her last messages to her group of friends, seen by the BBC, Grace wrote: "I'm unable to eat or sleep, it's a mess, I hate the family court. Dead dead dead."

Her health declined and she died after the final court hearing, in which her child was ordered to live with her abusive partner.

Sarah:

The case of another mother – who took her own life after two years of family court proceedings – highlights what a drawn-out legal process can do to the mental health of a vulnerable person.

A published judgement of the case – of the woman we are calling Sarah – details extreme abuse. Before her death, the judge determined in a fact-finding hearing that she had been raped by her partner, who drank excessively and became aggressive. Her partner punched her in the chest, slapped her in the face and threw her against the bannister.

He put CCTV in the house to monitor Sarah and their two children and would not even allow them to use the bathroom without keeping the door open. He also threatened Sarah, saying he would reveal footage of her inside the bedroom.

After she left him, he also placed trackers in her car, the judge concluded.

Parental alienation was brought up in proceedings, with the father saying he wanted contact with his children. Eventually the father was denied contact, but by then Sarah had killed herself.

And Sheila:

Parental alienation was brought up by a family court judge in Sheila's first hearing, as a warning to her.

People close to her say she had suffered coercive and controlling behaviour for years from an abusive partner, and had been bombarded with emails, calls and messages at all hours – even after they split.

When her former partner applied for greater access to their child, loved ones urged her to see the family court as a friend – but they now say they bitterly regret that advice.

Before any expert reports had been commissioned, the judge said in their opinion the case involved parental alienation and the court took it extremely seriously.

People who knew her well said she was traumatised by the hearing – which went in favour of the father.

"She felt like she'd go to prison if she did anything wrong," the BBC was told. "She never recovered, she was now controlled by the family courts and her abuser."

Over a year later, she took her own life

….

Carried out with the domestic abuse research group SHERA, and soon to be published in the Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody and Child Development, the research examined the health impacts on abused women facing family court proceedings.

Dr Dalgarno, the lead researcher, says the mothers in these private law cases were not supported in the court. "Credible evidence of abuse was diminished or ignored completely – and when I say credible evidence, I'm talking about criminal convictions," she says….

The term parental alienation was first coined by the controversial US psychiatrist Richard Gardner as "parental alienation syndrome". He claimed mothers in acrimonious divorces brainwashed their children to believe they had been abused by their fathers and recommended completely severing contact to "re-programme" them.

Hmm. No doubt such nasty controlling mothers do exist – especially, perhaps, in the US – but it's somehow all too typical that the small number of cases where men suffer because of a manipulative woman becomes the template for a psychiatric syndrome now applied to any acromonious split where children are involved. So in these – I would imagine, overwhelmingly more common – cases where an abusive father seeks to maintain his control and dominance over his partner, it's all set up for the man as victim and the woman as scheming harridan.