A Major National Newspaper Finally Places Family Court Abuse Industry on Front Page!!

It Should be Headline News Everywhere that Family Courts do Not Protect but Profit from Domestic Abuse — with Deadly Results

An astonishing event has happened: the Family Court abuse industry made the front page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)! I had always said that the U.K., not the U.S., was ahead in reporting the abuse industry: people were up in arms when nineteen child homicides in Family Courts were uncovered, and the government finally forced Family Courts to open to reporters. In the U.S., even after a thousand children were murdered, nothing had happened — until now. The WSJ, the largest newspaper in the U.S. by print circulation, and published six days a week by Dow Jones and Company, is as establishment as they come. I hope this article will herald a turning point for the unconscionable human rights violations that have been able to continue, largely because of the media blackout — and judges’ ability to threaten and harm reporters, if they dared to cover the issue. In other words, the more severe and egregious the criminal activity, the more it has evaded scrutiny through gangster-like techniques of intimidating reporters. Therefore, the significance of the WSJ reporting cannot be overstated. Below is only the tip of the iceberg, of course, but it brings out the stark reality of “reunification therapy” camps, which are in truth torture camps (and after this article is another exceptional piece in the U.K.-based Independent, which reports on the decimation of women — which is often the true, hidden goal behind destroying the children they care for).

Here is the WSJ article:

A Court-Ordered Therapy that Separates Kids from a Parent They Love Stirs a Backlash

A controversial treatment used in custody fights can keep family members apart for years against children’s wishes. ‘It all absolutely destroyed me.’

August 25, 2024

By Daniel Frosch

PHOENIX — Tori Nielsen was 16 when she and her 12-year-old brother were whisked away from their mother at the Maricopa County courthouse by four strangers in a white minivan on the morning of May 27, 2021.

The strangers wouldn’t tell Tori and her brother where they were going, she recalled, as the siblings held hands and cried in the back seat. After hours on the interstate, they arrived at a hotel somewhere by the ocean. The strangers, three men and one woman, barricaded the door to their room with furniture so they couldn’t leave, Tori said.

The next morning, she remembered one of them saying: “You’re going to have a meeting with your father now.”

“At night, the children were moved into a hotel room with their father and his girlfriend, said Tori, recalling how the hotel phone was removed from the room so they couldn’t try to call their mom. Their cellphones had been confiscated the day they were taken from Arizona.”

What Tori didn’t know was that a judge had ordered the children to attend a four-day family reunification program in Ventura, Calif., with their father. The judge determined it was the only way to repair their relationship, damaged during a decadelong custody battle, court documents show.

The children had been living mostly with their mother, Angela Nielsen, and resisted seeing their dad because of his temper, Tori said. But court-appointed evaluators determined that Nielsen was poisoning the kids against their father. She was suddenly barred from contacting her children to ensure they no longer rejected their dad.

It would be around two years before Tori and her brother saw or talked to her again.

“I tried to numb myself to what was happening. It was like surviving,” said Tori, who moved back in with her mom the day she turned 18 in May 2023. “But that only worked for so long because it all absolutely destroyed me.”

Tori’s father declined to speak about his family’s situation, saying he was focused on being the best father to his children.

The treatment the Nielsens underwent is part of an industry of intensive “reunification therapy” that has sprung up during the past decade and is ordered by family courts to settle custody fights. Services like Building Family Bridges, where the Nielsens were forced to go, use videos and exercises to try to break a child’s pattern of rejecting a parent. The child is then ordered to live with that parent for an extended period and barred from having contact with the other parent. A battle has erupted over the approach in courtrooms and statehouses across the country.

After Tori told her story at a hearing with Arizona lawmakers earlier this year, the Republican-led legislature passed a measure prohibiting courts from ordering any reunification treatment that cuts off a child from the parent they prefer unless both parents agree. It was signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in April.

Utah, New Hampshire and Tennessee approved similar proposals this year. California and Colorado passed laws restricting reunification treatment in 2023.

Some legal experts and family advocacy groups say the treatment is too extreme and traumatizes children. Child-abuse researchers have raised concerns that the operations, which can cost families tens of thousands of dollars, are unregulated and use pseudoscience to sway courts into believing they can help kids and parents.

“Children are being court-ordered into costly, unregulated reunification treatments or ‘camps,’ which force them into contact with a parent who they often fear for good reason,” said Danielle Pollack, policy manager for the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington University, which supports restricting the treatment.

But supporters say it’s a last resort during the worst custody disputes, when one parent wants to re-establish a relationship with a child who has shunned them. In these cases, they say, the other, favored parent must be temporarily cut off during the reunification process, to keep from interfering.

“The whole goal here is to ensure a child has a happy, healthy relationship with both their parents,” said Demosthenes Lorandos, a psychologist and attorney who has worked with Building Family Bridges.

Disputed theory

Only about 10% of divorces in the U.S. involve significant conflict over custody arrangements, and just a fraction of these need to be decided by a judge, according to Robert Mnookin, a Harvard University professor who studies divorces.

It’s in these cases that the idea of parental alienation syndrome emerged in the 1980s with the late child psychiatrist Richard Gardner.

Gardner posited that a child can be brainwashed by one parent into rebuffing the other during custody fights and even persuaded to make up abuse claims. He testified in numerous cases, recommending in extreme circumstances that a child be taken from the “alienating parent” who had custody and placed with the “rejected parent.”

Gardner’s theory spurred fierce opposition from some mental-health professionals and family-law experts, who said it dismissed children’s legitimate abuse allegations and was being weaponized by mostly fathers seeking custody of kids living with their mothers. Parental alienation syndrome has never been officially recognized as a diagnosis by major medical or psychiatric associations.

Because custody cases are mostly sealed, information is limited on how frequently courts mandate the treatment. Researchers say programs like Building Family Bridges are likely ordered by judges only in especially contentious cases — perhaps as many as several hundred over the past few years.

There has been limited research examining their effectiveness or safety, said Jean Mercer, a professor of psychology who studies the programs and believes they pose serious risks for children.

“We don’t know the simplest things — like how often the mother is alleged to be an alienator, and how often the father is alleged to be an alienator,” Mercer said. “What we do know is there are potential dangers for the kids, like PTSD, and depression and anger at how they were treated. This can be extremely frightening for them.”

Matthew Sullivan, a psychologist and supporter of reunification treatment, said courts typically don’t order the programs until after less intensive interventions have failed and multiple evaluations by experts. Effective treatment seeks to challenge dysfunctional behavior exhibited by the child and both parents, he said.

“These are pretty awful situations on all sides,” said Sullivan.

Costs can range from $8,000 to around $40,000 for the programs, according to documents viewed by the Journal. There are also hourly therapist fees for the “aftercare” program that the so-called alienating parent must typically complete before seeing their children again.

Judges may order the rejected parent to pay the bill up front. In some cases, the favored parent ends up paying a portion.

‘Burst into tears’

The website for Building Family Bridges greets people with a silent video showing what appears to be a teenager on a couch having an intense conversation with a parent. A clipboard-toting counselor looks on.

Describing itself as the “gold standard” of family reunification services, Building Family Bridges says it can help families who therapists and courts thought were beyond reach.

“This innovative four-day workshop helps children reunify with a parent they claim to hate or fear,” the site says.

The site quotes unnamed parents and judges lauding its success. It also cites a study by a former workshop leader that says out of 83 children who had participated in Building Family Bridges, a “significant number” repaired their relationship with the parent they’d previously rejected.

Tori Nielsen’s experience was far different

After arriving in Ventura and spending a sleepless night together, Tori and her brother were ushered across the street to a Crowne Plaza hotel, she said.

In a conference room, their dad, his girlfriend and several Building Family Bridges staff members were waiting. One introduced himself to Tori. She later learned from speaking with other children who’d gone through Building Family Bridges and from a picture she found online that this was Randy Rand, a founder.

Staff read aloud the court order and laid out rules, Tori recalled. The children couldn’t contact their mother for 90 days. If they tried to leave or didn’t participate, they could be sent to a wilderness camp, she said. Bringing up incidents from the past was forbidden. If someone did, staff told Tori that they would stop them by saying, “Moratorium!”

The first two days were spent watching videos that appeared aimed at shifting the kids’ memories about their parents, Tori said. One focused on “The Monkey Business Illusion,” a psychological study that aims to show blind spots in people’s perception of events. The second two days were interactive, with the group writing down traits about themselves and family members.

Rand declined to comment on any specific cases and described parental alienation as “complex, painful for those involved, and nuanced.”

“The Building Family Bridges methodology is available for severe parental alienation cases and continues to be an effective tool for families,” he said.

Lorandos, the psychologist who worked with Building Family Bridges, said he’d observed its workshops and trainings. He likened their work with children who had rejected one parent to deprogramming people who’d been in a cult.

“There’s a lot of re-education around things your dad, for example, may have said about your mom that are not true,” he said.

At night, the children were moved into a hotel room with their father and his girlfriend, said Tori, recalling how the hotel phone was removed from the room so they couldn’t try to call their mom. Their cellphones had been confiscated the day they were taken from Arizona.

“One morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom, and I just looked in the mirror and I thought about what was happening and I burst into tears,” she said.

Immediately following the workshop, Tori and her brother were required to vacation with their dad, who took them to San Diego. Under the court order, they then returned to live with him at his home in the Phoenix suburbs.

Angela Nielsen lived just a few miles away. But under the no-contact order, she couldn’t interact with her children until she completed Building Family Bridges’s “aftercare” curriculum.

It included writing out explanations on why she was forbidden from contacting her kids and why the court had intervened to protect them.

Nielsen said she worked for countless hours on the responses. The therapist administering the program for Building Family Bridges said they were insufficient and that Nielsen was combative, documents show.

The therapist wrote that Nielsen drafted multiple iterations of answers but refused to acknowledge that she’d “ever engaged in any parental alienating patterns.” She therefore couldn’t move onto the program’s next level.

In another report, the therapist noted that while the children’s relationship with their dad was “close and healthy,” they missed their mother and desperately wanted to see her. The report said Tori would prefer to live primarily with her mom, and felt more supported and happier living with her.

These emotions, while normal, were also examples of the kids’ own alienating beliefs, the therapist wrote.

“I would get so upset and so down,” Nielsen said. “Like why can’t I pass this program? I would spend entire weekends working on these questions. I just wanted my children to come home.”

Now staying with her dad and his girlfriend, Tori buried herself in activities: cheerleading, a mentorship club, time at her boyfriend’s house. She stayed “neutral” toward her father, trying to get along with him, hoping it would speed a chance to see her mother, she said.

Her dad’s mood swings continued to upset her, Tori said. And she developed panic attacks, overcome with nausea and shakiness.

On her closet mirror, Tori marked off the days that passed. Just after midnight on May 7, 2023, her 18th birthday, she packed her belongings and told her dad she was leaving. He asked if she was certain she wanted to leave like this, she recalled. Her brother implored her not to forget about him. It broke her heart.

“I kind of just showed up at my mom’s house that day,” Tori said. “We just hugged and cried. It was a surreal and relieving moment, but it was really hard because my brother wasn’t there with me.”

Troubled histories

Concerned by reports of children being traumatized after being removed from a parent to attend reunification programs, Danielle Pollack’s group at George Washington University has been working with lawmakers to limit them.

Kayden’s Law, passed by Congress in 2022, provides federal funding to states that restrict reunification treatment not shown to be effective, and trains judges on how best to evaluate abuse allegations in custody fights.

The law was named after Kayden Mancuso, a 7-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was fatally beaten by her father after a judge allowed him unsupervised visits despite warnings from her mother about his violent history.

“These camps are not about protecting our children or bringing families together. They manipulate children and pass on exorbitant fees to families,” said Arizona state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, a Republican who sponsored the recent measure there.

Supporters of more restrictions note that while the reunification industry includes some well-intentioned therapists, leading proponents have come under scrutiny.

Randy Rand of Building Family Bridges was disciplined by the California Board of Psychology in 2009 for misconduct in two cases, records show. In one, the board found Rand blatantly sided with the father in a custody case he was supposed to be impartially mediating. In a separate case, Rand recommended a permanent custody change without ever interviewing the child, which amounted to gross negligence, the board said.

Rand’s license was placed on probation for five years unless he agreed to have his practice monitored, take an ethics course and pay a $43,000 fine. His license is currently inactive.

In board filings, Rand denied wrongdoing.

Rand said he does not lead Building Family Bridges workshops and serves as “administrative services director.” He said he occasionally provides support to the licensed mental health workers and legal professionals running the sessions.

Linda Gottlieb, who runs the Turning Points for Families reunification program in New York, is the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York state court in March. In the lawsuit, an Ohio woman, Tricia Singer-Romohr, sued Gottlieb for violating rules on deceptive and unfair trade practices, alleging she falsely represented parental alienation as a scientifically accepted disorder that her program could cure.

A judge ordered Singer-Romohr’s two children to participate in Gottlieb’s program in 2021 after determining she was manipulating them into rejecting their father and after hearing testimony from Gottlieb. Singer-Romohr, who had primary custody, was initially barred from contacting her kids for 90 days until Gottlieb determined she was supporting the kids’ relationship with their dad.

In court filings, Singer-Romohr included copies of letters that Gottlieb required she write to her children. Her letters included recollections of good times the kids shared with their dad, and encouraged them to have a loving relationship with him while apologizing for making them feel like they shouldn’t.

Gottlieb told Singer-Romohr that wasn’t enough, according to emails from the filings. After Gottlieb said Singer-Romohr wasn’t complying, the no-contact order ultimately got extended for around 900 days, according to the suit.

Attorneys for Singer-Romohr referred to the lawsuit when asked for comment.

Gottlieb, a marriage and family therapist and social worker, wouldn’t comment on the case. In legal filings, she said parental alienation was widely accepted by courts and that she favors lifting no-contact orders as soon as it’s “clinically advisable.” Gottlieb asserted that it was the judge who extended the no-contact orders and she never made any recommendations about them. In court filings, her lawyer said Singer-Romohr didn’t object to Gottlieb’s involvement until she disagreed with the outcome of the case.

“I think my entire profession, including what I do, has been unfairly criticized with deliberate lies,” Gottlieb said in an interview.

‘Unnecessary and sad’

The house where Tori lives with her mother is cluttered with court documents that have been the weapons in her parents’ war.

Three years since the two children attended Building Family Bridges, Tori’s brother still lives solely with his dad. The aftercare program is effectively on hold, Nielsen said. Earlier this year, a judge granted her four hours a week of supervised visitation with her son.

Tori, who is heading to college in the fall, sees her brother about once a month at her dad’s house and occasionally accompanies her mom on her visits. She leaves feeling despondent.

Among boxes of court filings, several cards and letters are displayed from both kids, expressing how much they love their mother and want to spend time with her. Somewhere in the boxes, there’s a photo of the entire family from more than a decade ago, before the divorce and its aftermath.

Tori, who was 6 when her parents split, said it’s surreal to see them all together. She struggles to understand why her father pursued reunification treatment as a solution. She wants a positive relationship with him. But if anything, the past three years have driven a deeper wedge between them, she said.

“I always asked my dad, ‘Can we please figure this out ourselves and stop involving the courts?’ It all seemed so unnecessary and sad. We could all have gotten along,” she said.

“None of this ever had to happen.”

(The original article is published here: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/reunification-therapy-custody-family-court-5b4e9279?st=q9k56tiw0odemhd&reflink=article_imessage_share.)

Here is the Independent article, just nine days earlier (a fertile fortnight in the midst of the desert of Family Court reporting!):

‘It’s not like you were beaten’: The horrifying misogyny vulnerable women face from the judge’s bench

Domestic abuse survivors warn that — inside the secretive family courts — they are being ‘retraumatised’ by the legal system, and say judges are the worst offenders.

16 August 2024

By Athena Stavrou

“Domestic violence is a 50/50 thing.” “It’s not like you were beaten.” “Maybe one day you’ll be able to forget what happened.”

These are just some of the shocking comments that vulnerable women say they have been forced to face in court — from the judges tasked with deciding their families’ futures.

They say the comments show a problem with misogyny in the secretive family courts that not only subjects them to further trauma — often in a courtroom with their abuser present — but leads to rulings that can even leave them legally required to face the perpetrator.

Now campaigners are calling for judges who sit in the family courts to undergo further training so they have a proper understanding of the complexities behind domestic abuse, including coercive control, when deciding on cases including access to and custody of children.

‘Reinforcing the coercive control’

Emma* broke up with her partner after 10 years, during which she says he controlled her money and would bill her for “costs” — including when she was on maternity leave raising their child. He was investigated by police for coercive and financial control but, despite this, she faced hours of questioning over money in court after he brought a case against her.

She said she had been put into debt even before the process started, because the assets under her name meant she did not qualify for legal aid despite them being controlled by her ex-husband. She said: “I have assets on paper, but my ex-husband has trapped the capital in those assets [in property], so I am thousands in the red while he controls the assets that I have no access to, because his name is on the mortgages despite the first property being one I bought many years before I knew him.

“Initially his barrister spent a lot of time attacking me on the finances and the money. He focused on the fact that [my ex-husband] was paying for things while I was on maternity leave. So it’s reinforcing the coercive control, it’s reinforcing that you should somehow be grateful that he’s controlling the money.

“The judge was not challenging things that should have been challenged, such as victim-blaming from my ex-partner’s barrister and reinforcement of outdated and sexist attitudes. They were quite happy to just take my husband’s word for everything.

“I was attacked by a barrister for four-and-a-half hours, and the trauma just came right up to the surface that entire time.”

‘The system is abusing them’

A 2020 report published by the Ministry of Justice found that the courts were putting domestic abuse victims and their children at risk of additional harm yet little has been changed since.

Family court cases, which often involve parental disputes concerning the upbringing of children, are anonymised and closed to the public, placing a shroud of secrecy around proceedings. But campaigners say this is also leading to a lack of accountability.

Solicitor Rachel Horman-Brown, who has worked within the family courts for 30 years, said domestic abuse victims face a “lottery” when it comes to who hears their case.

“Some clients feel effectively the system is abusing them and colluding with the perpetrator or minimising the abuse,” she said.

The lawyer said that judges often avoid investigating domestic abuse as it takes up time and resources in a stretched legal system.

“While official guidance has caught up and has recommend that the court takes [domestic abuse] seriously, the reality isn’t quite there,” she said.

“It’s sad we have a system that which judge your case gets put in front of will change the outcome.”

Ms Horman-Brown said more training needs to be offered to judges to deal with domestic abuse.

“This infects all participants within the family system. Judges are the top of that pyramid of power within it,” she said.

“For the judge to make a comment the victim feels is unfair or minimising abuse, hurts so much more than if it was said by a lawyer or social worker.

“That person wields so much power and it really is terrifying for victims if they feel judges don’t understand domestic abuse. It’s something they find really traumatic.”

‘Where can you feel safe?’

Following a decade-long abusive relationship, Sally* was taken to court by the father of her child for visitation rights.

The 31-year-old informed the judge of his abusive past and provided evidence. She requested an investigation but says the judge told her it would have to be shelved “because she didn’t think it was fair”. She added: “What does she mean it’s not fair? It sounded like she didn’t believe me. He did this to me for 10 years, what makes you think he wouldn’t do it to my son?”

She added: “Because she dismissed the abuse, I now have to call him every week and I myself have to drop my son off to him every six weeks.

“It makes me feel sick every time. My stomach turns, I absolutely hate it.”

A campaign launched by Riverlight — which provides support for abuse survivors — has brought to light testimony from victims of their experience during family court proceedings. Survivors were invited to submit testimonies, which also included judges rolling their eyes at mentions of gaslighting and saying: “If you are so afraid of him and we are to believe what you’ve said, how can you sit near him in court?”

The Judicial College, which is responsible for training of judges, said all family judges and magistrates complete an induction and training that covers domestic abuse.

But Riverlight founder Roda Hassan is calling for more to be done. She said: “Victims and survivors constantly tell us that they often feel more abused and victimised by the court system itself than the perpetrator. If you can’t feel safe in a court of law where this happens, then where can you feel safe?”

(The original article is published here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/family-court-judges-misogyny-domestic-abuse-b2595125.html.)