CCChat-Magazine_Issue-16

Gardner wrote prolifically but the books
he produced from the late 1980s onwards
were all self-published and without the
usual peer review process. In what he
considered to be extreme cases of
alienation, he recommended “Threat
Therapy” whereby the parent he claimed
was “ brainwashing” the children would
be threatened with jail unless the children
agreed to contact with the allegedly
abusive parent. Custody would also be
transferred to the alleged abusive parent
with a period of several months of no
contact between the child and so-called
alienating parent as part of the
'reunification' process. "Threat therapy"
was part of a much broader theory of
Gardner's known in family courts as
"Parental Alienation Syndrome".
Nathan Grieco, aged 16
In a contentious child custody dispute,
the three teenage Grieco brothers begged
a family court judge not to force them to
continue visits to their father because he
was physically abusive towards them.
Rather than believe the boys, the judge
relied on the testimony of an expert
witness retained by the father, a
Columbia University professor of clinical
psychiatry, Richard A. Gardner. Gardner
insisted the boys were lying as a result of
brainwashing by their mother and
recommended "threat therapy".
"In an interview, when asked what a mother should do if the child
disclosed sexual abuse by the father, Gardner responded: “ What would
she day? Don’t you say that about your father. If you do, I’ll beat you.”
Courts deferred to Gardner's academic
credentials and put children in the
custody of their alleged abuser, EVEN in
cases where police records, medical
records and testimony by teachers and
social workers supported the mother's
accusations.
In an interview, when asked what a
mother should do if the child disclosed
sexual abuse by the father, Gardner
responded: “What would she day? Don’t
you say that about your father. If you do,
I’ll beat you.”
Gardner died by suicide in 2003 having
stabbed himself several times in the chest
and neck, before stabbing himself in the
heart. His obituary in the New York
Times was corrected, on 14th June 2003,
to clarify that his position at Columbia
University was misstated and that he was
NOT a professor of child psychiatry but
an unpaid volunteer.
The Grieco boys were told they should be
respectful and obedient on visits to their
father and, if they were not, their mother
would go to jail. “These children need
coercion,”Gardner had said.
Nathan Grieco,who was 16 and the eldest
of the brothers, hanged himself in his
bedroom, leaving behind a diary in which
he wrote that life had become an "endless
torment". Both Gardner and the court
were unrepentant about their decision -
even after the suicide. It was only after an
exposé in the local newspaper that
custody arrangements for the two
surviving boys were changed.
Should we really still be continuing using
the term 'parental alienation', when its
origins have been shown to be so
intensely problematic? I think it's time to
look at identifying disrupted child contact
differently.
Making The Invisible Visible