The first part of this is perhaps for the 'general reader'. The second is more technical, to do with a successful appeal against enforcement of a contact order in a 'parental alienation' case.

Part one.

'Parental Alienation' is when a parent who has control of a child poisons them against the other parent. So that when asked whether they want to have a relationship with them the child, apparently off its own bat, says they do not. Of course if there are genuine reasons why they should not want to see a parent - abuse, or lack of child centredness for example - that is not PA. It is only PA if it is a response to the wishes of the parent who has control of them.

Now that the wishes of children are getting more attention - and that is usually a good thing - it has become important for a parent who is hostile to the other parent should get the child to say that it is their own view that they do not want to see them. Sometimes the child is deliberately coached, at other times the child picks up - as they do - what their parent wants, even if they do not explicitly try and impose it.  All parents rely on their children trusting them and their judgement, and this is an abuse of the confidence that children usually rightly show.

PA is sometimes given the title 'parental alienation syndrome'. This is an attempt to 'medicalise' it. This is important in the United States. It has so far failed to meet the tests applied by the relevant authorities to be considered a medical 'syndrome'. This sometimes leads people to say it is not 'recognised'. Actually it is only the 'syndrome' bit that is not recognised, not the conduct or the effect.

 But PA is often not 'recognised' in the more everyday sense - viz it is not spotted. A child's view is taken at face value. Even fairly obvious 'give away signs' are not heeded, for example children writing hate letters to their other parent using language too advanced for their years.

What is to be done? Prevention is easier than cure. Prevention usually takes the form of not allowing breaches of contact to become entrenched. This makes the child feel incapable of resisting the wishes of the parent on whom they are now wholly dependent, and prevents them seeing their 'other parent' except in terms picked up from the resident parent. Wretchedly the current legal system makes PA only too possible. The parent who has gained possession of the child is allowed to control the child's relationship to the other. This control can, in theory, be overturned by a court order, but there are so many barriers and delays to getting one that there is plenty of time and opportunity to instil PA.

So quick and easy remedies to contact denial are necessary.....but not yet in sight.

part two

this is a comment on a successful appeal, in front of Judge Munby (usually a fair judge) and others of a father who was being sanctioned for not allowing his son, now 11, to see his mother. [2010 EWCA civ 1253]

That PA was present was pretty well made out. Judge Caddick of Maidstone had been piling consequencies on the father for not allowing the boy to see his mother, in defiance of court orders. The father had taken the punishment but insisted it was the boy refusing to see his mother, not him stopping him.

Munby set aside the court orders and lifted the remaining sanctions. The judgement is 28 pages, but the guts of it was that in his view the father was complying with the orders in making the boy available for contact, but it was the boy who was refusing.

Poor lad, the Court of Appeal has allowed him to be tool of his father.

it has signalled to all alienating parents that if they tough it out, they will win.

While acknowledging the difficulties, this is a bad decision. The boy should have been liberated from the pressures his father put on him. The father is being short-sighted too. The boy, when old enough to be independent, will get in contact with his mother and condemn his father for taking away a key part of his childhood.

The answer really lay well back - greater resolution of the legal system to promote the rights of children to both their parents  at a far earlier stage.