California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse

Written by: Chris
May 7th, 2009


A California representative, Democrat Jim Beall, has reintroduced legislation as Assembly Bill 612 (AB 612) to ban the discussion of parental alienation in child custody evaluations. California judges, psychologists, and family law attorneys all oppose this legislation because they know that parental alienation is a real problem that is harming children in many families, especially in high-conflict divorces. So do the many California parents who have been alienated from their children. And so do the grown children who are victims of parental alienation and recognize it for the damage their alienating parent caused in their own lives.

Beall Supports Child Abuse for Personal Political Gain

The real impetus to backing Beall’s pro-child-abuse legislation is to pander to the extremist anti-family organizations that deny that parental alienation even exists or ever happens. Such organizations as NOW (National Organization of Women) and the California Protective Parents Association, both part of the pro-child-abuse lobby, are blatantly dishonest and irresponsible in their claims. They aim to cover for women who are abusing children because it suits their political and gender goals. They don’t care about children except as property and tools. Beall is unethical and disingenuous enough to go along with this argument to try to get an advantage out of his alliance with them. For disgusting politicians like Beall, harming abused children and parents is a perfectly acceptable strategy to win political support. After all, the child-abusing dollars from NOW and CPPA can help him campaign for re-election.

Parental Alienation Should Not Be A Gender Issue

Parental alienation at its core is not a gender issue. It is a child abuse issue. The researchers who have studied it for decades make it very clear that parental alienation is a form of child abuse that can be committed by either mother or father, sometimes even being committed by both parents in a family. However, the pro-child-abuse lobby tries to distort reality by claiming mothers never abuse their children and that fathers are always abusers.

Any Nascent Research Has Flaws, But This Doesn’t Invalidate It Entirely

Richard Gardner’s seminal research on parental alienation syndrome has flaws. Virtually any seminal research is inevitably going to have flaws. To have no flaws means that either nothing new is being uncovered or the subject is so well understood that there is little need for more research. Neither was the case with parental alienation research, so flaws should be expected. Such flaws do not mean that the research is not about a real subject.

There is additionally a debate about what to call the parental denigration and brainwashing behaviors. The pro-child-abuse lobby claims that there is no “Parental Alienation Syndrome” because they don’t like the term or its meaning. They also portray parental alienation research as being “junk science” to thoroughly discredit it and to cover for the continuation of emotional child abuse by their allies and mis-characterization of mothers as inherently protective and fathers as inherently abusive. This is a continuation of the “victim feminism” that wreaks havoc with Western societies. Either gender can be protective, and either can be abusive. To deny this as the pro-child-abuse lobby does is ludicrous. But yet deny it they do.

“It’s junk science used to target women and take their custody rights away,” said Karen Anderson, a spokesperson for the California Protective Parents Association. “It’s a problem in courts all over the country.”

Child Abusers Misportray DSM as a Dogmatic Bible

One of the common criticisms that the pro-child-abuse lobby makes is that parental alienation is not mentioned in DSM-IV, the “Bible” of mental health professionals in its 4th major version. DSM hasn’t been updated significantly since 1994. The DSM-IV-TR version in 2000 was a very minor text revision that did not significantly change the contents of the book. So that means it was last significantly updated 15 years ago. This was only several years after the very first theories on parental alienation were being developed, not enough time for the many years long debate needed for the inclusion of substantially new material into this type of text.

As an example of how long it can take for well-established research to get into DSM, consider that earlier versions of DSM, prior to DSM-IV, didn’t mention AIDS or Tourette Syndrome. So when DSM-III was the latest version of DSM prior to the publication of DSM-IV in 1994, does that mean that AIDS did not exist? Tell that to the many tens of thousands of people who died from it prior to its inclusion in DSM-IV.

Was Tourette Syndrome “junk science” in 1993, but not in 1995, for the same reason? What were likely the first documented cases of Tourette Syndrome were published in 1885. It took more than 100 years for it to be included in DSM. Does that mean it never existed and/or was “junk science” in the meantime? This quote from Wikipedia’s coverage on Tourette Syndrome makes it very clear that a seemingly obscure and rare disorder can in fact be far more common than popularly believed until much more research is done and standards for how to diagnose it are determined:

Tourette syndrome was once thought to be rare: in 1972, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) believed there were fewer than 100 cases in the United States,[69] and a 1973 registry reported only 485 cases worldwide.[70] However, multiple studies published since 2000 have consistently demonstrated that the prevalence is much higher than previously thought.[71] Discrepancies across current and prior prevalence estimates come from several factors: ascertainment bias in earlier samples drawn from clinically referred cases, assessment methods that may fail to detect milder cases, and differences in diagnostic criteria and thresholds.[72] There were few broad-based community studies published before 2000 and until the 1980s, most epidemiological studies of Tourette syndrome were based on individuals referred to tertiary care or specialty clinics.[1][73]

DSM-V, the next revision, isn’t scheduled for publication until 2012. Does that mean that nothing discovered in the fields of psychology and psychiatry between the late 1980’s and 2012 is real and it is all “junk science” until it is mentioned in DSM-V or some later version of DSM?
Parental Alienation Supported by Reputable Researchers of Both Genders

Parental alienation has substantial scientific backing from reputable researchers and professionals at prestigious universities. There is simply no debate from responsible mental health professionals who have spent time researching high conflict divorces and child abuse that systematic denigration, access blocking, and false allegations designed to destroy one parent’s relationship with a child is not child abuse. There is undisputed and well-researched evidence that this conduct happens in many divorces by many parents of both genders. Such research has been done by many mental health, social sciences, and legal researchers of both genders. This is not a male versus female issue, it is an issue of those who oppose the abuse of children and destruction of their relationships with both parents versus those who are willing to sanction and advocate that such abuse should be allowed and even encouraged, despite the well-demonstrated damage it does to the children and the target parent.

Alienated children frequently are psychologically damaged in long-term ways. They often develop depression, substance abuse problems, eating disorders, and even manipulative behavior patterns similar to their alienating parents. Some compare growing up with an alienating parent as being kidnapped and brainwashed. Dr. Amy Baker studied and documented in depth the cases of 40 research subjects who as adults realized they are victims of parental alienation. Her book Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind mentions some disturbing statistics:

* 70% suffered from depression
* 58% were divorced
* Half of the 28 who had children are estranged from their own children
* 35% developed problems with drugs and alcohol

Mothers Wrongly Losing Custody Doesn’t Invalidate Parental Alienation

The pro-child-abuse lobby argues that some women have lost custody to child abusers because they falsely claimed parental alienation. Perhaps that is true. But even if you are 100% certain it is true and can prove it beyond any doubt, that doesn’t mean that parental alienation is not real. What it means is that the family law courts and justice system are flawed and reach inaccurate conclusions that cause damage to children and innocent parents.

Some Women Do Abuse Children, Including by Alienation Tactics

First of all, men are not the only people who abuse children. The facts are clear that children are abused by people of both genders. There is no way that all child abuse is done by men, and there is no scientific or research backing for any position even close to this. There’s no way to even make a case about the only parents who abuse children are fathers. The incidents that show that mothers abuse and murder their own children are numerous. See our article Murderous Mentally Ill Mothers and Government Negligence for some famous examples.

Fix Flawed Family Law Courts, Don’t Shelter Child Abusers

Courts are fallible and make bad decisions every day. Witness the repeated convictions and even death sentences handed down to people who were later exonerated by new evidence or discovery of perjury, often perjury by government employees or people manipulated by the government. Furthermore, it is entirely clear that there are some very dishonest and incompetent police officers, CPS social workers, and judges who have agendas that are anything but the best interests of the children.

As a drastic example of this line of thought, consider the Pennsylvania court judges who sent thousands of children to private jails without fair trials in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks. (See our article Corrupt Pennsylvania Courts Jail Kids for Cash.) These judges considered their personal financial gain to be more important than the lives of thousands of children whom in many cases didn’t even commit any crimes. Does that mean no child should ever be charged or tried for a crime? No, it doesn’t. It means that corrupt and evil government employees should suffer the consequences for their misconduct and that perhaps those consequences need to be made much more severe to ensure that government employees comply with the law. If government employees are willing to wrongly and severely damage or destroy the lives of thousands of young children, perhaps there should be penalties commensurate for the crimes. Jail time for such people hardly seems adequate, and apparently wasn’t enough of a disincentive to keep them from committing such crimes thousands of times over many years.

Perhaps the mothers who wrongly had their custody taken away were mistreated by the courts, police, or CPS. This is nothing new for fathers, it happens to them all the time and in fact it was public policy for decades that children should live with their mother and have little contact with their father. Fathers didn’t and don’t like bad public policy and incompetent court decisions. It is no surprise that mothers don’t like bad policies and incompetent courts now that they are more often wronged by them than before, in the days when custody assignment was a “children shall have only mothers” rubber stamp that more or less uniformly deprived children of a father as public policy.

Bad family law decisions indicate that courts are ill-equipped to deal with divorce cases involving mentally ill and abusive parties who are dishonest and fail to use the tools that should be used, such as prosecution for perjury, to make the legal process result in just and beneficial outcomes. But these bad decisions do not indicate in any way that parental alienation is not real.

None of the arguments presented by the pro-child-abuse lobby denying reality and portraying child abuse as acceptable and legal makes it ethically and objectively so. Child abuse is wrong because it hurts children. Parental alienation is wrong because it hurts children (and target parents and other target family member). It doesn’t matter if the alienating parent is the mother or father (or both!) — any way you cut it, parental alienation is child abuse.

It is likely true that some parents who claim parental alienation managed to estrange themselves from their kids, but are not abusers. It is also likely that some really did abuse their children and some of these parents ended up with custody because of false claims of parental alienation. That doesn’t mean that no parents ever brainwash their children to hate their other parent. Pretending parental alienation does not happen and making it impossible to address this form of child abuse in custody decisions and plans is effectively mandating state-sanctioned and state-assisted child abuse.

Advocates for the State of California to assist in abusing children (like Beall is) want to claim that just because decades-old research and papers on parental alienation were scientifically flawed means that all the current research and studies that are not flawed and show it is a real phenomenon. They want to pretend that brainwashing a child to hate a parent is not child abuse and their vile constituents who do this should be allowed to abuse their children with no consequences.

AB 612 Is Immoral, Even Evil

To deny that parental alienation is happening and to cover it up is nothing short of supporting the legalization of systematic emotional abuse of children. NOW, Democrat Jim Beall, and their ilk are essentially mass child abusers. Metaphorically, their relationship to the parents committing such child abuses is little different than the relationship between Nazi party members who pushed for funding and resources to “control the Jew problem” but didn’t actually drop cyanide into gas chambers, leaving that to SS executioners. NOW, Beall, and allies are making themselves just as guilty as the abusive parents who are in the children’s faces abusing them, often on a daily basis.

As another example, sometimes anti-white discrimination in hiring decisions occur. Yet is anybody seriously arguing that all non-whites should be enslaved or banned from employment so as to ensure that discriminatory hiring decisions won’t adversely affect some whites again? Such a proposal would be blatantly racist and immoral. Yet the proposal to ban parental alienation as a factor in custody decisions because courts have made mistakes is little different from such an extremist and racist position.

Beall Advocates for State-Assisted Child Abuse as Public Policy

Beall is an advocate of state-backed child abuse, as the other misguided California assembly representatives and parties collaborating with him in support of child abuse. These people do not represent the interests of the children of California. They place their own political futures and support of misguided special interests above the well-being of children.

Beall and the California Assembly should withdraw support for state-backed child abuse. Legislation and policies making the emotional child abuse tactic of parental alienation legally allowed is not good for California children, just like laws and policies that promoted the genocide of populations in German concentration camps and the mass-enslavement of millions were not good for the victims of those policies.
How to Contact Jim Beall

Please let Beall know that his support for child abuse and destruction of children is not appreciated. Contact information follows.

Jim Beall Jr. - Democrat
Assembly District 24
(916) 319-2024
email: Assemblymember.Beall@assembly.ca.gov

Further Reading

AB 612 Will Make It Harder to Protect Children from Parental Alienation

Child Custody Evaluation Changes

Parental Alienation: Not In The Best Interest Of The Children

US court found PAS met the Frye Test for Scientific Acceptability

Bill Wades In to Custody Battles (PAS)

Alienating Mom Denies Dying Man Chance to See Child

Kids’ Parental Alienation Book: “I Don’t Want to Choose!”

The original source for this article can be found: http://angiemedia.com/?p=2240