In cases where a parent, particularly the mother, alleges that the other parent is physically and/or sexually violent toward the protective parent or a child, many custody evaluators mistakenly subscribe to the discredited theory of "Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS)."
"PAS is junk science at its worst," says Dr. Paul Fink, President of the
Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, and a former President of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Fink explains, "Science tells us that the most likely reason that a child becomes estranged from a parent is that parent's own behavior. Labels, such as PAS, serve to deflect attention away from those behaviors."
— The Leadership Council, Press Release, Child Abuse Experts Applaud Legal Community for Rejecting Parent Alienation Syndrome, July 12, 2006.
A vocal movement has brought the concept of "parental alienation syndrome" to the forefront of public attention. It was originally devised by psychiatrist Richard Gardner who wrote articles defending pedophilia and was of the opinion that most allegations of child sexual abuse were manufactured by one parent (usually the mother) to vilify the other parent, with the child used as a pawn. His remedy was to transfer custody from the protective parent to the parent the child rejected (
Dallam,
Dr. Richard Gardner, 1998).
