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The topic dominating the morning of the Law and Justice Interim Committee at the Capital on Tuesday, July 23, was “parental alienation.”
After their previous meeting in May 2024, the committee requested a panel presentation, where three judges volunteered to present information about family court cases involving parental alienation accusations. The three judges testifying evaded almost every question asked by the committee and “wasted our time,” according to one of the committee members. Disappointed by the judge's panel, Representative Caleb Hinkle, HD68, requested a citizen's panel of professionals on parental alienation to provide much-needed clarity for the committee.
Although widely discredited through the scientific and medical communities, the pseudoscience of “Parental Alienation” (PA) is still utilized across the state of Montana to remove children from their safe, or bonded, parent and place them in the primary custody of an alleged abusive parent. Attorney and legal analyst Richard Ducote is now famously quoted as saying, “Alienation is the only ‘disease’ diagnosed by lawyers.” The Center for Judicial Excellence warned that the number one defense tactic of abusers since 1985 is an accusation of parental alienation.
The topic of parental alienation and forced reunification therapies was a hot topic in the 2023 legislative session. So numerous and egregious were the testimonies revolving around this topic during the last session that they sparked a rare unanimous vote in the House of Representatives for the Standing Master Reform bill, HB 322.
After a 2022 Legislative report investigating the history of parental alienation, it was discovered that the statewide legal abuse of PA emanated from Bozeman, Montana. This was primarily due to the local Standing Master, Magdalena Bowen, creating a haven for this type of domestic abuse and her tolerance for underqualified Guardian ad Litems abusing their court authority and funneling children into private reunification camps and therapies.
This exposure prompted enormous pressure from the citizens and legal community in Gallatin County, forcing Standing Master Bowen into early “retirement.” Bowen’s disgraceful career officially ends on August 2, 2024, as was predicted by Elizabeth Peterson upon the successful passage of the Standing Master Reform bill. “Due to Unconstitutional quasi-judicial immunity afforded to judicial officials, we rarely see judges being held to the same legal standard they piously enforce upon the citizens. Instead, we see early ‘retirement’ from our judges once the curtain has been drawn back on their evil, and sometimes, criminal behavior.” (Media interview by Peterson May 2023, shortly after HB 322 was signed into law)
It was confirmed through this panel presentation that Parental Alienation Syndrome is nothing more than a tactic utilized by abusers to distract the court's attention from their history of abuse and cast doubt in the mind of the judge about the protective parent. So powerful is the legal strategy of making allegations of parental alienation that court records across Montana show judges repeatedly ignoring documented histories of even sexual abuse and placing children in the exclusive custody of violent offenders.
“Our Judiciary has been operating inside myths regarding the topic of domestic abuse for decades,” declared Ms. Peterson, Montana’s Representative for the National Safe Parents Organization. “The judge's panel discussion before this committee in May shined a glaring spotlight on their need for education regarding matters of domestic abuse issues.”
Parental Alienation (PA) has been declared a “pseudoscience” by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the American Psychological Association. Yet many judges across Montana refuse to acknowledge the current research on the subject matter. District Court judges continue to remove children from their historically safe parents and force them to live in potentially dangerous situations with unsafe parents.
Rochelle Beley, one of Montana’s veteran mental health experts on the long-term psychological abuse inflicted on children removed from their primary attachment figure, testified that mental health professionals “…have an ethical responsibility to engage in evidence-based practices that have been subjected to peer review.”
Ms. Beley reminded the committee, "Since Parental Alienation is not recognized in the field as a diagnosable condition, there is obviously no evidence-based treatment for Parental Alienation. Sadly, there have been professionals in the field who claim they practice a specialized treatment for PA. Once again, these methods of treatment are not evidence-based.”
Court records show that once the judge accepts the legal strategy of making claims of parental alienation as a legitimate mental health condition, the Court is then influenced by counselors, court evaluators, and Guardian ad Litems…. all of whom financially profit from perpetuating this false narrative. Judges are sold on the idea that the invented pediatric mental illness of PA is mysteriously jeopardizing the safety of the child. The standardized “treatment” for the fictitious condition inflicted on the child is an extreme change in custody from the primary attachment figure to the unbonded parent, who often has a lengthy history of neglect and abuse.
Part of this “treatment” routinely includes no contact with the child’s safe parent for a minimum of ninety days. However, Montana court records indicate these extreme parenting plans extend on average four years and typically only end when the child ages out of the system.
Ms. Beley informed the Committee that mental health professionals are ethically responsible for “no harm.” However, Montana’s court records are replete with these extreme and dangerous parenting plans financed by a for-profit industry of unscrupulous mental health professionals. Additional documentation is available here: www.alienationindustry.com
Montana’s Board of Behavioral Health, tasked with the responsibility of investigating and disciplining mental health professionals who violate their legal and ethical code of conduct, appears to not only be complicit with these egregious violations of conduct but have gone so far as to take steps to protect these abusive professionals.
In February of this year, the Board of Behavioral Health removed competency from their ARMS ( 24.219.1209 #12), which stated that a licensee should not render a diagnosis or form an expert opinion about any party not personally evaluated and may not make parenting plan recommendations when the licensee has not personally evaluated both parents and child.
Ms. Beley stated, “I fear removing this language, which places children at risk of the practitioner stepping over their role as therapeutic and is contrary to any recommendations of the Association of Family and Coalition Courts.”
Matt Furlong, a certified behavioral health peer support specialist and respected long-term advocate for children, commented on the Committee's need for mental health professionals to engage in “Trauma-informed care.” Mr. Furlong highlighted the fact that Parental Alienation Syndrome has not been proven to be a trauma-informed recovery model and “in fact, from my observation working with children and families, it is trauma-inducing.”
With his vast experience, Mr. Furlong believes that court-appointed Guardian ad Litems (GALs), assigned by the court to legally represent the child's best interest, “…must be an attorney who is educated in and knows the law.”
Surprisingly, in Montana, most court-assigned GALs are not attorneys. The 2022 Legislative report highlighted that poorly worded legislation regarding the lack of Guardian ad Litem qualifications initially allowed professional perpetrators, hoping to profit off of the “parental alienation scam,” to identify Montana as a financially advantageous State over a decade ago and infiltrate the family court system.
The Solution: Brody’s Law
Kyla Hailstone, a paralegal, investigator, family law specialist, and the Director of the MT Family Court Awareness Project, presented a thoughtful, common-sense solution to the parental alienation problem terrorizing safe parents and children of Montana.
The new proposed legislation is titled Brody’s Law, named after a young man from Bozeman who took his life last year after being trapped in a court-ordered parenting plan with a documented abusive father.
Ms. Hailstone pointed to numerous examples of Judges delegating their judicial authority to Family Court professionals, which “…allows for gross misconduct, restriction of protected fundamental rights, and, in some cases, violation of the law by court-appointed professionals.”
Brody’s Law is based on the Federal standard of the Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act, which was signed in March 2022.
There are four primary components to Brody’s Law:
Ms. Peterson carefully offered a word of caution to the Committee:
“Any person or organization opposed to legislation designed to protect children in the family court system should raise a red flag to society. They are either profiting from the industries affected by child safety laws or opposing evidence-based training that may challenge their confirmed bias.”
After this presentation, the Law and Justice Committee seemed to be relieved. The Citizen’s panel offered clarity on the topic of parental alienation and provided clear solutions easily implemented by our lawmakers.
In her closing statement to the Committee, Ms. Hailstone stated that the inspiration for Brody’s Law came partly from the late Rep Gene Donaldson, a leader who invested in Montana Children. “Montanans see the streams, mountains, minerals, and the land as our best resource, but it is our children that are our most valuable resource. Protecting our children is the most important thing we can do for our future.”
