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I have taken my ex to high-court yesterday to get access to my children.

Three girls 17, 13 and 8.

The judge has ordered her to hand them over to me on Monday.

This brings an end to the last 6 months of drama where the family advocate and the high court has judged that I be given immediate access to.my girls.

They have been put tbrough such trauma by my ex and her new husband and are reticent  to come to me.

What experience do you guys have after a period of no contact to begin building something again?

How should I behave around them and are there any pointers?

Hi I am not a parent but I have on/off custody of my partners siblings (10,13,15) due to his mum's BPD. I tend to find that after a prolonged period with their mum the children are hostile and nervous when they first come to use because of the messages she gives them. I find that being consistently calm and positive ultimately helps them overcome their reluctance. I never insult their mum or get involved in their relationship and this helps them draw their own conclusions. Stay positive things will come right in the end!
 

I'm so sorry to hear about the alienation, Moselle. You and your kids have been through a lot

My SO has had to work through alienation issues with his kids, too. I can't remember who on this forum recommended this, but Childress's article on jujitsu parenting for alienated kids is really helpful:


Basically, he points out two types of communication styles that alienated kids are primed to treat as abuse, which he calls "intent to task" and "intent to change." If we could parent in normal ways, those styles would not have such negative consequences.

You want to avoid those, or at least minimize them as much as possible with alienated kids.

Then there is "intent to understand" and "intent to be-with." You want to do a lot of those. He explains them in more detail in the article.

My son is nowhere near as scarred from alienation tactics as SO's kids are. Even so, I use these skills with S16 and it's profound how he responds. It's like playing a musical instrument. When I go from intent to understand/intent to be-with and shift to intent to task/intent to change, I can feel the emotional distance almost immediately.

Sometimes it feels like taming an abused animal, where you have to be a lot more patient and focus on positive interactions, even if it means they don't get something done right away that you know is good for them, like cleaning their room.

My thought was to be yourself... .just be dad. I also agree no mom talk, I would also suggest if you hear something about something going on at mom's that you don't like, do not run to the ex to try and fix it.  You want to build trust with your kids.  Keep what goes on at your house at your house as much as possible.

This might seem like a little thing but maybe try a board game that everyone likes as an ice breaker.  It's a way for you all to be together, to interact (no emotional hot buttons), and focus on something fun.

Panda39

I need to caveat, that parental alienation is bad science that is easliy refuted.

However the suggestion I have is to probably engage a trained attachment therapist. I have sole custody and my dxBPDw was caught by the kids therapist emotionally and psychologically abuse our kids be saying things that really created security and trust issues.

It is going to take thousands of interactions with your children to restore a secure and ordered  Parent-Child dyad. Patience and constantly are a must, mindfulness is the best skill to master for this.

I'm wondering if you are referring to parental alienation as a syndrome. That has been pretty thoroughly defanged. Richard Gardner (who introduced the concept) failed to back up his syndrome with theory, so experts were able to discredit the "syndrome" part of alienation, even though courts seemed to agree that parents do engage in tactics to alienate their kids from the other parent.

Engaging an attachment therapist is a good idea.

I wish I had done therapy with my son, in addition to him having his own therapist. Alienation was relatively mild in my case, and I now have sole custody, but still. I can still see signs how the alienation tactics traumatized him and made it hard to trust.

 

Thank you L&L

That article is absolutely brilliant. And the jiu jitsu analogy is perfect. I am stuck being pounded by them. But this has helped me so much.

The   solution   is to shift your “parenting   communication fighting style” to ju-jitsu,   where the opponent’s own force is first managed, then redirected, and ultimately turned against   them so that they become   trapped in a   (metaphorical) arm-bar or leg-lock from   which they cannot escape.      

I'm so excited to try these techniques

 :)

Let us know how it goes.

You must be so excited to see them again.

In my case an we had two attachment evaluations, and the kids personal therapist got to bat for the kids. Three back to back rulings from placement, a trial do novo and custody and visitation hearing... .the court hs ruled no contact.

Gardener was never able to reproduce an evidence based model for his hypothesis. PAS is pure junk science and is easily refuted. Under the Daubert standard, PA or PAS fails completely in all but five states of the US.

What we call PA is basically child abuse by proxy... .

I was, but she has already  broken the new high court order by not communicating with me by Saturday 5pm if the girls are coming to me on Monday or Tuesday. So it's back to court. I swear she is going to end up in jail for this. The judges here are losing their patience with her.

She also lied to the judge about going away with them this last weekend. She actually worked and had someone babysit the girls.

When will this end ?

Mine didn't end until my ex, like yours, defied court authority so many times that the pathology was indisputable.

Basically, the behaviors that were once directed to me, became directed toward the court, and then the judge seemed to take notice.

It took years.  


Curious what the states are, if you know?

In my case, we never used the words parental alienation, just described and documented the behaviors. Same for the pathological behaviors.

It was my ex who used the words parental alienation. He hired a father's rights lawyer and tried to build a case, except neither seemed to understand what alienation was. S16 felt comfortable hugging his dad in front of me and waving to him, whereas with me, S16 never did.

There is more but it's too tiresome to go into it in detail and who here doesn't already know the drill  

Ex thought all of it was proof of alienation and a PC got on stand to say that S16 had not seemed to form a secure attachment bond to his dad, and dad's allegations of alienation were distorted.

Childress places it here: V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse

Pathogenic parenting that is creating

significant developmental pathology in the child (attachment system suppression; diagnostic indicator 1 of AB-PA),

personality disorder pathology in the child (narcissistic personality traits evidenced in the child’s symptom display; diagnostic indicator 2 of AB-PA),

delusional-psychiatric pathology in the child (an encapsulated persecutory delusion; diagnostic indicator 3 of AB-PA),

is a DSM-5 diagnosis of V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse, Confirmed.  Creating that level of severe psychopathology in the child is psychological child abuse.

My lawyer just emailed me with ex's response below. She decided to email them instead of me, 2 days after the court ordered her to email me. And she is burdening my children with "keeping her out of prison" :-(

On the positive side. I see my girls. And thanks L&L for the Jiu Jitsu training. Time to give my ex a few elbows to the face off my back :-)

"Please note that Mr Moselle can come and collect the girls at 9am on Tuesday 19th for the day.  They are not happy with this arrangement forced on them, but they have agreed to do this to keep their mother out of prison.  How sad that Mr Moselle has to force this relationship"

 

Wow! Amazing how some people, BPD or not, just can't see how bad they make themselves look by emailing something like that. It looks like she attempted shaming, blaming and guilting all in one there. Sounds like something my ex would write.

I'll pray that your relationship with your girls is restored and becomes stronger than ever. I have four girls myself so I know they need their dad in their life. Stay strong and keep fighting Moselle!

Thanks 40 days :-)

Today has been amazing.

I was expecting animosity and difficult children.

They have been pleasant, fun and easy to be with.

I feel blessed

Moselle,

I'm glad it's going well, enjoy it!|iiii

I'm not trying to be negative Nellie but be aware that you might hear from the ex that it didn't go well.  Your kids might in order to keep the peace tell their mother what she wants to hear or their mother might twist things they say about the visit into something negative. She will do what she needs to in order to believe the kids don't love you, therefore won't abandon her for you.

Keep in mind what you experienced vs what you might hear later.

Panda39

Thanks for the awareness, Panda,

That's a fascinating insight. I get it now. The fear of abandonment is driving this!

She has opposed her contempt of high court charge so she needs material to pad her replying affidavit on 6 Feb.

I've been careful to give her nothing, but as you say, she will interrogate the children and twist or manipulate something.

That's great they were easy to be with! What a relief.


When do you see them next?

I had all my jiu jitsu moves down. But haven't had to use them :)

The next visitation is 14 Jan due to their vacation. However she is required under the new order to provide Skype on Monday, Wednesday and Friday whilst on vacation.

She failed to do so on Monday.

This article really puts the communication tactics into a usable context.  I haven't visited Childress's site much, but I'm wondering if there are discussions about how to get past a PA child that stonewalls by clamming up, or answering every question with "no."

I would like to think Gardner's work, no matter how debateable, laid the groundwork through awareness fro people like Childress to continue the debate in a productive way for people dealing with PA.  The fact that Gardner's work may be considered "junk" by people in the profession means little to people like me that have used his tools and become more knowledgeable about alienation through sources like Divorce Poison.

I think it's only considered junk as a syndrome, especially in the expert witness sense. The problem seems to be academic, not practical.

Even those who debunked PAS agreed that there are pathological adult behaviors that estrange kids from target parents. But to be a bonafide syndrome, there is a higher bar that Gardner didn't clear because he lacked a theory with empirical research to support it. That might work in pure academia for a while, but when it began to be used in court, it didn't have the backing of Gardner's profession and expert witnesses duked it out in court.

Childress is the first (that I know of) to connect alienation pathologies with a theory that can be empirically researched and backed with evidence.

If I remember correctly, Warshak (Divorce Poison) addresses this a bit in the beginning of his book. Basically saying that just because PAS doesn't hold up academically doesn't mean the behaviors don't exist. I think his book was maybe the first counter move to offset the confusion about PAS and plain old parental alienation.

Where it hurts people like us is that we can't address it in a tidy way in court. Instead, we have to show evidence of a pattern of harmful behaviors and let the judge draw conclusions.

In that sense, it's not that different than what we go through with BPD pathologies in general, where we can't diagnosis the disorder ourselves, we have to shine light on the behavior patterns and hope the courts connect the dots, usually many thousands of dollars later  

Also on a practical level, even if we are able to present the evidence in a coherent way, it takes a seasoned professional, to understand and process the emotionality of the lies and false accusations - that the target spouse has abused the children. Especially if the accuser is a woman and the target is a man.

Counsellors are taught to believe accusations of abuse, eg I have read "false accusations of abuse are extremely rare... .around 2-4%"

It has taken me 2 years to get to this point. Both the family advocate and the high court have found in my favour. But the high court battle over primary care is only beginning.

PS. I realise that i did use the Jiu Jitsu parenting skills. I sent many "intent to listen" and "intent to be-with" cues. I also started the day with an "anchor" back to the older girls happier childhood, which prompted them to reminisce on the happy times we've had in the past. This set the tone for the day and continued throughout.

Moselle,

Not sure if this was mentioned prior, but I have found a wealth of information on Karen Woodall's site: https://karenwoodall.blog/writer-2/

While Childress focuses on the most extreme forms of alienation (with embedded PDs), KW touches on a wider range of attachment pathology.

As an alienated parent, I have spent many hours reading her articles, trying to understand "why"... .


Best of luck to you, and your children.

Thanks Stolen. That is interesting. Most parents would do what is best for their children I'm struggling to accept this nightmare. I just want to help my children and this dangerous woman (who i chose as their mother) refuses to do anything remotely healthy for them.

She has now reneged on the second high court order for Skype contact. It just goes on and on and on.

I am trying to accept that she will never be able to have any kind of interaction with me which would benefit our children. I suppose it is her agency she is exercising to damage my girls.

Where is the justice in this? that I will likely need to take them away from her through the courts, in order for them to have any kind of healthy parenting and a chance at a normal life. And even that is slim now.

My ex's siblings are all falling apart at the moment, and I am witnessing the same nightmare visited on my children.

What is impacting her siblings?  I ask because alienation, like other forms of abuse, is often a multi-generational pattern.  Look to the past for the clues to the future.  It took me a long time until I was able to draw the genealogy chart, and then scribe "X" after "X" after "X".   

6 female siblings

D38 my ex, dangerous NPD/BPD, eating disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, divorced, false accusations towards husband (me) of sexual abuse

D36 Suicidal, husband been hospitalized for nervous breakdown  

D34 Eating disorder (Bulimia), accused male cousin of sexual abuse as child

D33 Most stable of daughters, however husband hospitalised at least once per year for anxiety attacks

D31 Divorcing. Currently doing smear campaign of husband... Blaming him for sexual abuse of her and the children

D27 Married two years. Just had baby... .fireworks yet to start, but signs there that all is not right

I married the eldest when she was 19. In my defense her parents were well.respected in our community and there were no ( external) signs of any disturbed family dynamics at the time. All this started playing out during my 15 year marriage to the eldest daughter.

The spider at the centre of this web is the mother of the girls. She's a manipulative scheming and horrible matriarch who positions herself as a benevolent mother hen, who is actually a cruel and malicious schemer where all the men in the family are either patsies or victimised. I and now ( I assume) the husband of D31 are the only ones willing to call the truth. The rest just go along with the family facade.

It's bizarre, but even with all of this happening, this family is for the most part held up as a model family by the community. They are charming achievers, but also deeply troubled people.

My ex is currently being stonewalled by the whole group, I assume for being dragged unceremoniously to high court by me, and for bringing the family into disrepute. It's bizarre and fascinating to watch them turn on her,  after they have been perfectly united, in their smear campaign and aggression towards me for so long. They are also trying to be as friendly as can be with me now, for some strange reason.

Who knows?, I don't take them seriously. Its all crazy-making and I don't need or want any of these people in my life.

A short update.

I've just signed a second affidavit for my ex's contempt of court trial on Monday. The judge had issued a second order to cover Christmas, and new year and she is contempt on most of it again.  

She missed the deadline for her opposing affidavit. So I'm assuming she's going to either skip it altogether or appear and fight with the judge... .again.

If she's convicted she faces a potential jail stint. I've requested a suspended sentence in the papers with a suspended warrant of arrest. Who knows how this will go!

On the positive side, I've seen my girls three times and I'm using L&L's jiujitsu parenting skills training. Intent to listen and intent to 'be with' are paying off.

What is the benefit of suspended sentence and suspended warrant?  I'm asking because attempts to look fair or nice (we are by nature nice but there have to be limits) by delaying consequences is risking self-sabotage.

If you're worried about her having a record, then ponder whether her not having a record might (or will) enable (or encourage) her to continue obstructing you.

You can let her face her consequences while still holding true to yourself.  It is what it is.

Looking forward, what is your strategy?  I'm assuming she has majority time.  That is a typical huge entitlement for a person with BPD (pwBPD).  In my own life, I had 8 years of obstruction and, in the court's eventual words, "denigration of Father".  At the 6 year mark I gained custody (Legal Guardian) but the conflict continued.  At the 8 year mark I moved up from equal time to 75% parenting time.  That's when her entitlement bubble deflated.

The point I'm making is that if you're an alternate weekend father then your best long term strategy may be to seek more scheduled parenting time and tell the court you want to step forward for custody as well.  Fixing the current issues probably isn't really a fix, court will figure you will be back again and again.  Courts like a parent to offer solutions rather than just complaints.  By now it may be frustrated with the repeated courts cases and be willing to assign you more authority in parenting.

Likely you have joint custody, right?  Even if the court isn't ready to award you full custody, it may decide to grant you more than just clarity in the current order.  Perhaps Decision Making or Tie Breaker status.  Probably those would require you to have at least equal time.  Of course, all of that may not be covered by the current Contempt of Court case, but the court may indicate a positive view of you stepping forward asking more more time and more authority in parenting.

Richard Warshak, author of Divorce Poison, has a web site which describes his Family Bridges program to reintegrate children with the alienated parent.  Were you just blocked or alienated too?  Often the program is cast as a sort of retreat or vacation.  Probably there are other options available in your area.

Hi Forever. There is no benefit. The lawyers have phrased it "be committed to prison or at the court's discretion, receive a suspended sentence"

They were of the opinion that that this was the best way to approach the court.

The parenting plan stipulates 50/50 care as soon as I am able to provide it. And I have asked the lawyers to get this stipulated. They are of the opinion that we should get the conviction of contempt first and then go for a change in primary care.

There are "Guardianship rights" and "primary care" here. Guardianship is the right to decision making and primary care is where they live.

My strategy is to get the contempt charges. But in the court's eyes its important to be seen to be reasonable. They can and do send contemptuous women to prison for this. If he doesn't convict, I will give her enough rope and I am confident that she will hang herself on the suspended sentence.

Then i want 50/50. Then I want Guardianship which gives me exclusive decision making rights.

My lawyers/advocate believe that this is the best strategy. I was far more hawkish in December. As it turns out dovish was a better strategy. The judge came at her like a ton of bricks. These advocates seem to know the judges pretty well and how to approach them.

One clever trick my advocate pulled was to have a 'curator ad leitem' appointed. Someone ( an advocate)  who acts for the children's best interest. So the negotiation on primary care will happen with her, not with my ex.

In a new turn of events my ex tried to pull a trick of adjournment today at 4 pm. The curator has not been able to interview the children because my ex knew that the deadline to submit her report was yesterday, to be heard on the 6th. She has been deliberately obstructive because she wanted to postpone her date of trial. I believe this curator will be there on Tuesday to testify to this effect.

She was served with the second contempt affidavit on the interim order of 15 December today, and now this. It's in addition to the original contempt charge. The evidence piles up!


Properly alienated. Thanks for this.

That's how things worked for me, too.

Courts began to see a pattern of contempt for court.

Nice not to be the only target!

It went from "he-said, she-said" to "this is a lot of evidence," to "how about we give n/BPDx a bunch of chances" to "what's wrong with this guy?" to "LnL can have full custody so we can get this guy out of my court room."

I wish I could blame the court for taking so long but honestly, the judge figured out ex faster than I did  

I'm so glad your kids are responding to your skilled way of interacting with them, and that court is catching on. Small steps, but at least going in the right direction!

LnL

The judge is already ready there. He said " keep the second order simple so she doesn't go into contempt and we sit with the same problem of contempt in Jan" Well he picked it. Same problem in Jan.

Yes small steps. Thank you for the support and jiu jitsu training :-)

A general observation here is that Contempt of Court Cases during a divorce are treated like parking tickets.  However, after the divorce the court expect the parents to have let go of the emotions and conflict of the divorce and they're taken much more seriously.

During my divorce I brought a few Contempt cases.  However, they were not all that serious.  Yours were for substantially blocking your parenting time, more serious I think.

My lawyer also started a couple Contempt motions during the divorce, however, once they were ready for a decision, he paused the cases as pending.  He explained to me that if the magistrate made a ruling then the matter would be considered handled, resolved and could not be brought up if we ended up with a trial.  By pausing them at that point it would aid in my ex looking worse legally at a trial.  On Trial Day I arrived at court and was greeted with the news she wanted to settle so that strategy wasn't used.

In the last one, just after the final decree, my ex had taken our son on an out-of-state week-long vacation to visit her family.  But she didn't give me any written, emailed or texted notification nor any specifics.  All she had done was mention once that she wanted to go during Spring Break week.  In those days she barely made phone calls.  Well, she had traded my Friday that week for an earlier day that week so I assumed she had cancelled her plans.  Well, I showed up to get him that Friday evening and she was long gone.  She had taken him for the week following Spring Break and hadn't even notified his school he would be gone for a week.  In court the magistrate ruled she wasn't "technically" (quotes used) in Contempt.  The Final Decree was only weeks old and magistrate stretched logic to the limit by stating the old order was no longer enforceable and the new order was too new to be enforceable.  Even my lawyer was flabbergasted.  Who would have thought my order would have needed a disclaimer clause stating how any "in between" issues would be handled?

So much depends on the judge on the day and their own version of "logic". One day you get a peach, the next you get a lemon. I suppose it's like any profession. You get good ones, average ones and bad ones.

I'm a bit nervous on this one. The judge has given her 5 or 6 opportunities to show any co-operation. She hasn't taken any of them. In fact she is doing the opposite. Being belligerent and obstructive, so I don't see her being in any way cooperative when the judge puts her on the stand.

What will be will be.

This takes such energy and focus. Energy and focus which is better spent on productive pursuits. I'm trying to build a new life at the same time. This is exhausting.  I really just want peace.

All she has to do to stop this freight train coming at her, is to be reasonable. Is that truly beyond a narc/borderline?

 

My ex is heading straight into a legal freight train on Tuesday. And a 50/50 chance of jail time for repeated and blatant contempt of court.

I asked rather tongue in cheek, In a different thread why she can't just be reasonable? It would save her so much trouble.

I'm actually curious about this. Is there something wrong with their reasoning function in their brain?

JADE, they are used to steamrollering people, and have difficulty with the concept this doesn't always work.

Hopefully she is about to learn one of the most important lessons of her life.

or maybe not,

I'm not meaning to be flippant,  but she's mentally ill.  Aside from that,  her world view is highly distorted. Personality disorders are,  by definition,  behaviors outside of the norm for a given culture.  It's sad that she's self destructive. Be there for your kids.  As a friend at work told me yesterday,  take care of yourself most of all. He lost his 18 year old son in a car accident two months ago (two younger kids remain).  It was sobering for him to tell me that given what his family has been through.   

To answer your question and piggyback on Turkish... .yes, there is something wrong with their brain.  It's called "executive functioning skills".  They do not have this or have very small amounts of it.  To you, what may be a snap decision takes a lot of brain processing power and time for them.  They are limited in their judgment skills and in their ability to make decisions.  They are very poor planners and prognosticators.  On top of all of this their emotions are super out of whack... .so No, I would not expect her to be "reasonable" for any length of time. 

Good point Turk, one thing i came across, that i have learnt to be true is, you can't get someone with a PD to change the way they think, but you can get them to change their strategy, though there precepts maybe flawed, there rational remains consistent


To paraphrase M Linehan,

You may feel crazy, but that doesn't mean you have to act crazy


I showed my Sd a beautiful mind ( the movie ) and riddled her this,

eventually it seemed to help her a lot.

Thanks for your comments all.

That makes sense SlyQQ. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Only a high court judge isn't a nail. She's hitting the tail of a big powerful dog, with her hammer  . He unleashed fury on her on 15 December for contempt on one court order. Now she's in contempt on the second one he issued her on that date. Plus 4 other acts of belligerence.


I'm thinking NOT, but I have never seen her back against the wall with absolutely no way out. I don't know if she will come out hammering tomorrow or curl up in a ball and cry. After he unleashed on her in December, the judge made her stand in the witness box for 15 minutes crying until he finished the new order, which she is now in breach on.


Thanks Turkish. I'm trying to be there for myself and the girls. Sorry to hear about your friend at work. That must be heartbreaking.


My estimate is that she is co-morbid NPD/BPD to a ratio of 40/60

She has extremely high executive functioning, and planning skills! This is what makes her so dangerous, and believable with her lies! She has pulled the wool over many magistrates eyes. Like 5 of them! The high court is not about convincing arguments however, its about black and white facts on founding and opposing affidavits, argued between advocates.

Prognosticator: agreed low functioning
Emotions: Agreed seriously out of whack
Self and other destructive: Very high
World View: Extremely highly distorted. Bordering on hallucination

Having lived with someone with BPD/NPD for 25 years, I have to tell you that reason isn't part of it. It's about saving face and feeling in control.

Mine continues to tell his relatives that he has "no idea" why our marriage broke up. Most of them buy it too. When I used to remind him of all the threats and intimidation and how that eroded my trust and confidence in him, he said that I should have learned to deal with that as a "good" wife. So back in my court. I'm why we broke up.

This is also why therapy generally isn't effective and why marriage counselling isn't recommended until they deal with the errors in thinking. It's a fundamental, core flaw in thinking that drives them.

Other than a miracle, the only way to survive is to keep them at arms length unless you have a really good therapist and a lot of resolve.

AnuDay is right.  And there is also, often, a resentment of authority (ties back to their parental relationships).

Hey Moselle, My BPDxW was found in contempt of court, too.  Agree w/those above.  I would add that she lacked the ability to see things from a perspective different than her own.  Part of my job involves looking at issues from different angles, in order to see both (or many) sides to a question, which is what helps me do my job.  Not so for her.  It was her way or the highway, which doesn't go over well with Judges.

LuckyJim