New York

Support legislation that recognizes science based PA and oppose legislation that discredits it

Letters and emails make a difference to lawmakers.
Contact your own representatives as well as each law's committee.
Please act upon the bills listed below and
alert us when you discover new bills.

ALERT US ABOUT PROPOSED LEGISLATION

URGET ALERT
KAYDEN'S LAW IS NOW PENDING IN THE US SENATE. IT WILL BE A SEVERE SETBACK FOR ALIENATED PARENTS AND CHILDREN. INFORMATION ABOUT THE THREAT THAT THIS LAW PRESENTS CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.KAYDENSLAW.INFO. PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW!

2/18/2021 2 Comments

New York

Senate Bill 4837 Requires judges or justices in a court that exercises criminal jurisdiction, including town and village justices, family court judges, and justices of the supreme court who regularly handle matrimonial matters, and court clerks of such courts to attend a program approved by the chief administrator of the courts addressing issues relating to domestic violence totaling at least ten hours every two years.Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 2-0)
Status: Introduced on February 16 2021 - 25% progression
Action: 2022-01-05 - REFERRED TO JUDICIARY
Pending: Senate Judiciary Committee
Text: Latest bill text (Introduced) [HTML]

Bill text:To educate judges about the harm courts may cause victims by separating children from their primary attachment figure, failing to prioritize the safety of children and non-offending parents, seeking to award custody to both parents despite the presence of domestic violence or child abuse, or relying on faulty assumptions regarding domestic violence that have been rejected by reputable professional organizations, such as, but not limited to: (i) the assumption that women or children frequently make false allegations of abuse, (ii) the assumption that a parent's efforts to protect a child from abuse by another parent is evidence of unwillingness or inability to cooperate with that parent, (iii) the assumption that one parent alienates a child from the other parent due to a pathological medical syndrome, and (iv) in cases involving domestic violence or child abuse, the assumption that one parent can and should support a child's relationship with the other parent.

Assembly Bill 5398

Requires the court to consider a child's health and safety when making a decision regarding child custody and visitation; directs presumptions that may be made by the court and admissibility of certain evidence in such cases; requires court officials to take part in training to handle such cases regarding domestic violence and child abuse.

Spectrum: Slight Partisan Bill (Democrat 36-17)
Status: Introduced on February 16 2021 - 25% progression
Action: 2022-01-05 - referred to judiciary
Pending: Assembly Judiciary Committee
Text: Latest bill text (Introduced) [HTML]

Bill text: education regarding the harm courts may cause children in child custody cases where domestic violence or child abuse is present by rely-ing on non-scientific theories such as parental alienation, parental alienation syndrome, the friendly parent concept, or any other theory or label that is not supported by scientific research and not generally accepted by the scientific community. (The bill is long long. It should be read in its entirty since it contains many other problematic statements).

SB7425

Requires the court to consider a child's health and safety when making a decision regarding child custody and visitation; directs presumptions that may be made by the court and admissibility of certain evidence in such cases; requires court officials to take part in training to handle such cases regarding domestic violence and child abuse.

Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 8-2)
Status: Introduced on October 8 2021 - 25% progression
Action: 2022-01-07 - REFERENCE CHANGED TO JUDICIARY
Pending: Senate Judiciary Committee
Text: Latest bill text (Introduced) [HTML]

Bill text: education regarding the harm courts may cause children in child custody cases where domestic violence or child abuse is present by rely-ing on non-scientific theories such as parental alienation, parental alienation syndrome, the friendly parent concept, or any other theory or label that is not supported by scientific research and not generally accepted by the scientific community. (The bill is long long. It should be read in its entirty since it contains many other problematic statements).

2 Comments

Lauren

5/27/2024 06:00:26 pm

Kayden's law is important and PA is a pseudoscientific claim made by a discredited therapist. Parents who engage in domestic violence often turn their abuse on the kids when access to the former spouse is no longer available to them. Kayden's mother should have been believed and she should still be alive. Shame on the abusers who try claim PA when really it is their own behavior that causes estrangement. Stop defending domestic violence by proxy and wake up to the fact that protective parents are just trying to save their kids. 🤦‍♀️

Jake Oaktree

5/27/2024 08:00:09 pm

Thank you for your comments Lauren,
It is through open dialogue that science and public policy improves. In response to your comments, I refer you to Exposing Misinformation and Public Policy Deception Contained in Child Safety First: https://bit.ly/3t5VuYx :

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, submitted a 20-page report to the UN Human Rights Council for its June 2023 meeting which discusses ‘how the discredited and unscientific pseudo-concept of parental alienation is used in family law proceedings by abusers as a tool to continue their abuse and coercion and to undermine and discredit allegations of domestic violence made by mothers who are trying to keep their children safe. Peer-reviewed research has extensively disproven parental alienation as a concept that lacks validity for many years. It is not recognized as a diagnosis and rather only as a legal term, yet parental alienation remains the reigning paradigm in many family courtrooms’”

IN FACT: Sander van der Linden (2023), an expert on combatting misinformation, explains in his book Foolproof that one of the main techniques of spreading misinformation is discrediting. The report of the Special Rapporteur claims that parental alienation theory is discredited and unscientific, but it neglects to mention hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that have been published in highly rated academic journals. A recent study of parental alienation research located 213 empirical studies in ten languages that are ignored by the Child Safety First report (Harman et al., 2022). Nowhere does the UN Report or the Child Safety First document explain when, how, and by whom parental alienation was allegedly discredited. Other than the ipse dixit opinions of parental alienation critics, there is no scholarly research that supports this supposed discrediting (Mendoza-Amaro et al., 2023).

“Protecting children from abuse, violence, and risk of death (instead of protecting them from ‘alienation’) should be court professionals’ priority whenever child abuse or domestic abuse is established” (p. 41).

IN FACT: This statement is predicated on the assumption that parental alienation is not itself a form of abuse. Research shows that parental alienation is a form of psychological abuse and needs to be protected against just like any other form of abuse. This abuse can have lifelong consequences on the mental and physical health of the child (Baker, 2005; Verhaar, Matthewson, & Bentley, 2022). A recent pilot study identified a promising revised ACE’s measure that includes screening for parental alienation. This measure suggests that there is an additional adverse childhood experience uniquely related to parental alienation (Marsden, Saunders, & Harman, 2023).

It is important to keep in mind that when allegations of abuse are made against a parent who alleges that they are being alienated, it is the alienating parent who is most likely to actually be abusive: Claims of domestic violence have been levied against the alienated parent in less than half of parental alienation cases (Harman & Lorandos, 2021; Harman, Giancarlo, et al., 2023). Among the claims that were investigated or heard in court, only 10% were found to be true or substantiated. Over 75% of the allegations levied against alienated parents by an alienating parent were investigated and found to be unsubstantiated or false (Harman, Giancarlo, et al., 2023). Rowlands et al. (2023) and Sharples et al. (2023) have also found that it is the alienating parent, not the alienated parent, who is more likely to have a finding of abuse made against them, and that their false allegations of abuse toward the alienated parent are a form of legal and administrative aggression against them to maintain power and control over the children (Hines et al., 2015). Harman, Maniotes, and Grubb (2021) also found that many of the parents who had been alienated from their children in their sample were the victims of intimate terrorism or coercively controlling violence perpetrated by the alienating parent. Indeed, Harman, Giancarlo, and colleagues (2023) found that 30% of abuse allegations were made by an alienating parent against the alienated parent after a court filing or decision, presumably out of retaliation against the alienated parent (Aichenbaum et al., 2023, pp. 33-34).

False allegations of parental alienation are sometimes made just like false allegations are sometimes made. The answer is not to discredit the severity of either form of abuse, but to train professionals to be able to differentiate between valid and false allegations. It is not a black and white world. Kayden’s Law unfortunately portrays a false narrative of science and parent child contact issues that presents a real danger to many people. We hope that this clarifies some of the issues for you.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

YOUR CART

Support legislation that recognizes science based PA and oppose legislation that discredits it

New York

Leave a Reply.

Archives

Categories

You can help stop PA. Tell your friends and legislators that PA is harmful!