Hello, I’m Linda Gottlieb, a practicing family therapist for more than 52 years. My life’s work has been to ensure that children are safe from abusive parents.
In the 24 years that I worked with 3,000 adjudicated abused and neglected foster children, not one of them ever said “I never want to see my parent again.”
When a child rejects a non-abusive parent, especially when there had been a prior loving and protective relationship between the child and the rejected parent, the case should be assessed for a high probability that the child has been coercively influenced by the other parent.
During the last 3 decades I have specialized in identifying and treating a profound form of psychological child abuse known as parental alienation.
Due to the insufficiency of effective treatment interventions for this abuse, I developed the Turning Points for Families program, a 4-day specialized intervention that was found to be safe and 96.4% effective in reconnecting children under a parent’s coercive control with an unjustifiably rejected parent.
Here you will learn about the child abuse that is going on and the truth about “reunification camps.”
Table of Contents
How Families End up at a Reunification Camp
A parent files a case in Court against the other parent for turning their child against them. As incredible as it sounds, this is very real and quite common. It often happens during a contentious divorce, yet not always. This form of abuse has many different names, the current label being “parental alienation.”
Therapists and witnesses are brought in and a trial takes place. Often, I am hired to testify as a parental alienation expert. These cases take years and years until a judgment is finally made. When a judge makes a ruling of parental alienation, it is a finding of child abuse.
The Court has found that the children are being influenced by the abusing parent against the other parent, and are under the control of the abusive parent. In order to remedy the situation, the court has ruled that the children require a protective separation from the abusive alienating parent.
As the appropriate and necessary remedy, the Court has ordered the alienated parent and children to participate in the Turning Points for Families reunification program for severely alienated children.
There already has been a finding for child abuse by a Court of Law when families come to Turning Points.
In the best interests of the child, it is extremely important that I clear up the misinformation and disinformation that is going around about reunification camps.
“Reunification Camp” Is a Made up Name
Turning Points for Families is not a camp, and never was intended to be. “Reunification camp” is a concocted label to discredit and slander programs like mine that are relied upon by the Court system to help alienated parents reunite with their children, who have been abused and brainwashed by their other parent to reject them.
The “Alleged Experts” Lack Expertise in Alienation
Much of the misinformation out there references “alleged experts.” These “alleged experts” are not trained or educated in parental alienation. They lack the necessary experience and credentials required to give qualified opinions about the subject.
The other critics referenced are alienating parents who have been found guilty by the Court of psychological child abuse. They clearly are biased with a self interest in bringing down reunification programs like mine. What is being said by the alienators is deceptive and erroneous.
It is analogous to blaming a rape victim, after the rapist has been found guilty in a Court of Law.
Children Are Not Being Made to Go With an Abusive Parent
The alienators and their supporters are perpetuating an egregious lie that Turning Points for Families and other reunification programs are advocating for the placement of children with an abusive parent. This is utterly false and downright harmful.
Any child who is being abused by a parent should not be entrusted to that parent’s contact and care.
Reunification programs are Court ordered after the alienating parent has been found guilty of child abuse. The Court has determined that the children require a protective separation from the abusive parent.
These are alienated children who have been brainwashed by their abusive alienating parent to hate their other parent who did none of the things they are saying.
What’s counterintuitive is that the children are actually being abused by the parent with whom they want to remain, which is the reason the Court had to step in.
The “alleged experts” are exploiting these severely abused children and creating a false narrative about what is going on. The abusive parent incites their children, and then alerts the news media to film the transition of the children to the other parent. In doing this, the alienating parent is further abusing their children to serve their needs.
They show the children kicking and screaming, not wanting to see their alienated parent, claiming their alienated parent is abusive.
What is left out is that the alienating parent has already been found guilty of committing child abuse, which is the reason the kids are behaving this way. The Court has taken measures to protect the child by removing them from the abusive parent.
Reunification Programs Are Regulated by the Courts
Independent, peer-reviewed research studies show Turning Points for Families, Family Bridges, and Family Reflections to be safe and more than 95% effective in reconnecting children with their alienated parent.
All reunification interventions are Court ordered and Court reviewed from beginning to end. Subsequent to each program’s 4 day-intensive component, the Court holds mandatory hearings to assess progress towards the reunification. The Court, NOT THE THERAPIST, determines if the protective separation is extended between the alienating parent and child.
In addition to Court oversight, the treatment providers in the three programs hold mental health licenses that are issued by their state licensing boards; the therapists must thereby comply with their licensing board’s ethical and clinical mandates.
Turning Points for Families is a Therapeutic Vacation
When alienated children and parents come to my program, it is the first time in years the children are free from the control of the abusive parent. The alienated parent and children both wanted to be with each other, yet the alienator and long court process has kept them apart.
The fighting has ended, for now, and the healing has begun. For an alienated parent and child, reuniting at Turning Points for Families is a “therapeutic vacation.”
Some Therapists & Attorneys Don’t Always Act in the Child’s Best Interests
Parental alienation is a sub-specialty within the discipline of family therapy, and family therapy is a specialized discipline within the field of mental health.
To become a specialist in alienation and thereby arrive at correct findings in an alienation case requires specialized training, education, and experience.
Parental alienation, additionally, is an exceedingly complex, counterintuitive clinical condition.
Not all mental health clinicians nor all matrimonial lawyers have acquired this specialization, which takes many years of hands-on practice and continuing education.
The alienating parent generally presents well and can be very manipulative. When non-specialists get involved in an alienation case they unknowingly perpetuate the child psychological abuse, which is extremely harmful for alienated children.
Far too often I see cases where the therapist disregards the evidence and aligns with the alienator. These therapists make a bad situation worse. Some don’t know any better, some do it because they are intimidated by the alienator, and others do it for the money.
Usually the therapist will blame the child’s rejection on the alienated parent’s parenting style or claim it’s “estrangement,” and ignore the clear parental alienation.
No Contact With the Abusive Alienating Parent is Important for an Alienated Child
It should come as no surprise that an alienating parent’s violation of the Court-ordered protective separation almost surely sabotages and reverses the progress toward reunification and accounts for the FEW unsuccessful reunifications we’ve had.
When the Court imposes the protective separation, it frees the child from the loyalty conflict that had been inflicted upon the child by the alienating parent. The alienator’s loyalty conflict coerces the child to relinquish the instinctual love and need for the alienated parent as the price to pay to maintain the alienating parent’s love, support, and approval.
The child must either deny having positive feelings for and good times with the alienated parent; or, instead, the child must concoct a negative delusional thought system about the alienated parent.
The child must further instigate negative and even violent interactions with the alienated parent in order to report back about a dreadful time.
Living under the imposition of the alienator’s loyalty conflict is an untenable, psychologically abusive situation for the child, a situation so stressful that it frequently results in the child’s manifestations of severe psychiatric symptoms.
These symptoms include, but are not limited to, cutting, suicidal ideation, and even suicide attempts.
Alienating Parents Are Required to Write a Support Letter
Ask any clinician who has had extensive, successful experiences treating severe cases of alienation: “What does it take to make alienated children flip like a light switch to welcome their alienated parent meaningfully back in their lives?”
The one and only answer to this question is, “It is the alienating parent’s genuine support for the child to do so.”
Since alienation is a form of child abuse, the sooner alienation is upended, the sooner the child is freed from abuse. And since only the alienating parent has the power to make the alienated child flip like a light switch, the alienating parent’s reunification support letter, if genuine, is an indispensable therapeutic tool.
It is the swiftest, most effective means to free the child from the untenable, abusive loyalty conflict. Freeing alienated children from child abuse is the primary reason for the protective separation of the child from the alienating parent and it is the primary focus of reunification programs.
Alienating Parents Are Required to Write an Apology Letter
Alienating parents cowardly blame the alienation on their children. They do so by claiming that they had not influenced their children against the other parent but were instead responding to their children’s autonomous complaints about and resistance to their other parent.
Frequently, alienating parents coerce their children to make false child abuse allegations against their alienated parent.
As a result of believing that they had autonomously denigrated, maltreated, lied about, and rejected their alienated parent, alienated children suffer unbearable, punishing guilt.
This is where the apology letter comes in: alienating parents must absolve their children’s guilt by apologizing to their children for first having influenced them against their other parent and then manipulating them to believe that they [the children] had acted autonomously.
It is crucial to alienated children’s psychological recovery and long-term stability to be absolved of their guilt. This can only be achieved if alienating parents apologize to their children for having instilled their behaviors [the alienating parent’s] upon their children.
Parental Alienation Specialists Are Incensed
Social media platforms are spreading the lies and misinformation of unqualified, self-proclaimed “experts” who are enabling the alienating parents’ agenda.
Alienating parents are child abusers who project their egregious, unlawful, and inhumane behaviors onto alienated parents and the professionals who attempt to help their children.
Alienators lie to their children, lie to the courts, lie to the therapists, and they lie to their followers.
Alienators have one mission in life: to drive the alienated parent from their children’s lives. Their methods include creating distractions, hiding & distorting the truth, and perpetuating the abuse of their children.
Email Responses From Alienation Specialists
Conclusion
Unqualified professionals & journalists who have independently acquired biased misperceptions about parental alienation make false claims and spread erroneous information about so-called “reunification camps.”
The focus should be on the safety and protection of children and ending the child psychological abuse. Reunification programs such as Turning Points for Families have been relied upon by Courts across the United States and Canada as a safe and effective intervention for the finding of child abuse.
