Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

Introduction

This week, I have been watching a documentary by Olivia Gentile, a journalist who describes herself as ‘telling stories about women.’ This documentary headlines itself as ‘The Truth Behind the Experimental Therapy that Kids Say Starts With Legalised Kidnapping‘ and is being promoted by a wide range of academics and those who claim expertise in the field of coercive control as well as the new term Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS),

The impact of CAMS, which has been coined to describe a situation in which a child’s relationship with their mother in divorce or separation, is damaged by an abusive father is seen from the outset in the documentary by Gentile, who tells us during the intro –

‘when this video, of two kids being taken by force went viral, people were shocked. But actually, it had been ordered by a judge and the same thing is happening to children all over the country.

What Gentile is referring to, is the process in the USA, by which emotionally and psychologically abused children, who are trauma bonded to an abusive parent, are removed from that parent in order to undergo therapeutic treatment. Whilst Gentile tells us that the kids call it ‘legalised kidnapping,’ what is really going on is that the child is being separated from an abusive parent who has caused them serious harm.

The documentary opens with the video of Maya and Sebastian, two children whose father has been found to have caused them harm. The process of removal from their father, which was filmed and published widely across the internet, depicts a classic case of what the anti – alienation campaigners call child and mother sabotage (CAMS), in which the children’s relationship with the mother they rejected, had been seriously damaged by their father. What you are watching in the opening part of the video therefore, is removal from an abusive father to a healthy mother, which makes it all the more bizarre that it was made by a woman who supposedly tells stories about women and is being promoted by women who have come up with the label CAMS.

‘Before reading this article further, you may wish to watch the documenary which is being promoted by Gentile and those groups supporting women’s rights. This will give you perspective so that what I unpack further into this article makes sense. Because what is being called by these campaigners (variously) experimental therapy, reprogramming therapy and sometimes even conversion therapy‘ is actually the child protection intervention of removal of a child from harm.

Background

There is a serious trans atlantic campaign going on currently to demonise the label parental alienation and the theory which supports it. Anyone working in this space in the UK, will be aware that since 2020, when academics met at Brunel University to scope out a push back against the gains made in the use of the label, an escalating spiral of false claims, attacks on reputation, challenges to the law and efforts to influence public opinion on the family courts, has been underway. At times the campaign against the label parental alienation has appeared obsessed to the point of irrationality, meaning that allegations of pedophilia, child trafficking and even organ harvesting, have made against those who work in the family courts with emotionally and psychologically abused children. Ad hominen attacks, particularly at a time when these campaigners feel they have won something, have been regularly seen and there has been interference in work being done with families, by campaigners who have been triangulated into cases by alienating parents. This emotionally and psychologically charged environment has been, at times, tremendously difficult to navigate in the face of what we would call, negative transference.

Understanding Constructs

The label and theory of parental alienation is not the only way that those of us who work with emotionally and psychologically abused children, understand and work with the problem. The AFCC in the USA and Canada (and now established in the UK and Europe), use a systemic/ecological approach to understanding which seeks to reduce polarised behaviours in the family. Dr Childress in the USA uses a diagnostic model (ABPA) and in the UK at the Family Separation Clinic, we use a relational model of understanding and treating the problem which enables unresolved trauma in the family to be identified and the pressure points which cause splitting in the child to be isolated, with structural interventions to change the power dynamics causing these. Following on from that, therapy which is combined with therapeutic parenting training for the parent in the rejected position, is utilised to address the underlying attachment trauma suffered by the child. Teaching therapists and social workers to recognise and work with the problem using the FSC model enables a holistic approach to treatment of a family trauma which is caused by a multitude of relational dynamics which are tightly interwoven. Despite the different approaches being used however, the campaigning remains focused upon the label and theory of parental alienation, meaning that there is a binary for/against attitude around this issue, which does not allow for either depth understanding or treatment of the problem.

Psychology not Ideology in the Family Courts

According to Katz (2023), Child and Mother Sabotage is a preferable term to the label parental alienation when seeking to understanding why some children reject their mother after divorce and separation. The research group SHERA which is made up of a number of academics in the UK and USA, of which Katz is a member, have recently introduced this new term which they say is recognised by defensive strategies in the child’s behaviour. According to this group, the term CAMS has been introduced to social workers and judges, I am assuming that this is in order to persaude those who work with emotionally and psychologically abused children, that this ideologically constructed term has some validity in helping to understand (and presumably treat), the problem of a child’s rejecting behaviour. The problem that Katz et al have however, is that they are a) academics not clinicians and b) do not understand the problem they have created a term for. If they did they would recognise that Maya and Sebastian, who feature strongly in this new documentary they are promoting widely, are real life victims of Child and Mother Sabotage.

A recent claim by one of the academics involved in SHERA went along the lines that when CAMS is treated it will be ‘trauma informed’ and underpinned by an understanding of domestic abuse. When I read such claims, I know that clinical understanding of the reality of this family trauma by those who have designed this term, is absent. Children who are trauma bonded to an abusive father cannot be treated therapeutically in situ and cannot be persuaded to change their stance either. This is because children who are being abused by a parent, in circumstances where they are utilising defensive strategies to stay safe in the care of that parent, will do anything and everything in their power to show the abusive parent that they remain aligned with them. To do anything else is impossible because the defensive strategies which are in place are biological imperatives. This is why abused children who cling to a parenting who is harming them will escalate their allegations against a parent in the rejected position if anyone gets too close to changing the dynamics. In situations where children are clinging to an abusive parent they are afraid of, especially in situations where they may have witnessed the abuse of the parent who is in the rejected position, there is a strong likelihood that they will be suffering from a well known defence called identification with the aggressor. This is why these children, like those who have been otherwise abused, are removed and this is why that removal often has to be forcibly undertaken. Anyone who has worked in the children protection arena is aware of this and all understand that when it comes to a child clinging to an abusive caregiver, making difficult decisions which go against the expressed wishes of the child are necessary for their longer term protection.

Identification with the Aggressor

Maya and Sebastian’s situation appears to be like so many other children around the world, they have been triangulated by adults into adult battles and have been forced (Maya in particular), into a defence mechanism which is well known in situations where children align to an abusive caregiver. You can learn more about identification with the aggressor by watching this short film below.

Identifying Children Who are Aligned to Abusive Parents

Whilst CAMS is supposed to offer a way of identifying where a child is aligned to an abusive father and where a mother is in the rejected position because of relationship sabotage, it would appear that the reality of CAMS is not well understood by its authors. In such circumstances where children are clinging to abusive parents, the defensive strategies which are seen in the child look exactly like the behaviours of Maya and Sebastian in this documentary. Anyone who understands this dynamic and who has done the work of child protection will understand on watching the opening part of the documentary that these children are being removed from their abusive father. The lack of recognition of this most fundamental point amongst campaigners in this space, must, in my view, rest upon the binary splitting caused by their ideological beliefs.

For these campaigners the binary split in thinking goes something like this –

1. Feminist theory is right (and anyone associated with it is right )

2. Parental alienation theory is wrong (meaning anything and anyone associated with it is wrong)

3. Any child being removed from a parent on the basis of parental alienation theory is telling the truth and must be listened to.

The reason why Gentile and the academics who devised Child and Mother Sabotage cannot see that what they are watching in the opening part of the documentary are two children who have been abused by their father being removed from his care, is because ideological constructs produce outcomes which are always in line with ideological beliefs. Thus, if parental alienation theory and label is wrong, then the intervention to remove the child who is being abused must also be wrong and if that is wrong then it must mean that the father is protective and the mother is abusive. The lack of clinical experience in understanding children’s behaviours (for example it is entirely possible from a clinical point of view, to observe Sebastian’s anxious attachment to his sister who has likely become a proxy mother to him), and the lack of critical thinking which is embedded within feminist ideology, leaves children like Maya and Sebastian and their mother, without recognition or the help and assistance they need, trauma informed or otherwise.

The trend towards making programmes based upon the testimonies of parents who have been found to have harmed their children (or who are considered a risk to their children’s health and wellbeing), has been increasing as a strategy to influence public opinion all around the world. As such Gentile, like others before her, has been duped into believing something which is not only untrue (this is not ‘experimental’ therapy), she has headlined her documentary with the depiction of two children suffering from Child and Mother Relationship Sabotage, who are rejecting their mother due to their identification with an abusive father. The truth is that what we are watching in the opening minutes of her documentary, is the US version of removal from harm which here in the UK is often undertaken by social workers.

What this documentary therefore underlines for me is, that psychology not ideology is what is necessary to assist people to understand this relational trauma and that campaigners who rely upon ideological constructs, put children (and often, as in this case, their mothers), at serious risk of harm. Whether Gentile can grasp that what she has done will be re-traumatising to Maya and Sebastian’s mother and will prolong the attachment trauma seen in Sebastian and the weaponisation of Maya by campaigners who are using these children’s plight to further their own campaign aims, remains to be seen. For now the use of abused children to shield adults from scrutiny continues and this documentary, made by a woman who is supposed to be the ‘teller of women’s stories’, merely promotes the campaign aims of those who seek to hide this pernicious form of child abuse.