25th September 2021

EVENT PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release –  25th September  2021

Contact details: Alienated Children First Spokesperson: Kenn Joyce 086 326 2239 

Email: media@alienated.ie 

“It struck me that here is a fantastic guy who, despite his relationship breaking down, just wants to continue to be a great father to his biological daughter yet faces many emotional and legal challenges to continue to be her dad.” Karin Pritzel on why she film documented  ‘Fatherly’ an Alienated Father’s traumatic plight and fight for his child’s right not to be separated from both her parents against her will (Article 9 of UNCRC). This short film is being celebrated internationally.

This story can be reversed and be about a mother too. Tragically in Ireland this is a story of  thousands of Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents and most importantly Children. It cannot be often heard as the main characters are silenced by the family court system and social services, who do not officially recognise this inhuman plight called Parental Alienation.  It is a form of abuse and is not only child abuse, coercive control, domestic abuse but could be construed as a hate crime as the child is often psychologically manipulated to be in fear or hate their loving parent (Irish Justice Minister on Parental Alienation).

On Monday at 4pm, International Parental Alienation Scientist Dr Jennifer Harman will be presenting a free Irish organised webinar on how ‘Shared Parenting and effective Reunification Therapy Programmes are two of the best ways to fix much of Ireland’s shocking parental alienation crisis’ The webinar is aimed at professionals working with families and children of high conflict separation and alienated parents.

To register and ask questions to Dr Harman please visit www.alienated.ie or www.eventbrite.ie 

Further Information

Ireland has an estimated 8,000 alienated parents, children and young adults, being abused emotionally every year through parental alienation abuse. This is in a context where government, courts, social services and NGOs do not presently have the training and skills to know how to recognise or diagnose parental alienation. When parental alienation occurs in a post-relationship breakdown one parent coercively controls a child to turn him/her against the other parent, which can result in long term psychological damage to the child whilst negatively impacting on their ability to properly form future relationships and much more. To help to find solutions to this crisis the parent-led NGO Alienation Children First (ACF) have invited expert Dr Jennnifer Harman and her co- researcher Luke Saunders to present their scientific  findings..

Dr Jennifer Jill Harman, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University in the Applied Social & Health Psychology program.. Dr Harman previously served as a family and substance abuse counselor for several years prior to her entry into academia.

She received her doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Connecticut in 2005, and specializes in the study of intimate relationships, she also has two masters degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University in psychological counseling.

Dr. Harman is an accomplished and awarded scientist and teacher, and has published many peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has presented her research regularly at scientific conferences around the world. Dr. Harman’s areas of research expertise focus on the topic of power in relationships: power in how intimate partners influence each other for good or bad. As an applied social psychologist, her work has applied social psychological theories on intimate relationships to the study of public health problems ranging from STI prevention to domestic violence. For nearly the last decade, her primary focus has been on the study of parental alienation.

Dr. Jennifer Harman has published numerous  professional articles including 

• Power dynamics in families affected by Parental Alienation –
• Losses experience by children alienated from a parent-
• Allegations of family violence in court: How parental alienation affects judicial outcomes -Gender differences in the use of PA behaviours 
• Prevalence of adults who are the targets of parental alienating behaviours and their impact:

Results from three national polls on Parental Alienation: 

• The blossoming of a field of study on Parenting time and child coping:
•  The context of parental alienation-parental alienating behaviours: An unacknowledged form of family violence Parents behaving badly: 
• Gender biases in the perception of parental alienation – Parents acting badly: How institutions and societies promote the alienation of children from their loving families.

Aside from her professional publications, Dr. Harman also writes articles for general audiences, such as ’The Conversation’, and her work is republished in thousands of other news sites (e.g., Associated Press, Raw Story). Her 2016 TEDx talk on parental alienation, has had thousands of views. Dr. Harman regularly conducts training for legal and mental health professionals on parental alienation, and has served as an expert witness and consultant on civil and criminal cases involving parental alienation and other forms of family violence.

Allegations of Family Violence in Court: How Parental Alienation Affects Judicial Outcomes debunking Professor Joan Meier’s well-publicised research on this issue. Jennifer’s latest work includes co-authoring ‘Evaluation of the Turning Points for Families program ‘with Luke Saunders & Tamara Afifi and with Dr Demosthenes Lorandos (2020).

Luke Saunders is a Graduate Student at Department of Psychology,Colorado State University. Luke undertook research in the Evaluation of Turning Points for Families Program for severely alienated children.

Further Information

This is ACF’s Fourth webinar bringing Experts to speak to Irish professionals and advocates. ACF believes that this event is a must go-to event for anyone working with children and young adults, in a child and young adult protection capacity or dealing with family conflict in society including court professionals, social services, mental health professionals, NGOs, parents and especially politicians who will be legislating and devising a future policy on parental alienation.

Time and Date of Event: 4pm – Monday, 27th September 2021:

 Webinar details here                  website: alienated.ie

Webinar format 

• Dr Jennifer Harman’s Journey through Parental Alienation
• Dr Jennifer Harman & Luke Saunders:- findings on Reunification Therapy programme Turning Points for Families – Program for severely alienated children

The Turning Points for Families (TPFF) therapeutic intervention program for severely alienated children and their alienated parents was evaluated to determine whether it was safe, did not cause harm, and led to positive changes in the alienated parent–alienated child relationship. Court orders and video recordings of the 4-day intervention were reviewed for indications of improvements over the course of the intervention in relational communication, social support and communal coping, which refers to the family members jointly ‘owning’ a problem and proactively taking responsibility for it together. Improvements in the parent–child relationships were noted, and the TPFF helped to improve family members’ communal coping scores. Participation did not lead to negative changes on any measure. This preliminary evidence indicates that TPFF, similar to other therapeutic structural interventions, is a safe and effective treatment option for severely alienated children.

• Dr Jennifer Harman on the Importance of Shared Parenting for Children
• Questions & Answers – Dr Jennifer Harmen &Luke Saunders

Jennifer Harman Media

Ted Talk on Parental Alienation https://youtu.be/v3YdldNXZnQ

Parental Alienation as a form of family violence – https://youtu.be/lKuUnq4rcp

Some of Dr Jennifer Harmans Quotes 

•  – Parental alienation doesn’t just destroy children’s psychological well being and rips the guts out of safe and loving parents ( if they were abusive it wouldn’t be called parental alienation)

• It destroys loving grandparents who once poured all their wisdom, love and nurture into their grandchildren to then be brutally discarded at the same time.

• “Our findings show that parental alienating behaviors more closely resemble coercively controlling violence, intimate terrorism and battery than other more common types of abuse, such as situational couple violence,” Harman said. “Parental alienating behaviors are abusive and should be included under legislation and policies that seek to protect children.”
• Harman and her colleagues’ work also shows that parental alienation is mostly gender-neutral; both fathers and mothers do it at about the same rates, although they use different tactics. This gender neutrality matches national statistics on other abusive behaviors like stalking, physical and sexual abuse.

Further Information

Alienated Children First (ACF) is a mother and fathers, voluntary non-profit and victims’ organisation that condemns all forms of abuse, domestic violence ,child abuse including false allegations of parental alienation.

 ACF feel that all false allegations of child abuse, parental alienation, coercive control and domestic violence must be dealt with by the full rigours of Irish and International law.

 ACF is also a part of an international consortium that aims to positively address and educate the public about parental alienation. 

To find out more on the issue please log into  http://alienated.ie/ or https://pasg.info/.

This is the Fourth of a series of extremely important webinars that takes place in a period when the Irish Government has recognised the importance of the research on parental alienation and will also consult on it later this year. 

Last July the Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee described it as ”a situation when a child’s resistance or hostility towards one parent is not justified and is the result of psychological manipulation by the other parent.”  

Kenn Joyce, ACF Spokesperson commented that “Parental Alienation Abuse is largely not understood in Irish Family Courts and breaches the child’s right to have a relationship with both parents as enshrined in Irish legislation and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). 

Ireland and Parental Alienation

Presently parental alienation is not officially recognised in Irish legislation or by health social services however Judges have recognised its existence such as by a Judge at Ennis family court see Judge describes case as ‘parental alienation’ and where recently TUSLA social services appointed a parental alienation expert in a recent case High Court to intervene as separated father raises parental alienation concerns with Tusla. In addition to this are many other cases that have not been publicly reported as they are held ‘in camera’. Politically many individual TDs support the recognition and legislation of parental alienation and 30 of Ireland’s 31 councils voted cross party calling upon the Irish government to act on this issue and 30 questions were asked to the government about parental alienation in 2020. The Irish government as outlined by Minister of Justice Helen McEntee have outlined actions in the Justice Action Plan 2021 to ‘Undertake research into the approaches to parental alienation taken by other jurisdictions including public consultations’. 

Opponents of parental alienation say it is only a strategic tool used by male abusers, yet there are thousands of alienated mothers, daughters, aunts and grandmothers throughout Ireland suffering terribly because of this parental alienation abuse. 

ACF, whose directors are female and male, categorically state that Parental Alienation is a non-gender based abuse and can affect any parent or child, often for life. 

Sadly organisations that oppose the recognition do not have any alternative workable solutions or proposals to address parental alienation.

Parental Alienation is more complex than how its opponents define it as it operates by  fundamentally using  psychological manipulation and abuse of children and young adults, misuse of courts, social and NGO services, false allegations etc.