Monday, June 27, 2016

Parental Alienation is Child Abuse - Should this form of abuse be also criminalised?

In my legal practice, I see this way too often.Please visit the site below which illustrates this clearly.
http://www.parentalalienation.com.au/
It is a real tragedy. A parent using a child against the other parent by inciting a child (not necessarily small children, but also grown adolescents) to 'break away' from the other parent. Courts in Australia are not generally well equipped to deal with this issue and some of the ICL (independent child lawyers) one comes across fail to recognize it and act accordingly (their quality, in my opinion, is also not the best, being a lowly paid job by lawyers' standards).
Up to not long ago, bullying and harassment claims were not legally recognized by the courts. These days such claims give right to hefty compensation claims sanctioned by the courts for the psychiatric and even crippling damage suffered by the victims. Yet these claims, even a decade ago, were rare if not unheard of. Today they are common.
I believe that the epidemic of vindictive child abusers disguised as 'caring' parents who 'coach' and 'work' their children to 'break away' from the other parent will give rise to hefty civil claims in the future against the abuser parent from the children themselves (once they grow up and get old enough to acknowledge what their parents have done to them) and also from the targeted parents who have suffered the unbearable pain of being rejected by their own children and who would have the right to make multi-million dollar claims against the parent who incited the 'break away'. From an evidentiary perspective, this may present some difficulties but hardly insurmountable.
It is only a matter of time and it would not surprise me if there is a civil case already in process in our system. Once one targeted parent or child prevails against the abuser parent who caused such a devastating damage and sets a precedent there will be an avalanche because the problem is far too common. There are thousands of silent victims (children and targeted parents alike) while the abuser parents who inflicted the pain enjoy an impunity which courts will have to start acknowledging and redressing.

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