When a child reports sexual abuse, we want to believe telling someone will bring safety and stop the harm. With at least 1 in 4 girls experiencing child sexual abuse, this is a public health crisis.
Yet in family court, disclosure can lead to even more trauma. A child’s fear or refusal of contact can be reframed as “parental alienation” or a relationship problem to be treated. Following abuse, families often report years of litigation involving guardians ad litem, evaluators, therapists, special masters, and reunification providers, often at enormous private and public cost.
Professor Joan Meier’s national research documented a devastating pattern: courts credited child sexual abuse disclosures in only 1 of 49 cases when parental alienation was raised. The United Nations has also warned that parental-alienation concepts can discount abuse and expose children to further harm. Even the World Health Organization says there are no evidence-based health care interventions specifically for parental alienation. Yet children can still be ordered into interventions aimed at overcoming resistance that many survivors and advocates describe as controversial and rely on outdated and coercive techniques.
Massachusetts has a highly interconnected parental-alienation and reunification professional ecosystem, including prominent local training programs of the kind Judge Mary Ferriter once directed at William James College. Judges make paid appointments, including for “special subject matter” services.
Who gets these fee-for-service appointments? What do families pay? Are the same professional networks repeatedly selected, including outside ordinary list rotation? Most importantly, what is happening to the children locally who report sexual abuse? Those questions need an independent state audit.
On Sept. 1, I urge Belmont voters to support Margie Palladino, Daniel Lander, and David Solet in the Democratic Primary because we need fresh faces and new elected officials who are willing to examine conflicts, financial relationships, and systems that can monetize prolonged family-court intervention after abuse disclosures.
Believe children and support trauma-informed care for abuse victims. No child should spend years of their childhood being retraumatized by systems meant to protect them.
Amanda Gorey, Beech Street, Belmont
