How To Deal With Parental Alienation: An Interview With PA Expert Dr. Richard Warshak

Posted by: Matt Allen on Apr 22, 2010 Tagged in: PAS , Parental Alienation Syndrome , Children , alienation

Note: April 25 is the fifth annual Parental Alienation Awareness Day, put together by the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization. To find out how you can help or how to get April 25 recognized in your town, visit the Parental Alienation Awareness Day web site.

Dr. Richard Warshak is the author of Divorce Poison: How to Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing, a book that gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and repair loving relationships with their children.

Internationally renowned lecturer and authority on divorce, custody, and the psychology of alienated children, Warshak is a clinical, research, and consulting psychologist and a clinical professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

He also wrote the chapter on Parental Alienation Syndrome for the Expert Witness Manual, a guide for attorneys and judges dealing with expert testimony.

Read on for the two-part Q&A with Warshak about parental alienation, the signs of it, how to deal with it, and how to restore your relationship with an alienated child.

DadsDivorce.com: For someone who is entering a divorce or in the throes of it and are concerned about parental alienation happening at some point, how can they prevent it or can they prevent it from happening?

Dr. Richard Warshak: There are certainly things you can do to reduce the likelihood of it occurring. Some of it depends on your spouse but one can certainly maintain regular contact with children and keep arranged schedules of contact consistent. It’s also important to not badmouth the other parents and to not give the kids the third degree.

Don’t overreact, don’t allow your contact to be interrupted, and hang in there. If the child expresses distorted views of you, provide the information to help clarify issues when appropriate. You’ll need to exercise great patience if the other parent is alienating.

Some common mistakes parents make is overreacting, trying to talk the children out of their feelings, withdrawing from the child, and accusing the child of merely parodying the other parent’s complaints.

You don’t want to jump to conclusions and conclude that the other parent is always trying to turn the child against you. Innocent situations may turn out to just be innocent situations. Don’t immediately assume alienation is occurring.

However, if you feel the other parent is intentionally alienating, it’s important to discuss your concerns with them if you’re on civil terms. If you aren’t on that level, you need to seek counseling with a third party.

DD: I’ve heard often from parents who don’t even realize they are a victim of parental alienation. Then when you describe what it is, they suddenly go “that’s exactly what is happening to me.” So is there any way of knowing how prevalent this is?

RW: Many of the readers of my “Divorce Poison” book say they haven’t been aware they were hurting children that they weren’t doing it deliberately. It’s helped them appreciate how damaging it is to badmouth a parent.

Once parents read about it, they came to recognize they and their children are victims of it. There’s no way to know for sure due to the variations of research studies in determining the severity of alienating behavior, but it’s believed there are between 20,000-250,000 new child victims each year.

DD: So we talked about the “before,” and attempts to prevent alienation from happening. What about how to act during this stage when parental alienation is occurring? How should you act if you know your ex is alienating you?

RW: If the purposeful alienation extends to denying contact, it’s very important to get legal assistance so you know what your rights are and how orders can be enforced. You cannot allow your contact with the child to be interrupted. Time and space is the beginning to the end of the relationship.

DD: Say one parent has alienated a child. How can the other parent successfully restore that relationship with the child, or how likely is it that the relationship will ever be restored?

RW: It really depends on the circumstances. If you’re still able to gain contact with the child, you may be able to show your children through your behavior that you aren’t this demon being portrayed. Sometimes children are filled with such distortions that you’ll need professional programs to help children live with parents they claim to dislike and reject as a result of alienation.

When it’s more severe, it’s very important to have some legal intervention because the favored parent will say, “There’s nothing I can do. The child just doesn’t want to see you.”

It’s hard to overturn a child’s attitude, so use the court to enforce contact with the child and get them into counseling with you.

Note: Part 2 of this Q&A will be posted Friday.

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Canadian TV5 Exposes Cases of Parental Alienation

Children have always been on the frontlines of divorces. It is just a matter of time before Parental Alienation Syndrome is recognized officially by the APA, and in federal courts. Right now, thousands of case of Parental Alienation have resulted in significant changes in custody and many more are still waiting.

W5 investigates: Children on the frontlines of divorce

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CTV News Video

W5: Poisoned Minds, part one There is nothing pleasant about divorce, but for couples breaking up there is now a whole new battleground -- parental alienation. It is a proxy war that can produce poisoned minds. W5: Poisoned Minds, part two Family courts and social workers are grappling with how to make divorcing parents cooperate, and heal the children. Even in a legal system where kids have all the rights, harmony doesn't come easy.

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Experts call it parental alienation, when in the midst of a divorce, one parent tries to turn a child against the other parent. It's a mind-warping tactic for the child.

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W5 Staff

Date: Sat. Nov. 7 2009 6:58 PM ET

The world of divorce is scary for any child. Even when spouses split amicably children can be forced to balance their love and time between two parents.

But when a divorce becomes especially toxic children can become the target of an unrelenting crusade by one parent to destroy the child's relationship with the other. Experts call it parental alienation, a persistent campaign by one parent to poison a child's relationship with the other parent.

Typical tactics include lying or making false allegations about the targeted parent, refusing to let the child see the other parent, even punishing the child for showing affection for the other parent. Experts claim, in its more extreme forms, it is child abuse.

Pamela Richardson

For almost 12 years, Pamela Richardson rarely saw her son Dash because of the campaign her ex-husband waged against her.

According to Richardson, after her marriage dissolved her ex-husband, who had custody of the then-four-year-old, did everything he could to alienate Dash from his mother - fabricating illness, booking activities for Dash to prevent visits; he even arranged to have Richardson banned from Dash's school.

"I wouldn't see Dash for, you know, a number of months and not without me trying, not without me doing all the classic things that alienated parents do -- cookies on the doorstop, faxes, phone calls, notes, trying to see him at friends' houses -- everything you possibly can to keep that thread of a relationship alive," said Richardson.

Despite a court order giving her regular visits with Dash, Richardson said her ex-husband did everything he could to keep them apart and to convince their son that she was a bad and uncaring mother.

"There was period of two years, and I added up the hours (with Dash) and it came to 24 - in two years," Richardson lamented.

Richardson said she wasn't the only one suffering as a result of the alienation - Dash was suffering too. Alienated from his mother, the once happy little boy turned into an isolated, depressed and angry teenager.

On January 1, 2001, Dash, then 16, jumped off Vancouver's Granville Street bridge, in the middle of the night, to his death. While Richardson blames her ex-husband, she also blames a court system that she insists did little to intervene and help.

"This is extreme and this was something that was in the courts many, many times...they had an opportunity to do something and they didn't," said Richardson.

Parental Alienation and the Courts

Courts are paying more attention. Family court judges are increasingly considering issues of parental alienation in deciding custody.

Justice Harvey Brownstone is a family court judge in Toronto and the author of a book on the bitter realities of divorce court.

"Parents who are on a campaign to destroy the child's relationship with the other parent could lose custody and, in extreme cases, courts have changed custody to the other parent," said Brownstone.

He encourages divorcing couples to focus on parenting together rather than using children as a tool of revenge, dragging them through protracted, bitter family feuds.

"While there may be some therapeutic benefits to coming to court and venting and telling a judge how much you were hurt by the other parent's infidelities or bad conduct, at the end of the day, we are looking at parenting capacity, parenting skills," he said. "We need to look at how couples are going to reinvent themselves from ex-partners to co-parents."

Co-parenting

The concept of divorced parents co-parenting isn't new for psychologists Peggie Ward and Robin Deutsch. They bring bad-mouthing alienating parents, targeted parents, and their children to a camp in Vermont in an effort to help these broken families learn new ways to properly raise their children

Eight-year-old Tori Cercone knows first hand how it feels to be caught in the middle of a high conflict divorce. "What is so painful is that your mom and dad get separated and they don't like each other but you like both. And it's kind of like a contest who you like better"

Two years ago Tori's parents Fran Beecy and Chris Cercone couldn't stand to be in the same room after Beecy made abuse allegations against her ex-husband.

"Oh my God, he hated me," said Beecy. "I was like the big mother bear guarding the door, not letting my ex-husband near my kids...I just wanted to protect them, to keep them safe. And yet he, on the other hand, was just like 'these are my kids, I want to see them. I have every right to see them.'"

Divorce camp in Vermont changed everything. Today, they visit together, gather for family dinners, and get along.

As Cercone explained, "whichever side you're on, whether you're the alienated or the alienator, you've got to come to grips that it can't be about how I feel or getting back at the other one."

"I think I'm a better mom because I'm happier," said Beecy. "I'm not trying to create any wedges between my kids and their dad."

Round 2 of Campaign to Ask DSM to Include Parental Alienation—We’ve Made Progress, but Need You to Act Again

February 15th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director

Fathers & Families wants to ensure that the DSM-5 Task Force is aware of the scope and severity of Parental Alienation. To this end, in December we asked our supporters to write the Task Force to urge them to consider including Parental Alienation Disorder in DSM-5. As usual, your response was overwhelming. It also helped lead to progress–while as expected the newly-released draft version does not specifically include Parental Alienation Disorder, the DSM-5 Task Force has now listed Parental Alienation Disorder among the “Conditions Proposed by Outside Sources…that are still under consideration by the work groups.”

The Task Force says it “welcome[s] your comments on whether available evidence indicates that the following [disorders] should be included in DSM-5.” Fathers & Families is asking its supporters to write to the Task Force and again emphasize that Parental Alienation Disorder is a large-scale problem–to do so, please click here.

As in Round 1, Fathers & Families will print out your letter and send it by regular US mail to the three relevant figures in DSM-V: David J. Kupfer, M.D., the chair of the DSM-V Task Force; Darrel A. Regier, M.D., vice-chair of the DSM-V Task Force; and Daniel S. Pine, M.D., chair of the DSM-V Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence Work Group.

This isn’t easy–as Dr. Kupfer recently told the media, ”The door to get in [the manual] is pretty hard.” But Parental Alienation Disorder does merit serious consideration.

Many observers have noted that hundreds of mental health professionals, doctors, educators, family law professionals and prominent citizens endorsed our campaign. If you belong to one of these groups and would like to be publicly listed as an endorser, please see our endorsement statement in the right-hand column and submit your name, title, city and state to us at GlennSacks@FathersandFamilies.org.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article Mental health professionals getting update on definitions (2/15/10) details the DSM-V process:

[There are] many questions that scores of mental health professionals wrestled with for nearly a decade, as they conducted their periodic update of the neuroses of an evolving society.

The result of their work was unveiled by the American Psychiatric Association last week, as a draft version of the new “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”

Known as the DSM-5, because it represents the fifth edition of this exhaustive bible for psychiatrists, psychologists and others, it attempts to catalog [disorders]…

The first update since 1994 also includes descriptions of depression, sleep disorders, alcohol abuse and other common maladies, but everything gets a fresh look because of the volume of new research and science affecting how they’re all regarded, said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatry professor who chaired the DSM-5 task force.

The final product will go into the offices of all sorts of health professionals — from psychiatrists to family practitioners — while also influencing treatment payments by insurance companies, drug development by the pharmaceutical industry and future research by government and academia.

Dr. Kupfer, the longtime head of Pitt’s psychiatry department before stepping down in October, said the manual remains a work in progress, with revisions based on public and professional reaction before final publication in 2013.

“We weren’t out to make major changes, but so much has happened that we needed to address, that some may accuse us of being overambitious,” he said…Dr. Kupfer…said there is intense discussion during every update about what problems merit entering the manual for the first time…

“The door to get in [the manual] is pretty hard,” Dr. Kupfer said. “Once you’re in the club, it’s then hard to get out. All of us are a little tight about admitting people in the club.”

Again, write to the DSM-5 Task Force by clicking here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers & Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Founder, Chairman of the Board, Fathers & Families

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Fathers & Families Advocacy Group, Parental Alienation/PAS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Parental Alienation Destroys Lives.... Forever

Parental Alienation Destroys Lives.... Forever

The damage done from parental alienation will last throughout a child's life. The one person who was most important to them has been defamed not only by the custodial parent... but by the child as well. What a heavy burden for one to carry throughout their lives. That they not only lost their father/mother for life... but they played a part in removing that person from their life. My guess is that any child who goes through parental alienation will go through their life incomplete, anxiety ridden, and with many misplaced feelings.

Gary's own daughter will turn eighteen this year. She's been doing a series of vlogs on youtube, and to me they are quite interesting. She's no longer slamming him and burning his picture hoping that he burns in hell. No. She doesn't even mention his name. It's as though he never existed. She's all happy and everything... or so she seems. But I can see through her facade. This kid will have problems all of her life. Her dad was a wonderful father, and she lost him at 13 and she played a part in that alienation.... something she will either some day have to face, or go through her life living with a lie that will affect every aspect of her life. I feel sorry for her.

Posted by chambrayblue

Alec Baldwin is not Alone: Parental Alienation Destroys Lives.... Forever.

Behind the Black Robes: Failed Justice

Behind the Black Robes: Failed Justice
By Barbara C. Johnson
Published August 2009

The book addresses a serious problem, the need for court reform and the abolishment of judicial and quasi-judicial immunity. Marinated with the makings of sizzle, the book is filled with the courts’ tricks and traps for the unwary—to alert the readers both why their law cases failed and what must be done to effect court reform.

Each chapter introduces the background of the subject of that chapter and then presents a series of illustrative anecdotes intended to teach the readers by example how to avoid those court tricks and traps people are likely to encounter in their existing or potential court cases.

Its author, Barbara C. Johnson, an unconventional 74-year-old, has long been a fierce advocate for fathers' rights in family courts. She is an outspoken critic of the Massachusetts court system, which she says is rife with corruption.

In 2002, she ran a quixotic campaign for governor, campaigning in an antique fire truck and promising to use creativity, compassion, and a willingness to listen to the People to mend an ailing government.

In 2006, Johnson was barred from practicing law in Massachusetts. “The disbarment by a kangaroo court was an effort to silence my criticism of the courts,” she said.

A newspaper wrote, “While we don't fully agree with either her politics or her methods, Johnson is a character in a humdrum world sorely in need of more characters. She's the thorn in the side, the thumbtack on the chair. . . . Johnson speaks her mind, and loudly.”

Behind the Black Robes: Failed Justice is available for purchase at-

* www.Amazon.com

* www.Abebooks.com

* www.Alibris.com

Barbara C. Johnson, Advocate of Court Reform and Attorney in Fact

Apdo #404-4013 Alajuela, Atenas, Atenas 20501-Costa Rica

barbaracjohnson74@gmail.com SKYPE ID: barbaracjohnson74 Phone 2446-6724

False Allegations: http://www.falseallegations.com

Participating Attorney: http://www.lawguru.com/cgi/bbs2/user/browse.shtml
Campaign 2002: http://www.barbforgovernor.com

The judicial system is very broken. It must be fixed. There are four people who can do the job: Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. Everybody thinks Somebody will surely do it. It is a job Anybody can do. But Nobody is doing it. At least I'm trying. What are you doing?

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. --- VOLTAIRE

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. --- ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

Behind the Black Robes: Failed Justice.

Child Custody Case to study Constitutional Protections

Fathers frequently left without significant contact
Posted: May 12, 2009
10:58 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

A court hearing is scheduled tomorrow on arguments that allege the basic child custody procedures used by judges in Bradley County, Tenn., are unconstitutionally biased in favor of one parent.

WND previously reported on the case stemming from a divorce dispute that attorney Stanley Charles Thorne believes could impact custody decisions nationwide, because it calls down the authority of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause to help fathers who are good parents.

According to Thorne, the case before Circuit Judge J. Michael Sharp is testing the court procedures used in the child custody case of 3-year-old Kate Hopkins, which began in 2007.

After more than two years in court and five different judges, the case is set for trial beginning May 27 in Sharp's courtroom. But Sharp is hearing the constitutional issues before the rest of the case is heard.

Attorney Jeffrey Miller will argue on behalf of fit Tennessee parents and their children, and an attorney from the Tennessee attorney general's office, Warren Jasper, is expected to argue on behalf of the standard procedures.

According to a statement from Thorne, one of the procedures that will be challenged is the "80-day rule" created by local judges. It automatically takes effect as soon as a child custody case is filed, allowing one parent only 80 days a year with the child while the other parent is allowed 285 days – regardless of circumstances.

The rule, Miller argues, discriminates against one parent, violating the principle of equal protection as well as due process, since it is imposed without a hearing.

Such procedures would be banned if Sharp rules the practices are unconstitutional, Thorne's statement said.

Hundreds of divorce cases are filed daily across the U.S., and according to the Children'sJustice.org website, custody dispute cases leave nearly 38 percent of the fathers with no access or visitation rights to their children. In addition, four in 10 mothers report they interfered with the father's visitation to punish him at least once, half the mothers see "no value" in the father's continued contact with his children and 70 percent of the fathers wanted more time with their kids.

Thorne is serving as a consultant in the case of Jeremy Hopkins, a successful lawyer, in his attempts to be treated the same as his daughter's mother, Elisabeth, also a successful lawyer, in their custody of Kate.

Since the mother left the family in Tennessee and took Kate to Pennsylvania about two years ago, Jeremy Hopkins has been allowed only sporadic days with his daughter.

"All I want for my daughter is for her to have mom and a dad," Jeremy Hopkins told WDEF-TV in Chattanooga.

Michael McCormick of the Institute for American Families said the system is set up to pit a mother against a father in a marital dispute, when it should be working to accommodate the needs of a child for both a mother and father.

"The courts are going to pick a winner and a loser and when they do that, the child ultimately loses," he told the station at a recent rally regarding the case.

"If we look at what's happening to our society we can trace the social pathologies just as increased rates of incarceration, early sexual activity for girls, truancy issues related to the family breaking down and the social fabric of our society is breaking down in terms of the family breaking down, we are being weaken as a nation and we need to change that," McCormick added.

He estimates 17 million fathers nationwide do not have fair access to their children, and about 3 million mothers have the same problem.

Thorne, who has 25 years experience as a lawyer, most recently has specialized in constitutional issues in family courts, representing parents and children on various issues.

The family's life was disrupted by the mother's decision to leave, Thorne said, but the relationship of the father and daughter was aggravated by a "family court system that cares for neither of them while it keeps them mired in a swamp of never-ending legal hassles just to be together."

"Many constitutional issues will be decided by Kate Hopkins' case," he continued. "Perhaps the most important is where the Constitution draws the line to protect the relationship between an innocent child and an innocent parent from government interference."

he dispute came to a head just before last Christmas, following the expiration of the most recent visitation order. Jeremy Hopkins, on a scheduled visit with his daughter, decided to have her stay in Tennessee until a court hearing on the required court-ordered visitation plan.

Instead, he was arrested for interfering with a custodial plan, "even though there was no court order in force," and his daughter was returned to Pennsylvania. The warrant later was quashed by a judge, who essentially determined it never should have been issued.

Thorne questioned the legal system ordering a child taken from one parent "when the child is in no danger … and the child has never been abused, neglected, or harmed" and given to another parent absent a court order.

The 14th Amendment states: "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

"This case affects not just the people of Tennessee," Thorne said. "This is huge."

Numerous organizations are working for the rights of fathers in disputes like the Tennessee case, including FathersCustody.org, LongDistanceParenting.org, Fathers False Charges Helpline, Fathers National Lawyers Referral, WinningCustody.com and FathersRights.org.

The original article can be found here:
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=97943

Anti-Parental Alienation Language Stripped from California Bill

by Mark Godbey
May 8, 2009

Language to deny judges the right to accept the "non-scientific" theories in Family Court cases was removed from a proposed California law last week.

California Assembly Bill 612 (AB612) was targeted to deny the use of Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome as part of an evaluators report or considered as evidence in custody proceedings. An analysis of the Assembly Judiciary Committee found the bills sponsorship used "anecdotal evidence" is pushing for this measure and would be the first enacted anywhere in this country.

"Specifically, this measure seeks to prohibit, apparently for the first time anywhere in the country, a family law judge from considering any evidence of parental alienation or of so-called "Parental Alienation Syndrome," out of deep and sincere concern, and apparently anecdotal evidence, that some family law courts are dangerously misusing their discretion and making inappropriate custody decisions on the bases of these so-called "syndromes" that are not supported by a consensus in the scientific community," states the report. The complete analysis can be found on the California Legal Information website.

"The bill further provides that all other relevant evidence contained in a professional evaluator's child custody report that might assist the court in determining the children's best interests also shall be barred from the judge's consideration if any mention is made in the report pertaining to the possibility that one parent has been seeking to alienate the children from the other parent -- even presumably if the report contains significant admissible evidence that could help the court determine the best interests of the children."

It would seem that the sponsors of this bill were set on banning "significant admissible evidence" as well and this is not the first time the sponsors, and certain co-sponsors of this similar were set on pushing a child custody bill that would deny children to shared parenting after divorce. This is the third year in a row at such an attempt.

The Legislative Committee select the final language of the bill:

Section 3027.3 1 (a) "It is the intent of the Legislature that courts strive to protect the safety and best interests of children in custody matters by ensuring that allegations of physical and sexual abuse are investigated appropriately
and/or referrals are made to the child welfare services agency."
(b) A child's expression of significant hostility toward a parent can, in the discretion of the court, be admitted as possible corroborating evidence that the parent has abused the child. The court cannot decide that an accusation of child physical or sexual abuse against a parent is false based solely on the child's expression of significant hostility toward that parent.
(c) On or after January 1, 2010, the provisions of this section shall be included in all trainings required pursuant to Section 3110.5.

The committee report goes on further to state:

This bill appears to create a hard and fast rule that an
evaluator and a court may never determine that a child's
refusal to visit with the other parent can be caused by the
efforts of the parent to alienate the child's from the other
parent. However, such a bright line rule is in sharp contrast
to the long-standing foundational premise contained in
California's and most other states' Family Codes providing
broad and unfettered discretion to the trier of fact which has
been felt to be critical for making child custody decisions
that are in the best interests of children.

Family law judicial officers and counsel have long testified in
the Legislature that determining custody arrangements that
appear to be in the best interests of children is one of the
toughest jobs a court officer and an evaluator can ever make.
These decisions they state are extremely fact intensive inquiries - each family situation and each child is unique, and every judicial inquiry must consider those unique situations,
and have as much potential evidence before the court as the
court deems admissible and illuminating. However they note,
judicial discretion in this area is not unfettered. Courts are
limited by the rules of evidence. (See Evidence Code Section
801.) However, beyond that, opponents of this measure suggest
that any broad restriction on the information the court can
consider could well unintentionally compromise the court's
ability to make determinations that are in children's best
interests, and could inadvertently compromise child safety.
Family law statutes, opponents note, do provide some limits on
the court's authority in the form of various presumptions, but
judges still have discretion to rebut those presumptions if
they are not in the best interests of the child. (See Family
Code 3044.)"

In opposition to the bill, the California Psychological Association stated "significant scientific and agreed-upon knowledge base of the last 30 years on children who are`alienated. The proposed amendments to this scientifically inaccurate measure assume the truth of any accusation of abuse.

The Family Law Section of the State Bar, also in opposition to the bill stated:

More pernicious attempts could be made by parent who
cancels the other parent's visit without telling the
child that the visit has been canceled, creating a
"let down" for the child when that parent does not
"show up" for the visit. Threats could also be made
against the child for wanting to have visitation with
the other parent - "Fine, if you want to see [your
other parent] tonight, then you are grounded for the
rest of the week." Guilt can also be used to
influence a child to avoid visitation - "I'm not
feeling well and I wish you would stay here with me,
but if you have to see [your other parent] I will
understand." Rewards can also be used - "Sure, you
can see [your other parent] today, but I thought we
would go play laser tag with your friends today."

The committee report pointed out that PA and PAS training were not excluded in other states rather:

On the other hand, one state - Nevada - trains child custody mediators on parental
alienation (Nevada Court Rules 5.70) and another state - North
Carolina - allows family court fees to be used to support supervised visitation and exchange centers that offer services on, among other things, domestic violence, mental illness and parental alienation (North Carolina Gen. Stat. Section
7A-314.1).

Also in oppostion to the the bill were the California Judges Association and the Family Law Section of the State Bar:

The California Judges Association opposes the bill because it
would "take away judicial discretion and replace it with an
unclear and inflexible standard for determining whether to
admit evidence in a child custody hearing. The bill would
hinder the courts, confuse and delay child custody evaluators,
and burden children and their families." Likewise, the Family
Law Section of the State Bar opposes the bill because "although
the stated purpose of AB 612 is to protect children, the bill
would actually place children at risk by prohibiting courts and
child custody evaluators from considering evidence relevant to
the best interests of the child."

With that action the Assembly Judiciary Committee accepted the bill by a vote of 9-0 and one assemblyman not voting with the revised language, which amounts to the evidence "angry children" shall be taken into account, but is not the only evidence to be considered.