107. When 'parental alienation' is actually coercive control

WEBVTT
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Before we begin, a brief content note.
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This episode discusses coercive control, post separation abuse, and the discredited framework of parental alienation, including references to research on child sexual abuse.
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It's directed primarily at Australian protective parents who have been accused of alienation or who have experienced the deliberate damaging of their relationship with their children by a coercive and controlling former partner.
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If you need support, 1-800-respect on 1-800-737-732 is available at 24-7 across Australia.
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If you're listening from somewhere else in the world, please do consider reaching out to a support service near you.
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You know the drill.
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Let's take a slow deep breath in together.
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Hold it for a moment.
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Then slowly release it.
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Bring your shoulders up to your ears.
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And then let them drop.
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Feel that tension at least some of it.
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Start to dissipate, even if just a small amount.
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Unclench your jaw.
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Unclench your hands, fingers, loosen up a little bit, however you can, if safe to do so.
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Welcome to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast.
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I'm your host, Danielle Black.
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Today's episode is one that I've been building toward for a quite a while.
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We're going to talk about what is often called, quote, parental alienation, about what it is, what it isn't, and what we should be calling it instead.
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We're also going to talk about how the Australian legal landscape has shifted in some really important ways around this entire conversation.
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But I do want to flag something important at the outset.
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This episode is primarily for Australian protective parents, and the legal context that we will be discussing is the Australian legal context.
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As always, nothing covered here is legal advice.
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The dynamics that I'll be describing are the dynamics that I see in my coaching work with Australian clients.
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If you're listening from somewhere else in the world, particularly from the US, where this framework has, unfortunately, the longest history and the most aggressive deployment, some of what I describe will resonate, but some won't map directly to your jurisdiction.
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This is probably going to be a longer episode than usual, partly because there is just simply a lot of ground to cover.
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If you're a protective parent who has been accused of alienation, or if you've experienced the deliberate damaging of your relationship with your children by a coercive and controlling former partner, this episode is absolutely for you.
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The territory that we're walking through includes some hard history, some difficult realities about how the family law system has worked, and some honest grief about what protective parents have endured.
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But it will also include the reframe that I think is one of the most important developments in this space in a generation, and the legislative changes in Australia that, for the first time in many years, do give protective parents some slightly stronger ground to stand on.
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Let's start with what parental alienation is, where it came from, and why it has been such a successful weapon against protective parents.
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The term parental alienation or parental alienation syndrome in its original formulation was developed in the 1980s by an American psychiatrist named Richard Gardner.
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Gardner created PAS, parental alienation syndrome, specifically in the context of child custody disputes where mothers were raising concerns about child sexual abuse.
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His theory was that children who resist contact with their fathers, particularly in cases where abuse is alleged, are not actually being protected by their mothers, but rather they're being programmed or brainwashed.
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And the quote syndrome is the result of that programming.
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Gardner himself was a deeply problematic figure.
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His published writings on child sexual abuse greatly minimized the harm.
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He suggested that sexual contact between adults and children could in some circumstances be beneficial.
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He characterized maternal concerns about abuse as quote hysterical.
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He testified extensively in court cases on behalf of accused fathers and against protective mothers.
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His theories have been thoroughly discredited by the broader scientific community.
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Parental alienation syndrome has never been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
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It is not recognized by the American Psychological Association, by the World Health Organization, or by any major psychological or psychiatric professional body in the world.
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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women has called it a pseudoconcept.
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And yet the framework has persisted.
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It has been imported into family law conversations around the world, including into Australia, despite having absolutely no statutory basis here and no scientific credibility anywhere.
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So why has it persisted?
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Simply because it's worked.
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It's worked as a weapon against protective parents.
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When a father, and yes, the statistical pattern of who deploys alienation allegations is overwhelmingly male.
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When a father alleges that his child's mother is quote alienating them, the entire focus of the case can shift.
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Instead of focusing on the father's behaviour that might be causing the children's resistance, the system can then turn to investigate the mother's behaviour for evidence of alienation.
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Her advocacy for her children is reframed as pathology.
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Her protective decisions are reframed as manipulation, her credibility is undermined, her authority over her own experiences and observations is dissolved.
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This is not theoretical.
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The research on the cost of this framework where it has taken hold is very sobering.
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In the US, and I want to be very careful to state that this is US-specific research, and the US system is structurally very different from the Australian one.
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A 2019 study by Professor Joan Meyer examined more than 4,000 family court cases in detail.
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She found that when fathers alleged parental alienation against mothers who had raised abuse concerns, mothers lost custody to those fathers in 60% of cases.
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Even when the court was convinced that the mother had been subjected to family violence by the father, but the father then alleged parental alienation, fathers still took primary custody in 29% of cases.
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Again, that is US research describing the US system in which the alienation framework has been most aggressively embedded.
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We'll come to the Australian picture in a moment, because it matters that the picture here is very different.
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But these findings do tell us something important about what this framework does wherever it's been allowed to take hold.
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It can hand significant parenting time to abusers, and that is its function.
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It's not by accident, it's by design.
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That is the framework.
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Discredited science, vast international criticism, catastrophic outcomes for children wherever it's been adopted.
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So why am I telling Australian parents about US research?
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Because while the Australian system itself has not embraced this framework in the way that the US system has, you and your former partner may well be deeply embedded in US-based, US produced content that treat all of this as gospel.
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And that's the dynamic that we need to talk about next.
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Here is what I see over and over in my coaching work with Australian protective parents.
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A woman is leaving a relationship or has left, often, with the people that are coming to us at Danielle Black Coaching.
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She's leaving a coercive and controlling relationship.
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She's doing her best to advocate for her children, and her former partner is consuming a particular kind of content online.
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Father's rights material, parental alienation, quote, recovery material, US based custody strategy content, how to quote win your kids.
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You can usually tell when this is happening.
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The vocabulary changes, the certainty changes, the threats change.
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He starts telling her in emails, in messages, perhaps also via lawyers or other professionals, that she is quote alienating the children.
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I've had many clients tell me that their former partner has started sending them links to websites that detail alienation.
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He might start warning her that he will quote prove it.
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He might start talking about quote parental alienation experts.
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He insists that the system will see what's really going on.
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He may threaten to seek primary care of the children.
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He certainly threatens her psychologically.
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If this is your experience, if your former partner has gone down this rabbit hole and is now speaking to you with any of this language, I want two things to land with you.
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The first is that the psychological pressure that you are experiencing is very real.
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Even if these threats never amount to anything in court, and in my experience the vast majority of them don't ever amount to anything tangible, the experience of being constantly accused of damaging your own children by someone who used to know you intimately is its own form of harm.
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I've lived it.
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It's exhausting, it's destabilizing, it can plant doubt in your own mind.
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In and of itself it can be a continuation of the coercive controls that you experienced inside the relationship.
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Except it's now coming from outside of that relationship.
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I don't want to minimise that psychological pressure.
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I want you to know that it's real and it's hard, and it's exactly the kind of post-separation abuse that this podcast exists to address.
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The second thing that I want to land with you is that the Australian legal system is not the system that your ex is reading about online.
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And this is important.
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The US-produced content that your former partner is likely consuming describes a US system and US outcomes.
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It describes a United States, quote, alienation industry and alienation professionals and litigation strategies.
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Your ex is likely being told via that content that the system will see through you, that he will, quote, win the children, that his persistence will be rewarded, and that is not how the Australian system has worked, and it's not how the Australian system works now.
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Australian family courts have not in the main embraced the parental alienation framework the way that US courts have.
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The term does not appear in our Family Law Act.
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It has no statutory basis here.
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At final trial, the stage of court proceedings where the allegations are tested most rigorously, the threshold for alienation accusations to be taken seriously is incredibly high.
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Dr.
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Stan Carosi, an Australian clinical counsellor and sociologist, has observed that Australian family law largely avoids the term when describing published cases.
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The Australian academic and clinical voice that is sceptical of the framework includes Dr.
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Karen Williams, an Australian psychiatrist specialising in complex PTSD, who has publicly described parental alienation system as quote, made up pop psychology.
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This does not mean that Australian protective parents have had it easy.
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They haven't.
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It's important that we're honest about that.
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Australian research published in 2021 in the Australian Journal of Social Issues examined 380 fully contested cases in the family court.
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Just 14% of family court judges expressed a belief that the allegations of child sexual abuse before them were true.
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88% believed those children were at no risk.
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In nearly two-thirds of cases, the children had time with the alleged perpetrator increased.
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In 17% of cases, children were moved into the alleged perpetrator's care.
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That research is Australian, peer-reviewed, recent, and damning.
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It tells us that Australian family courts have had their own profound problems with disbelieving protective parents, not by importing the alienation framework wholesale, but by other mechanisms, including disbelief, minimization, and the framing of protective concerns as exaggeration or vindictiveness.
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And here's where the Australian dynamic genuinely differs from the US one.
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In my coaching experience, and it's important that I flag this as my observation as a coaching practitioner rather than as published research, protective parents in Australian family law proceedings are far more likely to be framed as obstructive than alienating.
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The accusation that lands here is not usually quote she's alienating the children.
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Rather, it's more often quote she is being obstructive, or quote, she's not facilitating contact, or she is making this harder than it needs to be.
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That is a different problem with different solutions.
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There are specific things that protective parents can do to avoid being framed as obstructive whilst still protecting their children, but that is its own future episode.
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But for now, the takeaway is this.
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Your former partner might be loudly threatening you with parental alienation accusations.
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And the Australian system is far less likely to take those threats seriously at trial than the US-produced content suggests that it will.
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The actual risk in Australian proceedings is more often the protective parent bank framed as obstructive, which can still be a real problem, but it is a different problem, and it is one that we can work with.
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So hold that distinction.
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The threats can be loud, but the Australian threshold is high.
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Australian inquiries did identify systemic problems in how the family law system was responding to family violence and protective parents, and those inquiries are the reason that the 2023 reforms happened.
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Two inquiries in particular drove the changes.
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The Australian Law Reform Commission's Family Law for the Future, tabled in April 2019, was the first comprehensive review of Australia's family law system since the Family Law Act commenced in 1976.
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It made 60 recommendations with significant focus on improving how the system addresses family violence and child abuse.
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The Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System ran from 2019 to 2021.
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Its second interim report, tabled in March 2021, made 29 recommendations focused on family violence, court delays, and the family law framework.
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Its recommendation 15, worth noting specifically, I think, called for all family law professionals, including judges, to undertake regular professional training on parental alienation, domestic violence, coercive control, complex trauma, and unconscious bias.
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The committee placed parental alienation in that list alongside coercive control and complex trauma.
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That's a signal that the committee recognised the contested and complex nature of the term, not as a freestanding diagnosis to be embraced uncritically.
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These were Australian inquiries addressing Australian problems, recommending Australian reforms.
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The Family Law Amendment Act 2023, which we'll get to in a minute, is the Australian legislative response to the Australian findings, not an import of overseas reform, but a homegrown response to homegrown evidence.
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This matters because the reforms now in force are designed for the system that you're actually navigating, not the one that your former partner is likely reading about online.
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So now let's talk about what should replace the parental alienation framework.
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When people talk about parental alienation, they're usually describing one of two situations.
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The first is a protective parent who has been falsely accused.
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The mother who is raising legitimate safety concerns about her former partner.
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The mother who is honouring her children's expressed reluctance to spend time with the other parent.
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The parent who is exercising protective parenting in response to a documented pattern of harmful behaviour.
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Protective parents who are accused of alienation because their actions inconvenienced the coercive controller and threaten the control over the children.
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The second situation is also genuinely concerning, and it's one where one parent, almost always a coercive and controlling parent, is actually engaged in quite deliberate sustained behaviour aimed at damaging the children's relationship with the other parent, telling children lies about the other parent, putting them in loyalty conflicts, recruiting them to take sides, using them as instruments to harm the protective parent, burdening the child with their adult emotions, creating a situation in which the child feels responsible emotionally for that parent, essentially using the children as instruments to harm the protective parent.
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Both situations exist, they're very different, and both are actually misnamed by the parental alienation framework.
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This is one of the reasons why I refuse to use the term except when I'm talking about false accusations against protective parents.
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The reframe that the academic field has converged on, driven particularly by the work of Dr.
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Emma Katz, who is a UK-based criminologist, she spent more than a decade researching the impact of coercive control on children.
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The reframe is this.
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Both of these situations belong inside a framework of coercive control, not as a separate quote, alienation phenomenon, rather as coercive control.
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Katz introduced a specific term in her 2022 book, Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives, published by Oxford University Press, and the first academic book to focus specifically on children's experiences of coercive control.
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The term that she introduced refined further in 2023 research is child and mother sabotage.
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CAMS for short CAMS Child and Mother Sabotage.
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And the reasoning behind that term is important.
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Parental alienation on the surface is gender neutral.
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It can be claimed by any parent against any other parent, but in practice the term is overwhelmingly weaponised by abusive fathers against protective mothers.
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But the gender neutrality means that it has no structural defence against the misuse.
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Child and mother sabotage CAMS is structurally different.
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It names the perpetrator, the coercive controller, which is almost always a father, and it names the targets, the child.
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Child and the mother, who are co-victims of the sabotage.
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And here's the key: a father cannot co-opt CAMS against a mother because he's not the mother.
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The term has structural protection against being misused, built into its very name.
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When you apply CAMS to the two situations that I just described, so in the first situation, the falsely accused protective parent, what's actually happening is that the coercive controller is using alienation allegations as a Darvo move.
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Darvo stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
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The coercive controller denies any abusive behaviour.
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They then attack the protective parent's character, reversing the narrative so that he becomes the wronged victim and she is the quote alienator.
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The alienation allegation is the vehicle for this reversal.
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In and of itself it is a coercive control tactic.
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In the second situation where there is genuinely parent-child relationship sabotage occurring, this is also a tactic of coercive control.
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The controller is using the child as an instrument.
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He is damaging their relationship with the protective parent, the mother, in order to maintain his dominance.
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It is not a separate alienation phenomenon.
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It is coercive control of the child and the mother simultaneously.
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In both situations, the coercive control framework is the correct framework.
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The alienation framework is the misnomer.
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It's wrong.
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This isn't just semantics.
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It's about precision.
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Precision matters in this field because the framework that you use determines what gets investigated, what gets believed, and what gets protected.
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If you use the alienation framework, you investigate the protective parent.
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If you use the coercive control framework, you investigate the coercive control patterns and the person perpetrating them.
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The investigation is different, the findings are different, the outcomes are different.
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That's just one reason why this reframe matters.
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If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I usually keep the legislative details in the background.
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I'm a coach, not a lawyer, and the law is your lawyer's domain.
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In saying that, there are moments where the legislative framework matters a lot to the protective parent situation that I do think it's worth bringing forward.
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This is one of those moments.
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Since the sixth of may 2024, Australian family law has been operating under a substantially reformed framework.
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The Family Law Act Amendment, which commenced in May 2024, made the most significant changes of the Family Law Act 1975 since the 2006 reforms.
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Now the 2006 reforms, they were the ones that introduced the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility.
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That's the decision-making component of parenting.
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Now we know, we know now, that that contributed to so many bad outcomes for protective parents and children because the equal shared parental responsibility language was interpreted by many in the community, and you know, not just the average person in the community, but also by professionals working in the family law space, it was interpreted to also mean that equal shared parenting time should also be presumed.
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That was a huge problem.
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We're still dealing with the the effects of that really ideology today.
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So what changed?
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Now the important thing is that the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility has been removed.
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It's gone.
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There is no longer any legal presumption that parents will share decision making equally over their children.
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The new framework speaks of joint decision making for major long-term issues, and courts can order that in various configurations.
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So for example, sometimes one parent may be given sole parental decision making over education or medical, with there being joint decision making for other long-term major decisions, and it's also very possible for parents to obtain sole parental decision making.
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The presumption that those major long-term decisions will be shared, quote unquote, equally is gone.
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So what does that mean for protective parents?
00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:27.759
It means that the system no longer starts from a position that assumes equal decision making, and it no longer assumes that equal decision making is in your children's best interests, and with that wording gone, we can now also start to undo the links that that wording had with an assumption of equal time being in children's best interests.
00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:45.680
The starting point now, as far as we're talking about the law, the wording of the Family Law Act, the starting point now is that your children's actual needs and circumstances are the primary thing to be considered.
00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:55.519
Now, something can be in the law, and how that actually gets implemented is an entirely different situation, unfortunately.
00:27:55.599 --> 00:28:01.680
And I know that there's many of you listening who understand exactly what it is that I'm talking about.
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:08.079
Moving on, secondly, the best interests of the child framework has been simplified and reweighted.
00:28:08.240 --> 00:28:12.240
The previous framework had about sixteen factors that needed to be considered.
00:28:12.400 --> 00:28:20.160
The new framework has a much shorter list, but I think even more importantly, the weighting has changed.
00:28:20.480 --> 00:28:28.640
Safety is now explicitly weighted higher than the benefit of a meaningful relationship with both parents.
00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:30.640
Now that's important.
00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:50.079
Section 60 C C two A of the Family Law Act now provides in effect that the court must give greater weight to the need to protect the child from harm than to any benefit of having a relationship with both parents.
00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:53.839
That is a very significant and substantial shift.
00:28:54.079 --> 00:29:07.519
Under the previous framework, family report writers, other professionals in the system, even judges, often treated safety and meaningful relationships as roughly equal considerations.
00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:11.759
They're no longer treated on par or equal.
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:15.359
Safety well and truly wins.
00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.000
And this is what I want to really land with you.
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:27.920
The benefit of a relationship with both parents is now expressed in the legislation as quote where it is safe to do so.
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:30.480
That qualifier is important.
00:29:31.359 --> 00:29:37.599
That qualifier is now the law where it is safe to do so.
00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:54.319
If a family report writer any other single expert witness treats safety and relationship as being equally weighted, then they are not actually using the current framework that exists in the Family Law Act.
00:29:54.640 --> 00:30:08.960
This is just one reason why it can be so incredibly important for family report writers to be cross-examined at a final trial, for family reports to be scrutinized.
00:30:09.119 --> 00:30:14.160
Remember, as we've unpacked in previous episodes, they are one piece of evidence.
00:30:14.640 --> 00:30:15.599
Just one.
00:30:16.079 --> 00:30:26.559
Those recommendations are not gospel, particularly if there's concerns that the report writer has incorrectly weighted the factors.
00:30:26.799 --> 00:30:35.680
Next, and this matters specifically for cases involving coercive control, final parenting orders and are much harder to revisit.
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:52.400
There's a new section that provides that a court must not reconsider a final parenting order unless there has been a significant change in circumstances since the order was made, and it is in the child's best interests for the order to be reconsidered.
00:30:52.720 --> 00:30:56.000
So what does that mean for protective parents?
00:30:56.559 --> 00:31:15.519
What it means is that endless litigation being taken back to court even after final orders as a tactic of post-separation abuse, you know, bringing you back to court again and again and again to keep you destabilized, depleted, that tactic is now much structurally harder.
00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:31.839
The system is starting to recognise that some of what looks like you know contested family law is actually a continuation of coercive control using the court system as the vehicle, as the weapon.
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:36.799
There's also now greater information sharing across systems.
00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:54.559
The Family Law Act amendment of information sharing, which commenced alongside the main act, enables sharing of family violence, child abuse and neglect information between the Federal Circuit and Family Court, child welfare agencies and police.
00:31:54.880 --> 00:31:59.119
And this addresses a long-standing structural failure.
00:31:59.359 --> 00:32:05.839
Previously you could disclose abuse to police and the family court could be unaware of it.
00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:11.200
You could disclose to child protection and the family court may be unaware of it.
00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:20.960
So now all of those individual silos have been dismantled and documentation in any system is now relevant across all systems.
00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:29.279
And lastly, connecting directly to our broader conversation, coercive control has now been criminalised in two Australian states.
00:32:29.519 --> 00:32:40.400
In New South Wales, the Crimes Legislation Amendment, Coercive Control Act 2022, came into operation on July 1, 2024.
00:32:40.799 --> 00:32:47.759
Coercive control in New South Wales is now a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of seven years' imprisonment.
00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:52.720
It applies to current and former intimate partner relationships.
00:32:52.960 --> 00:33:05.680
In Queensland, there is a much broader and stronger Coercive Control and Affirmative Consent and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024, which commenced on the 26th of May 2025.
00:33:05.920 --> 00:33:10.799
The maximum penalty in the state of Queensland is 14 years imprisonment.
00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:12.799
That's the highest in Australia.
00:33:13.039 --> 00:33:24.559
The Queensland offence also has a much broader scope than the New South Wales offence, because it applies to not just intimate partners but also to other family members and also to unpaid carers.
00:33:25.039 --> 00:33:30.799
The Queensland law is known as Hannah's Law, named for Hannah Clarke and her three children.
00:33:31.039 --> 00:33:34.640
Other Australian states are at various stages of reform.
00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:40.400
Victoria has not yet criminalised it as a standalone offence, but is in consultation.
00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:43.440
South Australia has proposed legislation.
00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:46.400
Western Australia is taking a staged approach.
00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:52.880
At the time of recording this, the Northern Territory had not yet taken significant action.
00:33:53.440 --> 00:34:11.440
And again, at the time of recording, the ACT had introduced the Crimes Coercive Control Amendment Bill into the Legislative Assembly, which, if passed, it will create a standalone criminal offence of coercive control.
00:34:12.079 --> 00:34:26.719
It's worth noting that coercive control, whether specifically legislated in its own right or not, it's important to note that it is still recognized as family violence.
00:34:26.960 --> 00:34:35.679
So even if there's no standalone criminal offence in whatever state you're in, it is recognised as family violence.
00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:50.719
One of the common misconceptions that I see, for example, in the state that I live in, which is Victoria, is people assuming that because Victoria doesn't have a standalone offence for coercive control, that it's somehow not recognised at all legally.
00:34:50.880 --> 00:34:52.239
Now that's not the case.
00:34:52.480 --> 00:35:03.920
The debate in Victoria has partly been about whether creating a specific criminal offence would improve safety outcomes that go beyond the existing family violence framework.
00:35:04.159 --> 00:35:14.079
It's also important that we're realistic about coercive control as a standalone criminal offence.
00:35:14.480 --> 00:35:25.679
There's often a public perception that once coercive control is criminalised in a state, victims will simply be able to report the behaviour and perpetrators will be convicted.
00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:28.559
But the reality is much more complex.
00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:38.400
A criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest evidentiary standard in the Australian legal system.
00:35:38.800 --> 00:35:46.559
And that threshold exists for a very good reason, but it does create significant challenges when dealing with coercive control.
00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:51.280
Partly because the behaviour most often occurs in private.
00:35:51.679 --> 00:35:58.159
Many individual acts are not in isolation considered unlawful.
00:35:58.400 --> 00:36:04.880
The harm arises from the pattern and the cumulative effect rather than any single incident.
00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:09.039
The evidence can span months or years.
00:36:09.599 --> 00:36:16.639
Perpetrators frequently present well publicly and may have little or no criminal history.
00:36:17.039 --> 00:36:22.719
Victim survivors often have very limited documentary evidence of the fall pattern.
00:36:23.199 --> 00:36:30.079
And trauma can affect recall and the ability to provide a neat chronological account.
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:38.559
This is one reason why many jurisdictions have spent years in consultation before introducing coercive control offences.
00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:56.320
Legislators have been trying to balance protecting victim survivors, ensuring procedural fairness, avoiding criminalizing ordinary relationship conflict, and creating an offense that prosecutors can actually prove.
00:36:56.880 --> 00:37:01.679
From a family law perspective, this distinction is particularly important.
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:07.280
The family court is not applying the criminal standard of proof.
00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:12.639
Rather, it generally applies the balance of probabilities.
00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:28.639
A court may therefore be satisfied that coercive control has occurred in a co parenting relationship, for example, even when there would be insufficient evidence to support a criminal conviction.
00:37:28.880 --> 00:37:40.719
In many ways, the greater significance of coercive control legislation may ultimately be cultural and educational rather than prosecutorial.
00:37:41.039 --> 00:38:02.639
The fact that it is an offence in several states and will likely become an offence in more states and territories in Australia, that fact helps to establish a shared understanding that family violence is often a pattern of domination and control, not simply a series or one-off physical assaults.
00:38:03.119 --> 00:38:09.519
Now, whether that is ever going to translate into a large number of convictions remains to be seen.
00:38:09.679 --> 00:38:24.239
Looking at the experience in other jurisdictions such as the UK and Scotland, many experts anticipated from the outset that the conviction numbers would be relatively modest compared to the prevalence of coercive control itself.
00:38:24.719 --> 00:38:34.159
The existence of the offence and the number of convictions are not necessarily good measures of whether coercive control is actually occurring in the community.
00:38:34.480 --> 00:38:43.199
In fact, most coercive control is highly likely to remain far outside the criminal justice system altogether.
00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:48.960
So what does all of this mean for protective parents in Australia practically?
00:38:49.199 --> 00:38:56.480
Well, in New South Wales and Queensland, you now have a criminal law pathway for documented patterns of coercive control.
00:38:56.880 --> 00:39:01.119
The threshold for actual prosecution remains very high.
00:39:01.440 --> 00:39:13.679
These laws are new, police and prosecutors are still building capacity, but the existence of the offence matters regardless because it shifts how the patterns can be understood and documented.
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:17.119
The cultural ground in the courts is still moving.
00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:34.159
Family report writers, independent children's lawyers, magistrates, judges, all of those professionals still vary widely and wildly in how they actually understand the framework of coercive control.
00:39:34.400 --> 00:39:42.000
When we're specifically talking about family law, your legal team's familiarity with the current framework is critical.
00:39:42.320 --> 00:39:48.880
But and this I think is a really important point, the law has shifted in your favour.
00:39:49.119 --> 00:39:52.880
And rather I think more specifically in the favour of our children.
00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:59.119
The issue that we have is the consistent and appropriate implementation.
00:39:59.360 --> 00:40:02.239
Unfortunately, that is going to take longer.
00:40:02.559 --> 00:40:06.000
So now for a bit of practical orientation.
00:40:06.239 --> 00:40:13.039
Knowing that this episode can only scratch the surface and that the full framework does live inside the blueprint.
00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:18.400
One of the most important things that I can tell you might sound a little bit counterintuitive.
00:40:18.880 --> 00:40:47.199
When you're accused of alienation or one of its Australian cousins withholding gatekeeping or unilateral decision making, every instinct and almost every piece of advice that you'll find online can seem as though it's telling you to turn toward the accusation, to anticipate the other parent's next move, to gather evidence against them, to build your case, to defeat the other parent's story.
00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:51.760
What I'm suggesting you do is the opposite to that.
00:40:52.159 --> 00:40:56.719
What I'm suggesting you do is to come back into your own lane.
00:40:57.920 --> 00:41:10.800
Because here's the truth, and this is coming from me not just as a professional who's been working in this post-separation space for many, many years now, but also as a survivor of this.
00:41:11.039 --> 00:41:13.440
This is something that I was accused of for years.
00:41:13.599 --> 00:41:17.679
It's potentially still the narrative that my former partner might have about me.
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:19.039
I don't much care.
00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:26.880
But I say it to highlight the fact that I'm not coming at this just purely from that professional lens.
00:41:27.440 --> 00:41:44.800
I truly do understand what it is like to have those accusations thrown at you by a former partner, by your former partner's legal team, by your former partner's allies and advocates.
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:46.159
I get it.
00:41:46.480 --> 00:41:58.400
But what I know to be true is that when you are consumed by the other parent's narrative, even when you're fighting against it, you're in their lane, not yours.
00:41:58.559 --> 00:42:08.639
You're reactive, you're dysregulated, you're spending the little energy that you do have on the one thing that you can't control, which is the other parent.
00:42:09.760 --> 00:42:13.199
This is the embodiment of calm is credible.
00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:25.360
And you cannot fake being calm from a nervous system that is dysregulated, from a nervous system that is in fight, flight, faint, freeze, fawn.
00:42:26.159 --> 00:42:30.000
This is exactly why the inner work is so important.
00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:34.320
So before anything else, one shift has to happen.
00:42:34.559 --> 00:42:40.400
You have to be able to see that what you're doing is protective, not punitive.
00:42:40.559 --> 00:42:56.079
So if you're being conservative with the parenting arrangements, if you haven't agreed to overnight time, or if you're keeping that overnight time minimal currently, what you're doing is protective not punitive.
00:42:56.400 --> 00:43:13.599
The accusation of alienation, or again, it's Australian cousins that I see so often in this work, withholding, gatekeeping, unilateral decision making, honestly, we we could probably have a bit of like an alienation bingo card.
00:43:14.079 --> 00:43:20.159
Those accusations are designed to stop you seeing that what you're doing is protective.
00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:27.599
They reframe your protecting as withholding, your boundaries as gatekeeping, your advocacy is alienating.
00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:37.920
And when that is said with enough confidence and bluster, often by professionals, you can start to wonder if you're the problem.
00:43:38.239 --> 00:43:39.599
You are not the problem.
00:43:39.840 --> 00:43:50.159
What looks like withholding from inside his story is protective parenting in response to a documented pattern of harm.
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:54.000
Holding that really steadily is important.
00:43:55.280 --> 00:43:59.440
From there, the framework isn't something new to memorize it.
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:11.760
That it's our three steps to protective parenting that runs through everything that we do here at Danielle Blight Coaching and that is the foundation of the blueprint.
00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:16.719
Building knowledge, growing capacity, effective advocacy.
00:44:16.960 --> 00:44:21.599
First the knowledge piece, understanding and seeing the situation clearly.
00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:27.440
You need to become the expert in your own case, and that includes the coercive control.
00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:28.880
Not your lawyer.
00:44:29.119 --> 00:44:34.639
You might hear advice about find a lawyer who understands coercive control, and you know what?
00:44:34.719 --> 00:44:36.639
I'm just going to be really honest with you.
00:44:36.880 --> 00:44:39.119
Those lawyers are really fucking rare.
00:44:39.440 --> 00:44:42.239
Far rarer than the website suggests.
00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:47.039
As my dear old dad would say, they're as rare as rocking horse poo.
00:44:47.280 --> 00:44:51.679
Waiting to find one is a great way of staying stuck.
00:44:52.159 --> 00:44:57.599
You do not need your lawyer to understand coercive control in order to advocate for yourself and your children.
00:44:57.760 --> 00:44:59.599
If they do, fantastic.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:02.559
But you still need to understand it.
00:45:02.719 --> 00:45:12.800
You need to understand it deeply enough to name the patterns and frame them so that the people who are able to act and support you can actually do that.
00:45:13.440 --> 00:45:18.559
Part of understanding and seeing clearly is knowing what to document and why.
00:45:18.880 --> 00:45:26.960
And a lot of that is covered in module 17 of the blueprint, which is specifically dedicated to coercive control.
00:45:27.199 --> 00:45:32.719
Next we've got our capacity component, steadying ourselves, coming home to ourselves.
00:45:32.880 --> 00:45:34.159
This is the heart of it.
00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:38.000
And it's also the part that almost no one else talks about.
00:45:38.239 --> 00:45:44.960
This is our steer framework where we're reframing our thinking.
00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:57.199
It's also an identity journey, coming home to a version of ourselves that isn't built on being a victim and isn't organized around reacting to the other parent.
00:45:57.840 --> 00:46:05.119
It's also nervous system regulation because you cannot co-regulate with your children while you're dysregulated.
00:46:05.679 --> 00:46:07.920
And here's the hard truth.
00:46:08.239 --> 00:46:09.840
Your kids can't wait.
00:46:10.079 --> 00:46:17.199
They can't wait for your ex to settle, or for final orders, or for things to be perfect.
00:46:17.519 --> 00:46:26.000
You are the last line of defense, the one hope of a regulated parent that they have, and that doesn't mean being perfect.
00:46:26.239 --> 00:46:36.639
It means expecting to be knocked off balance and then being willing to do the work so that you can come back to baseline more quickly each time.
00:46:37.039 --> 00:46:41.280
And next we have our advocacy, being able to stand credibly.
00:46:41.599 --> 00:46:49.920
This is the work that seems a bit more outward facing, but done from a grounded place and never aimed at the other parent.
00:46:50.239 --> 00:46:57.599
You document, not as a case against the other parent, but as a calm factual record in service of your kids.
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:05.840
You instruct your lawyer, understanding that their role is primarily for legal advice and legal risk management.
00:47:06.159 --> 00:47:11.840
You frame it for them, you learn to ask better questions because better questions get better answers.
00:47:11.920 --> 00:47:14.000
That's where coaching can help.
00:47:14.320 --> 00:47:21.840
And you engage the professionals around your kids, the GP, the therapists, credibly and child focused.
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:36.480
Not showing up and telling your story at every opportunity, which actually erodes the credibility that you're trying to build, and also steering clear of anyone who references reunification therapy or alienation treatment.
00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:44.559
Because those people are working inside the very framework that you are really working to avoid and to get away from.
00:47:44.960 --> 00:47:51.119
And the order of how we do those things matters because it's who before how.
00:48:03.840 --> 00:48:05.440
That's how we do it.
00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:13.280
All of this is covered in both module 17 and now also in module 19 of the blueprint.
00:48:13.360 --> 00:48:41.519
Yes, module nineteen, which covers parental alienation, the debunking of parental alienation, now has, I think, an extra three or four lessons added to it, specifically around alienation accusations, the reframing of things, what language to use instead, what to do instead, all of those sorts of things that has now been added to module 19.
00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:56.480
For those of you who have lived through or are currently living through child and mother sabotage, who have watched your children be turned against you by a coercive controller.
00:48:56.639 --> 00:48:59.840
I want to speak just directly to you for a minute.
00:49:00.079 --> 00:49:04.960
The grief that you are carrying is so real and specific.
00:49:05.840 --> 00:49:12.639
It's it's not the same as the grief of divorce, it's not the same as the grief of parenting struggles.
00:49:12.880 --> 00:49:26.159
It's the very real specific grief of watching your relationship with your child be deliberately damaged by someone who is using them as a weapon against you.
00:49:26.480 --> 00:49:32.480
Some of you listening might be actively estranged from your kids right now.
00:49:33.119 --> 00:49:37.760
Or maybe you're in contact but you're watching things deteriorate.
00:49:39.360 --> 00:49:43.119
Or maybe you're in a phase of repair after years of damage.
00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:48.400
Whatever phase you're in, the framework for recovery is the same.
00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:52.480
And here's the reframe that I think can have an impact.
00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:57.119
Your child loves you, but they may not feel safe to love you.
00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:06.800
When a child pulls away or goes quiet or aligns with the other parent, it's easy to believe that the love is gone, that it isn't.
00:50:07.199 --> 00:50:10.559
What's been damaged is their sense of safety to show it.
00:50:11.199 --> 00:50:15.199
But you can keep offering that love, you can keep showing up.
00:50:15.440 --> 00:50:20.719
Your steady, attuned, regulated presence is the vehicle of recovery.
00:50:21.119 --> 00:50:32.079
Not professional intervention, not dramatic gestures, the ordinary daily fabric of you being who you are, available to your children whenever they're ready.
00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:32.639
Dr.
00:50:32.880 --> 00:50:43.119
Emma Katz's research, drawn from interviews with mothers and children who have recovered from coercive control, actually documents this empirically.
00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:46.559
She calls it the recovery promoters framework.
00:50:46.800 --> 00:50:54.639
Mothers and children act as recovery promoters for each other through everyday supportive interactions.
00:50:55.679 --> 00:51:22.400
Practically, this means you being the steady presence, working on your capacity so that you can show up regardless of what is happening, and showing up regulated, showing up taking responsibility for your own emotions, being able to hold space for your children's developing capacity because you've grown your own, which then helps them to evaluate their own experiences.
00:51:22.960 --> 00:51:27.440
Speaking about the other parent factually and without obvious contempt.
00:51:27.679 --> 00:51:38.320
Providing an environment of psychological safety where your children can express any view without fear of losing connection to you or with you.
00:51:38.559 --> 00:51:39.920
Keeping it light.
00:51:40.159 --> 00:51:44.000
This is the part that I think sometimes can surprise people.
00:51:44.320 --> 00:51:49.199
Love your child, delight in them, keep it fun, make pancakes, order pizza.
00:51:49.599 --> 00:51:52.320
Ask yourself, what if today was all there is?
00:51:52.480 --> 00:51:59.760
That does not mean, you know, you you're not actually encouraging them to eat the vegetables or brush their teeth or do their homework.
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:02.159
But it does mean being present.
00:52:02.400 --> 00:52:05.760
You're not winning them back through heavy conversations.
00:52:06.480 --> 00:52:10.960
You're not trying to quote unquote prove anything to them about the other parent.
00:52:11.119 --> 00:52:15.119
You're just being there in the ordinary moments.
00:52:15.760 --> 00:52:19.760
Because it's the ordinary moments where that connection is rebuilt.
00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:22.719
It's also about honoring their autonomy.
00:52:22.960 --> 00:52:26.000
Your child is a gift, but you don't own them.
00:52:26.480 --> 00:52:28.719
They are not yours to own.
00:52:29.199 --> 00:52:34.639
They will navigate their relationship with the other parent on their own terms and in their own time.
00:52:35.280 --> 00:52:37.440
And here's a hard thing.
00:52:37.760 --> 00:52:52.559
Trying to influence that relationship that they have with the other parent in any direction is as painful as it can be to hear in many ways a version of the same coercive control that you're trying to protect them from.
00:52:52.880 --> 00:52:54.000
Don't compete.
00:52:54.239 --> 00:52:55.199
Don't compare.
00:52:55.360 --> 00:52:58.719
Don't try to quote unquote fix your child.
00:52:59.039 --> 00:53:05.760
Love them and just as much love yourself too.
00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:12.880
You are worthy of love, and your child's love for you has never been something that you've needed to compete for.
00:53:13.119 --> 00:53:25.440
If your children are currently estranged from you, as in fully, just completely resisting and refusing all contact, the most important thing you can do is keep the door open if it's safe for you.
00:53:25.760 --> 00:53:28.480
Visible, accessible, non pressuring.
00:53:28.719 --> 00:53:31.440
Send the birthday card, send the Christmas card.
00:53:31.679 --> 00:53:37.760
Mark the important occasions, but also live your own life with as much wellness as you can.
00:53:38.159 --> 00:53:40.960
Estrangement is not necessarily permanent.
00:53:41.199 --> 00:53:49.360
Many older children, many adult children do eventually reevaluate and reconnect with the targeted parent.
00:53:49.679 --> 00:53:52.480
Some relationships will never fully recover.
00:53:52.719 --> 00:54:03.440
But the work, the keeping of the door open, the regulated presence, the refusal to make your children choose or to feel bad, that work matters whether or not your children come back.
00:54:03.599 --> 00:54:06.400
And this is not a failing of you as a parent.
00:54:06.719 --> 00:54:22.400
Coercive control has done this to your children's relationship with you, but your parenting, the love, that continues regardless of where your children are in their own processing of all of this.
00:54:22.719 --> 00:54:38.559
A note to everyone who's listening outside Australia, particularly if you're in the US, where the parental alienation framework has the longest history, the most aggressive deployment, and the most documented harm to protective parents and their children.
00:54:39.039 --> 00:54:46.400
Much of what I've described about the Australian legal landscape is not going to align with your jurisdiction.
00:54:46.719 --> 00:54:58.960
The mere research I cited earlier reflects the system that you're working within, and the outcomes for protective parents there have been so much harder than what I've described as the Australian picture.
00:54:59.440 --> 00:55:08.480
If you're listening from the UK, Canada, New Zealand or elsewhere, your jurisdiction has its own legal framework and its own current state of reform.
00:55:08.800 --> 00:55:22.159
The reframe, alienation as coercive control, the CAMS terminology, Emma Katz's research, all of that is internationally applicable, but the legal specifics aren't.
00:55:22.480 --> 00:55:27.599
So it's important that you do seek jurisdiction appropriate professional advice.
00:55:27.920 --> 00:55:31.920
Connect with local protective parent advocacy where it exists.
00:55:32.559 --> 00:55:39.199
The frameworks travel, the research travels, but the legal mechanisms often don't.
00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:43.280
This has been a long episode and we've covered a lot of ground.
00:55:43.599 --> 00:55:46.320
I really appreciate you being here with me.
00:55:46.639 --> 00:55:50.079
Let's wrap it up together before we finish.
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The framework that has for decades been used against protective parents, the parental alienation framework, is not scientifically credible.
00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:10.480
It was created in the 1980s by a man whose own writings minimised child sexual abuse, and it has been systematically weaponised against protective mothers ever since.
00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:16.480
The Australian system has not in the main embraced the framework the way the US system has.
00:56:17.039 --> 00:56:24.800
At final trial, the threshold for alienation accusations to ever be taken seriously here in Australia is very high.
00:56:25.039 --> 00:56:37.440
The more common Australian dynamic is that the protective parent is framed as being obstructive rather than alienating, which is a different problem with different solutions and one that I'll come back to in another episode.
00:56:37.840 --> 00:56:54.639
Australian inquiries, the ALRC's Family Law for the Future, and the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System, they documented the systemic failures in how the Australian Family Law System has responded to family violence and protective parents.
00:56:54.960 --> 00:56:59.360
Those inquiries drove the Family Law Amendment Act 2023.
00:56:59.519 --> 00:57:00.960
The reforms are now in force.
00:57:01.119 --> 00:57:09.519
The presumption of equal shared parental responsibility is gone, along with its unfortunate links to equal shared parenting time.
00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:15.920
Safety is now explicitly weighted higher than meaningful relationships with both parents.
00:57:16.079 --> 00:57:20.639
The quote safe to do so qualifier is in the legislation.
00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:25.840
Coercive control is a criminal offence in New South Wales and Queensland.
00:57:26.079 --> 00:57:29.519
The academic field has converged on a clearer framework.
00:57:29.679 --> 00:57:30.000
Dr.
00:57:30.079 --> 00:57:48.079
Emma Katz's reframe, the child and mother sabotage, or the broader terms of coercive control through children, child-directed coercive control, and parent-child relationship sabotage, place the phenomenon within the framework of coercive control where it belongs.
00:57:48.400 --> 00:57:56.000
When abusers falsely accuse protective parents of alienation, that itself is a coercive control tactic.
00:57:56.320 --> 00:58:06.639
When actual sabotage of a child's relationship with their protective parent occurs, that is also a coercive control tactic, one that uses children as instruments.
00:58:07.039 --> 00:58:18.400
The work of the protective parent is the same as it has always been, to provide the steady, attuned, regulated presence that is the foundation of children's recovery.
00:58:18.639 --> 00:58:33.199
If you're facing alienation allegations, the blueprint contains a fully updated module 19 with a structured framework for staying in your own lane and responding to the accusations from a grounded protective place, drawing on Dr.
00:58:33.360 --> 00:58:38.000
Emma Katzer's research and the current Australian legislative framework.
00:58:38.320 --> 00:58:42.320
Module 17 covers the underlying coercive control frameworks.
00:58:42.559 --> 00:58:46.880
Together those modules give you a comprehensive path through this territory.
00:58:47.039 --> 00:58:48.719
You're not alone in this.
00:58:49.039 --> 00:58:53.199
To everyone listening, thank you so much for being here for this conversation.
00:58:53.519 --> 00:58:57.440
It's been a long one and it's one that I've been wanting to have for a long time.
00:58:57.679 --> 00:59:02.559
There is more to say, and I'll keep saying it as the work continues.
00:59:02.800 --> 00:59:06.000
As always, thank you so much for being here with me.
00:59:06.320 --> 00:59:08.320
I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.
00:59:08.559 --> 00:59:08.880
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