The Saturday Paper: The legal battlefield of parental alienation
By Jane Caro
Daphne* has not seen her daughter since 2020, despite the Family Court awarding her the right to meaningful time together. Every time Daphne comes to pick up her daughter, the father calls the police, claiming she is trespassing. According to her, the father has a police record of abuse towards two previous partners, but the police have no ability to enforce parenting orders, she says, so she can be the one who is arrested.
“A 10-year-old child can go to jail for stealing a car,” Daphne says, “but an adult who steals a child faces no penalty.” She is blunt about the pain of missing her daughter: “I now live suicidally.”
Parental alienation is “the malevolent behaviour of one parent to exclude the other parent from the life of their child”, according to Duncan Holmes, solicitor and accredited specialist in family law. The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia says such cases are “extremely complex and often present a vexed situation when deciding what is the best and safest arrangements for a child who may be refusing or resisting spending time with one parent”.
For the professionals, accusations of parental alienation when a relationship breaks down create a dilemma. For those on the receiving end, it creates despair.
The concept of parental alienation itself has increased the barriers for women, says Dr Karen Williams, especially if they are escaping violent, coercive controlling relationships or where accusations of child sexual abuse have been made. Williams, who is a director of the Illawarra Trauma Recovery Centre and a psychiatrist specialising in complex post-traumatic stress disorder, believes that parental alienation as a syndrome is made up – a pop psychology term.
But still it’s a term that “has influenced how people regard women seeking custody of their children who make such claims”.
Williams cites research from 2021, published in the Australian Journal of Social Issues, which examined 380 fully contested cases in the Family Court: Just 14 per cent of Family Court judges expressed “belief that the allegations of child sexual abuse were true”.
The study showed that 88 per cent of the judges believed those children were at no risk. In almost two thirds of cases, the children had time with their alleged perpetrator increased, and 17 per cent were moved into the alleged perpetrator’s custody.
“These results are shocking and completely reflect the advice my patients have been given by lawyers when they are trying to leave abusive relationships,” Williams says. She says her patients have been told not to tell the court about abuse because they won’t be believed and they might lose custody altogether.
There are other circumstances in which protective parents may choose to keep silent about abuse.
Two very different women, many years apart in age, have confided to me that they left their marriages when their children were small because of partner violence. The women did not tell the children about the abuse for fear of souring their relationship with their father. Neither woman used the term parental alienation, but it appears both were actively trying not to turn their children against the other parent.
The dreadful irony of that protective parenting decision is that now the children have grown, both mothers have been accused of breaking up what the children now believe was a happy home. Both women feel they cannot reveal the abuse they suffered because their former partners will deny it. They fear not being believed, or misinterpreted as trying to undermine their adult children’s relationships with their father.
Margaret* says her female ex-partner has isolated her from their daughter, and she has had no direct contact for more than 18 months. “Every attempt to reintegrate into my daughter’s life was knocked back,” Margaret says. She describes phone calls cut short, problems such as being late for ballet used as excuses to change arrangements, and other perceived faults leveraged as reasons to block contact.
Margaret and her ex-partner have received court orders, been to mediation, attended co-parenting coaching. They have a goodwill agreement, but there has been no progress. Margaret says her daughter ran away from her when she turned up with flowers to her high school graduation. Margaret has sold her house to help pay her legal bills, but she hesitates to take further action because of the harm she fears will be done to her daughter by the legal process itself.
“The child has a damaging experience when they become subject to court machinery, because they are at the centre of the conflict,” she says.
Clinical counsellor and sociologist Dr Stan Korosi says international studies suggest men are just as likely as women to display alienation behaviours against their co-parent. He says this equal representation is not reflected in Australian family law because it avoids using the term parental alienation to describe anonymously published cases.
Mark*’s relationship broke down 20 years ago. His stepson, the child of his ex-wife with a previous partner, came to live with him, but his biological daughter stayed with her mother. Mark says he tried to stay connected, but to no avail. Eventually, even Christmas gifts were returned destroyed. Mark says neither he nor his stepson has any meaningful relationship with his daughter, who is now 30.
“The object of conventional coercive control is to prevent your partner from leaving. The object of coercive control using parental alienation behaviours is to force your partner to leave and never come back.”
The hope that children will begin to see through the manipulation as they grow up is common but also creates a special kind of emotional pain, Margaret says. “Every attempt at contact carries hope, and when it is dashed over and over again, hope can kill you. To live without the little person you love so much is an existential struggle.”
Karen Williams describes parental alienation as systems abuse – using the system to punish a former partner. Korosi agrees, pointing out that either parent can exploit family violence and coercive control laws against the other, using their children as weapons. “The object of conventional coercive control is to prevent your partner from leaving,” he says. “The object of coercive control using parental alienation behaviours is to force your partner to leave and never come back.”
The Family Court has taken steps to deal with parental alienation sensitively. “Often both parents are completely convinced of their perspective on the problem, however, the reasons behind why a child rejects or resists spending time with a parent are seldom black and white,” says a spokesperson.
Judges, registrars, court child experts and other staff of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia have undertaken extensive and ongoing training to understand these types of allegations and, importantly, consider how they affect the children involved. That training includes the American-designed and internationally acclaimed Safe & Together Model for ensuring child welfare in domestic violence situations. “From the court’s perspective, the focus is always on determining what is safe and in the best interests of the child,” the spokesperson says.
Those who face such exclusion urge further reform, however. Advocate Sarah Runcie says parents want to see more awareness of alienation, and how it presents in family conflict, across the police, legal and community sectors. They want comprehensive data collection and research, along with holistic policy reform that includes legislation to disincentivise the contravention of parenting orders. “Understanding parental alienation should be considered as core to broader family law reform, because parental alienation provides a lens for viewing coercive control dynamics,” Runcie says.
This form of coercive control tends to be gendered, Korosi says. He notes that abusive mothers and fathers often choose distinct approaches in attempts to exploit the paramount consideration of children’s safety in our family law systems. “Men will claim their partner is dangerously ill, women will claim he’s dangerous – he’s bad, she’s mad.”
Williams warns that the much higher prevalence of family violence against women can mean an abused woman’s PTSD around an abusive ex-partner can, in itself, be used as evidence she is an unfit or uncooperative parent.
“I eventually suffered a total nervous breakdown,” says Daphne about her years of fighting for her child. “At which point, welfare took my other child from the hospital and placed them with my ex-partner.”
*Names have been changed
National Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service 1800 737 732
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 2, 2025 as "The co-parent trap".
Original online article: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2025/08/02/the-legal-battlefield-parental-alienation