Exposing Misinformation and Public Policy Deception Contained in Child Safety First: Preventing Child Homicides During Divorce, Separation, and Child Custody Disputes - Recommendations for Reforming U.S. Family Courts, 2023
The Center for Judicial Excellence (CJE) recently generated a report, Child Safety First, that cl... more The Center for Judicial Excellence (CJE) recently generated a report, Child Safety First, that claims to have uncovered a crisis that is indicative of systemic problems in the family court system and that places countless children at risk each year. Based on the Center’s non-peer-reviewed research, CJE proposes that significant changes are needed in the family court system to rectify this alleged crisis. While we agree that our family court system needs changes, we believe these changes should be based on facts and accurate data. Experts from the Parental Alienation Study Group and Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation dispute the Center’s research and findings and contend that the CJE has engaged in academic disinformation and intentional public policy deception. The CJE report is inherently biased. It selectively appropriates scientific evidence about parental alienation, while denying scientific evidence that would discredit their report. As a result, these professionals feel that it is crucial to warn policymakers, the public, and the media about the inherent biases, misinformation, and deceit that permeate the Child Safety First report.
The nature and content of their recommendations make it clear that the CJE has been deceptive in its representations to Congress and to state legislatures across the country. Moreover, the proposed recommendations are apparently an attempt to control the judiciary branch in regard to: judicial discretion; admissibility of evidence; admissibility of expert witnesses; judicial training curriculum and who is qualified to administer such training; types of interventions that can be ordered; and more. The CJE recommendations would not have prevented most of the reported homicides. While protecting children is a goal that we all desire, Child Safety First is in reality a smokescreen to advance the CJE’s anti-parental alienation agenda. Considering the factual distortions and ethical violations that the CJE has promoted in this report and in its other activities, it is negligent and reckless to give carte blanche credence to its policy recommendations.
Parental alienation has been described as a mental condition in which a child (usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict divorce) allies strongly with one parent and rejects a relationship with the other parent without legitimate justification (Lorandos & Bernet, 2020, pp. 5–6). It is also a social and policy issue. Parental alienating behaviors are a form of coercive control which can adversely affect children and cause major public health issues. It is not gender specific; parental alienation theory and practice is a non-gendered social science inclusive of all forms of parent and caregiver relationships with children in all types of families. It is not a ruse to deflect domestic violence allegations; rather, it is a form of domestic violence requiring coherent, non-gendered social and public health initiatives. There is an emerging scientific consensus on its prevalence, effects, and professional recognition of parental alienation as a form of child abuse (Harman, Kruk, & Hines, 2018). The CJE report neglects to cite any of the hundreds of empirical studies about parental alienation, its causes, long-term effects, and treatment options (Harman, Warshak, Lorandos, & Florian, 2022).
The Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) is a nonprofit corporation founded in 2010 with the purpose of educating mental health and legal professionals and the general public regarding parental alienation. PASG consists of 900 members in 65 countries. Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation (GARI-PA) is an international nonprofit organization that investigates and corrects scientific fraud that relates to parental alienation. These groups carefully analyzed the CJE research methodology, reported data, citations, and recommendations. Our analysis revealed that in spite of its scholarly appearance, the CJE research contains significant methodological research flaws: over 50 citations that are fraudulent, misquoted, or misrepresented; untenable statistics; a lack of transparency in the data that the CJE claims is triangulated; cherry-picked citations that exclude relevant scientific research; science denial techniques; and outright misinformation about parental information and other topics. All of these flaws are documented in our analysis as well as inconsistences between the CJE’s profile of murdered children and documented facts about the cases.
The CJE claims that there are a considerable number of cases in which family court professionals in separation, divorce, custody, or child support proceedings were warned about an abusive parent’s history of domestic violence, abusive behavior, and/or severe mental illness but decided to place children into unsupervised contact with the dangerous parent anyway, putting them at risk of harm and ultimately death. Based on this claim, the CJE makes numerous recommendations. The CJE went well beyond its limited data (which is mostly anecdotal) to suggest such policy changes. In general, policy recommendations should not be based on only a few studies or issued in the absence of conclusive evidence (Nielsen, 2014, 2015). Therefore, our analysis explains the fallacies of many of the CJE recommendations and the harm that they will cause.
While our hearts go out to the families of each of the tragedies that is depicted in the CJE report, it is nevertheless our consensus that the CJE has engaged in academic fraud and other unethical practices in the generation and promoting of the Child Safety First report. The CJE has created a moral panic that is not supported by the scientific literature. The claims that mothers are losing custody of children to abusive fathers claiming to have been alienated is not supported. While CJE may cherry-pick anecdotal stories that are largely unverifiable, the cases do not reflect real life court cases. The mistakes and negligent research practices that are apparent in the report are so basic and outrageous that any competent researcher would be aware of them and avoid them. Accordingly, the credibility of the CJE, its claims, and policy recommendations are compromised and should be approached with great caution and suspicion.
The misinformation and science denial techniques that permeate Child Safety First are not unique; rather, they are rampant in the writings of parental alienation critics (Aichenbaum, Bernet, Cedervall, Harman, Mendoza-Amaro, & Sherry, 2023). It is alarming that recommendations from the Child Safety First report as well from Joan Meier’s (2020) controversial study (see Harman & Lorandos, 2021) are being used to propose public policy changes. The CJE and other likeminded advocacy groups are vigorously promoting disinformation about parental alienation in the United States, to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (Mendoza-Amaro, Aichenbaum, Bernet, Brzozowski, Hellstern, & Ludmer, 2023), and to the World Health Organization (https://bit.ly/46ky9QU) and other international bodies in order to influence public policy. It is equally worrisome that the U.S. State Department invited the CJE to speak to high level judges from nine African countries about the dangers of parental alienation (https: //bit.ly/ 3REZE3u).
Conclusions
All readers of the CJE Child Safety First report should consider it critically with extreme skepticism. They should be mindful that reports such as that issued by the CJE promote policies that have not been subjected to discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Parental alienation experts, shared parenting experts, and domestic violence organizations that do not harbor gender biases must be included in future stakeholder meetings regarding family court legislation and related issues.
In addition, it is incumbent upon elected officials to launch congressional and other inquiries into the activities and funding sources of the Center for Judicial Excellence, the National Family Violence Law Center, the National Safe Parent Organization, and other groups who have been misrepresenting parental alienation science to federal and state governments. Children will only be properly protected from all forms of abuse when public policy is based upon the input of all stakeholders and legitimate scientific research, and not upon science denial campaigns. Representatives from PASG and GARI-PA are available to meet with elected officials, the media, and other stakeholders to discuss the contents of our analysis and to answer questions about parental alienation. Please contact the authors and contributors via email or through the websites provided in this document.
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This Statement is a highly specialized technical-scientific study on the subject of research integrity in parental alienation. It supports itself through the most relevant documents in the field, such as those of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Chair in Bioethics, the World Conference on Research Integrity, the Global Research Council, Committee on Publication Ethics, Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity (SOPs4RI), as well as guidelines from publishing houses such as Wiley and Emerald, with the help of digital tools for the identification of major plagiarism. We refer to three specific works that constitute a scientific fraud and that have refused to follow the standard retraction procedures or have ignored the letter to the editor. The reputation of these institutions has caused that the content of the errors become viral and spread as a phenomenon of infodemic. We intend to reveal and focus on the negative consequences of this type of child abuse, which includes stigma, defamation, slander and libel, “scientific” misinformation campaigns, censorship, politicization, legal involution, negligent training, human rights violations, inadequate interpretation of children human rights, social distrust, discrimination, erroneous expert reports, trials with major errors (big mistake), funding and quality of research. We formulate our proposals according to research integrity as an invitation to the institutions to review retraction procedures, especially in cases of parental alienation, we also request the support of the international scientific community and the intervention of the United Nations. We conclude that the recurrent identification of scientific fraud makes it clear that it is not a question of a theoretical or opinion disagreement among authors, but rather a serious problem of scientific malpractice that includes data falsification, adulteration of original sources and defamation.
Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation recognizes the serious and worrying diversity of violence, both in families and in couples, regardless of gender, identity and sexual preference.
Because questionable practices have been identified in recent vicarious violence publications, which describe the same phenomenon of parental alienation but only when it occurs from the father against the mother and, on the other hand, categorically deny that parental alienation exists qualifying it as a fallacious concept that is used to attack mothers, is creating a scenario of protection of human rights in children and adolescents of a sector of the population and, at the same time, causing a serious crisis of human rights of other part of the population including minority and vulnerable groups. It should be noted that some of the authors who have published on parental alienation with severe research integrity problems, have also recently published on the subject of vicarious violence with questionable practices.
In order to adhere to international guidelines on scientific integrity, in the present document, publications and authors with problems of scientific fraud and questionable practices are not indicated. In this way, Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation will act in accordance with international guidelines to contact editors, make the corresponding retraction requests and inform society of what happened.
Thus, through this document, the most important aspects of the Research Project entitled Vicarious Violence. An Analysis from Research Integrity and Human Rights, and that, once completed, will be published as a book with the same name, before the end of this year.
The nature and content of their recommendations make it clear that the CJE has been deceptive in its representations to Congress and to state legislatures across the country. Moreover, the proposed recommendations are apparently an attempt to control the judiciary branch in regard to: judicial discretion; admissibility of evidence; admissibility of expert witnesses; judicial training curriculum and who is qualified to administer such training; types of interventions that can be ordered; and more. The CJE recommendations would not have prevented most of the reported homicides. While protecting children is a goal that we all desire, Child Safety First is in reality a smokescreen to advance the CJE’s anti-parental alienation agenda. Considering the factual distortions and ethical violations that the CJE has promoted in this report and in its other activities, it is negligent and reckless to give carte blanche credence to its policy recommendations.
Parental alienation has been described as a mental condition in which a child (usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict divorce) allies strongly with one parent and rejects a relationship with the other parent without legitimate justification (Lorandos & Bernet, 2020, pp. 5–6). It is also a social and policy issue. Parental alienating behaviors are a form of coercive control which can adversely affect children and cause major public health issues. It is not gender specific; parental alienation theory and practice is a non-gendered social science inclusive of all forms of parent and caregiver relationships with children in all types of families. It is not a ruse to deflect domestic violence allegations; rather, it is a form of domestic violence requiring coherent, non-gendered social and public health initiatives. There is an emerging scientific consensus on its prevalence, effects, and professional recognition of parental alienation as a form of child abuse (Harman, Kruk, & Hines, 2018). The CJE report neglects to cite any of the hundreds of empirical studies about parental alienation, its causes, long-term effects, and treatment options (Harman, Warshak, Lorandos, & Florian, 2022).
The Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG) is a nonprofit corporation founded in 2010 with the purpose of educating mental health and legal professionals and the general public regarding parental alienation. PASG consists of 900 members in 65 countries. Global Action for Research Integrity in Parental Alienation (GARI-PA) is an international nonprofit organization that investigates and corrects scientific fraud that relates to parental alienation. These groups carefully analyzed the CJE research methodology, reported data, citations, and recommendations. Our analysis revealed that in spite of its scholarly appearance, the CJE research contains significant methodological research flaws: over 50 citations that are fraudulent, misquoted, or misrepresented; untenable statistics; a lack of transparency in the data that the CJE claims is triangulated; cherry-picked citations that exclude relevant scientific research; science denial techniques; and outright misinformation about parental information and other topics. All of these flaws are documented in our analysis as well as inconsistences between the CJE’s profile of murdered children and documented facts about the cases.
The CJE claims that there are a considerable number of cases in which family court professionals in separation, divorce, custody, or child support proceedings were warned about an abusive parent’s history of domestic violence, abusive behavior, and/or severe mental illness but decided to place children into unsupervised contact with the dangerous parent anyway, putting them at risk of harm and ultimately death. Based on this claim, the CJE makes numerous recommendations. The CJE went well beyond its limited data (which is mostly anecdotal) to suggest such policy changes. In general, policy recommendations should not be based on only a few studies or issued in the absence of conclusive evidence (Nielsen, 2014, 2015). Therefore, our analysis explains the fallacies of many of the CJE recommendations and the harm that they will cause.
While our hearts go out to the families of each of the tragedies that is depicted in the CJE report, it is nevertheless our consensus that the CJE has engaged in academic fraud and other unethical practices in the generation and promoting of the Child Safety First report. The CJE has created a moral panic that is not supported by the scientific literature. The claims that mothers are losing custody of children to abusive fathers claiming to have been alienated is not supported. While CJE may cherry-pick anecdotal stories that are largely unverifiable, the cases do not reflect real life court cases. The mistakes and negligent research practices that are apparent in the report are so basic and outrageous that any competent researcher would be aware of them and avoid them. Accordingly, the credibility of the CJE, its claims, and policy recommendations are compromised and should be approached with great caution and suspicion.
The misinformation and science denial techniques that permeate Child Safety First are not unique; rather, they are rampant in the writings of parental alienation critics (Aichenbaum, Bernet, Cedervall, Harman, Mendoza-Amaro, & Sherry, 2023). It is alarming that recommendations from the Child Safety First report as well from Joan Meier’s (2020) controversial study (see Harman & Lorandos, 2021) are being used to propose public policy changes. The CJE and other likeminded advocacy groups are vigorously promoting disinformation about parental alienation in the United States, to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations (Mendoza-Amaro, Aichenbaum, Bernet, Brzozowski, Hellstern, & Ludmer, 2023), and to the World Health Organization (https://bit.ly/46ky9QU) and other international bodies in order to influence public policy. It is equally worrisome that the U.S. State Department invited the CJE to speak to high level judges from nine African countries about the dangers of parental alienation (https: //bit.ly/ 3REZE3u).
Conclusions
All readers of the CJE Child Safety First report should consider it critically with extreme skepticism. They should be mindful that reports such as that issued by the CJE promote policies that have not been subjected to discussion with the relevant stakeholders. Parental alienation experts, shared parenting experts, and domestic violence organizations that do not harbor gender biases must be included in future stakeholder meetings regarding family court legislation and related issues.
In addition, it is incumbent upon elected officials to launch congressional and other inquiries into the activities and funding sources of the Center for Judicial Excellence, the National Family Violence Law Center, the National Safe Parent Organization, and other groups who have been misrepresenting parental alienation science to federal and state governments. Children will only be properly protected from all forms of abuse when public policy is based upon the input of all stakeholders and legitimate scientific research, and not upon science denial campaigns. Representatives from PASG and GARI-PA are available to meet with elected officials, the media, and other stakeholders to discuss the contents of our analysis and to answer questions about parental alienation. Please contact the authors and contributors via email or through the websites provided in this document.