"Parental Alienation Disorder" (PAS) was first articulated by Dr. Richard Gardner, who studied over 700 "highly contested" divorce cases over a span of 12 years.

He observed that PAS was much more than simply brainwashing a child to turn against the other parent. PAS is a mental disorder inflicted upon the child and after it takes effect, the child becomes a participant.

Such children will contribute to the campaign of denigration of the victim parent in support of the alienating parent, who is often the parent with physical custody.

The good news for victimized parents, is that since PAS has become a recognized syndrome, a parent can hire a qualified mental health professional to testify as an expert witness that PAS is occurring. Such a testimony can go a long way to gaining custody of the child.

Briefly, here are the four criteria an expert would look for:

1. Denying or interferring access and visitation with the child. Often the guilty parent will justify denial on the grounds that he or she is "protecting" the child, or that contact with the other parent is "upsetting" to the child.

2. False accusations of abuse. This can be either physical, mental/emotional or sexual.

3. Deterioration of the parental relationship during seperation. As Michael Bone and Michael Walsh wrote in the March, 1999 issue of the Florida Bar Journal:

"By way of example, if a father had a good and involved relationship with the children prior to the separation, and a very distant one since, then one can only assume without explicit proof to the contrary that something caused it to change."

"If this father is clearly trying to maintain a positive relationship with the children through observance of visitation and other activities and the children do not want to see him or have him involved in their lives, then one can only speculate that an alienation process may have been in operation."

"Children do not naturally lose interest in and become distant from their nonresidential parent simply by virtue of the absence of that parent. Also, healthy and established parental relationships do not erode naturally of their own accord. They must be attacked."

4. The Child is fearful of displeasing the controlling parent. The child is made to feel this parent's great displeasure if he or she expresses any positive feelings toward the other parent, and lives under a constant state of reprisal.

Clearly, Parental Alienation Syndrome violates the best interests of the child. And if your expert witness can establish in court that it exists, you will stand an excellent chance of winning custody.
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Remember, you CAN win custody of your child. For more information, written by two experts on child custody, you may also wish to visit Child Custody Strategies.

First of all, let's get the myths out of the way: Both men AND women can be the targets of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

I say this because some womens' advocacy groups have come out claiming PAS is an example of a "pseudo science" that was created by men to fight innocent women for child custody.

The truth is, neither genders have a corner on the market for astonishing cruelty or mental health problems.

But of course, the real victims of PAS are always the children themselves. When they are used as innocent pawns, when they are brainwashed and when they are used as mouthpieces to verbalize the offending parent's own words, these children are made to suffer in unspeakable ways.

Neverthelsess, I suspect most visitors to this site will be men because the issue of Parental Alienation Syndrome has been taken up by fathers' rights groupd and men have gotten the word out to other men.

But I still want to make it clear to women who visit this lens that you are welcome here. I will make every effort to provide resources for you to fight against this insidious problem of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Along those lines, I want to make you aware of a great site called, http://www.helpstoppas.org. It has a lot of articles on Parental Alienation Syndrome and how to battle and win to get custody or visitation of your children.

You CAN win custody of your child. For more information, written by two experts on child custody, you may also wish to visit Child Custody Strategies.

Click to join ParentsAgainstParentalAlienation

Remember, you CAN win custody of your child and you can also win back your child's affection. For more information, written by two experts on child custody, you may also wish to visit Child Custody Strategies.

I just wanted to let you know about another great site devoted to getting out information on PAS.

Check out: http://www.splitntwo.com/index2.html. It is full of articles and information that could be very helpful in your struggle over your child's affections.