Pretoria - Parental alienation syndrome diagnosed in an 8-year-old child whose unmarried parents are at loggerheads over his maintenance has caused the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, to intervene as this situation has a detrimental effect on the child’s psychological and mental well-being.
Judge Leicester Adams said a court should not hesitate to intervene in the interest of the minor child under these circumstances.
The judge commented that the child has since his birth been caught in a tug-of-war between the applicant (his mother) and the respondent (his father), who were never married, but had agreed to have a child together, only identified as M.
The mother and the father have been involved in ongoing litigation.
Last year the court appointed an advocate to act on behalf of the child himself to ensure the little boy’s best interests are represented before court. The advocate also has to investigate the child’s living circumstances.
A clinical psychologist was also appointed to urgently investigate the circumstances of the child.
At least eight court orders have been granted in the past, all of which dealt with disputes between the parties in relation to the exercise of their parental responsibilities and rights.
Experts had been engaged to assist in resolving some of the issues between the parents and three parenting co-ordinators had been appointed up to that point, none of whom lasted the distance, the judge said. He added that this gave some indication of the animosity throughout the history of the litigation between the parties.
In a bid to alleviate the animosity between the parents, the court last year directed that the mother and the father would remain jointly vested with full parental responsibilities and rights towards the child. It was ordered that the child would every two weeks reside with one of the parents.
But this changed in the present application, as the court ordered that the child would live with the mother for the time being. He would only after three months and following intense psychological therapy, be reintroduced to his father’s care.
A psychologist found M was more at risk than ever and his psychological functioning was “in a process of rapid and very concerning decline”.
The expert said M was living in a “psychologically chaotic and emotionally dysregulated family, which is no doubt frightening and confusing”.
In his opinion the child was “rendered into a mere object by the ongoing conflict and vicious power struggle between his parents who both believe and claim that they are acting in his interests while behaving like two rivalrous small children trying to convince authority figures that they are the ones being victimised”.
“Parental alienation makes the world in which M is being raised a treacherous and emotionally dangerous one. To survive in it, he must learn to become at best a tactical liar and a remorseless politician, at worst become so bound up in the alienating parent’s delusional belief system that his attachment bonds are disrupted and he himself becomes delusional,” the expert told the court.
It has emerged that his father is convincing him that his mother and her parents are harmful or dangerous – the very definition of “parental alienation syndrome”, the court was told.
The psychologist took the view that the child needs a period of protective separation from his father’s influence. He therefore recommended that M should not have contact with his father for three months while undergoing therapy.
At the same time, the father would need to be guided as to how to be a healthy co-parent, he said.
The child is meanwhile of the view that he is the cause of conflict and pain for both his parents. He noted on two occasions that his parents “had been fighting since before I was born” and “they will fight until I am 30 years old ... They will always fight ... I will have my own wife and children already and they will still fight over me”.
When asked about his wishes that may come true, he wished that his parents would stop fighting.
The judge commented that the child was suffering severely from the consequences of the clear inability of the parties to jointly act in his best interests and that as upper guardian of children, the court had to once again step in.
Pretoria News