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Parental Alienation Syndrome
When Children Get Caught in the Middle
By Kelly Burgess
What makes it worse is that the alienated parent often reacts by getting angry at the child, thus reinforcing what the child is being told: that this parent is a bad person, or doesn't love them or is angry at them. In fact, the child is not responsible for the alienation; they are merely a pawn.
Jeff Opperman of Seymour, Conn., has been divorced for six years and has not seen his youngest son for the last five. "At first there was contact but it was very negative," Opperman says. "I forced him to spend time with me even though he obviously didn't want to. Finally, I just gave up and there's been no contact at all since then. I send e-mails and gifts just in case there might be a breakthrough, but they just go into a black hole."
In Opperman's case, the alienation started before he and his ex-wife separated, when they first began having problems in the marriage. Bone says this is not uncommon. However, even in retrospect, Opperman is pessimistic about whether or not he could have fought successfully against his ex-wife's influence over their son.
While PAS was finally accepted by a court of law in a case in 2000, in general it boils down to situations that are "he said, she said" and is extremely difficult to prove. "It's very easy to split up property and money in a bank, but what do you do whe you have a child who says he doesn't want to have anything to do with one parent, and one parent thinks the child should be able to make that decision while the other parent is protesting it," Opperman says. "The courts simply aren't prepared or equipped to deal with this."
