Hello, you're listening to Get Booked, the women's and men's radio station. I'm Hazel Butterfield and a huge book fan, so I love doing this show. Get Booked is all about talking to authors, chatting about anything and everything books related, and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books can provide. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week, sharing who they are, what they do, and and what inspires them. Just a quick reminder that you can actually pop onto womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud to check out previous shows and have another little listen. Now, today's show, it's going to be— I don't have no idea how we're going to fit in everything I want to talk about. It's such an emotive subject. What happens when the very same system designed to protect children fails? That's exactly what is happening right now in the UK Family Court in cases of parental alienation, a form of post-divorce abuse. CAF/CASS defines parental alienation as when a child's resistance or hostility towards one parent is not justified and the result of psychological manipulation by the other parent Yet experts, therapists, and social workers are not trained to assess or deal with cases involving parental alienation. Author A spent years making his cases to judges, experts, and lawyers, all of whom failed to agree on what was actually happening between his ex-wife, his children, and himself. At the time, it seemed like he was constantly trying to prove a negative, to find a new direction to reach his kids, and while all were promising, all ended in an expensive dead end as his ex-wife pursued her agenda. Today's book, The Invisible Parent: The Dark Art of Parent Alienation, is written by Andrew Keith Walker, who's written the foreword, who will be joining us on Get Booked today. And the story is about the other author who is anonymous, um, and that is who this story is all about. It has been described as 'an honest, sad, and shocking account of the realities of parental alienation and an important reminder that until the family courts address cases of parental alienation, they will continue to let children and parents down.' It's also been described as a must-read for parents going through a hostile split. Now, I've read this book from COVID to cover, managing to just— I had to stop so often as I was reading through it to kind of let it all absorb. It's— there are always two sides to every story. Unfortunately, it's often not the case that both sides are equally heard or represented. Perception is everything and very individualistic. Life is complicated. What we hear is happening is not always the motivation for highlighting such behaviour. Anger, being scorned, feeling hard done by can make us act unfairly, whether this is unconscious or not. Regardless of whether you are a pain in the bottom ex or you don't agree with someone's life choices, after all, you've ended your relationship for a reason. You don't get on. How much is too much to justify no contact with your children or develop a feeling of unease about a parent. Children can, will, and should develop their own opinions, not influenced by one of the two people they trust most in the world. Where your children are involved, it will always be a highly emotionally charged subject where even the best of people can behave irrationally. We are only human. Children are easily influenced and they pick up on their parents' attitude. So where is the protective line? Regardless of who did what, unfortunately the result is the same in parent alienation. The kids do not want to see the alienated parent and ultimately their wishes are taken into consideration. The process, no matter how it's developed, has still resulted in anxiety around seeing said parent. Now this book, it's not a vendetta book, it's about opening discussions, increased knowledge, and push for reform. Knowledge in situations such as this can be power. Andrew, thank you for joining us on the show. I mean, where do we even start? Well, thank you for having me, and Well, that's a, that's a really good place to start, actually. I, I think that's it, which is the, the purpose of the book, um, from day one was, uh, in fact, the very first conversation I had with the author. And I, I call him that because it's his story. I'm, uh, a ghostwriter and a, a journalist. I help people tell their stories, but this is very much his story. And I said to him when I first met him that, you know, we— this couldn't just be a he said, she said, uh, you know, story about, oh, look what's happened to me. Everything in this book has to be treated like a piece of— like a journalism, uh, exercise. We need evidence, we need sources. We— nothing goes in the book that we haven't got at least two sources to, uh, prove its existence, whether that's from a court paper or from a witness statement or something like this about the events that took place uh, in his experience of alienation. And the reason for this, um, was very much because from my point of view, I didn't just want to write something that was one-sided. I wanted to try and make it as balanced as possible. And from the author's point of view, he also wanted people to make up their own mind about whether or not we should be accepting of the way that parental alienation is treated, or rather it's almost ignored, uh, in many different court systems around the world, but in the UK. So he wanted to start a debate and to push for reform much more than put the boot in on, you know, his own dreadful sort of experience and the abuse he'd suffered from his ex-wife. No, it definitely was a case of throw enough mud and some of it will stick. We all know about that, don't we? It's not just in parental alienation, it is definitely something that happens in divorces. You do throw enough mud, you're all very angry But in the case of parental alienation, that throwing of mud is making sure that the kids find out about that mud, which is marring their view of the other parent. And it's so— I've been through my own divorce. I have friends who have had split-ups somewhere that wasn't even— they weren't originally married. And I've seen so many different situations where the system has failed. It's overloaded. There are so many different elements, and trying to get it all married together is so incredibly hard. And as I said in the intro, I had to stop at various sections to just, just kind of digest what was being discussed, because although a lot of the points that you talk about in this book are incredibly valid, there are opposing sides to every single story. The system is played no matter what, we know that, and I have situations where the system has allowed a friend of mine's ex to see his children when they genuinely were scared because they had seen violence. She actually used to be in— she had to go into hiding for a little bit, and they genuinely didn't want to see their father. And yet, in reverse to what you're describing in The Invisible Parent, CAFCASS were allowing it and the judges were saying— I think at one point said, 'Well, that was a long time ago, kids need two parents.' And the point is, it is dependent on the judge you get, the CAFCASS professional you get, the solicitor you get, the day and time that your court case is heard, the money involved, you know, if And you can— it's just, there's so many different incredible layers to it that can affect the outcome of what's happening to you. Oh, I mean, absolutely right. The thing is, it's a huge— I mean, you can start from the point of view it's a huge industry. I mean, it is worth literally billions and billions of dollars globally. It's a growing market, family law. And custody within that, uh, is, you know, an area where there's a game that is played. You know, one side will make a move, uh, for access, the other side will make a move for fact-finding, or vice versa, and what have you. And the law firms, uh, are invested in sometimes in these cases running on as long as possible. Obviously they don't want them to be quickly resolved, uh, necessarily, because, you know, they are huge— sadly, they're huge fee-earning areas for some law firms. And it's a slightly cynical viewpoint to take because obviously lawyers do generally— I mean, it is true. I mean, generally they try and represent their clients as best they can. The problem is, is that the system favors sort of tactics and games and kicking stuff into the long grass rather than coming to a quick decision. I mean, one of the things that we sort of come to towards the end of the book in terms of reform is this idea that you have tribunals systems in place for all kinds of things which have teeth. They will come to a meaningful outcome, and you have a board of people who will hear your case from different professional areas of expertise, whether it's a rent tribunal if you're having a dispute with your landlord, or it's an HR tribunal because of, you know, treatment or conditions at work, or even if it's a prison board, parole board. You will have mental health, law enforcement, legal experts, judges sitting on a panel. They will hear your case and they'll make a decision and then a result comes from it. That is completely lacking in the family courts and I think that's sort of point number one, which is, you know, the author in this story, he saw 6 different judges in 3 years. So a case that runs on for 3, nearly 4 years, 6 different judges. Each one is a district court judge, which means they're basically a freelancer, to put it in a sort of very simple terms, but district court judges aren't full-time judges. And the final judge who gave the final judgment and put an end to all the legal action was actually retired. He'd come out of retirement to help deal with the backlog of cases in the court. With historical views. With— not just with historical views, but I mean basically with very little knowledge of the case itself. He actually referred to the client, the author, as having a different job from the one he actually had. Oh, they called him a stockbroker? He referred to events. Yeah, they called him a stockbroker. Well, he definitely isn't. And, you know, it doesn't work in that area at all. So it's complete misunderstanding of who he was, a complete misrep— mentioned events which were disputed, fabricated, in some cases completely untrue, which had become part of this sort of false narrative that the children had been taught by someone. You know, we can't say for certain because we don't know for certain. With the journalist hat on, we can't say for definite it was the ex-wife, but it certainly would appear to be from where these ideas came from, that it's all come from accusations she had made in court papers which the children should never have seen. But you have a judge who comes, he doesn't know what the father does for a living, misunderstands events, includes events which have been misrepresented. And to give a really good example of that, one of the big bones of contention, the children had said that they didn't like being tutored, that he, that the father, was obsessed with their grades and having them tutored, and they had to do tutoring 2, 3 times a week. Now In fairness, they were not doing well at school. He'd had them tutored to get them through their 11+, and they were having tutoring because they were having issues, behavioral issues, which we can come to later. And as part of that, their grades were failing. This is before the split. Afterwards, they said they didn't want the tutoring, the tutoring was invasive. The judge raised this and said, you know, they thought that the father was too obsessed with education and that, you know, he was taking all the joy out of his children's lives by making them have tutoring all the time. The reason I raise this is because after the case, the— and everything had been finished and he'd given up his final right to take it anywhere and rights to appeal because this was the final judgment, the ex-wife recommenced tutoring with the children, which the father pays for. She recommenced the tutoring as soon as the court case was over because the children weren't doing well at school and so they went back to having tutors. So one of the very items that was raised as being a major problem then was reinstated anyway by the ex-wife after the court case was over, but for the duration of the court case it was something that the children couldn't bear to do any more of, and this is raised by the judge. So it shows that there's complete lack of understanding, a lack of continuity, and things will appear in the court judgment which actually are quite false and being misrepresented. And those are things that can genuinely determine, uh, the, the biggest decisions that a parent will ever experience in their life. It's perception, isn't it? It's the perception on what you— so much useful information is omitted at will depending on what serves the purpose. Now, I did say that I wanted to talk about the concept of parental alienation predominantly in this chat. But there's something I do want to talk about because I was actually— when I was reading this book, I was actually at my sister's house, who her own husband, before they got married, he had two children and he went through a process of parental alienation. And he actually only in the last 10 years has gained contact with one of his children. The other one has nothing to do with him. He didn't do anything wrong. It was just a case of you know, there was a lot of badmouthing going on. Now, as I was reading the book, and bear with me on this, I was sitting there going, because, because Author A, anonymous, he's extremely honest that yes, he's got lots of money. Yes, he did that thing where, you know, you ended up going out with a younger, pretty much model. He was going around town doing the most incredible things. After the divorce, his business just did, it boomed, it did incredibly well. It could have gone the other way as well. And I was sitting there going, I get it from the wife's point of view. I get, you know, you're gonna sit there seething with anger. She's at home looking after the kids, she doesn't particularly have any job prospects because she was always going to be the stay-at-home mum. All of a sudden his business is worth a good 20 million more, he's retiring just after his 40, he's got a beautiful house, he's got staff to do everything, he's going around with this beautiful 20-something-year-old who has got so much energy, no responsibilities whatsoever, and there's all these situations where you just sit there going, oh my God, I can get it, I get it why she's so incredibly annoyed. And I just sat there going, I, I get it, I get her mentality, But yeah, you don't do that. That's the thing. It doesn't matter what they've— he could have cheated on her, you know, he could have done a multitude of things, but the fact is you don't screw with your kids. Well, the, the interesting thing about that, and I, I think this is a really interesting point because it's something that I interviewed a lot of people in, in the course of putting this together, and I, I sort of spent a lot of time listening to people's stories and following people's stories of messy divorces or difficult custody. And a lot of them encounter custody problems when one partner tries to move on and starts another relationship. And this does seem in this case to have been the flashpoint because, you know, post-divorce they had a perfectly workable relationship. Yep, businesses together. Yeah, they had Christmases together. They helped each other select houses and what have you. I mean, it's worth pointing out here that his ex-wife, although she was from choice the stay-at-home mum, we should put that in perspective. She was a stay-at-home multimillionaire mum who exited the divorce with a multimillionaire in her own right and lives in property that is worth many millions. So she's not— She's not destitute in any way, shape, or form. She's not poor, she's not destitute, and she has a very big family and a big circle of friends around her. And her children are attending, you know, a private school, and a very expensive private school, and all bills are being paid and are still being paid. Even though they're over 18 now and they're, you know, in higher education, still being paid by the father who paid all the court bills as well and also set them up with a trust fund, etc., etc. So they were a very rarefied case, this particular family, from the point of view that they are rich in a way that, you know, most people aren't rich in a way that most celebrities aren't rich. You know, they are, you know, taking the private jet down to, you know, California and, you know, off on the yacht in Monte Carlo types. So It's a slightly different thing. She does, however, and this is something that comes out in interviews with the children, constantly complain about the fact that she can't make ends meet and the father is mean and didn't pay her enough money. And they, the children, in their court reports say, oh yes, Dad's mean, he hasn't given Mum enough money, she can barely manage, etc., etc. Even though obviously at the time he's paid, he paid everyone's court fees, everyone's, including his ex-wife and his children. No one paid a penny for any of the court action other than him. That's how much he was concerned about justice being done as opposed to, you know, a court battle where it's whoever runs out of money first tends to lose, which is often what happens in family cases. But yes, going back to the original point, you're absolutely right though. They had a working relationship, it was fine until he started dating again and then his ex-wife started refusing to bring the children for custody weekends. He had to go and collect them. This eventually got taken to court and split. So she would take them to a certain train station, he would pick them up from there, which was slightly nearer to his home than before. But she still changed then when he started dating, even though she was dating and, you know, has had a number of close relationships since then. As soon as he started, that's really when the trouble did start. And yes, you're absolutely right. When he starts going out with a model half his age who the children think is amazing and, you know, can do no wrong, that was absolutely when the sort of the problems really started. Although, as it turned out, you know, she was not honest. She did steal a lot of money and do a runner effectively. And although that all got sorted out, it left him heartbroken and very devastated, and the children as well. I mean, they were all planning a new life, new family together, and yes, it turned out that the person they'd all put their trust in, you know, literally filled a suitcase full of money and, you know, did the off. As well, and although it all got sorted out without police charges being brought, she nevertheless came back and then, you know, filled an actual removal van full of furniture and jewels and did a run as well. I mean, it's a proper Dallas Dynasty-style story in a way, the sort of the betrayal and, you know, the heartbreak he went through and the children went through. And this, of course, is what caused the argument and the stresses in their relationship that the kids initially got very upset about, and the school suggested they have a break so that the children can have some counseling so they can come to terms with their feelings of loss and upset. And that was the last time he saw them, was when he agreed to that break. He put himself through, uh, uh, went to see a psychiatrist, uh, who dealt with, you know, severe sort of emotional trauma and heartbreaks, those sorts of things, uh, to get himself straight. And then his children went, you know, to have counseling at school, at the school's, you know, request. And then they decided— then that was it. He never saw them again. And they said no, they didn't want to see him again. They blamed him pretty much for the breakup of the relationship and for everything. Even, as it turns out, many things that he didn't even know about and hadn't done, you know. Well, there is also highlighted in the book that his new girlfriend did actually get help stealing the money and moving back to America, and it turns out that it was the ex-wife that helped her do that. So there's so many hidden layers and depths to what was going on. I mean, he didn't— yes, I mean, he didn't find that out until there was— because when the ex-girlfriend went back to the States, there was a police investigation. She had also— there was also a police complaint that he made because she told the police that he was a violent man. And he's not. He's never had anything. I think the worst thing he's ever done is had a parking ticket. He's also someone who is, without giving away anything, someone who is extremely well-connected in society. And works in heavily regulated affairs, as most sort of, you know, high net worth individuals working in sort of, you know, business and finance do. So he's someone who is 100% under a great deal of scrutiny. So he couldn't get away with, you know, being a violent man in any respects, because he would lose his ability to trade and do all sorts of things like this. So here is someone, though, The ex-girlfriend turned up with police who manhandled him and said, "No, she's worried you're going to kick off." And she literally turns up with a van and fills it with furniture, antiques, you know, a £150,000 engagement ring, etc., etc. And he complains and says, "Look, I didn't like the way I was treated." The police do an investigation and a very senior member of the local constabulary comes around to see him to apologize in person for the treatment he's received when they realize who he is and actually he's a pillar of the community, you know, etc., etc. And it's during that conversation that he says, "Listen, there was someone else involved in this situation. You need to be very careful who you trust." And he says, "Well, who was it?" Obviously the policeman says, "Well, I can't tell you." 'Cause, you know, it's part of an ongoing investigation. And he said, "Well, I can't think of anyone." And he goes through a list of names, and it's only when he mentions his wife's name that the policeman says, "I wouldn't rule anybody out." And that's when he first suspected. Later, in one of her depositions, the wife does actually— then the ex-wife does admit that, yes, she had been helping the ex-girlfriend who she claims had told her the most absurd story, in fact, that actually the author's butler had made up because he didn't trust her. And so the butler said, "Oh yes, well, you want to be careful. Don't cross him because the last person who crossed him, he paid to have their horse assassinated." And— Sorry, this just sounds a little bit more about Dynasty again now, and I was thinking— It does, doesn't it? It's crazy, but the butler said— I interviewed him, I mean, I had a 3-hour— I mean, I've got over sort of 20 hours of interviews with different people who were there at the time. And the butler said, yes, I didn't trust her, I thought she was a gold digger, no one else believed me, so I said to her, yes, don't cross him because, you know, he had this horse shot with someone who crossed him once, and, you know, he's a very dangerous man. Now, he said that— he said, I did it to test her. Loyalty. And this story comes out again from the ex-wife when she said, "Yes, well, apparently he's a monster. He shot a horse." And, you know, it was something clearly that the butler shouldn't have said, but it showed that the only way— he said the only way that story could have gotten to the ex-wife was through them having a relationship that was clandestine, that the girlfriend had a relationship with the ex-wife that, you know, the author knew nothing about. And, you know, with a seed, didn't he, just to see if it would make its way there. And the only way it could make its way there was from the girlfriend to the ex-wife. And, you know, I appreciate why he did it. I mean, it was probably ill-thought-out, but it was— as I was reading it, I just had visions of people, you know, in the Deep South kind of arranging for horses to be assassinated and whatnot. I mean, you can't make it up. It's not the first time. I mean, you know, in a slightly less sort of salacious example, but I mean a real example, the author had been approached to finance a business venture with a friend of the ex-wife's, who the ex-wife had advised, "Don't do it. Don't go into business with him," which would have made £230 million profit if it had gone ahead. So there were material instances of her interfering. There was another case which only the details only emerged later on of someone who had, uh, um, sort of taken funds out of a corporation and gone on the run. Eventually, the author and his business associates had them arrested in, uh, America, and they were tried and found convicted there of fraud. And again, he had been in contact with the ex-wife over a number of, you know, years relevant to getting insider information on the man's business dealings. I mean, unfortunately, the author— this is one of the things that, as a side point, that just emerged for me is if you are a single man with, you know, an awful lot of money, and you are high profile in sort of international jet-set business, you are constantly being targeted by people who want to get rich quick, or by scammers, or sadly by gold diggers. I mean, it is a— he's had a very unfortunate time, but it's really damaged his trust in people. To be honest with you. He is amazingly resilient. He will invite you into his home, sit down. There's not an— I mean, for a man who, you know, he grew up in quite a tough working-class background, left school at 16, has worked his way up to really the very, very upper echelons, there's not an air of grace about him at all. You know, you go around, he'll sit you down to his kitchen table, cook you dinner, make you a cup of tea, And, you know, absolutely, you get everything you get at face value, and I really admire that about him. He's bounced back from some absolutely terrible heartbreak and letdowns and betrayals in his life, which are documented in the book. Well, regardless of being self-made or how genuine he might be, when it comes to success and money, Jealousy always plays a part in how you are treated. And what is discussed in the book, which I think is so important, is the concept of confirmation bias. People believe what they want to believe. Yeah. And if he was destitute, then people aren't as keen to see your downfall, are they? And, you know, people sometimes you have to put up a particular front, especially when you're hanging around with certain people, or you're a certain socialite, or you have certain people that you need to impress. Whether you're going through absolute turmoil at home, you still have to put up a particular front, which can affect how people treat you and the jealousy they will feel towards you, whether it's somebody close to you or a complete stranger. And confirmation bias is just about people sometimes wanting to hear something that that helps appease their jealousy. And well, this is the problem, especially with parental alienation, is that the minute you are a parent whose children say they don't want to see you, people's minds go naturally to some very, very dark places. And the first thing they ask is, what have you done? What did you do to them? You know, and if you're a father, what did you do goes in one of two ways: either you're a pedophile or you're a child beater. You know, that's immediately where people's minds jump to. Not necessarily a child beater, but more violent. It could be violence towards anybody. Absolutely, no, no, absolutely. Wife— certainly domestic violence is where it goes. And, you know, the thing is, sadly, and this is one of the biggest issues with parental alienation, it has been used in a number of cases that have been well documented and are often talked about by people who very much campaign against advancing the case of parental alienation, that it is often— it has been used by pedophiles and by violent men to, you know, force access to their children to then commit more acts of abuse against them. And there have been a few cases, tragically, of children who have died whilst in the custody of a violent husband that, you know, an ex-wife is trying to escape because he has claimed parental alienation, because the court has found favour. But the, the problem is, is that those cases are an absolute tiny, tiny fraction of the number of people who are ordinary everyday folks. They're not recovering al— alcoholics, they're not drug addicts, they're not ex-prisoners, there is nothing about them that even casts a shadow of a doubt on their past. They're just ordinary everyday members of the public who can't get access to their kids because of a messy divorce, a difficult relationship, with their children. There's nothing to cast any aspersions on their character whatsoever, and they also get that very similar treatment, or you're some kind of abuser. I mean, the author in this case went through horribly humiliating moment where he was seeing an old friend who he'd known for many years. They were playing golf, and the old friend turned to him and said, look, you can tell me, it's just us here on the golf course, what did you do to those kids? And he was— they're not friends anymore, obviously. He said he couldn't— how could you, how could you play golf with someone who you suspected had harmed a child? He said, you know, that was the most terrible thing, he said. But it's the public shame and the private shame that is thrust upon you by other people's judgments when you claim parental alienation, because there is an awful lot of bias against it, and there remains that way. And the thing is it's not studied, it's not properly understood. There's a real lack of understanding in the area, and I think the question we all have to ask ourselves is, you know, that doesn't sound unfamiliar, does it? There's a lot of lack of understanding that's been expressed in the past by people who were claiming to be victims of abuse and they weren't taken seriously by predominantly, you know, white middle-aged men who were sitting in judgment. And we've seen this time and time again from domestic violence right the way through to discrimination and all kinds of different things. So it seems to me a very dangerous position to be in to say, oh no, well, parental alienation, it's just something that crackpots claim. I think it obviously needs a lot more investigation because it's not— it's thousands and thousands of people claiming this. And we have to ask ourselves, how many cases are we— how many real cases of this are we prepared to tolerate slipping through the cracks? Because it's devastating people's lives. Well, the problem is, um, a ridiculous amount of problems. Yes, throw enough mud and some of it will stick. People know how to completely abuse the system. All it takes is to say 10 lies and for one of them to be true, you can turn and say, 'But look, I can prove this,' and then people don't have the time or the resources, whether it's somebody in the local cafe or whether it's your solicitor, your barrister, the judge, CAF/CASS, all they— they don't have time for you to prove every single lie. All you need to do is prove one of them, which We've all— I'm sure there's very few people out there that hasn't done something a little bit dodgy, which, you know, we are all human. But there isn't one particular solution that is going to work because we are all different and every situation is subjective, and the dynamic elements of such individual relationships, it's so hard. It's a time issue, it's a resources issue, and They do discuss— you do discuss in the book a case of possibly instilling some sort of expedited process where they have to decide where the parental alienation is happening within 3 months before you carry on with the process, to make sure that it doesn't drag on with the divorce process. Because, you know, that can take years, and in that time alienation happens. You know, the kids genuinely will be hurt, depressed, suffering, got anxiety because if you haven't seen your parent and you're hearing all this information about them, it will develop anxiety in your kids, and it's going to be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway. But if you turn it on its head a little bit, as you said, for the, for the smaller cases where parental alienation isn't happening even though it's been claimed, it can just be a tool for an abusive ex to kind of beat the ex with, to put them under more stress, a case of, you know, they're never going to let me go, they're never going to let me live my life. It's another form of control, you know, relentless badgering. And so I can understand the system is flawed, and I've seen so many issues with it, but it's hard to fix it because how— in the process of trying to figure out whether it is parental alienation, there might be an abused mother who is yet again being forced to use her money to fight a case and be in a room with somebody who scares the life out of her. And this is why it's riddled with issues. And the more reform there is, the more new laws that come out, there's always someone there trying to abuse that system to further something that they have done that is not okay. And So the reform, I guess the reason why the reform hasn't been there is because they've looked at it, seen the issues, seen how much it is compounded with how they can get it wrong and make a situation even worse, that they've kind of gone, oh, should we just park it because we can't deal with that right now? And it's just, it's constantly getting ignored because of the flaws, the possible flaws. I think so. I think the problem is there is this, the idea that it's used by abusers is absolutely right from the point of view that we know there's a few cases where that's happened and it's been unequivocally, you know, identified, often too late, with tragic outcomes. I think though there is another side to this though, which is it's not a very effective way of abusing anyone, the court system, from the point of view that it takes so long to get your day in court and it's so expensive to do it that actually mostly people who are claiming parental alienation, they can't afford to pursue the case to the extent where they want to get it resolved. And in, in this case, of course, here was someone to whom money was no object who pursued it to the very fullest extent and then still couldn't get it resolved at the end of it because, uh, there were so many blocks placed in the way, and those blocks can exist completely outside anything to do with the courts. I mean, if you have a school that says, oh no, I'm sorry, data protection, we won't share any information with you about issues relating to anything other than grades, which is what happened in this case, there is an immediate block. You can't find out what's happening to your kids in school. In this case, the children in school, one was a victim of an online pedophile who groomed them over computers, some of which, some of those incidents took place on school grounds. That information was not being shared by the school with the other responsible parent, in this case the father, because they said, well, the children haven't consented on data protection grounds for you to have access to that information. That isn't actually— data protection wasn't placed, the legislation wasn't put there so that 12- and 13-year-olds could be sexually abused in an institution and the institution doesn't have to tell you about it. That's a very sinister application of those rules. But the problem is, is that, you know, in this case we have a situation where everything took months and months to come to fruition, whether it was getting a court report enacted and then delivered and reviewed, whether it was getting an application in place to try and start family therapy, all of which were fought and refused and can take months and months and months. So if you wanted to abuse someone Doing it through the courts is a very, very slow and expensive way to do it, as opposed to other means that would be outside the court, like, you know, emailing and arguing and fighting and doing all those other sort of mechanisms that are there. So, I mean, that's not to say it doesn't exist, but it's not nearly as prevalent, I think, as people like to think, purely from the point of view that the courts are hopelessly slow and inefficient. And, and often, you know, you won't— it'll take 6 months. They will kick it out, whatever it is you go in for. It'll take 6 months before there is a hearing or an action that comes from it, and then it can be appealed. And in this case, you know, we're looking at 3 or 4 years of toing and froing, uh, and in which point it then gets completely put to an end because the court case has gone on too long. The children are too old now to be subjected to the rulings of the family court because they're deemed to be old enough to have their own representation and to make their own minds up, and it can just go to a stop. So while the children are still young, um, the, the way it works is people are constantly running the clock down. So it's not a— it's not really a very effective way of abusing an ex-partner from the point of view that it's so easy to run the clock down and make these things drag out so long that it's always, uh, largely speaking, ineffectual. In fact, that's actually— I realize I've gone on too long about that point, but to be clear, I interviewed a number of family lawyers and they all said the same thing. Basically, inevitably, most of these cases end with the judge setting the status quo in stone and saying, look, we're never going to come to an answer here, so we'll just leave things the way they are. And often the level of custody or access you have when you go into court a few years later is where a judge will come up with the final ruling and fix it. And that's why they all say the same thing: if you can sort it out without going to court, that is your best possible option, even if it means accepting something that you just think is totally unfair, because there is no fairness that's going to come back to you through the family courts. It does become quite an impossible case, as you said, running the clock down but running the money down as well. And I think especially in the case of the anonymous author of this book, when the situation started, his kids weren't in a situation where they were old enough to make their own decision, but by the time the clock had been run down, they were, which was quite intentional, wasn't it? Yes, and it's worth bearing in mind that in the initial case, it was the school said, look, we'll have a cooling-off period of a month, you know, the kids can have some counselling and come to terms with their feelings. They're very upset about what's happened with, you know, the breakup of your relationship with your girlfriend you've got angry about it, there's been tension at home, etc., etc. I mean, you know, he's not the sort of person who is— he's not an angry man. He doesn't have this sort of terrible temper or anything like that. But you can imagine it puts a strain on familial relationships when there's a big bust-up in there. I mean, lots of families go through difficult times. There was one argument where he said, look, you know, I think your mum has been, you know, interfering. He shouldn't have said it. He's acknowledged that you shouldn't say something negative about the ex-partner to your kids. That's something which goes very much against you in court. And they got very upset and said, well, you're a bully to her and that's why she went, etc., etc. Mum says you're mean, you know, this, that, and the other. And they had a row and the nanny drove them home. He never saw them again. They're having counseling. The counselor eventually at the school says, look, you know, there's no reason why you can't restart contact, but it's all down to the mum really, and she doesn't seem to want you to be in touch with them. This is one of the first signs he got. And he was, you know, texting one of the kids because they were going on a ski trip together. He was texting them and they were looking forward to it, it was all going to be great, and then suddenly their phone numbers have changed and he can't contact them. And the wife says, no, they wanted new phone numbers so you couldn't ring them and they don't want to speak to you. I'll see if I can get them to send you a text message, but, you know, I'm not going to force them to do anything they don't want to do. And that was her line throughout the whole thing, which is she wasn't going to force the children to do anything they didn't want to do. Um, and of course, the problem with that is it meant that they wouldn't attend family therapy. It meant that the psychiatrist, uh, who was a leading child psychiatrist who was appointed by the court to do assessment, said, you know, the children, you know, um, are refusing to see the father. The mother won't do anything to support it. And the thing is, there's nothing you can do then. You can't force the kids into therapy, family therapy, to try and rebuild their relationship. And this was, you know, very, very much the soul of it, of course. And as you say, by the time they are pushing 16, that's it. They can say they don't want to see him, and there's nothing really the court can do, and the judge puts an end to it. And the problem is, is that those years from 11 to 16, those sort of 4 3.5, 4 years, 12 to sort of 16 that passed. In those, you've got 6 different hearings, you have various different actions which are tried by the court, by different sides, they're resisted by different sides, and throughout all of this, there's this ongoing and rather sinister discovery that there are things happening at the school which I'm not being informed about. The school doesn't have proper safeguarding policies in place, it doesn't have proper reporting or anything, they're not keeping records properly. Eventually they're forced by court order to turn over all those records, and it shows there are huge gaps in the way that they are looking after this, the well-being of their own, uh, pupils at a very, very expensive and exclusive school as well, which came as a nasty shock. You've got GPs refusing to turn over information, you've got therapists who refuse to turn over information to a court-ordered official. A psychiatrist has been ordered by the court to make an assessment of the children who writes a letter complaining to the court saying that he has been blocked by all of the children's different health workers on grounds of data protection without any proper data protection assessments, without any proper competency assessments. And, you know, it's his belief that the wife's legal team has instructed them not to cooperate in any way, and this is running the clock down. And there you go, all you have to do is not cooperate and say no, the kids don't want to do it and they're not giving you permission to see their data, and you can quite literally stall it for years and years and years. This is, you know, really what happened in this case is why it needs reform. Wow. I mean, this is the thing that the reform needs to be, even if it's just a starting block, of clear guidelines to be adhered to. A clear guideline for school and GDPR, a clear guideline of what CAF/CASS has to do, certain parameters, and what a judge has to have been able to— that's what the reform needs to be, some clear guidelines that at least everybody knows where they stand. And that's what I suppose this is, the starting block, isn't it? And hopefully— and I just want to point out to all of our listeners as well that it is actually Parental Alienation Awareness Day on the 25th of April, so I think anybody listening who's quite intrigued by this situation, or possibly feel that you might be the victim of it, or just if you're just wanting to find out a little bit more, and go and get involved. Now, something I do want to bring to the attention of our listeners, that as I was reading this book, it dawned on me that sometimes I think parental alienation can be happening unconsciously. Sometimes we're just angry and we don't realize the effect we have on our children. We don't— sometimes we're just angry. And I think this book is a good book to read for anybody going through a divorce. So you can kind of— this is an extreme case. The Invisible Parent: The Dark Art of Parental Alienation is an extreme case, but there are certain elements where I'm sure all of us who have gone through a breakup has been guilty of possibly letting our kids overhear a conversation, not intentionally, with friends when we're talking about how much we hate our ex and what they're doing. Kids shouldn't be hearing this. Or they might see that you're upset, you know, kids seeing you upset will automatically make them want to protect you. And, you know, they'll think, well, the way I can protect my mum is by making out that I love her more. Or actually, that I was sorry, I hate to butt in, but that was something that was raised with me by, um, the first, uh, family lawyer I interviewed, uh, who very, very experienced, had been in a long time. And he said the problem is this, is that you don't even know necessarily if you're alienating, uh, the other parent. He said it can be something as simple as when you— when they come back, when the children come back from a weekend, uh, a custody weekend and say they had a great time and you say, "Oh really?" and get irritated. "Oh, you always have a great time with your dad, don't you, but not with me?" or whatever it might be. Those sorts of comments, he said, and it can often happen where, you know, they just sense that actually they can't talk about having a good time with the other parent because it upsets the parent that they have residency with or whoever it is. He said that is often the start of it. I mean, in this case it is, as you say, an extreme case. I mean, one of the things that they cited, for example, as why they didn't want to see their dad again is because he flew them on his private jet to Monte Carlo, or, you know, and they didn't want to go. Or he took them to the, you know, the opera when they wanted to see The Lion King, or, you know, they wanted to go to Euro Disney. Instead, he flew them to Florida. Yeah, took them, you know, for 2 weeks on his yacht around the Upper Thames Peninsula or whatever. And a lot of it sounds kind of fake or like they're, you know, they're reaching for issues. A lot of it could just be— I mean, they did say a number of times they went on holidays where they were miserable and they didn't enjoy it. Now, I've seen the holiday snaps and the videos. They were supplied to the court. Now, what's really shocking here is the court never reviewed them. So they're saying they had a miserable holiday, and yet I've seen videos of them on that holiday with people who they're calling uncle and auntie, and they're clearly very close to, who then later, 3 years later in court, they claim they didn't know who they they never had a relationship with them. And a lot of things don't add up when you actually look at these happy smiling kids having a great time with their Uncle Matty and everything's great. And then they say they don't know who Uncle Matty is and they had the worst holiday of their lives. There's a real mismatch there. And it is again, I think as you're saying, it's one of those things where they come back and they make out they haven't had a good time because they don't want to upset, uh, mum. The sort of the resident. And it's not always mum, it can often be dad. There are a lot of women who feel they've been through the same process of alienation. But you're right, the resident parent can sometimes unconsciously influence, uh, these, these situations, not even know why they're doing it. Which is why you have to have, um, counseling. I mean, you can't get divorced in Denmark until you've been on a course where they explore all these different issues, and they give you a license that, you know, a certification. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. In— I've got a list here. In Denmark, um, you have to, uh, attend a training course and get a certification so that you've considered the kids. Same thing in Norway, um, 100%, you have to have custody classes about, uh, making proper arrangements for the children and understanding the issues and how they can affect it. And Denmark is a really interesting one— higher divorce rate than the UK, much lower custody dispute rate than the UK because of this. And it's very much actually like going to your prenatal classes. In fact, um, prenatal classes saw a huge reduction in childhood illnesses, in infant mortality, and those, uh, sorts of issues that affect young parents who are inexperienced because it gives them training before it happens. They should be doing the same thing for custody and divorce. We know it works. We can see it working in Europe. I did read that part of the book and I was just thinking that is an excellent idea, even if there could be different levels that you want to participate in, you know, but there's got to be a basic minimum that you have to actually take on because— and what would be the reason for not agreeing to do it? There is no reason that is justifiable. Now, interestingly, when I was talking about how we sometimes unconsciously do things and just kind of bring it to our listeners as a different example. And I have two friends who are divorcing each other. I know them both. I know their children very well. And both of them are fantastic parents in their own right. They pretty much have 50/50 care. There's not a huge amount of money to go around, but the kids definitely don't want for anything. But I do know that whenever the kids come home from their dads, they are always in tears and very angry with their mum because their dad just says, I get so sad when you go home. I wish I could come home, but Mummy just doesn't love me anymore. Wow. And that's when the kids say, but Mum, that's Mum's fault. So then they give her a lot of— see, the thing is, he's not an inherently bad person. He's not doing that intentionally. It's just sadness that sometimes overtakes us, and we don't quite grasp how much we're damaging our children with saying something that we think is honest but in fact it's so damaging. And this is why I think there are so many different layers to this book as to why people should read it, to help us just understand our behaviour, the behaviour of others. And again, as we've said, knowledge is power. It's— we sometimes don't realise what we are doing or the motive behind what people are saying or why our children are feeling a particular way. So I think the idea of what they do in Denmark could be invaluable for the system. What you say there is absolutely spot on. You know, there's, um, uh, a lot of talk about, you know, issues to do with— there was a theory called parental alienation syndrome that was sort of dismissed and has been debunked largely. And, you know, that's done a lot of negative sort of press damage to, um, the cause of parental alienation. But one thing that everyone can agree on is that parents and children become alienated from one another, and through a huge variety of different issues. And sometimes, rarely, it's through psychological manipulation by one parent, and it's parental alienation in the sense that the author here went through in these these sort of small, obviously, number of cases, although like I said, there's no study of this, so no idea actually how widespread it is. Often though, it can be, like you say, through someone not realizing that they're actually creating emotional tension, um, that— because children can't process that. I'm sad because you're going back to mummy's. I wish, you know, we could all live together again. That is something that it's very difficult for children to process, and, and this is one of the issues is exposing children to information that they're not mature enough to process can be hugely damaging. I mean, in, in this book, the author did have a child with an ex-girlfriend. She revealed she was pregnant after they'd split up. It was something that was quite difficult at the time, and he's still dealing with that. He's paid for the education of the baby, and everyone's moved on, and they have a perfectly cordial relationship. Relationship. In fact, the mother of that child did write letters in support of him to the court saying that he was a very decent man, he'd done the decent thing even though he didn't want to be part of the child's life, and he said he was so messed up over his own kids he couldn't have another baby, he didn't know what to deal with, uh, how to deal with it. Um, this was very challenging, but that's information that you, you want to be able to tell your children yourself so you can explain it to them. Unfortunately, his children found out about it because papers were left lying around, shall we say, and they happened to read them. And they're 13. Now, of course, to them, it made him sound like a monster who had abandoned their sibling, a child abandoner. And they do say then later on in later assessments, something they never say at the beginning, 3 years later they're saying, well, he's a monster, he abandoned our our sibling, um, he abandons babies, he's a baby abandoner. And it's the sort of thing, it's a very childish but understandable emotional reaction, being exposed to something that they shouldn't have been exposed to, uh, at that age because they don't have the emotional maturity to understand it and deal with it and deal with complex adult problems. And, and this is something that can be so damaging in relationships. And it's one of those things that really stood out to me. You know, one of the other witnesses I interviewed said that if you could just, before you decide to get divorced and split up, sit down for half an hour with the author of this book and let him tell you what happened to him, and you will treat your custody completely differently and do everything you can to avoid being that person. Because it is worse, that, in a way, than losing a child, uh, through illness or through an accident, from the point of view that you've lost them, but you know that they're still alive and well. They just, you know, don't want to see you again. Well, wow, there's so much I want to talk about. We've come to the end. We've, we've kind of— this— look, I've got about at least 6 other things I want to talk about, but I think the main thing about The Invisible Parent: The Dark Heart of Parental Alienation is that he's talking about situations so people can be more knowledgeable about it, be aware of this happening even if you're a party to it unconsciously. But if it's happening to you, then hopefully you can either push for reform— and he talks about certain help groups that he's come across, especially on Facebook and whatnot— so you can get additional support, depending on whether you've got the financial support backing you or whether you need to find out how you can possibly, you know, get legal aid. The book is great for just increasing people's knowledge of the situations that can arise when dealing with your children and splitting up with the other parent. And I think it's fantastic in that, right? I— and just to point out to everybody, they can get hold of it, um, on paperback. It's on Kindle as well, isn't it? I think it is, yes, yes. You can get it from Amazon, Waterstones, any decent bookstores. It's, it's completely easy to get hold of. Maybe you know somebody who's going through the process and you think that this might help them, just to kind of watch out for certain pointers, just to make sure that things don't get as bad for you as well. And thank you so much for talking to me. We could have done this for at least another hour. We could, I know it's a really big topic. Thank you, thank you for having me. You're very welcome. You've been listening to me, Hazel Butterfield, and Andrew Keith Walker, and we've been chatting about The Invisible Parent: The Dark Art of Parental Alienation. And thank you so much for joining me, and hopefully we'll, we'll speak again on your next ghostwriting experience. Okay, hopefully. Good.