Customer Reviews

Parental Alienation Syndrome in Court Referred Custody Cases

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1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book provides the reader with thought provoking ideas regarding parental alienation, its causes, symptomology, and remedies. It is useful for family law attornies, mental health professionals, and families involved in custody cases. Parents whose children have turned away from them and refuse visitation will find this book insightful and with a possible answer to their children's refusal or reluctance to visit them.

Excellent recent research,which is coroborrated by Baker's recent study of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome. The West Coast vs. the East Coast researchers are in such competition, they have forgot it is the children's best interests and welfare which must be protected, not their competitive egos to denounce other research. This includes finding remedies and early interventions, barring true abuse, so that researchers' intent should be finding ways to protect parent-child relations and protect the children so that both parents and children have positive interactions and safe access. Dr. Burrill or Dr. Baker or Dr. Warshak, "Divorce Poison," ever suggest allowing or exposing children who are abused by either parent as part of alienation nor should it be. Alienation cases are documented cases; wherein, one parent has systematically turned the child against the other parent by continuous assauts against the child's thoughts and feelings s about the other parent causing signification disturbance and distortions of reality in the child. PAS is not true molest or abuse or a manner in which perpetrators should ever have any type of access; this is entirely different and should be immediately turned over to law enforcement agencies to determine these types of allegations and substantiated, evidentiary abuse.

Before buying this book you need to research the author's credentials! My family has been a victim of her ideology, and I wonder what long term effects the children will have because the court awarded partial custody to their father who was an abusive alcoholic. She claims to have a PHD, which she actually bought from an online university. She uses JD in her title, indicating that she is an attorney, however she failed the Bar exam several times. Don't take my word for it, but please do the research.

Do not be deceived, as I was - mia culpa! - by the disarming size of this diminutive volume, because this booklet is a treasure trove of indispensable, soundly reasoned, captivating logic regarding the validity of a psychosocial syndrome which Dr. Richard A. Gardner terms the "parental alienation syndrome."

If brevity is the soul of wit, or if "less is more," then this booklet exemplifies the soul of wit.

For readers who believe this book's logically reasoned presentation may omit a vital component, look at the text again, and you may find what you are looking for.

This booklet's author logically confronts the critics who deny the validity or existence of the "parental alienation syndrome." Ms. Burill concludes, from logically reasoned examination, that, as defined, the "parental alienation syndrome" is a valid concept.

The author's reasoned conclusion regarding the validity of the "parental alienation syndrome" mirrors the conclusion regarding the validity of the "parental alienation syndrome" reached by the American Bar Association "Section of Family Law's' book entitled CREATING EFFECTIVE PARENTING PLANS: A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH FOR LAWYERS AND DIVORCE PROFESSIONALS, i.e., that (page 111) "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck."

When I superficially examined Janelle Burrill's published dissertation, my initial impression was that publishing her dissertation was an act of hubris and self-advertisement by Janelle Burrill. However, when I actually read this booklet's text, I realized that Janelle Burrill had reason to believe her booklet is a worthwhile pioneering contribution to the fledgling concept and literature of the "parental alienation syndrome." and that by publishing her dissertation Ms. Burrill was contributing to the acceptance of the "parental alienation syndrome" concept and, in doing so, is promoting the "best interests" of alienated children and parents of alienated children.

This booklet's title is somewhat misleading, as it suggests that the book provides legal instruction as to how to apply the "parental alienation syndrome" in court-referred custody cases. However, from a non-legal sense, it does.

Postscript (1/17/11): The first "comment" to this review alleges some serious charges against the author of this booklet. I do not know if these charges exist or are true or false. I have not reread this booklet since I initially posted this review. However, these alleged charges are irrelevant to the text of this booklet, and the validity of my review. This booklet appealed to me because I am a "target" parent who (like my daughter) is a victim of my child's alienation from me. I therefore wholeheartedly support the PAS concept, and reasoned literature which supports the PAS concept. I don't give a hoot whether PAS is called a "syndrome" or not; PAS exists.

The book (Ph.D. dissertation) was interesting, but I thought that it would be more useful to mental health professionals rather than parents dealing with PAS. I believe that my oldest daughter is suffering from PAS, somewhere between the moderate and moderate severe level. The book provides data that adds further support to the reality/existence of PAS and it provides some information about how to treat or deal with this syndrome. However, the collected data appears to be limited to divorce cases where child custody disputes were contentious and had to be resolved in court, i.e. not settled prior to the court rulings.

very poor material. do not recommend this one as there are many other very good books out there...such as Divorce Poison. Don't waste your money on Burril's book.

Well researched, informative, and professionally presented. This dissertation is written for professionals in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. Parents involved in a high conflict divorce will likely find the information insightful. Highly recommended

The American Judges Association, the National District Attorney's Association and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has all debunked PAS as a legal tool of abuse for abusers to get child custody away from their victims, with the latter warning judges NOT to accept claims of parental alienation:

2009: A Judicial Guide to Child Safety in Custody Cases National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
Family Violence Department

Page 12: C. [§3.3]

A Word of Caution about Parental Alienation34 Under relevant evidentiary standards, the court should not accept testimony regarding parental alienation syndrome, or "PAS." The theory positing the existence of PAS has been discredited by the scientific community.35 In Kumho Tire v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999), the Supreme Court ruled that even expert testimony based in the "soft sciences" must meet the standard set in the Daubert case.36 Daubert, in which the court re-examined the standard it had earlier articulated in the Frye37 case, requires application of a multi-factor test, including peer review, publication, testability, rate of error, and general acceptance. PAS does not pass this test. Any testimony that a party to a custody case suffers from the syndrome or "parental alienation" should therefore be ruled inadmissible and stricken from the evaluation report under both the standard established in Daubert and the earlier Frye standard.38 The discredited "diagnosis" of PAS (or an allegation of "parental alienation"), quite apart from its scientific invalidity, inappropriately asks the court to assume that the child's behaviors and attitudes toward the parent who claims to be "alienated" have no grounding in reality. It also diverts attention away from the behaviors of the abusive parent, who may have directly influenced the child's responses by acting in violent, disrespectful, intimidating, humiliating, or discrediting ways toward the child or the other parent. The task for the court is to distinguish between situations in which the child is critical of one parent because they have been inappropriately manipulated by the other (taking care not to rely solely on subtle indications) , and situations in which the child has his or her own legitimate grounds for criticism or fear of a parent, which will likely be the case when that parent has perpetrated domestic violence. Those grounds do not become less legitimate because the abused parent shares them, and seeks to advocate for the child by voicing his or her concerns.

This author has made a career out of robbing mothers of their children. This book and its diagnosis lends itself purely to "Junk Science," promoting pseudoscience, where recognition of reality is not only absent, but rejected. Law-makers in California are now passing legislation designed to protect against and disallow any form of junk science from being used in any court room as a strategy to gain custody of a child. This book's theory has been used as the accepted family court reference, with complete disregard to the law, and contributes to the destruction of family bonds while continuing to threaten the health and welfare of children. The supposed alienation "Syndrome" is without recognition and support from the medical community. So why is it still used? Look to the author's inspiration. This egregious misrepresentation of protective parenting "borrows" original material written by the deeply disturbed Richard Gardener, who later committed suicide after causing irreversible damage to the American Family Court system and the families whom this system is charged with protecting. This book is proof of our family court system's dire need of inspection, audit, and fixing.

PAS is a pseudo scientific theory invented by a pedophile, Dr. Richard Gardner. Ms. Burrill has done a disservice to children that she has been in contact with. Do not waste your time or energy reading this propaganda.