A coalition of women’s rights groups is calling on the federal Justice Minister to amend the Divorce Act to end the use of what it calls “sexist pseudoscience” in family courts, says taking particular note of the accusations of “parental alienation” which are repeatedly made there.
Because such accusations “revictimize women and children in divorce proceedings,” denounce the approximately 250 groups in their letter also addressed to the leaders of federal political parties.
“‘Parental alienation’ is a controversial concept,” they argue to the Minister of Justice, Arif Virani.
It is often used to describe a situation where one parent repeatedly denigrates the other, brainwashing the child into rejecting the other parent.
Do not report violence out of fear
Except that when a mother denounces domestic or family violence committed by the father, she is often accused of “parental alienation” and of verbalizing such allegations to harm the other parent in order to reduce their time. guard.
And when courts and experts who evaluate a child consider this to be alienating behavior, they can separate children from their mothers and force them to live with their fathers, “even when there is a history of documented domestic violence,” denounces the coalition.
What the groups observe is that mothers refrain from denouncing violence, because they fear losing their child if they are accused of being alienating.
In short, this “controversial” concept is too often used to silence the parent who denounces violence, writes the coalition in its letter.
The missive also refers to a report issued last year by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, which calls on all states to legislate to “prohibit the invocation of parental alienation or pseudo-concepts of the same type” in family law cases.
“For years, feminist experts and researchers have been sounding the alarm about accusations of parental alienation, which have become ubiquitous in family disputes across the country. Research, education and training have not been enough,” underlines researcher Suzanne Zaccour, director of legal affairs at the National Association of Women and Law.
This is why the coalition is launching an urgent call for action to Minister Virani and says it hopes that the government will act quickly to remedy the damage caused by accusations of “parental alienation”, which have taken on “epidemic proportions”.