Fathers Canada

Political Commentary and Opinion

Judge fines mother $10,000 for 'alienation' In OTTAWA - An Ontario woman who poisoned her children's minds against their "good and loving father" has been fined $10,000 -- and threatened with further fines and imprisonment -- in what is believed to be the harshest penalty yet imposed by a Canadian court for "parental alienation."

The Parental Alienation Syndrome, so named by Dr. Richard Gardner, is a distinctive family response to divorce in which the child becomes aligned with one parent and preoccupied with unjustified and/or exaggerated denigration of the other, target parent. In severe cases, the child's once love-bonded relationship with rejected/target parent is destroyed. Testimony on Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) in legal proceedings has sparked debate. This two-part article seeks to shed light on the debate by reviewing Gardner's work and that of others on PAS, integrating the concept of PAS with research on high conflict divorce and other related literature. The material is organized under topic headings such as parents who induce alienation, the child in PAS, the target/alienated parent, attorneys on PAS, and evaluation and intervention. Part 11 begins with the child in PAS. Case vignettes of moderate to severe PAS are presented in both parts, some of which illustrate the consequences for children and families when the system is successfully manipulated by the alienating parent, as well as some difficult but effective interventions implemented by the author, her husband Randy Rand, Ed.D., and other colleagues.

NATIONAL POST - CanWest News Service

A9 - 20 January, 2004

“Woman fined $10,000 for ‘parental alienation’ “  

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=7add02e4-a0e6-4f51-9705-a942d2d9c7d5

Hefty fine unusual - "Repeatedly blocked father’s access to children."

By Cristin Schmitz

OTTAWA :  An Ontario woman who poisoned her children’s minds against their “good and loving father” has been fined $10,000 – and threatened with farther fines and imprisonment – in what is believed to be the harshest penalty yet imposed by a Canadian court for “parental alienation”.

Superior Court Justice Lorna-Lee Snowie of Brampton recently found Nancy Cooper, 52, in civil contempt of court for repeatedly flouting court orders over the past seven years that required her to facilitate contact between her three daughters and their father, David Cooper, of Point Clark, Ont. The 53-year-old Air Canada pilot has not seen or spoken with the two youngest children since 1998 when his ex-wife told to vacate the family home. The girls send occasional emails requesting money.

Nacy Cooper, an unemployed registered nurse whose ex-husband still financially supports her, must immediately pay $10,000 to the Treasurer of Ontario and faces a further $15,000 fine and 30 days in jail if she fails to encourage and assist her youngest child, 16, to take part in family counselling aimed at “reintegrating the father back into his daughter’s life.” Says the decision reported in the next edition of the Lawyers Weekly. “This counselling will provide a safe place for [the child] to work out her feelings and for the [father] to work out his feelings about their estrangement – their estrangement is through no fault of either one of them,’ Judge Snowie observed. The judge called the mother’s behaviour “a travesty” that deeply wounded her children.

The father’s lawyer, Paula Bateman of Mississauga said the decision sends a powerful warning to custodial parents who deny or obstruct  their children’s right to see the other parent. “You will be dealt with harshly, and possibly jailed,” Ms. Bateman cautioned. “You have a proactive obligation to facilitate contact when you are the custodial parent.” Obstructed access is a problem affecting thousands of divorced parents – mostly men – and their children across Canada . But monetary and other penalties remain rare. Few access deniers spend more than a few days in jail. Ms. Bateman and other lawyers said the hefty fine meted out by Judge Snowie is the highest they had ever seen from a Canadian court.

Roger Gallaway, the Liberal MP for Sarnia , Ont., and co-chair of the recent special joint Senate/House of Commons committee on custody and access, said courts have been remiss in not handing out stiffer sanctions when confronted by egregious cases of wrongful access denial, or "parental alienation" -- a term coined to describe the phenomenon of one parent (usually the custodial parent) brainwashing the child against the other parent by denigrating and devaluing that parent.

Judge Snowie held that the mother's persistent refusal to comply with two court orders requiring her to facilitate family counselling, and telephone contact between the girls and their father, amounted to civil contempt of court. The judge remarked she might have awarded sole custody to the father -- instead of joint custody -- were it not for the fact the youngest, the only child still at home, is so attached to her mother and will soon be independent.

"I find that [the mother's] sabotaging actions have been knowing, wilful and deliberate," found the judge. "As a result of [her] behaviour, the children have little or no relationship with the father who loves them, who has tried to be a good father, and who has been a good provider throughout their lives."

The girls were nine, 13 and 18 when their parents split up in 1998 after nearly 25 years of marriage. The eldest, now 25 and married, recently started to see her father on her own initiative. The judge emphasized all children have a right to a relationship with both their mother and their father.

"There is no evidence before this court that would indicate that Mr. Cooper was anything but a good father, a loving father, and father who throughout the last seven years wanted to be involved in any capacity in his children's lives," wrote Judge Snowie. "He has admirably and heroically been before this court on at least 15 occasions trying, unsuccessfully, to obtain access with his children. He still continues valiantly to attempt to have a relationship with his children."

Judge Snowie said despite the "heroic efforts" of judges, therapists, counsellors and others to reconcile the girls with their father, their mother "successfully manipulated the situation to sabotage all contact ... over and over again."

Due to a "major depression" that was partly caused by his estrangement from his daughters, Mr. Cooper has been on disability leave for the past two years from his post as a captain with Air Canada , says the judgment. He continued to pay combined child and spousal support of almost $5,000 a month even though his income fell drastically. He also voluntarily paid $41,300 for the university costs of his two older daughters.

© National Post 2005

On another issue of Pas where a father was killed by his own 10 year old son.

The Lohstroh Case: Alienating Mother Pushes 10 Year-Old Boy to Kill Father

In one of the most shocking murders in recent history, a 10 year old boy caught in his mother's vicious alienation campaign shot his father in the back after his father came to pick him up as part of his post-divorce shared custody arrangement. Judy Jones, a long time friend of the victim, Dr. Rick Lohstroh, an emergency physician at the University of Texas, has set up a website in his memory. According to Jones: "[Rick was] a very loving and devoted father. He was a compassionate man who devoted his life to saving the lives of others....he had been through a very contentious divorce with his ex-wife, Deborah Geisler, who had made allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Those abuse allegations had been proven false by several police departments, CPS, and a voluntary lie detector test taken by Dr. Lohstroh.

The audio archive of Sunday evening's show--The 'Wimp Factor': Leftist Psychologist Says Conservative Men Are 'Femiphobic'--can be found here.

I was quoted in a recent article about the nightmarish Lohstroh case--see Advocates say father's death a case of alienation syndrome (Houston Chronicle,12/29/04, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1/2/04). In October we devoted a show to this case, wherein a 10 year-old boy caught in his mother's alienation campaign shot his father in the back after his father came to pick him up as part of his post-divorce shared custody arrangement.  The most chilling part of the show was when we played recordings of Lohstroh's ex-wife threatening to bring false changes of child abuse against him. To listen, go to The Lohstroh Case: Alienating Mother Pushes 10 Year-Old Boy to Kill Father (10/31/04).

To write the Houston Chronicle about the article and the issue, click on viewpoints@chron.com.

Doug Darnall, who recently appeared on His Side (see Spontaneous Reunification, 12/19/04), was also quoted in the article. 

The Associated Press has an interesting article about the problem of divorce among families separated due to one spouse's military service--U.S. Army tries to save war-torn marriages.  One thing the article ignores is the role of anti-father family court bias in these divorces. Most divorces involving children are initiated by women, and the expectation of obtaining custody is one of the major factors which facilitates the divorce (see my co-authored column Can Abolishing Sole Custody Curb Divorce?, New York Sun, 10/2/02). I can guarantee that if these women weren't sure they would get custody of their children and all its attendant power and privileges they'd be more willing to be patient with their marriages to deployed servicemen.

The current system does a miserable job of protecting the family rights of deployed soldiers and sailors. For more information, see my columns The Betrayal of the Military Father (Los Angeles Daily News, 5/4/03) and Defrauded Veterans Have Mixed Emotions on Veterans Day (Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 11/11/03), and my co-authored column Military Service Costs Some Men Their Children (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 3/16/04).  As I've noted several times on the air, it amazes me that we have tens of thousands of fathers marching through Iraq and Afghanistan getting shot at and our government can't lift a finger to try to protect their rights to their children.

I was quoted in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer piece on fathers being separated from their children around the holidays--see Holidays can fuel child-custody woes (12/24/04). I discussed the same subject and the modern assault on fatherhood in general on the Al Rantel Show on KABC AM 790 in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Attention dads and daughters--Dr. Linda Nielsen's Embracing Your Father: How to Build the Relationship You Always Wanted with Your Dad gives practical, no nonsense advice and ideas on how fathers and daughters can communicate more honestly and be more comfortable with each other. Dr. Nielsen is a psychologist whose advice has helped hundreds of fathers and daughters strengthen their relationships. To listen to Dr. Nielsen on His Side, go to "Why Girls Need Fathers" (5/23/04).

PAS INFORMATION

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=00d56c1f-a506-4bc3-83b3-32c29822d5a9
 
National Post – Editorial
January 22, 2005
 
“A travesty punished”
 
In recent years, courts have gone out of their way to crack down on "deadbeat dads" -- or, in a few cases, "deadbeat moms" -- who fail to pay child support. That's a good thing: Any parent who effectively abandons his or her child deserves to be punished. But what about the flip-side -- loving, committed non-custodial parents, usually fathers, who are denied access to their children?
 
Such cases are all too common, and rarely is any penalty levelled against the guilty party selfishly denying their child a two-parent upbringing. So it was encouraging to learn this week that an Ontario mother who refused to allow her three children to see their father and deliberately turned them against him has paid the price.
 
At the time of Superior Court Justice Lorna Lee-Snowie's recent ruling, David Cooper, a 53-year-old Air Canada pilot, had not seen or spoken to his two youngest daughters since his ex-wife, Nancy Cooper, told him to leave the family home in 1998. That lack of contact does not appear to have been through any fault of his own: Judge Snowie has stated that Mr. Cooper "loves" his children, "has tried to be a good father" and "has been a good provider throughout their lives." But according to the judge, Ms. Cooper has sabotaged her children's relationship with him in a "knowing, wilful and deliberate" way.
 
Calling her behaviour "a travesty," Judge Snowie has fined Ms. Cooper $10,000 -- with another $15,000 and 30 days in jail to follow if she does not encourage her 16-year-old daughter, the youngest of the three children, to participate in family counselling aimed at helping her reconnect with her father.
 
Judge Snowie deserves full credit for adopting an unusually tough stance on what has come to be known as "parental alienation." But in most cases, the access denier would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist. Never before in this country has so large a fine been levelled for this offence -- and in most cases, parents denied the basic right to see their children just suffer in frustrated silence.
 
If there is any justice, the ruling against Ms. Cooper will set a precedent for future decisions. Even more importantly, it should encourage more non-custodial parents who have unjustly lost access to their kids to take their cases to court. We hope more judges will begin recognizing that parental rights deserve to be enforced just as much as parental responsibilities.
 
© National Post 2005
 
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