The Alienated Parent is Also Alienated From Family and Friends

An ongoing series on parental alienation authored by an anonymous CAFE volunteer

Many alienated parents speak of the excruciating pain of being alienated from their children. However, many also discuss that this alienation extends to friends, neighbours, acquaintances and even family.

As a result, not only does the custodial parent, engage in a psychological warfare using the children as pawns but even extended relations. Thus, leaving the alienated parent alone with little support and in some cases serious wrongful accusations.

The custodial parent often ends up retaining the home or in the interim is living in the home. The mutual friends you have continue to keep a relationship with the custodial parent especially if the friends have children as well. This is also the situation with neighbours or acquaintances that the alienated parent met at school, the park or other activities with the children.

As a result, the custodial parent is able to establish themselves as the de facto primary caregiver. They will accompany the children to all events and participate in their normal daily activities. This will solidify their position.

More importantly, with the absence of the alienated parent the custodial parent now has free reign to voice any opinion or allegation unchecked, to anyone. The alienated parent is not there to defend himself. If the custodial parent is making allegations of abandonment and abuse against the alienated parent that opinion might be accepted. The custodial parent might illicit sympathy and worse might be successful in convincing others.

Many alienated fathers speak of how family and friends backed off. How they, “didn’t want to get involved,” or “didn’t know what to say.” How the alienated parent is viewed with suspicion especially if he is a father and worse where the innocent alienated father is viewed as an abuser.

The most tragic of scenarios is where extended family ends up enabling the parental alienation further isolating the alienated parent. This can happen where the custodial parents’ own family might end up engaging in a smear campaign against the alienated parent. These individuals often in-laws who were once considered family by the alienated parent where intimate and personal information was shared are suddenly the enemy.

If the alienated parent is a father he will find few if any resources open to him. He will be faced with suspicious family and friends and a social and justice system unwilling to help him. While he grieves for the loss of his children he will grieve alone.