TEACHING KIDS TO HATE: Children can be weapons in post-divorce warsAuthor(s): Debra Cassens MossSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 74, No. 6 (JUNE 1, 1988), pp. 19-20Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20759933 .

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TEACHING KIDS TO HATE Children can be weapons in post-divorce wars

"The Court has no doubt... that the cause of the blind, brainwashed, bigoted belligerence of the children toward the Father grew from the soil nurtured, watered and tilled by the Mother," the Florida trial court wrote.

"The Court is thoroughly con vinced that the Mother breached every duty she owed as the custodial parent to the non-custodial parent of

instilling love, respect and feeling in the children for their Father. Worse, she slowly dripped poison into the

minds of these children, maybe even

beyond the power of this Court to find the antidote."

Those were the words of Dade

County Circuit Court Judge Richard Yale Feder in the case of Laurel Schutz v. Richard Schutz, Nos. 86 1756 and 86-1757. The problem iden tified by the judge has a name?pa rental alienation syndrome?and according to the psychiatrist who coined the term, it's a growing prob lem in divorce cases.

Two years after the divorce, Laurel Schutz moved with the chil dren without notifying her former husband, Richard. He did not see the children for five years. After that, the children were hostile toward the father, claiming he abandoned them.

Judge Feder ordered the mother to foster a "loving, caring feeling" in the minds of her daughters, Dee Britt and Brigette, toward their father. On

appeal, Florida's Third District Court of Appeal in Miami in a 2-1 decision rejected Laurel Schutz's contention that the order violated her rights to free speech. A petition for a rehear

ing en banc is pending. According to Richard Gardner, a

child psychiatry professor at Colum bia Medical School, children with pa rental alienation syndrome are obsessed by an unjustified or exag gerated hatred of a parent. He main tains the prevalence of the syndrome has increased markedly in the last few

years, to the extent that it is a prob lem in more than 90 percent of the

custody conflicts in which he is the

court-appointed examiner.

The syndrome can be caused by parents who try to "brainwash" their

I 'The mother didn't

\ like the husband

I and had every i reason not to'

Marsha Elser

kids against the other spouse. Some

examples: a parent who calls an ab sent parent an adulterer; a parent who leads his children to believe that

they will starve to death because the other parent is not sending enough money; a parent who calls the other

parent an alcoholic or drug addict. Gardner says parental program

ming can also be subtle and uncon scious. Some examples: a parent who

says, "There are things I could tell you about your father that would make your hair stand on end, but I'm too

good a person to say what they are;" a parent who reinforces a child who is reluctant to visit the other by say ing, "I respect your opinion;" a par ent who says, "Go see your father. If

you don't, the judge will put me in

jail" (implying there are no positive benefits to visiting Daddy).

Norristown, Pa., attorney Lynne Gold-Bikin agrees with Gardner that

parental alienation syndrome is a

growing problem. She has had sev eral cases where the kids exhibited the syndrome.

In one, when custody of a 12

year-old boy was awarded to his gay

father, the mother packed up the

boy's clothes, told him he didn't live in her home anymore and that his room was now a guest room. In three

months, the boy was back with his mother, and has nothing good to say about his father.

In another, a girl who was 12 when her parents divorced didn't in vite her father to her bas mitzvah, still refuses to talk to him four years later, and did not consult with him about

college choices even though he is an educator.

OVERCOMING HATRED According to the dissenter in the

Schutz case, Judge Norman Hendry, the trial court's order goes beyond the

mother's legal duty to encourage vis itation. By requiring her to express opinions she does not hold, Hendry reasoned, the order infringes on her

rights of free speech. Laurel Schutz's attorney, Miami

lawyer Marsha Elser, says Schutz's remarks about her husband were jus tified. "The mother didn't like the husband and had every reason not to like him," she said. She claims the

ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988 19

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trial court failed to admit evidence showing Richard Schutz was violent.

Fort Lauderdale lawyer Renee Goldenberg suggests that the trial judge's order may be impossible to enforce. "How can you get inside somebody else's house to monitor whether a parent is alienating a child?" she asks. And, Goldenberg says, throwing a mother in jail for vi olating such an order would only in crease the children's hatred of their father.

Jeff Atkinson, a member of the ABA Section of Family Law's cus

tody committee, says the usual rem

edy in such cases is to change custody, although some courts have held par ents in contempt for interfering with their children's relationship with the other parent.

He has found at least eight cases decided in the last few years in Lou isiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illi nois, North Carolina, Iowa and California where judges held that a parent cannot poison the mind of a child against the other parent.

Goldenberg proposes appointing a guardian ad litem in such cases to help re-establish contact between parent and child. The guardian could propose family counseling or media tion when appropriate.

Gardner thinks the solution lies with changing the standard for de termining custody from the best in terests of the child to a "healthy psychological bond" presumption.

He says the elimination of the presumption in favor of mothers caused them to fight for custody by alienating their children from their fathers, whether consciously or un

consciously. He suggests that preference be

given to the parent who has the strongest healthy psychological bond with the children, and for young chil dren, he says, that parent is more

likely to be the primary caretaker. But Beverly Groner, immediate

retiring chair of the ABA Section of Family Law, says joint custody helps avoid situations where the custodial parent becomes overbearing: "Par

ents who have sole custody very often perceive that they have an entitle ment to be a dictator and tyrant over their children, and to withhold and grant privileges to see them in ac cordance with their own values."

?Debra Cassens Moss

LAWPOLL

Should active euthanasia?the administration of a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient who wants to die?be legal? Yes, say lawyers, by a margin of almost 2-to-l (56.8 percent to 31.7 percent). This is one of the findings of a new Journal Gallup survey of the profession.

But lawyers' support for active euthanasia is strong only in cases where a terminally ill patient has made clear his wish to die. An equally large percentage of lawyers (57.6 per cent) oppose legal euthanasia if the patient is incompetent and consent is given by his legal representative. Only 27.2 percent of lawyers would ap prove of active euthanasia in these cases.

And nine out of 10 lawyers (89.2 percent) agree that active euthanasia should not be legal if the patient's consent is ambiguous.

The debate over active euthan asia has grown heated in recent months. In January, the Journal of the American Medical Association published "It's Over, Debbie," an ac count of a young resident physician

who gave a terminally ill cancer pa tient a lethal overdose of morphine. A criminal investigation has been launched in that case. JAMA has re fused to say who wrote the piece, and there are lingering questions about its authenticity.

Lawyers overall believe, by a 49 34 percent margin, that physicians who do what the resident did in "Debbie" should face criminal pros ecution. Lawyers over age 50, how

ever, tilt the other way: 46.1 percent of them think there shouldn't be criminal prosecutions of physicians currently suspected of practicing ac tive euthanasia, while only 35.3 per cent think there should.

But a majority of lawyers (51.3 percent) would ask their doctor for a lethal injection if they were hope lessly ill and in great pain.

The survey was conducted for the Journal by the Gallup Organiza tion of Princeton, N.J. The firm in terviewed 509 lawyers by telephone from March 17-24, 1988. The margin of error is 5 percent.

?Paul Reidinger

20 ABA JOURNAL / JUNE 1, 1988 ABAJ Chart/Sam Ward

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