Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

Having spent well over a decade writing about the harm which is caused to children who align with a parent and reject the other when the relationship between their parents ends, the judgment in a case I have worked in for four years, which recognises the pattern of behaviour by a mother towards her children and their father as coercive control is welcome.

Taken from the published judgment, the commentary makes it clear that the distorted and false views held by this mother, led to her abusive role in their lives which amounted to coercive control.

Neutral Citation Number: [2023] EWHC 1864 (Fam

I do not intend to write anything further about the case itself, because as a psychotherapist it is not appropriate to do so. I do however, over the coming weeks, intend to write about the harm caused by coercive control of children and parents in divorce and separation, because it is my experience that this is a fundamental dynamic which occurs in situations where children strongly align with one parent and vehemently reject the other, especially when this is accompanied by false allegations.

The finding of coercive control by a mother against her children and their father in such circumstances is important, because it underscores the reality that both mothers AND fathers can be involved in coercing their children to reject parents and/or make false allegations. This is something which has been denied by many who campaign against the idea that children can be manipulated in divorce and separation, with some agreeing that it can happen, but it is only fathers who do it as part of a pattern of post separation abuse.

My clinical experience has, for many years, shown that mothers and fathers are equally capable of controlling their children and coercing them to reject the other parent and that when they do this, children are forced to maladapt their attachment relationships. Those attachment maladaptations are demonstrated by hyper attachment to one parent, (idealising a parent, clinging to them, echoing their feelings and mirroring their behaviours) and rejection of the other parent which is often accompanied by contempt and/or disdain.

The distorted view which is promulgated by many who campaign against the idea that children can be manipulated, is that children always tell the truth and that they should always be listened to uncritically. This is a narrative which is based upon either a complete lack of understanding of children’s psychological responses to power and control dynamics, or a wilful attempt to cover up the truth, which is based upon an ideological belief system of good mothers/bad fathers.

Anyone who really understands the dynamics of coercive control, must know that it exists in situations where there is an inequitable distribution of power. In cases where children are being manipulated, the power over the child is held by one parent who has secured the child’s allegiance through either threats of harm or threats of abandonment or both. Children who are dependent upon their parent, are coerced into attachment maladaptations through fear, anxiety and often despair and will go to any lengths to placate or regulate a parent who feels out of control because of that. When people say to me ‘but why didn’t they tell someone‘ in situations where children are manipulated in this way, I point to the same question which is asked of women and men who are victims of domestic abuse. If adults cannot leave an abusive situation because of dependency, fear, anxiety and despair, why would children, (who are doubly dependent), be able to do so?

Children who are living in such situations, use splitting as a coping mechanism because they have no other route to dealing with what they have been forced to do. When people deny the reality of the lived experience of these children or worse, advocate that they should be listened to without question, they condemn abused children to further harm as the child must maladapt further, alienating themselves from their own sense of an integrated self.

The plight of alienated children is immense because most of them are conscious of the fact that they are unable to do anything other than reject a parent in circumstances where they are being controlled to do so. Whilst they will use the defence of splitting to cope with the shame and guilt of having rejected a parent they love, this is not a dissociative split in which the child develops two separate selves, but an ego split in which the child wards off the guilt and shame by putting the rejection out of their conscious mind for as long as possible.

The defensive presentation of the alienated child is recognised by the splitting behaviour which is infantile in nature and is not conversant with the reality of what is seen to be occurring around the child. When splitting is seen to develop, it is often heralded by the child’s switching behaviours (moving back and forth between seeming normal and a contemptuous presention which erupts) often accompanied by inexplicable events occurring as a pattern. These red flags are the signs that a child is under pressure, coercive control being one of the dynamics which causes this.

Splitting causes children to lie, the lies are necessary to explain the reasons why one parent is suddenly idealised and the other is demonised. The harm which occurs when this happens, is to the child first because the return to what Melanie Klein termed the paranoid/schizoid position causes the child to split the ego in order to ward off (deny), unwanted/unacceptable aspects of self and conscious aawareness of what is happening in the relationship with the idealised parent. This warded off material is then projected at the parent who must be evicted from the family system and who is then characterised by the child as a thoroughly bad person (because they carry the negative projections of the split off material from the child – ie, what the child cannot tolerate in their conscious mind, is projected and seen in the parent (projective identification).

The paranoid/schizoid position is characterised by splitting the world into good/bad and the projection of this internal defence onto parents, (one parent is felt to be wholly good, the other is experienced as wholly bad), is what gives it away in the child. Maturity allows for what Klein called the depressive position,which is ambivalence or in the case of relationships with parents, an acceptance that mum and dad are good people who might do things the child doesn’t like at times. Inducing a child to return to the infantile paranoid/schizoid state of mind, due to manipulation and coercion (with an underlying intent to ruin the child’s relationship with a healthy parent), is abusive.

The reality of the harm these children are suffering is well hidden unless you understand the child’s behavioural patterns. The intent to keep this harm hidden is, in my view one of the reasons why distorted narratives about children being removed from protective parents to be given to abusers are so prevalent (another being that those who campaign in this space are also those who operate in a world of primitive defences). With clarity that mothers and fathers harm their children via coercive control strategies in divorce and separation, I am hopeful that the distorted narratives can be understood for what they are and that the tide can turn towards greater awareness of why some children of divorce and separation lie and how to protect those who are the victims of coercive control for whom lying to protect themselves from further harm is a very necessary strategy.

The hero/villain binary debate, caused by ideological campaigns, must now be recognised for what is, a denial of the reality of what is happening to children who are suffering from coercive control at the hands of a parent who is harming them. Because the time for a grown up, collegiate and wiser approach to protecting children who suffer in this way, is desperately overdue.