Last night I testified before the Judicial Nominating Commission against a lawyer seeking to become a Family Court judge. I am posting that testimony here with linked documents for commissioners, candidates, and the public. (These links do not work from the body of the text, but only from the references given in the footnotes.)
Please notify me, Anne Grant, ParentingProject@verizon.net if you have any concerns or corrections regarding this testimony. Thank you.
Please notify me, Anne Grant, ParentingProject@verizon.net if you have any concerns or corrections regarding this testimony. Thank you.
§ 8-16.1-4 Criteria for selection of best qualified nominees. – The commission shall consider, but is not limited to, the following factors in selecting the best qualified nominees: intellect, ability, temperament, impartiality, diligence, experience, maturity, education, publications, and record of public, community, and government service. … The commission shall also consider the candidate's sensitivity to historically disadvantaged classes, and may disqualify any candidate with a demonstrated history of bias towards any of these classes.[i]Your criteria for selecting nominees includes impartiality, diligence, publications, and sensitivity to historically disadvantaged classes. Barbara Barrow wrote an article for the Rhode Island Bar Journal that disqualifies her for the bench on those grounds. I am posting this testimony with linked references so you can examine the sources for yourself.
Barbara Barrow’s article, “Parental Alienation Syndrome in Divorce”[ii] is simplistic and ignores factual evidence. What she leaves out is significant. She says that Richard A. Gardner, M.D., introduced “Parental Alienation” in the 1980s. She does not mention these facts:
·
Dr. Gardner was a psychiatrist on a mission to normalize sex between
adults and children.[iii]
·
He was a leading lobbyist against mandatory reporting of child sex
abuse.[iv]
·
He set up his own publishing company in New Jersey called “Creative
Therapeutics.”
·
He published his theories without standards of peer review that are essential
to establish scientific claims.
·
He falsely identified himself as a Clinical Professor of Child
Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, a claim
Columbia denied, asserting he was only a volunteer.[v]
·
Dr. Gardner served as an expert witness in more than 400 custody cases.
·
He committed suicide in 2003.[vi]
Gardner held that children who claim to be sexually abused by fathers, should not be believed. He hypothesized that the mothers had alienated, brainwashed, coached, and programmed their children. In one of the last interviews Gardner gave, Garland Waller asked what a mother should do when her child accuses a father of sexual abuse. Gardner replied the mother should say: “I don't believe you. I am going to beat you for saying that. Don't you ever talk that way again about your father.”[vii]
A Brief Chronology of
Parental Alienation in Rhode Island Family Court
1991: Gardner publishes Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem Witch Trials Revisited.
In his final paragraph, he admits that the “vast majority (probably over 95%)
of sex abuse allegations … are valid,” but he says he wrote the book to give
that 5% whom he considers falsely accused “the sympathy and attention they
deserve.”[viii]
1994: Courtroom testimony shows a court-ordered psychologist identifies
Gardner as his source, and Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr. comments that he, too, is reading Gardner.[ix]
1996: Chief Judge Jeremiah hires David Tassoni, who falsely claims to have college
and law degrees. Tassoni soon becomes Chief Mediator and Case Manager.
2004: Tassoni helps to produce a 374-page training manual, Guardian ad Litem Practice in Rhode Island Family Court (Rhode Island Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Sponsored with the Rhode Island Family Court, Center for Advanced Legal Studies, October 4 - 5, 2004). The manual devotes an entire section to “Parental Alienation.”
In the high-profile custody case of a Family Court deputy sheriff accused of domestic violence, Tassoni tells me he is searching for a psychologist who “understands Parental Alienation.” He finds one in a tiny suburban office. She moves into an elegant suite downtown as the court-appointed therapist who does “co-parenting” and “reunification therapy.” These are catchwords often associated with coercive “parental alienation” defense strategies. I have found them in Rhode Island guardian ad litem reports and court orders that placed children in the sole custody of alleged abusers or sent them back and forth between parents, even when one parent was documented as abusive and the other was protective.
In the high-profile custody case of a Family Court deputy sheriff accused of domestic violence, Tassoni tells me he is searching for a psychologist who “understands Parental Alienation.” He finds one in a tiny suburban office. She moves into an elegant suite downtown as the court-appointed therapist who does “co-parenting” and “reunification therapy.” These are catchwords often associated with coercive “parental alienation” defense strategies. I have found them in Rhode Island guardian ad litem reports and court orders that placed children in the sole custody of alleged abusers or sent them back and forth between parents, even when one parent was documented as abusive and the other was protective.
2006: The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges publishes A
Judicial Guide to Child Safety in Custody Cases[x]
and unequivocally states that judges should rule testimony on “parental
alienation” inadmissible and strike it from evaluation reports because the
concept has “no grounding in reality,” and it fails evidentiary standards.
I write an op-ed in the Providence Journal about the “Discredited Parental Alienation Syndrome”[xi] and residents of a Rhode Island town ask me to research a case in which a 3-year-old complained about her father’s “sausage games.”[xii] The guardian ad litem was a close friend of the father’s criminal defense attorney and their “parental alienation” argument persuaded DCYF to give the father sole custody. He eventually took his daughters out of state and then out of the country. The neighbors had helped bring to Rhode Island a nationally recognized out-of-state attorney who specializes in fighting parental alienation cases, but the father’s lawyers successfully invoked Rhode Island’s pro hoc vice rules to block his participation. I later testify about the case and write about it online, giving names of lawyers and clinicians, as well as referencing these sources.
I write an op-ed in the Providence Journal about the “Discredited Parental Alienation Syndrome”[xi] and residents of a Rhode Island town ask me to research a case in which a 3-year-old complained about her father’s “sausage games.”[xii] The guardian ad litem was a close friend of the father’s criminal defense attorney and their “parental alienation” argument persuaded DCYF to give the father sole custody. He eventually took his daughters out of state and then out of the country. The neighbors had helped bring to Rhode Island a nationally recognized out-of-state attorney who specializes in fighting parental alienation cases, but the father’s lawyers successfully invoked Rhode Island’s pro hoc vice rules to block his participation. I later testify about the case and write about it online, giving names of lawyers and clinicians, as well as referencing these sources.
2010: I document the “sausage games” case in the textbook Domestic
Violence, Legal Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues.[xiii]
Court records in this and other cases show how lawyers and psychologists use “parental
alienation” and coercive “co-parenting” and “reunification therapy” to stretch out
these cases for their own financial profit at great harm to these families.
2011: The new Chief Judge Hiaganush Bedrosian brings in state police to
examine David Tassoni’s credentials, and Tassoni resigns. He claims to have
mediated over 750 cases, but he is never charged with fraud on the court, and he sets up a mediation business.
Meanwhile,
advocates of “parental alienation” defense strategies try unsuccessfully to pressure the American Psychiatric Association
to add “parental alienation” to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5).
2012: Barbara Barrow’s article appears in the RI Bar Journal, as if
to restore the credibility of “parental alienation” after Tassoni’s downfall. I ask the
editor-in-chief if I may write a response, and he says no, because
I am not a lawyer.
2013: The American Psychiatric Association refuses to include “parental alienation” in the DSM-5.
2015: When I examine the letters for and against Barbara
Barrow, I find one of her most ardent supporters is the guardian ad litem
in the “sausage games” case. A letter in your file opposing Barrow comes from a stepfather
whose stepson has complained about sexual abuse by his birth father. The
stepfather writes that Attorney Barrow is not a neutral guardian ad litem. Following Dr. Gardner’s
pattern, Barrow blames the mother for “coaching and/or ‘suggesting’ to the
child…,” but then permits the alleged abuser to coach the child.
Families
that have been traumatized by coercive control, domestic violence, or sexual
abuse are “a historically disadvantaged class.” Such families need two things
to heal: safety and the rule of law.
Commissioners, this is not about political correctness. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the American Psychiatric Association have absolutely rejected “parental alienation” on both legal and scientific grounds. They recognize this as a racket in which a small group of lawyers and psychologists can enrich themselves for years at the expense of vulnerable children and families, as we have documented over more than two decades in Rhode Island.
We need this Commission to become well-informed about the racketeering use of “parental alienation” and to discern which candidates have the personal integrity not to allow these schemes to persist in their courtrooms. Please ask all candidates for Family Court -- and in the future, for appellate courts -- what their opinions are of “parental alienation.” See if they understand why coercive strategies for “co-parenting,” and “reunification therapy” can be dangerous for these children and their protective parents.
We need you to do three things:
1. Become well-informed about these abusive rackets by reviewing the sources; [xiv]
2. Nominate prospective judges who recognize and will not tolerate strategies based on the junk science of “parental alienation”; and
3. Do not recommend as “highly qualified” Barbara Barrow or any candidate willing to compromise the safety of children and the rigors of the law to permit courtroom strategies based on “parental alienation.”
[iv] Gardner,
R.A. (1995). Written testimony on HR3588 – Proposed revision of the child abuse
prevention and treatment act (CAPTA) (Public Law 93-247) and
Dallam, S.J. (1998). Dr. Richard Gardner: A review of
his theories and opinions on atypical sexuality, pedophilia, and treatment
issues. Treating Abuse Today, 8(1), 15-23, as cited in http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/RAG.html
[vii] Garland
Waller videos: Debating Richard Gardner;
Small Justice: Little Justice in America’s Family Courts
[viii] Richard
A. Gardner, Sex Abuse Hysteria: Salem
Witch Trials Revisited (Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics, 1991, p. 140.
[ix] P92-4797, Transcript, April 11, 1994, p. 18.
[xi] Anne Grant,
“Family Court Devastation: Discredited Parental Alienation Syndrome,”
Providence Journal, June 27, 2006, B5.
[xii] I began
writing about the case at “Custodyscam.blogspot.com” to document my testimony
before the RI Senate Health and Human Services Committee when they investigated
complaints against DCYF in 2007. Later I moved the information to a new site:
[xiv] Further
resources are available at The Leadership Council on Child Abuse and
Interpersonal Violence, http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/1.html
