Anonymum et al,
For clarity, I’m not denying that the cases you present are true. It’s tragic when child abusers are allowed unsupervised access to their children, but it's also tragic when a parent is denied access because of a false allegation of child abuse.

It’s not what you say but what you don’t say that makes yours a biased viewpoint. You don’t present the whole picture.

I have no doubt that Parental Alienation ‘Syndrome’ is used by abusive fathers as a means to gain access to their children.
But the purpose of ‘PAS’ was NOT meant to give abusive fathers access to their children, but it would benefit the falsely accused ones.
And I don’t doubt that some false accusations do happen in child custody cases.

Having said that, I don’t really like using the term ‘PAS’ (Parental Alienation Syndrome) because
”PAS is an atrocious theory with no science to back it up” –Harvard University.

I DO, however, recognise that children can become alienated from one of their parents; but the unscientific, non-medical term PAS should have no place in the judicial system or any professional organisation.

Even when children become alienated it doesn’t necessarily mean that any of the parents is guilty of causing it.

I believe that:
* Fathers and mothers are equally guilty of child abuse (except child sexual abuse, which is dominated by fathers).

* Fathers and mothers are equally guilty of making false accusations/allegations. False allegations of child abuse are rare. But ANY allegation can be either true of false and needs to be thoroughly investigated. Mothers can make false allegations that the father has abused the child, but the father can also falsely accuse the mother of making a false allegation. And vice versa. Father’s rights groups can play as dirty as some feminist groups.

* Fathers and mothers are equally guilty of alienating their children from the other parent.

I’m willing to change my mind about the above, but I’d have to see evidence, e.g. reliable statistics to back up your statements.

continued

I also believe that:
* Parents are not the only ones in children’s’ environments that are guilty of all of the above. For example, I know of one mother who is being dragged through the mud whenever her children visit her ex parents-in-law in an effort to alienate the children from her.

* Sometimes children feel naturally hostile towards one of the parents because they feel that the other parent is a victim.
For example, a friend’s husband took off with another woman. Before leaving the family, he had a great relationship with both his son and daughter. There had been traumatic marital problems, he just fell in love with someone else, and wanted to leave.

My friend and her ex split without too much drama. They decided on shared parenting so the father resided in their neughbourhood.
Shared parenting worked very well for their son, but the daughter refused to visit her father; she was 14, and angry at her father for leaving her mother, who had done no wrong.
My friend tried to change her daughter’s mind; she wanted her to maintain a relationship with her dad. She even took her to a counselor to see if that would help to fix the relationship with her dad.

It didn’t work- 5 years later; the daughter still rejects her dad.
There was a period that her father falsely accused his ex of alienating the daughter.
He changed his mind about that after a visit to the daughter’s counselor.

This is the time I wish there was an edit button option after posting a comment, accessible for the first 5-10 minutes or so after posting.

The part of the sentence in my last post that read contained an error,
"There had been traumatic marital problems,... "

Correction:
"There had been NO traumatic marital problems,..."

Courtesy of ABC Background Briefing:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2007/1847340.htm

While in the US, Dr Oates led a study looking at 550 cases of alleged sexual abuse. The purpose of the study was to assess the frequency of false allegations of sexual abuse made by children.

His team found that there was enough evidence to substantiate that sexual abuse did exist in 43% of cases. In 23% there wasn't enough evidence to be sure and the cases couldn't go to court. And the team found that in about 30% of cases, there was no evidence either way. The question then is how many of the cases were shown definitely to be false?

Dr Kim Oates.

Kim Oates: We only found 2-1/2%. 2-1/2% were false allegations, and then when we looked at those, 1% of the allegations that a parent had coached a child, so just 1%, and 1-1/2% were false allegations by children. So children do make false allegations occasionally, but very rarely, and that's in contrast to the view out there that children make these stories up a lot. Now when we looked at the children, they tended to be older children, young teenagers. One was emotionally disturbed, one did it to get even with a father because of some anger; another one did it to impress a classmate. So it's pretty unusual to have false allegations and unusual by very young children.

Justice for Kids

If you are going you are going to quote me at least be accurate and do not distort my words.

I wrote: "but there are many hurt people and the best way to care for our loved ones is in a united effort."

How is this not "talking nicely" and "patronising"?

I know this is a huge issue with domestic violence and abuse of children? I also know how some men can manipulate the system to continue their abuse (now who's being patronising?). There are a number female posters here who have much to offer in terms of experience and assistance. However, it seems very difficult to enter into a discussion with you as you appear to want to argue rather than discuss.

Fractelle,
I agree with justice for kids and note that you didn't answer her question about what you are supporting. You are supporting equality in a superficial eye. True equality acknowledges the circumstances of imbalance. Yes I to am a bit disgusted of those posters who try and equalize pedophile and completely ignore the real problems that are going on. An interesting thing about human rights abuses is that people don't really care unless its happened to them or there is some incentive for them. It would be sad to see any of these members suddenly discover a family member enduring such an atrocity and crash and burn with all of those ignorant beliefs. The family court allow a lot of publications that support the "no contact" for no real reason, but seldom do they allow publications about child abuse. Why? Because there would be a public outrage and no one would support the "no investigation" "Pro contact - no matter what" and in the end the family court will lose their money because these cases would be taken out of their hands completely.