Randy Flood, Director of the Men’s Resource Center of West Michigan has decades of experience working within the family court system and has written and spoken extensively about Parental Alienation and the toll it takes on targeted parents and children. Through the Men’s Resource Center, he provides family court coaching and offers an online Parental Alienation support group. In this series of interviews with Lynn, the creator and host of the podcast Once Upon A Time: From Storybook to Estrangement, Flood gives a detailed explanation of what parental alienation looks like. His goal is for mental health professionals and the courts to recognize the difference between parent/child estrangement and parental alienation so that they can make informed judgments in cases affecting children and the parents who are trying to protect them. The series is also available on Spotify and Google Podcasts.
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The father threatened harm repeatedly. The father presented as a nice guy – “look at him, he’s lovely”. The father was physically, emotionally, psychologically abusive to both his children. But the specially chosen court’s representatives only targeted the ex’s abusive patterns.
The father had an answer for everything, including “that never happened” – all taken at face value. The father had one child side with him, while threatening the younger child to fit in or else. The father in court, labelled the younger child as a liar, in need of ADHD drugs. The father labelled the ex with mental disorders – a list of three, that he wanted the court representatives to prove. The father’s narrative got in first, and the court representatives spent 7 months trying to prove that the ex was alienating the children. Eventually estrangement followed. Not surprisingly the ex became over-stressed.
Your men’s resource centre should help per se all parties with the aid of full clarity, full disclosures, and appropriate health, mental health, co-ordination, and consistent supervision.
Hearsay should not hold weight. The loopholes of hearsay – children’s voices, should be carefully discerned (without leading questions).
The picking and choosing of court representatives should be banned. Just like others, they too function from defaults, heuristics, and biases.
Unless there is real sexual abuse x 1, any other dysfunctions should be helped with in real time so that negative habits do not become entrenched in either parent, child, or intrusive others.
This service should look to the minute to minute functions and contributions of men over a long period of time. Then and only then, should the ex be targeted for their contributions. This is not to excuse reactive abuse, displaced aggressions, et cetera.
It’s inexcusable that the court’s representatives become emotionally involved and subjective in their approach – regardless of what they document in their objective rationalised notes.
“Should” to be read not as an imperative, but as a recommendation (often used in health terms, based on legal perspectives).
If the ex has been pushed, provoked, pressured, threatened (directly or indirectly) and has sought help per se from medical service/s, this information should be used as information on why that service was required and not that there is a deficiency and defect in the person.
It is this writer’s hope that the systems will change to genuinely and authentically and transparently provide safety and peace for all parties in the vast majority of high conflict and highly contentious cases.
Men’s resource/s centre is playing into mindsets that deliberately choose retribution and revenge. This leads to all similar presentations to be viewed with the same lens. Wrongly attributing a one- size-fits-all (as evidenced by the specific selecting of court representatives) to different individuals with different circumstances and different situations is creating added harms.
The systems treat people who are facing unseen adversities, focused targeting, as witch hunts per se, with preconceived notions and pre-planned outcomes.
It is a sign of society that they are willing and able to participate in destruction, blame, accusations, and fall substantially and significantly substandardly short on providing early interventions that are consistent and sustainable.
Focus broadly, focus narrowly, focus one-eyed, the bottom line is money and the the end game is money. Court representatives are focused on money. The majority of highly contentious cases are focused on money.
The failures by all parties to act with true responsibilities is over-shadowed by allegiances to money, reputations, and laws that favour such priorities.
When men get what they want, and if they have historically abused their partner/s spouse/s, child, children, family, relatives via various tactics and strategies there is no sudden respect for lawyers and legal processes.
Malicious mothers – yes there are. Abusive mothers – yes there are. Violent mothers – yes there are. Neglectful mothers – yes there are.
Men’s answers to these mothers, partners, – that they as men, are “not as bad”.
You are quite right in saying that they operate by stealth. Who is operating by stealth.
You are right about fear. Threatening one person and getting away with it, easily lines all others up to be on board with the abuser (usually those who want to maintain contact with the child, children).
As the men’s resource centre, what in-house data and statistics fo you have gor the short-term and long-term outcomes of court representatives approaches, judicial outcomes, family welfare, and child/children’s wellness?
Father’s alienate the ex, their own parent/s, family, and relatives who do not fall in line, and their own children from each other. “Divide and Conquer” as per judicial observations.
Most mothers, continue to seek healthy supports, healthy connections, and a better life. When they fail they are branded with verbal abuses “see”, no functional helps having been rightly given. And they are subjected to a further thousand cuts, which without the right supports, will break them. “See” what they are really like!
One rule.
The whole story.
One rule.
A father/parent: Not acting out for the judicial systems, is play-acting, a performance, a pretense, a ruse, a ploy, that is held in place by the judicial representatives and the men’s resource centre representatives. This fabricated environment and context and situation is not real; it is not indicative of that person in real life interactions with their ex.!
In real life these innocent parties declare “I’ll tell you how it’s going to be”
In real life, the ex whose behaviours have degraded to an unrecognisable level, were not, and are not mentally deranged.
When murders, homicides, suicides, injuries eventuate, amoral bystanders (including legal, psychological, social, familial, neighbourhood), come out of the woodwork to clear their own conscience if they have one (doubtful), and to protect their own innocent reputations.
Ugly stuff – Equally as ugly has the mean, cruel, abusive mother who sought the right help at the right times and was ignored, dismissed, undermined, blind-sided, by services and providers who focused on money, rebates, benefits, funding as their priorities. Looking for a target of blame was secondary. Child/children next. Relationships – not on the agenda. Reparations – not on the agenda. Why? Such care, doesn’t pay; it doesn’t fit with codes, item numbers, insurance, rebates. And notes “must” match claims. So why not twist the narratives, contexts and make them fit.
An waranted violence order merely aggravates any situation, into more violence of one sort or another.
How many men neglect their child/children once they have “won” them? Please provide the data and statistics.
Those double-headed, double-tailed coins always guarantee a winner.
The (full time well employed, reasonable income) father’s residence is untidy, unclean, disorganised, chaotic, there’s limited food, limited activities, limited access to social functions, no access to extra-curricular activities, no interactions with parent groups, school meetings, et cetera. Driving with alcohol on his breath and children in the car. Drink driving with a wine bottle in the console with children in the car. Eating a few specific breath agents, when pulled over by breathalyser police, while children in the car. Teaching children to pull their pants down and pee like a male, when the children are females and young. Not contacting their child/children for many months and the forcefully stating that the ex wouldn’t let them. Cutting all contact methods off unless they go through the father’s mail box, the father’s phone lines, the father’s email address. This role modelling is okay according to the courts and its representatives.
If a mother behaves in such ways, she is incarcerated, looses custody, et cetera.
The father wants the child/ren so that don’t have to pay child support. The father agrees to contact orders, written by their legal representatives and with the court appointed Guardians ad Litem. The father agrees and consents and signs the documents.
The courts representatives have created an 85% to 15% split – every second weekend with the father.
The mother for twelve days can no longer go to work in their profession which has shift work, can no longer earn an income other than every second weekend, and has no supports as they have by stealth, insidiously, been slowly eroded over time.
Once the father realises the ex can get work every second weekend, they stop taking one of the children.
The ex, with no income, child care duties 12 to 14 days a fortnight, eventually is trapped into seeking some sort of government financial assistance.
The government states the father “must” pay child support, and the government agency starts to garnishee the father’s salary.
All hell breaks loose. Ongoing: Property damage, pets harmed, car broken into, stalking at job sites, turning up at events uninvited, and with the involvement of other willing parties.
Things become scary.
The ex had in the first place met (after separation) with the father in an open neutral public location to discuss parenting. The only thing the father stated “when do you want me back”. The ex stayed with the topic at hand simply – to talk about the children. The father became enraged and shut down. No discussion could be had.
The father hears negatives, and automatically “by default” claims to the child, children that the ex is responsible.
The father communicates with the ex through the children.
What do mothers and other partners do?
One mother accused her partner of sexually abusing her daughter. The partner left (circumstances unknown). And yet, some years after their separation, when the ex partner turns up, the mother goes on a one-off outing with him, and says it was good and nice.
What is men’s resource centre setting out to achieve?
One court employee social worker, was a men’s rights movement advocate. He was deliberately, specifically chosen, as THE person to case manage. Interesting. But not so impartial, neutral, independent. A second appointee by the court per se, was a court employee psychologist, who warmly leaned in to listen to the “poor” husband/ father, while the ex was in the same room listening to being verbally abused. The judge in the matter said that the ex must understand that the psychology interview was under strict aprivacy and confidentiality clause, and nothing could be repeated. This was about as an obvious set-up as they get. When one person gets to verbally abuse another and the psychiatrist doesn’t shut it down. The ex refused to keep the shenanigans private and confidential, and refused to be pitted against the psychologist by the judge. The ex wrote an affidavit and created an addendum, exhibit, to their file. The judge immediately dropped any further predetermined lines of questioning.
The judge remembered the father’s opening line of not having any money, and factored that into his biased (transcripts reviewed by independent legal professional) projections. The same judge set up a line of questioning in which it was specified that the ex would talk first, the father would follow, and the ex would not have any further opportunity to respond.
And then there’s more.
The elderly parents of such fathers, ex partners, if they have managed to remain neutral, decent, honest, and truly prioritised their grandchild/ren suffer beyond anything measurable. They too will be conned, played, manipulated; and there is alawys that inheritance – money, assets, to get. And if all goes according to the father’s plans, no-one, nobody will end up too badly injured or dead (which would be in line with their numerous threats to the ex).
So, by stealth, by a repeated thousand cuts or otherwise (allies, character witnesses) the ex is “broken”. “See” how unfit, incompetent, disturbed, they are.?
The father’s favourite saying, one of many, “the best defense is a good offense”. What a refined sophisticated prestigious mindset to role model to their child/children.
Best of all, no-one, nobody, not a single person says anything, or changes the narrative to a healthier choice, or better way of doing things, or even makes an anonymous notification when needed.
The father has a plausible answer for everything. “Look at him, he’s lovely”.
Had men’s resource centre fallen into grooved patterns?
Is men’s resource centre more or somewhat discerning and wise?
If you would please provide data and statistics as requested earlier in this message.
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective and experiences. It’s clear you’ve witnessed and experienced situations that have left you with deep concerns about how some family court cases are handled.
I also agree with you on an important point: family courts and the professionals who serve them are not immune from bias, error, or poor judgment. The consequences of those mistakes can be profound for children and families. Every evaluator, therapist, attorney, and judge has a responsibility to continually examine their own assumptions and strive for fairness, humility, and objectivity.
The purpose of this podcast was not to advocate for fathers over mothers, but to explore the complexities of parent-child estrangement and alienation from a clinical perspective. Our work at the Men’s Resource Center is centered on helping men become healthier fathers, partners, and people, while recognizing that parent-child contact problems arise for many different reasons—including abuse, neglect, estrangement, alienation, substance abuse, mental illness, and other family dynamics. Every case deserves to be evaluated on its own facts rather than through preconceived assumptions.
Supporting men does not mean excusing abusive men. Throughout our work, we have consistently emphasized accountability, healthy relationships, child safety, and evidence-based assessment.
If you have the opportunity, I would encourage you to explore the many other articles, podcasts, and educational resources on our website. You’ll find discussions on domestic violence, coercive control, forensic evaluations, parent-child contact problems, estrangement, alienation, and men’s mental health. My hope is that you’ll see our commitment is not to advocating for one parent over another, but to thoughtful clinical practice, impartial evaluation, and ultimately the well-being of children and families.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.