By Frank Parlato
Dr. Richard A. Gardner helped clear the way for profit incentives in custody litigation. He was a psychiatrist who invented “parental alienation syndrome.”
He said children who reported abuse were usually liars coached by their mothers.
He said, “The mothers of these children are often fanatic… obsessed with hatred of their husbands… paranoid… They see in their husbands many objectionable characteristics that actually exist within themselves.”
Gardner wrote that sexual activity between adults and children was “part of the natural repertoire of human sexual activity,” and he framed pedophilia as a procreative benefit because abuse “charges up” the child sexually, making the child “highly sexualized” and more likely to “crave” sexual experiences that increase reproduction.
Family courts couldn’t officially endorse Gardner’s views on pedophilia, but they adopted his framework: the assumption that children lie and mothers alienate.
The algorithm is simple:
If a child reports fear, assume coaching.
If a mother reports abuse, assume vindictiveness.
If the father is accused, assume alienation.
Then prescribe the treatment: flip custody.
Cut off the protective parent.
Order the reunification programs.
Mandate therapy and the evaluations.
With PAS, the court doesn’t need to distinguish a credible abuse case from an alienation case, a confused case, or a fabrication. All get processed the same way.
Remove the Mother and Cash in
Gardner prescribed what the courts must do:
“The children must be removed from the mother’s home and placed in the home of the father.”
Lawyers liked it because it made every case a billable circus. Therapists liked it too.
Gardner explicitly endorsed coercive, court-powered therapy:
“Therapists must be comfortable with taking a somewhat dictatorial position.”
“The therapy relates more to manipulating and structuring situations than providing insight.”
“When parental alienation is present, the approach must involve people manipulation by court order.”
A Booming Business Is Sprung
Gardner helped created a billion-dollar system of evaluators, GALs, therapists, and reunification programs feeding off litigation.
It is profitable because a predator will pay to keep access to a child, and a protective parent will pay to stop it. A falsely accused parent and a false accuser will do the same.
What About the Judge?
Family-court judges live in a strange corner of the judiciary. They are often selected for reasons unrelated to expertise. They hold the broadest power but often have the least skill. In many states, family-court judges depend on reappointment or party endorsement. The people who decide that—lawyers, party committees, donors—are the same people who appear before them.
Gardner relied on GALs to enforce PAS:
“I have generally found collaboration with guardians ad litem to be very useful.”
“A guardian ad litem unfamiliar with parental alienation may prove a definite impediment.”
The Best Interests of the Child: The Nicest Lie Ever Told in Court
The phrase “the best interests of the child” sounds noble. But in family court, it means the judge, the GAL, and the court-appointed therapist can overrule the parents, the evidence, and even the child, because they say so.
If PAS is used to flip custody, it is justified under the ”best interests” of the child.
Yes. There are real alienators. Some parents do poison a child against the other parent. The trouble comes when the court stops asking what is real. The problem is how the courts use it to avoid the hard work of finding the truth.
In other courts, the jury, not the judge, has the last word.
A jury won’t start from Gardner’s claim that children lie.
A jury won’t endorse forced reunification camps.
A jury won’t jail a mother because she won’t “comply” with an abuser.
A jury won’t call a child’s fear “alienation” without looking at the facts.
A jury means a public trial, which is precisely why family courts resist it. Twelve citizens will not destroy a family lightly.
If a jury was going to make the final decision, lawyers couldn’t threaten clients with the whim of one judge. Cases would be resolved rather than turning into six-figure wars.
If juries were allowed, cases would end sooner, cost less, create less abuse, and strip away the incentive to weaponize accusations.
The Trouble With It
Privacy protects the court, not the child. Discretion becomes unchecked power. “Best interests” becomes anything the judge wants it to be.
Until there are juries, stay away from this criminal enterprise called family court.
