Child custody lore: The case of the runaway woozle

The bond between infant and mother is the bedrock of healthy child development When parents divorce, shared custody arrangements destabilize this primary attachment bond, leading to serious developmental problems in children. In general, mothers should maintain sole physical custody of children up until the age of four.

This is the consensus of a growing body of research. 

Or is it?

Do you remember when Winnie the Pooh and his friends became obsessed with the fear that a dread woozle was stalking them in the woods, only to realize that they were seeing their own footsteps? In science, a woozle is much the same. It’s a belief or claim that gains traction due to repeated citation, despite its lack of empirical support. Often, it’s an idea that appeals to members of the news media, politicians or the general public, because it fits with conventional wisdom or is politically expedient.

In the realm of child custody policy, the idea that shared parenting is a bad thing is a behemoth woozle that’s been trotting around the globe virtually unchallenged of late, according to Linda Nielsen, a professor of education at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and an outspoken proponent of shared parenting.

Nielsen’s case, methodically argued in the current issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law, is pretty convincing. When you peel back the layers of the onion, the much-touted “body of research” about the dangers of shared parenting plans for infants and toddlers consists primarily of one severely flawed study. It's been so oft-repeated in academic journals, news media reports, and legislative hearing rooms that it has gained an aura of ultimate truth even as contradictory evidence from other studies -- finding either no ill effects or even developmental benefits to shared custody -- has been side-railed.

The much-ballyhooed study, by clinical psychologist Jennifer McIntosh and colleagues, was part of a report commissioned by the Attorney General’s office in Australia in 2010. According to Nielsen, the so-called “preschooler study” was driven by outmoded theoretical assumptions about mother-infant attachment that are not supported by recent empirical studies. McIntosh leans heavily on the work of neuroscientist Allan Schore. She quotes Schore as claiming that small children do best when they have only one primary caregiver tending to their bedtime routines, and that women’s brains are more neurologically equipped than men's for communicating with and forming attachments to infants.

Nielsen starts by pointing out some obvious problems (which others in the field have noted) with generalizing from the Australian preschooler study. Sample sizes were small, the majority of the parents had never been married to each other (one-third hadn’t even lived together), etcetera.

But it’s when she drills down into the intimate details of the study’s procedures that things get interesting. The woozle’s claim that “overnighting” (spending nights with their father) is bad for children rests on four negative findings – increased watchfulness; irritability, persistent gazing, and frequent wheezing. Yet, the methods used to measure these constructs were novel, and lacked any established reliability or validity. To take just two examples:

• Wariness/ watchfulness in the mother’s presence: The rationale for measuring watchfulness was that some attachment theorists believe it to be a sign of insecurity and anxiety. The researchers created a “visual monitoring scale” by cribbing three items from a longer instrument. Mothers were asked how often the infant: (1) looked at her to see if she was watching, (2) tried to get her attention when she was being inattentive, and (3) tried to get her to notice or look at interesting objects. The researchers concluded that the infants in the frequent overnighting group – who scored higher on this novel scale -- were exhibiting signs of stress. This is problematic on its face, since this scale has not been established as a reliable or valid measure of insecurity, anxiety, stress, or attachment. But, more fundamentally – and quite ironically – the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales from which the items were drawn is intended to assess infants’ communication skills and language readiness. Thus, high scores on these items are interpreted as positive rather than negative -- indicating an infant is more developmentally advanced and poised to begin talking. Hardly evidence of impaired attachment and the perils of shared parenting. 

• Wheezing: The researchers proposed wheezing as a sign of stress due to a “negative emotional environment.” They measured wheezing by asking the mother one yes-or-no question: “Does your child wheeze at night more than four times a week?” Setting aside the fact that single-question instruments are known to be unreliable, the researchers went with the a priori assumption that wheezing is a psychosomatic symptom, ignoring significant evidence of alternate causes. Wheezing, indeed, has well established genetic, physiological and environmental components “having nothing to do with stress or family dynamics,” Nielsen points out. These include low parental income and – logically enough -- exposure to pollutants, cigarette smoke, pets, cockroaches, mildew and the like. According to Nielsen, none of the three studies that the authors cite to support their hypothesized link between attachment stress and wheezing do in fact support such a conclusion.

Despite these and other flaws as meticulously deconstructed by Nielsen, the preschooler study has been enormously influential in professional organizations, legal settings, and public policy discourse around the globe. From Australia to the United Kingdom to Israel and the United States, “it has been cited as grounds to set limits on shared parenting, to the exclusion of almost all of the other studies that have examined outcomes for children in shared parenting families."

Beyond the issue of child custody law and policy, this article is a great teaching tool applicable to other areas of psychology-law in its illustration of how social science data can “woozle” academics and the general public alike into swallowing things that are not true.

Next up, I’m hoping someone will conduct a similar scholarly analysis of the perplexing problem of woozles’ kinfolk, the Heffalumps of Winnie the Pooh's psychedelic nightmare.

* * * * *

The article, “Woozles: Their Role in Custody Law Reform, Parenting Plans, and Family Court,” can be requested from the author (HERE).

 Hat tip: Mark Worthen, PsyD

Documentary targets family courts and custody evaluators

Stuck in the middle of nowhere on a case, I happened to catch the new documentary No Way Out But One, depicting injustices against abused women and children in U.S. family courts. Of potential interest to blog readers, the film critiques the role of child custody evaluators as usurping the authority of fact finders by substituting their own judgments for the facts.

No Way Out highlights the internationally known case of Holly Collins, who fled with her son Zachary and daughter Jennifer in 1994 after her husband was granted sole custody by a court in Minnesota. According to the film, the judge ignored evidence of domestic violence and child abuse, including a skull fracture to the boy. After a circuitous flight through Canada and Guatemala, Collins eventually won asylum in the Netherlands. By the time the FBI caught up with the family, the children were adults. In the film, they convincingly describe chronic abuse at the hands of their father. Holly's dynamic daughter, Jennifer, the inspiration for the film, is executive director of Courageous Kids, which empowers children to go public about family court abuse (her blog is HERE).

The Collins children, grown up

The Collins's long-running custody battle featured allegations of Parental Alienation Syndrome, a controversial syndrome in which one parent (most often the mother) is accused of alienating the children from the other parent. Collins was also labeled with another highly contentious diagnosis, Munchausen by Proxy, after she sought medical treatment for her children, whom she says were being injured by their father’s abuse and neglect.

Due in part to Collins's supposed attempts to alienate the children, the father was granted full custody in 1993, and Collins was initially denied even phone or mail contact. Eventually, she was granted supervised visitation, but neither she nor her children were allowed to talk about the father’s abuse. In the film, Collins describes how she and the children secretly exchanged notes by placing them in the refrigerator; in the notes, the children begged for help and she finally promised to rescue them.

Collins became the first American ever granted asylum by the Netherlands. She ultimately married a Dutch man and had four more children. After the FBI located her, she returned to the United States in an effort to vindicate herself. Ultimately, the kidnapping charge was dismissed; she pled guilty to one count of contempt of court in exchange for a sentence of 40 hours of community service.

According to the film, Collins is just one of thousands of mothers forced to go on the run in order to protect their children from abusive fathers who have been granted custody of their children.

Jennifer (L) and Holly Collins (R) with filmmakers Nolan and Waller

Ironically, the film's debut on the Documentary Channel coincides with the publication of a similar story by another woman who is also named Collins. Frances Collins's book, Seashell Prisoners, chronicles her flight from Texas to the Honduras to protect her 3-year-old granddaughter. Her eight-year odyssey ultimately ended in arrest and incarceration.

The film is stoking up antipathy between the battered women's and father's rights camps, with the latter expending significant effort in to debunk the claims of Collins and her children that they were subjected to family violence.

Award-winning filmmaker Garland Waller told a Huffington Post columnist that she chose the Holly Collins case "because I believed her story would break through the barricade set up by the mainstream press." The film expands on last year’s award-winning short, Small Justice, produced on a shoestring by Waller, a communications professor at Boston University, and her husband Barry Nolan, a TV writer and reporter.

In the Huffington Post interview, Waller went on to say that what most surprised her in her involvement with this project was the dumbfounded reaction of members of the general public:

"They just can't believe that … family courts would give custody -- time and time again -- to abusers. But I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised. In both the tragedy of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal and the Jerry Sandusky thing, ‘good’ people turned a blind eye to the abuse of children. It's the same thing in family courts. It is just heart-breaking that so often when terrified children summon the courage to speak up and tell what is happening to them, even though the abuser has warned them of the terrible consequences if they ever talk... even though we teach children to speak up and to tell the truth...when they speak up against this one awful thing, we just don't listen."

I don’t see any more upcoming airings on the DocumentaryChannel, but the DVD will be going on sale soon, from Passion River Films.  

For people who are trying to stay positive and collaborative while going through a stressful divorce, a Florida law firm has put together a set of helpful tips from top relationship experts: "Coping with Divorce." 

Tearing the child apart: Free training in San Francisco

What motivates parents to -- either consciously or unconsciously -- damage or destroy their own children?

We know the complex psychological effects of high-conflict divorce, but how do we understand the contribution of narcissism, envy and perverse thinking?

This Saturday, Jan. 21, forensic psychologist Michael Donner, a psychoanalyst, child custody evaluator and ethicist, will take an analytic approach to questions usually considered part of the family court system.

Sponsored by the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, Saturday's event features H. Spencer Bloch, MD,  author of Adolescent Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment, as discussant.

The event runs from 10:00 a.m. to noon and is free. To register, call Aaron Chow at (415) 563-5815 or email him HERE. More information and online registration is HERE.

Donner authored an excellent article by the same title in Psychoanalytic Psychology. Contact him (HERE) to request a copy of "Tearing Children Apart: The Contribution of Narcissism, Envy and Perverse Modes of Thought to Child Custody Wars."

Our broken family court system: Free training in Arizona

Another free training geared toward child custody evaluators is coming up March 16-17 in Phoenix, Arizona. Co-sponsored by the National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers and the Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Foundation, it features a cast of well-known experts, including:

• Dr. Lenore Walker (author of the classic, The Battered Woman’s Syndrome)
• David L. Shapiro, PhD
• G. Andrew H. Benjamin, JD, PhD, ABPP
• Judge Marjory Fields 
• John Caccavale, PhD (speaking on Business Ethics for Custody Evaluators)

More information and online registration is available HERE.

Top forensic psych’s shameful secrets: A cautionary tale

An investigative report on the secret life of a prominent forensic psychologist is generating controversy on professional listservs. Some want to let sleeping dogs lie. Others, including this blogger, believe the sordid tale contains valuable lessons for the field.

Photo credit: Seattle Times

Stuart "Stu" Greenberg was at the pinnacle of a highly successful career when he committed suicide in 2007 after being caught using a secret camera to spy on women – including fellow psychologists -- in his office bathroom.

Greenberg was a respected leader in forensic psychology. Former president of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, he had functioned as a professional gatekeeper in heading the committee that wrote a national certification exam for the field. He was a sought-after speaker who published articles on ethics in peer-reviewed journals. In court, his opinion could decide the fate of a parent seeking custody of her child. Charging $450 an hour, he had amassed an estimated $1.7 million in personal worth and owned at least two houses and a boat.

But in last weekend's Seattle Times, investigative reporters Ken Armstrong and Maureen O'Hagan reveal new details of Greenberg's less savory side. They go so far as to paint the Seattle psychologist as a "toxic force -- a poison coursing through the state's court system," who destroyed lives while building a career based on "hypocrisy and lies."

Previously sealed records dug up by the newspaper -- including a 1990 disciplinary case -- attest to Greenberg's power and "cunning," the reporters write:

His word could determine which parent received custody of a child, or whether a jury believed a claim of sexual assault, or what damages might be awarded for emotional distress…. [The records] show how he played the courts for a fool. He played state regulators for a fool. He played his fellow psychologists for a fool. And were it not for a hidden camera, he might have gotten away with it.

The report describes how Greenberg coerced Washington state's Examining Board of Psychology into sealing public records of a 1990 disciplinary action against him. The case involved alleged misconduct in four separate child custody cases. The Board imposed a three-year ban on his conducting such evaluations. But "within a year of getting his disciplinary history sealed, Greenberg was giving seminars to other psychologists on the ethics of parenting evaluations," the report says.

As an example of the destruction wrought by Greenberg, the reporters interviewed the complainant in one of the four cases. Surgical nurse Cathy Graden said she had no fears of losing custody of her 4-year-old son after her divorce. What she didn't know was that Greenberg and the lawyer for her ex-husband were limited business partners in a speculative investment venture:

The report Greenberg filed in court eviscerated Graden. It said she posed a grave danger to her son; that she was "probably" sexually abusing him; that she was psychologically unstable and possibly paranoid….In court, testifying, Greenberg described Graden as "quasi-psychotic," but said the diagnosis was tricky, because Graden might appear "quite normal." She would likely deny doing anything wrong to her son, Greenberg said, or alternatively, she "might genuinely not remember."

By the time Greenberg finished, Graden, out in the hallway, had been stripped of all defenses -- and without a clue to what had just happened. If she appeared normal -- well, Greenberg said she would. If she denied hurting her son -- that was part of her disorder. If she challenged Greenberg's work or motives -- she was paranoid. At the end of the hearing … the judge ordered the boy turned immediately over to his father, with Graden allowed to visit only if supervised by a therapist.

Graden finally got her son back when he was nine years old, but only because his father was killed in a work accident.

"Inscrutable field with immense power"

The Seattle Times piece is slanted. It castigates the entire field for the alleged criminal and unethical conduct of one individual. As we all know, there are honorable and dishonorable people in all professions. In my locale, the FBI is investigating a group of rogue police who allegedly sold drugs, ran a brothel and took money from a lawyer to make staged arrests of fathers in child custody cases. Yet the media do not paint all law enforcement with that same dirty brush. And some of the supposed misdeeds for which the reporters lambast Greenberg, such as lacking the clairvoyance to know that a priest he evaluated was lying about the extent of his sexual misconduct, are hardly evidence of turpitude. Nowhere is a spokesperson for our field given space to clarify or comment about the implications.

But in calling forensic psychology "an inscrutable field with immense power," the reporters tap into a popular conception with a kernel of truth.

Power is a corrupting force. Just as Greenberg wielded immense power over the fates of parents and children, forensic psychologists today abuse their power and destroy lives when they invent diagnoses to further pretextual goals, present personal opinion and prejudice masked as science, or testify that they know with mathematical certainty that a person will commit a future crime. Such misconduct is common in certain forensic contexts. In fact, its routine nature presents an obstacle to intervention. I know of one colleague whose attempts to complain about psychologists' improper opinions in court were rebuffed by a licensing board on the grounds that the opinions -- while improper -- were not sufficiently unusual.

Greenberg's tale may thus serve as a cautionary one about why the field should not collectively look away when we see colleagues abusing their power. Individually or as a group, it is our ethical duty to intervene when we see colleagues misbehaving -- stepping beyond the bounds of science, engaging in activities that seem biased, or (as in Greenberg's case) mistreating women or others with less social currency. Perhaps if Greenberg's superficial aplomb had not blinded colleagues to his faults, he could have been redeemed and this public tragedy averted.

Professional condemnation of Greenberg's misconduct serves other purposes. It demonstrates respect for the members of the public who were negatively affected, as well as for our own women colleagues who allegedly suffered sexual exploitation and betrayal by a colleague whom they trusted. It may encourage exploration in our professional literature about the existence of corruption, which always creeps into situations involving power and authority, and how this problem might be addressed.

It may also be useful for each of us to reflect personally on the lessons here. Many of us work largely alone. Without professional accountability, it is easy to go astray. The stakes are high, the material troubling, the settings adversarial. In these difficult circumstances, it is incumbent upon all of us to behave honorably and ethically, to avoid even the appearance of bias, to be transparent in explaining the basis of our often-consequential opinions, and to admit the limits of our knowledge.

In other words, to recognize the inherent power imbalances, and to strive for humility and honesty.

A collection of primary documents and news reports on Greenberg's case can be found at The Liz Library. Also at that site are direct quotes from psychologists' (supposedly) internal debates on the case as culled from two professional listservs. (Note that the presentation is biased and misleading; by publishing mainly one side of a vigorous debate, they misrepresent psychologists as overwhelmingly opposed to public airing of this troubling case. But it's still worth checking out.)

Steffan's Alerts #5: Miranda warnings, child custody, and more

Click on a title to read the article abstract; click on a highlighted author's name to request the full article.

Global prevalence of child sexual abuse

Marije Stoltenborgh and colleagues, in a new issue of Child Maltreatment, report the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse based on over 9 million subjects extracted from 217 publications from various countries.

Public views of child custody arrangements

Using hypothetical cases, Sanford Braver and colleagues examined judgments of various custody arrangements by jury-eligible citizens in Arizona. Reporting their findings in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, the authors suggest that a significant gap exists between the judgments of the public and what occurs in the family law system.

Miranda rights: What don't suspects understand?

In the same issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, Richard Rogers and colleagues continue their research on defendants’ comprehension of Miranda warnings. Based on analyses of 416 pretrial defendants’ understanding of current Miranda terminology, the authors offer recommendations to simplify Miranda phrases so that persons with academic and cognitive limitations may more easily understand their rights at the time of interrogation.

Accuracy of methods for diagnosing pedophilia and assessing sexual recidivism

Robin Wilson and colleagues examine the accuracy of four methods for assessing pedophilia and appraising risk of recidivism among a sample of 130 child sexual abusers. They report their findings in a new issue of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.

Availability of treatment programs in juvenile justice facilities

In a new issue of Child and Youth Services Review, Rebecca Yazzie analyzes the types of treatment programs available in the United States through a sample of 3,163 juvenile facilities. Compared to public facilities, private facilities appeared better equipped, with more mental health staff and treatment programs. Facilities that offer family counseling reported a lower incidence of suicide.

Steffan's alerts are brought to you by Jarrod Steffan, Ph.D., a forensic and clinical psychologist based in Wichita, Kansas. For more information about Dr. Steffan, please visit his website.

Child abuse assessment: Special issue

Forensic psychologist Eric Mart has guest edited a special issue of the Journal of Psychiatry and the Law on assessment and testimony in cases of child abuse. The articles address both scientific and practical aspects of child abuse assessment, testimony, and research. They include:

Maternal Filicide and Mental Illness in Italy: This retrospective review co-authored by Geoffrey McKee, who has written books on filicide, and Alesandra Bramante compares the forensic characteristics of mothers with and without severe mental illness who killed their children.

Interviewing Immigrant Children for Suspected Child Maltreatment: Lisa Aronson Fontes examines challenges posed in forensic interviews of immigrant children when there is a suspicion that these children may be victims of child abuse or neglect. Suggestions are made
for interviewers regarding the interview setting, preparations, building rapport, conveying respect, narrative training, pacing the interview, and trauma symptoms that may stem from issues unrelated to the abuse.

Persistent Problems with the "Separation Test" in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy: Munchausen syndrome by proxy remains a controversial diagnosis because information is easily tainted to make the mother appear responsible for her child’s symptoms. Loren Pankratz critiques (and offers alternatives to) the “separation test,” a scientifically problematic procedure that is often used to gather evidence against the mother.

Common Errors in the Assessment of Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse: Finally, the special issue editor himself tackles common errors in the complex, challenging, and high-stakes undertaking of assessing CSA allegations. After reviewing frequent causes of substandard investigations, the illustrious Dr. Mart provides ideas for research-based methods to improve the situation.

New study: Children of lesbians more competent

The growing acceptance of same-sex marriage -- now legal in 8 countries, 5 U.S. states, and among the Coquille Indians in Oregon -- demonstrates the rapid social and legal progress of lesbians and gay men. Yet a handful of expert witnesses are still testifying in court that sexual minority parents put children at risk for bad outcomes.

Experts must rely on science. So these antigay experts cite biased research and make strained inferences from supposed empirical evidence of higher rates of psychiatric problems, substance abuse, and relationship instability among sexual minorities as a group. Of course, it's apples and oranges, because those studies are not of parents. These self-described experts only get away with such testimony due to societal prejudice; imagine a scientist testifying for a ban on adoption by Native Hawaiians due to their relatively higher rates of illegal drug use than Asians as a group.

But a new study in the journal Pediatrics blows this sham pseudoscience out of the water. The first prospective, longitudinal study of planned lesbian families found that by adolescence the sons and daughters of lesbians had better psychological adjustment across the board than their demographically matched counterparts from a large normative sample of American youth.

At age 17, both boys and girls were rated significantly higher in social, academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggression, and externalizing behavioral problems.

Interestingly, although more than half of the co-parent couples separated during the time period of the study, this did not affect their children's psychological health. That finding contrasts with the negative impact of divorce on children in heterosexual families. The researchers theorize it may be due to the nature of shared child-rearing among separted lesbian mothers.

The authors theorize that one factor in the relatively superior adjustment of these children is that their parents use less corporal punishment and authoritarian power assertion than do heterosexual fathers:

Growing up in households with less power assertion and more parental involvement has been shown to be associated with healthier psychological adjustment. Also, adolescent boys who are close to their parents are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior.

The study followed 154 prospective mothers who volunteered beginning in 1986 to be followed from their children's conception to adulthood. Because of its prospective nature, findings were not skewed by overrepresentation of families who volunteered once their offspring were doing well. Although the sample was non-random, this was offset by a remarkably high retention rate of 93 percent. The study is ongoing.

These and related findings have significant implications for child custody and adoption cases in which experts testify that the sexuality of the parents is relevant under the "best interest of the child" standard. Respected child custody expert Jonathan Gould and his colleagues have argued that parental sexual orientation is irrelevant to this issue. Forensic psychologist William O'Donohue disagrees. But now, an expert who does raise parental sexuality as a potential negative can expect to be confronted with mounting evidence that -- far from being a liability -- having lesbian parents may actually confer some advantages to children.

Related resources:

Pediatrics has made the article available for free online (HERE). My article in the Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice summarizing the state of this research as of 2003 is: Practice Opportunities with an Emerging Family Form: The Planned Lesbian and Gay Family (Volume 3, Issue 3, pages 47-64).

Photo credit: Telegraph (UK); Hat tip: Ken Pope

Calif.: Custody evaluators facing lost immunity

Among forensic psychologists, child custody evaluators face the highest rate of licensure board complaints. The courts request their help in the most acrimonious parenting disputes, and it is easy to get caught in the crossfire. Even though 99 percent of all board complaints are ultimately dismissed, defending oneself is stressful, time-consuming, and expensive.

Over the past 20 years, aggrieved parents have deluged psychology licensure boards with frivolous, manipulative and mean-spirited complaints. Fearing that the onslaught would discourage professionals from agreeing to assist courts in high-conflict parenting cases, legislatures in many U.S. states have increased statutory protections. In the past decade, Florida and West Virginia passed immunity statutes for court-appointed evaluators. Colorado went even further, barring licensing board complaints over child custody evaluations, requiring that complainants instead take their claims back to the original trial court.

But legislation being proposed in California would turn in the opposite direction, dismantling quasi-judicial immunity protections for evaluators and other neutral professionals who assist the courts in parenting disputes. The current version of the proposed Assembly Bill 2475, heading to the state Assembly's Judiciary Committee on May 4, would add the following section (43.94) to California’s Civil Code:

"The doctrine of judicial immunity or quasi judicial immunity shall not apply to exonerate any private third party appointed by the court in an advisory capacity based on his or her professional expertise, who provides a report or findings to the Court in a proceeding under the Family Code, with the intention that the Court act in one way or another based on such report or findings, from liability for acts performed within the scope of his or her appointment in violation of laws, rules of court, or professional standards. This section shall apply to private individuals such as special masters, minor's counsel, investigators, therapists, evaluators, receivers, bankruptcy trustees, experts, factfinders, and other persons specifically appointed by the courts in an advisory capacity based on their professional training or expertise."

I was initially suspicious that perhaps the "Men's Rights Movement" had a hand, as this increasingly powerful international lobby is making a concerted effort to reform child custody laws to favor men, and especially men accused of abusing their partners and children. Men's rights advocates claim that a feminist-run court system systematically violates men's civil rights, that a large proportion of abuse allegations are false, and that men "are victims of an unrecognized epidemic of violence at the hands of abusive wives," as reported in an expose in Slate. On the legal front, Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) claims credit for blocking four federal domestic-violence bills, among them an international expansion of the Violence Against Women Act, according to the Slate report. Extrajudicially, movement members go so far as to applaud acts of violence perceived as retaliation against the feminist status quo.

But Assemblyman James Beall, the sponsor of AB 2475, does not appear allied with this regressive movement. Rather, he bills himself as a progressive Democrat who fights for the rights of children, families, the poor, and the disabled. Previously, he sponsored legislation (AB 612) to ban the use of Parental Alienation Syndrome -- a favorite of the father's rights movement -- from family courts.

NOTE: After I wrote this post, I did a bit more research on AB 612, and realized it was even more extreme than his new proposal. It would have allowed parents to sue any expert witness who relied upon "an unproven, unscientific theory." This would have included not only Parental Alienation Syndrome, its ostensible target, but a gamut of other evidence. After all, not much in any field of science is completely proven and uncontested. Luckily, that bill was defeated, perhaps explaining this new attempt. -- May 8, 2010

As it turns out, AB 2475 is supported by opponents of the men's rights movement, including an organization called the Protective Parents Association. This group lobbies on behalf of mothers who say the courts impede their efforts to protect their children by giving joint or sole custody to abusive fathers. "[T]he court responds to women attempting to protect their children from an abusive father with a knee-jerk reaction, assigning gender-biased labels to women to minimize or ignore the abuse in a reckless disregard of the safety of the child," writes association director Karen Anderson. By gender-biased labels, she is referring, no doubt, to Parental Alienation Syndrome.

So, AB 2475 may turn out to be a case of failure to anticipate unintended consequences. As readers know, politicians often propose a law in a knee-jerk response to a high-profile event, tweaking existing mechanisms without adequate anticipation of potential future deployments. Ironically, the bill could open the floodgates for attacks on neutral evaluators by the very same angry men with money who most often invoke the pseudoscientific construct of Parental Alienation Syndrome in custody cases.

When I telephoned Assemblyman Beall's office today to get more background, a staff member was cagey about the bill's impetus and minimized its intended scope, saying it was meant to only apply to mediators and not to child custody evaluators. Clearly, the current language belies this claim. So far I have been unable to turn up any specific case or cases that prompted this bill. Rather, it may be a misguided effort to stop evaluators from using the construct of Parental Alienation Syndrome against mothers in custody cases.

By way of background, various types of immunity for professionals involved in the legal system have a long history. Judicial immunity (immunity for judges) was implemented on public policy grounds in England all the way back in the 17th century. Similarly, witness immunity enjoys a long history, based on the principle of encouraging people to testify honestly and without fear of reprisal. Prosecutors performing their job duties are protected by qualified immunity, while psychologists and teachers enjoy statutory immunity when the law requires them to report child abuse.

Under the construct of quasi-judicial immunity, courts across the United States have repeatedly held that court-appointed experts must have some protection from intimidation in order to feel confident and free to make neutral and independent findings. As Karl Kirkland and colleagues point out in an enlightening review, this bolsters both the integrity of the judicial process and public welfare more generally.

This does not mean evaluators can say or do whatever they want. Immunity is never absolute, nor should it be. But forensic evaluators actually face enhanced scrutiny and risk as compared with other clinicians due to the adversarial nature of legal cases. As Greenberg and colleagues point out in another excellent review (reference below), errors that might go unnoticed or be addressed constructively in therapy are much more likely to be exposed through the adversary process; the opinions of forensic experts must stand up to intense scrutiny and vigorous cross-examination.

But it seems an error to allow parties whose goal is often to subvert the legal process (for example by getting an evaluator removed from a case) to drive honest, hard-working, and experienced professionals away from child custody work through spurious harassment. Consider the data. California logged the most licensing board complaints over child custody evaluations of any U.S. state during the 1990s. Yet according to the review by Kirkland and colleagues, out of all of those 1,660 complaints, only a single one -- that's right, ONE -- led to a formal finding against the psychologist.

* * * * *

For a good expose of the men's rights movement, see the Slate article by Kathyrn Jones, Men's Rights Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective: They’re changing custody rights and domestic violence laws. In researching the issue of immunity for expert witnesses, I also consulted the following excellent sources (none, unfortunately, accessible online):

• Quasi-Judicial Immunity for Forensic Mental Health Professionals in Court-Appointed Roles, by Karl Kirkland, Kale E. Kirkland, Glen D. King, and Guy J. Renfro, Journal of Child Custody (2006)
• Lessons for Forensic Practice Drawn from the Law of Malpractice, by Stuart Greenberg, Daniel Shuman, Stephen Feldman, Collin Middleton, and Charles Patrick Ewing. In: Forensic Psychology: Emerging Topics and Expanding Roles (2007)
• A Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations: Mental Health and Legal Perspectives by Joanna Bunker Rohrbaugh (2007)
• Clinician's Guide to Child Custody Evaluations, 3rd Edition, by Marc J. Ackerman (2006)

Photo: "The Dads Who Fought Back" (2006 video)

Canada: Parent complaints deterring custody evaluators

Speaking of censorship...

Fear of complaints by disgruntled parents is deterring professionals from working in the child custody arena, creating a "major social and legal problem," according to a group of lawyers and forensic evaluators in Canada. The group is urging the Canadian government to change the law in order to restrict disciplinary complaints.

A plea signed by 11 psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers and social workers “urges changing the rules so disciplinary bodies can only consider complaints from such parents if they have been first approved by the judge in the case or by the other, winning parent, or have been screened to weed out frivolous grievances,” according to an article in the National Post. As reporter Tom Blackwell explains it:

Experts are appointed jointly in custody cases to interview, observe and sometime conduct psychological testing on family members to help determine who is best able to care for the children of divorces. The work can take months and cost the parties up to $75,000. The lobby group is not looking to gain "immunity" for assessors from disciplinary charges, only to curb the high number of spurious complaints, said Nick Bala, a Queen's University law professor.

Hat tip: Ken Pope

Study: Easier to implant negative false memories in children

This new study has potential relevance to forensic psychology, and specifically the automatic faith that some accord to statements made by children in criminal and child custody cases:

Children develop false memories for a negative event more readily than they do for a neutral one. Henry Otgaar and colleagues, who made the new finding, said their work has real-world implications for anyone working with child witnesses: "The argument that is sometimes heard in court - i.e. this memory report must be true because it describes such a horrible event - is, as our data show, on shaky grounds."

Seventy-six children aged between seven and nine years were asked to recall details about a true event that had happened to them the previous year (e.g. that their class had to perform a musical), and either a neutral fictitious event (moving classrooms) or a negative fictitious event (being wrongly accused of copying a classmate's work).

The children were asked about the events, true and fictitious, during two interviews held a week apart. If at first the children were unable to recall any further details, they were asked to concentrate and try again. They were also asked to reflect on the events during the week between interviews, to see if they could flesh out any further details.

Altogether, 74 percent of the children developed false memories for the fictitious event - that is, they said they remembered the event and added extra details about what happened. Crucially, those asked to recall the time they were accused of copying a classmate were significantly more likely to develop a false memory than were those asked to recall the time they had to switch classrooms.

The researchers speculated that children might be more prone to developing false memories of negative rather than neutral events because the two kinds of information are stored differently in the brain. "Negative information is more interrelated than neutral material," they explained. "As a result, the presentation of negative information - either true or false - might increase the possibility that other negative materials become activated in memory. This, in turn, could affect the development of a false memory for a negative event."

- From the British Psychological Society's Research Digest

The study, "Children's false memories: Easier to elicit for a negative than for a neutral event," appears in Acta Psychologica, the International Journal of Psychonomics, 128(2), 350-354. The authors are Henry Otgaar, Ingrid Candel, and Harald Merckelbach of Maastricht University, The Netherlands.

Showdown looming over controversial theory

Parental Alienation Syndrome is by far the most controversial theory in high-conflict child custody litigation. And the battle lines are drawn primarily by gender: PAS is apt to be the first line of defense when a husband is accused in a custody battle of sexually abusing his children. That is, provided he has the money to hire a high-powered attorney.

Under the theory, one parent - almost always the mother - is accused of turning the children against the other, and brainwashing them to believe they have been abused even when they have not been.

The purported syndrome stubbornly refuses to die despite the facts that:

• it has not been empirically verified

• it has been excluded from many courtrooms as not meeting minimal standards of evidence admissibility
  

• its creator and chief proponent is long gone (having allegedly stabbed himself to death with a butcher knife)

But historic legislation in California is aimed at squelching PAS by setting guidelines for child custody evaluations that could reduce or eliminate its introduction in court.

The original version of the legislation, AB 612, specifically referenced Parental Alienation Syndrome. The new version, AB 2587, is watered down, speaking only to the need for evaluators to conform to "generally accepted" standards without specifically mentioning PAS.

Although the American Psychological Association has raised concern about use of the theory in court, child custody evaluators remain divided in their beliefs about its validity. But psychologists are not nearly as rancorous in their division as are activists in the so-called "father’s rights" or women's rights movements. A quick web search reveals dozens of sites dedicated to proselytizing pro or con.

In a balanced report this week, the San Bernardino Sun quotes Dr. Philip Stahl, a California evaluator and member of the state's Association of Family & Conciliation Courts, as saying that judges also bring their own preconceptions into the fray.

"Courts are ruling in favor of people unfairly accused of alienation, and they are ruling against people who have been alienated," Stahl is quoted as saying. "Problems described by advocates on both sides on the issue are happening."

Central to the problem is the lack of a magic truth detector that can distinguish true from false allegations of child abuse. After a while, even the children themselves may become confused about what really did, or did not, happen.

The syndrome was invented by Dr. Richard Gardner, who self-published his work and made a career out of testifying for fathers in child custody cases.

Despite the fact that judges are supposed to play a gatekeeper function and not allow in evidence without sufficient scientific support, in practice courts vary tremendously in how rigorously they scrutinize scientific evidence. According to one attorney, courts that have held special hearings on whether PAS meets the Frye evidentiary standard of being generally accepted in the scientific community have found that it does not. (For more on the issue of the legal admissibility of the PAS, see this scholarly article and this website.)

The mental health and medical fields are littered with dozens if not hundreds of "syndromes" with widely varying levels of empirical support, some invoked to make something sound more medical or scientific than it is. Many of these - including False Memory Syndrome, Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome, Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, Adopted Child Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Premenstrual Syndrome, Battered Women's Syndrome, and even Post-Abduction Syndrome - are typically frowned on within the scientific community.

Particularly problematic in child custody litigation is the unequal playing field in court, with the husband often possessing greater financial resources that allow him to hire better attorneys and more convincing experts than his wife. Given the strong resistance of the father's rights movement, it's highly unlikely that this watered-down proposal will even become law, much less that it will significantly change the tenor of high-conflict child custody litigation.

The San Bernardino Sun article is here. More information, pro and con, can be found here, here, here, and here - and a web search will garner much more where that came from.

Photo credit: worldwidewebdomination (Creative Commons license)

Happy Valentine's Day

It's been a busy week, with little time for blogging. So, without further ado, I present a few highlights from the news media and blogosphere:

Of apes and jurors

You may have heard about this new study; researcher Jennifer Eberhardt and colleagues were shocked to find people subconsciously associated black faces with apes. (It's in the current issue of the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.) Jury consultant Anne Reed (of the Deliberations blog) has some astute thoughts on how this unconscious bias factors into jury deliberations, and what can be done to combat it. She's also collected some additional resources on the topic; see also my earlier posts and resources on race and juries, here and here.

Trolls evicted

I wrote awhile back about the sex offenders in Florida who had set up an exile community under a freeway overpass because they weren't allowed to live anywhere else. Now, those men are being evicted from their open-air tents. Some men evicted from under another overpass have set up camp in the remote Everglades; maybe the latest evictees will join them.

Religion and child custody

Remember the circumcision battle I blogged about a few months ago, in which one parent characterized the Judaic practice as religious freedom and the other called it sexual abuse? In recent decades, child custody disputes pitting different faiths and religious practices are on the rise due to an increase in interfaith marriages and a broader rise in custody conflicts. Although family court judges try to avoid rulings that favor one faith over another, it doesn't always work. New York Times reporter Neela Banerjee chronicled the complex dilemma yesterday in "Religion Joins Custody Cases, to Judges' Unease."

Bounty hunting: A corrupt American institution

Speaking of religion, have you heard of "Dog the Bounty Hunter"? I happened to catch it on cable TV when I was channel-surfing at a hotel recently. The show glorifies born-again Christian bail bondsman Duane "Dog" Chapman, a foul-mouthed religious convert who brags of capturing 6,000 runaway felons.

But from another perspective, Adam Liptak of the New York Times has written an expose on the bail bonds industry which, as it turns out, is a corrupt and uniquely U.S. institution. "In England, Canada and other countries, agreeing to pay a defendant's bond in exchange for money is a crime akin to witness tampering or bribing a juror - a form of obstruction of justice. Courts in Australia, India and South Africa [have] disciplined lawyers for professional misconduct for setting up commercial bail arrangements," writes Liptak in "American Exception: Illegal Globally, Bail for Profit Remains in U.S."

As Liptak chronicles, bounty hunters have enormous extrajudicial power. In many states, they can legally break into people's homes without warrants, temporarily imprison them, and force them across state lines without an extradition process.

"Most of the legal establishment, including the American Bar Association and the National District Attorneys Association, hates the bail bond business, saying it discriminates against poor and middle-class defendants, does nothing for public safety, and usurps decisions that ought to be made by the justice system," writes Liptak.

The full story is here, along with a short video.

Yet another call for juvenile justice reform

Last but not least, An Illinois group has called for an end of life-without-parole sentences of juveniles, based on interviews with 100-plus prisoners who received such sentences when they were ages 14 to 17. The oldest of the men is now 47. The report, entitled "Categorically less culpable: Children sentenced to life without possibility of parole in Illinois," is here. A press release is here, and The Northwestern Law School website has more resources.