Are you the monster they portray you to be?

It’s over and you are so mad with your ex, you hate them and never want to see them again. You may decide that it’s just you and the kids now and not want your ex seeing the kids as you don’t want to have to deal with them.

Your ex might be contacting you to ask when they can see the kids, but you don’t answer, they try again. They try again the next day, but you don’t reply. They want to see the children, so they come around to the family home to see them, but you don’t let them in. They bang on the door calling out to let them see the kids. The door remains locked. You wait quietly as their desperate pleas to see the kids are ignored. The kids are scared as you are hiding as though a monster is at the front door. The kids hear their dad upset, who they haven’t seen for weeks. They feel sad and want to rush to the door to let them in so they can stop their anguished cries, but they are held back as though danger lurks beyond the front door. Silence falls …. you wait listening, until you hear their car drive off.

You don’t want to talk to them about time with the kids or what’s going to happen with the house as you don’t want to lose either. So, you wait….

The targeted parent wants access to see the kids and talk about how the financials will be split as the relationship is over. They must make the first move to start the long process to battle it out whilst the parent with 100% care of the children and residing in the family home is not wanting to negotiate anything less than they already have created.

The targeted parent may try to contact again in the hope of seeing the kids, but the calls go unanswered. They text, but their pleas go unheard. Their raw emotions screaming for connection with their kids. The texts are lost in the abyss of separation solitude. No progress to separate with negotiations to spend time with the kids …. as though the kids have been abducted and held to ransom, but no ransom note has been provided on what the conditions are to see their children again. In sheer frustration they go to the kids’ school just to be able to see them again …. just to catch a glimpse of them…. but they are ushered off the premises with a threat of calling the police.

Unlike Liam Neesom seen as a hero in the movie Taken, tracking down his child who has been kidnapped by evil forces, society expects you to remain calm and civil whilst your heart breaks and your grief drives your need to find your kids.

The targeted parent is denied access to their children and are portrayed as a monster. Through desperation to see or hear their kids, their character is often tarnished as a stalker, harassing or making the primary carer feel emotionally unsafe. This wasn’t the intention, it was the result of being stonewalled with unanswered pleas, cut off from any contact with the children, gaslit to promote you as the crazy person or declining mediation to avoid negotiating some time with the children.

Of course, there are genuine cases where historical abusive relationships have a parent flee with the children or refuse for the targeted parent to see the children due to safety issues. Whilst this is the case, many parents are withholding children where there are no safety issues at all. These parents are creating their best-case scenario of 100% primary care erasing the targeted parent from theirs and their children’s lives. The impact on the children is emotional and psychological abuse as they erase half of the child’s identity, deny them of a loving parent and their love and bond to the targeted parent is severed with poisonous lies. Often children will develop anxiety, depression, and anti-social behaviours as a cry for help to gain the attention of someone to rescue them from this nightmare of isolation.

I work in an office that has a supervised contact centre and I have only heard excited, happy cries of “daddy, daddy” and squeals and laughter as they enjoy the short time with their deprived parent who just wants to be part of their children’s lives and vice vera.  The tears and cries I hear are not when they arrive to the centre to spend time with the portrayed “monster,” but I hear tears and cries when the children must leave as they cling onto their fathers. It breaks my heart!

Children need both parents in their lives to thrive, two loving homes where they can love and be loved where it is safe to do so.

Hopefully one day, false allegations and agendas to leverage the system will have consequences of time with the children temporarily taken away from the perpetrator so as to break the pattern of psychological abuse on children who want to spend time with both parents and extended family beyond separation. Maybe, the perpetrator can be punished with being ordered temporary supervised visits so as they experience the pain and trauma of forced separation experienced by the targeted parent and the children. This would go a long way to breaking the cycle of psychological abuse of children who are wanting to have time with both parents and being denied.

Author – Cheryl Duffy, Divorce Coach, AMDRAS Advanced Mediator, Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner and Parenting Coordinator

www.thedivorcecentre.com.au