(The Parental Alienation Syndrome thing is a pet peeve of mine. The entire concept was quite literally created by a pedophile to defend incestuous pedophiles in family court - basically it was invented to claim that the real evil when a man was accused of raping his little daughter was that the mother was openly disgusted by her child rapist soon-to-be-ex-husband, and he claimed that children were more messed up by being told that their father who raped them was a sick freak than they were by being raped. This is because that same man believed that pedophilia is completely normal and shouldn't be considered disgusting or even abnormal at all, that children are "sexually aggressive" and sexually pursue and seduce adults and thus are to blame for their own molestation, that pedophilia is no big deal and is in fact beneficial to society, that mothers should be "helped" through therapy to understand that their husbands raping their children is normal and totally acceptable and they shouldn't get all "hysterical" over it, and that the only reason incestuous pedophilia is harmful to children is because society overreacts to it.. among other sickening and psychotic things. I am not making any of this shit up. You can read some quotes from him
here. It's pretty sick shit, read at your own discretion.
(The theory was then latched onto by the growing "father's rights movement" (men's rights activists, in other words) and is primarily used these days to defend fathers who are abusive physically and emotionally moreso than sexually, who argue that their children are more damaged by knowing that Mommy is mad at Daddy for throwing a bottle at them than they are by Daddy being a physically abusive monster. And the worst part?
It works. Studies show that abusive fathers are vastly more likely to gain custody when they claim Parental Alienation Syndrome,
even if the abuse accusations are found to be credible. In other words, judges literally agree that, say, a child overhearing their mother say that their father is a monster for beating them is worse than the father actually beating his wife and children. I just... I do not have words for how insane this shit is. Sorry for the spergy rant, I just feel sort of like screaming every time I see Parental Alienation Syndrome brought up and talked about like it's a legitimate theory and not the literal cover-up for child abuse that it always has been.)
(ETA:
I found this and thought it might be a good informative addition to this rant. It's essentially a takedown of Parental Alienation Syndrome as a whole, going over all of the flaws of the theory, Gardner's views on pedophilia, its use in the courts now, etc. Apparently Gardner advocated that allegedly "alienated" children should be completely cut off from their mothers, their (abusive) fathers should be given 100% custody, and they should have a therapist brainwash them into desisting their abuse claims (literally stated). His advice led to multiple suicides of vulnerable children who were forced to live with their abusers while being cut off from their only loving, supportive parent. Charming, right?)
