"This is what my mom did to me...I had no idea it had a name."
                                                                      ~from a family man
April 17, 2013

Today Tammy and I were presented with another proclamation for Parental Alienation Awareness Day.

It was a packed house at the Indio City Hall Council Meeting, the Proclamation was the first on the agenda.

We accepted the Proclamation and I said a few words about the worst kind of abuse that you have never heard of. People listened.
Now they have heard of it.

I nervously scanned the crowd as I spoke. I was relieved when I saw the crowd listening attentively, some nodded in agreement. A man sat with his wife and three children next to him. His youngest daughter bounced on his knee as he listened intently.

As Tammy and I made our way back to our seats, the lady sitting beside me thanked me and Tammy for what we were doing. A few moments later an elderly man tapped my shoulder and thanked me as well. 

We stayed for a while and observed Citizens Helping Indio Police graduates receive their certificates.  

An Indio Police Officer had replaced the lady sitting to my right. After a while, he leaned over towards me and said that we shouldn't feel obligated to stay. People are presented with stuff all the time, he said, and quickly leave. He pointed out the remaining items on the agenda that visitors grab on their way in. “This stuff is boring. It won’t be weird if you don’t stay,” he said. I thanked him but we stayed a little while longer.

On my way out, I was stopped twice. The first man in his mid-to-late thirties had been waiting for me I felt. He was the man sitting behind us with his wife and 3 children, the youngest one of them on his knee. A family man I thought approvingly.

But right now he was waiting, alone, right outside the first set of doors that led into the lobby of the city hall building. We shook hands as we walked out the second set of double doors that led outside where his family stood waiting for him. He thanked me for what Tammy and I were doing in bringing awareness to Parental Alienation.

I thanked him in return just as another man in a business suit approached me. The second man was more interested in promoting his business-some type of marketing and fundraising. We talked a while and I took his card and now turned my attention back to the family man.

The family man was now talking to Tammy. I assumed thanking her as well. As I drew nearer they were saying good bye. He was walking away, and headed back to where his well-dressed children and wife awaited just a few feet away. I caught up to him and formally introduced myself. We shook hands and he made his way back and we exchanged names. He told me his name and then he told Tammy. It was an unusual name, but unfortunately, Tammy and I are having a hard time remembering it.

It’s a shame because what he told Tammy was both interesting and heartbreaking.

We were back in the van driving home, talking about how thoughtful it was for Mayor Holmes to take the time to place the Proclamation on a very nice frame and how packed the council meeting had been. Standing room only. 

“Was my speech okay?” I asked my wife.
“It was perfect.”

Our talk turned to the people who had approached us and shared kind words. Tammy then told me about the family man and what he had said to her before I came back to introduce myself.

It was a good thing that she was driving because if I was at the wheel at the time I would have slammed on the brakes.

A part of me wanted to turn around and go back. He might still be there, I told myself. It’s late in the evening and I am wondering how I can touch base with him again. Maybe I can mention it in my thank you letter to Mayor Holmes; There was this guy, maybe you know him, at the thing last night. A family man. Would you happen to have his number?
Or something like that.

It Has A Name
The family man had thanked Tammy as well, while I spoke with the business man. He had told her that he had no idea that what he had experienced as a child had a name.

“This is what my mom did to me with my dad,” he said. “I had no idea there was a name for it.”

This is what my mom did to me.
He went on to say that his mother had so much hatred for his dad that she alienated all of his children from him. As children, he and his sisters were taught to hate their father.

Apparently, he had reconnected with his father because he talked about how his father, it turned out, was this very cool guy.
Tammy told me how he placed an emphasis on very cool guy.

Unfortunately, my sisters never recovered from the damage that was done to their relationship with their father he explained. The family man went on to talk about how his sisters never gave his dad--their dad-- a chance because of all the lies that were told about him.

“My dad died a few years ago,” he told Tammy, matter-of-factly. His sisters never got to know how cool he was and they never will.

“I never knew it had a name,” he said. The family man smiled politely and began to walk back to his family.

When I give a brief speech at the proclamation presentations I always mention that it’s the most horrible type of child about that you have never heard of.

This is not the first time that I have heard someone say that they had no idea it had a name. Or that they had no idea it was so prevalent. Just tonight on my Facebook webpage someone commented that they never knew how common it was. But my hope is that the day will come when I don’t hear that any more. Instead I would rather hear:
Yes. Yes, I have heard of this.
This is completely unacceptable.
This is child abuse and it must stop.
Someday they will say this.

But what I want to leave you with is this. It is something that the family man said that I missed and my wife, Tammy, pointed it out.

In the van on the way home Tammy repeated something that had stayed with her that was so true. She said that what struck her was when he said, “This is what my mom did to me...”
She placed emphasis on the last two words and I immediately got it.
Now I really wished I could remember his name. 

This is what my mom did to me, he said.
Not to his father, the very cool guy who his mother had in her crosshairs when she spewed out her poison.

Mom did this to me.
Not to my father, the person who was her target when she shot out her venom.

But, to me.
The man, the intended target parent, the ex, the object of her hatred, is dead. She may have hurt him I am sure, but he is dead now.

All that is left are sisters who will never know how very cool their father was and your son, who is grown now and a family man himself.

Your son, ma’am, and he talks about what his mom did to him, still.

Tomorrow I expose myself to some more profound abuse and craziness. Again. yes, I am going to court. A practice in futility since I found out today that the court recommended psychologist hasn't had a chance to write her report for the court. But thats okay its only been 6 months since our girls 4, 8, and 10 have seen their sister.
So I will try to educate the judge about how Parental Alienation works and she will look down at me and say, "mom good. my dad bad," simultaneously ruling and revealing her daddy issues. And even though I had sworn to tell the truth at this point I will hold my tongue because the truth will get me arrested. I will ask the judge for a trial so she can see the overwhelming amount of documentation and evidence I have that there has been interference, and alienating behavior. She will say no. So then I will beg for weekly sessions so that a loving, insightful, stable and caring father can see his daughter more than 90 minutes every-other week. She will think about it. 
The best part is that I will come home to a beautiful wife and children and yes, stability. 

 April 3, 2013
 
Even before we decided to sit at a table outside of The Coffee Grind we had begun spilling our story. It had been hot enough that day that I had taken Sophie, our 4 year old, swimming rather than riding her bike around the grassy area, but it was now 5:30 and the table was in the shade; a perfect place to sit for the next  hour or two while we share our story with the reporter. 

One hour, two at the most, is what my wife Tammy and I were thinking.

Tammy, besides teaching 5th grade, is the district’s Math Field Day coordinator; the event is this Saturday. She still had to meet with one of her lead teachers later in the evening and go over some final details. At home with Grandma Lois, we had a house full of girls who needed to have their homework checked, fed, showered and put to bed. 

But right now we were talking to a reporter from a local paper. We are telling our story. Trying to pick out only the most relative details as to not overwhelm our listener. Our story is a convoluted mess, I began and wondered if she would have the patience to sit through what would amount to a fraction of our ordeal.

A few days earlier the reporter had run out after us as we exited the Cathedral City city council session where my wife and I had been presented with a Proclamation naming April 25, 2013 Parental Alienation Awareness Day. 

“My name is Tamara Sone, I am with the Desert Sun,” she said. It happened just like that. Just the way I had imagined it would a thousand times before. 

Tamara was very patient and attentive. She was easy to talk to, stopping us on the rare occasion that she had a question or to comment about something that resonated with her experiences as a well. She had some experience with alienation we would find out. Good. She could relate, therefor she would understand. 

We told our story. 

We talked about our wonderful relationship that a father once had with his daughter. We talked about how my wife’s relationship with our daughter may have even surpassed mine. We talked about our daughters at home, 4, 8, and 10 who weren’t sure what has happened to their big sister. We talked about Parental Alienation, custody interference, and heartbreak. We talked about our alienated daughter caught in the middle. We talked about being taught to hate a loving parent and the damage that would do to a child.

It seemed like we had just getting started when an aproned young man came out to our table to let us know that they would be closing in 10 minutes. I paused long enough to wonder why a coffee shop would close so early and then continued with my narrative.

Tammy and I took turns as each one of us would remember one repulsive event after another. The shameless interference, the manipulation, the lying, the audacity of it all. 

Then we talked about the mediators. The God-awful mediators. 

Perhaps I tried too hard to make sense of their incompetence. Regardless of the reason, if they were over-worked or not, or simply not properly trained, they were dealing with children’s lives. Every extra effort should be taken to insure accuracy and every precaution should be in place to protect their relationships with both parents. Do they not realize that lives are in their hands? 

Before I began telling her about our judge, about Commissioner Deborah Daniel, I mentioned that I had ordered the transcripts from my court hearings. 

I think their might have been a tinge of doubt when I told the reporter what Commissioner Daniel had said on August 7 that hadn’t simply turned the tide but drastically changed it. How things went from a raging rapid to a Niagaric plunge. 

The words she said are ingrained in my mind:

"I can tell you that in my experience,” Commissioner Daniel volunteered, “no law enforcement officer is going to force a teenager to engage in a visit." 

I made sure that I maintained eye-contact with Tamara Sone, checking for signs of skepticism, when I went on to tell the reporter from the Desert Sun that the commissioner had also said that courts don’t read past the first five pages of declarations. 

I leaned back into my seat. I almost expected her to call me a liar in that instant. If she would have turned off her recorder and closed her notebook, I wouldn’t have blamed her. I mentioned again that I had ordered the transcripts as if to say in case you find my story too incredulous -- too over-the-top. Things like this happen in badly scripted movies but not in real life courthouses. 

Tamara listened as her mouth fell open but not to call me a liar.

I told her how I felt that I had been denied due process but even more tragically how I have been denied my God-given rights to be in our daughter’s life. How a loving, doting, and involved father has had his time reduced to a 5o minute visit every other week and only in the presence of a therapist. 

Fifty minutes a week.

Then I echoed the words that so many other alienated parents say, “It’s like we are in the Twilight Zone.” 

We paused took a breath and allowed Tamara Sone to take it all in. I believe that she had no idea what just hit her. Welcome to our world. We had shared only some of the craziness with her. Some.     
I glanced down at my cell phone--it was past 10 o'clock at night. 
The rest would have to wait.

Tammy would meet with her lead teacher the next night before her class and they would go over Math Field Day stuff. Grandma Lois would have our girls fed, showered, and in bed by the time we got home. We would have to check their homework in the morning. Because tonight a promise was kept. We got to tell our story. 


(Note: Our story of Parental Alienation due out on April 25)