27. Part One: Safe-guarding yourself from 'alienation' accusations - supervised visitation

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me on today's episode of the post-separation abuse podcast. Earlier this week, I discussed the myth and the junk science of parental alienation syndrome and the problems with continuing to use terms like parental alienation and alienation when it comes to family law. I also spoke about the gendered consequences of using those terms in family law and the fact that terms such as parental alienation and alienation are usually accusations levelled against protective mothers when they have made allegations of family violence. Today, what I'd like to briefly chat about is what you can do to help to safeguard yourself from alienation accusations and to help to prevent any accusations of parental alienation from sticking. Understandably, when you're separating from a controlling person, from someone who may have been abusive in other ways, there are many reasons why you have concerns about your children in the care of that person, regardless of whether your ex-partner has ever been physically abusive or not. Unfortunately, wanting to protect your children from the other parent to the extent of not allowing any contact at all can make it more likely that you will be accused of alienation. It's important that I say here that if there has been physical violence, threats of physical violence, threats of self-harm or suicidal ideation, problematic alcohol use, drug use, those sorts of things. I'm not suggesting that you just hand your children over to these people. You do have an obligation to put the safety and the wellbeing of your children first. However, if you want to avoid an accusation of alienation or if you want to help to safeguard your case against accusations of alienation being believed, it's important that, along with safeguarding your children, protecting your children, it's important that you also create a façade of being a parent who wants their children to have a relationship with the other parent, albeit a safe relationship. If your stance is that you don't want your children having any contact with that other person whatsoever, it's easy to see where accusations of alienation might actually start to get a bit of a foothold.

A number of my clients are dealing with ex-partners who have been physically violent, who have threatened harm either to themselves or to the children, who have problematic alcohol use and who have problematic drug use. In those situations, what I encourage my clients to explore is supervised visitation with the other parent. One of the best ways for this to be achieved is by a professional supervisor, usually a supervision centre or a children's contact centre. You don't need to engage with a lawyer or go to court in order to be able to use the services of a supervision centre or a contact centre. You can do a search online for such services in your area and you can make contact with those particular centres and find out information such as the costs of supervision and the availability that that particular centre may have.

A protective parent who is prepared to offer supervised time for children with the other parent is going to present better in many cases, than a parent who is cutting off any and all contact. Now, is this ideal for your children? No, it's not ideal, but so much of this journey actually isn't about the ideal. One of the decisions that we have to make on this journey are great ones. To be honest, most of the pathways, most of the options, are not all that great either. We're often choosing between a variety of shitty pathways. That's just the reality of this. What we have to do is to make a choice with whatever we can live with, keeping in mind also that we need to ensure that we are presenting as being child focused, that we are presenting as being parents who want to facilitate a meaningful relationship between our children and the other parent, even if we feel deep in our bones that the other parent is not capable of having a meaningful relationship with any human.

If you suspect that your ex-partner may have one or more personality disorders I'm guessing that's what you're thinking and you would be right. Someone with a personality disorder is not capable of having a healthy or meaningful relationship with another person, and that includes their kids, and that's never going to be possible. But when you're navigating family law, if you suspect that your ex-partner is going to initiate legal proceedings, whether or not they may or may not have a personality disorder is really not your call. You need to be focused on how you're presenting. You need to be focused on your side of the street, the things that you can control, and what you want to be doing is to be presenting as a parent who wants the children to have a meaningful relationship with the other parent, albeit it needs to be safe, and this is where supervised visits come in.

When you're wanting to ensure that accusations of alienation aren't taken seriously by the court or by professionals connected with the court, it's very important that you're aware how your behaviour and how your communication may be perceived by the court or by those court professionals, and this is part of the way that I support my clients by helping them to understand how they might be perceived by others. This can be really frustrating to navigate. When you've been a victim of family violence, when you're trying to move on with your life, when you're trying to establish safety for yourself and your children, it feels really unfair that you should also have to be thinking about how you might be perceived by outsiders. I get it, I've lived it. However, this is something that you do need to radically accept. This is your reality.

Whether or not you genuinely want your children having a relationship with the other parent or not, whether or not you genuinely think that any contact is in your kids' best interests at all, is really not the point. The point is how are you going to be perceived? The point is ensuring that the court and that professionals connected with the court have the perception that that is what you want and again, this is part of how I support my clients to safeguard themselves and to safeguard their case from alienation accusations. Now, in this episode, we've just briefly touched on the way that supervised visits can be one strategy that you can use to enable your children to spend time with the other parent without overly compromising the safety of your children. Join me on next week's episodes where I start to unpack some other things that you can use to help facilitate a relationship between your children and the other parent, whilst also safeguarding yourself from alienation accusations. Thanks so much for your time. I'll talk to you soon.