For the purposes of this article my ex husband shall be referred to as "Nex" meaning narcissistic ex, and my children J and E. I have two children a daughter aged almost 13 and a son now 11. I haven't seen my daughter for over a year as the Nex filed a vexatious restraining order against me last year - I recently agreed to it as I was tired of trying to fight it legally. My new partner I refer to as "My Husband" as we married in Vegas in an awesome fashion in August 2016.
When I left my marriage in May 2015 I had no idea that all my parental rights to my children would be completely eroded and that my relationship with my children would be virtually severed within two and a half years post-divorce.
Immediately after announcing my separation, I said to the Nex that we should make this experience as positive as possible for the children and I sought family therapy through the public service Employee Assistance system then available through my employment with the public service. The Nex and I took the children to a therapist who was supposedly skilled in dealing with family issues – however she wasn’t. I don’t recall her name. I told her that my daughter J was having problems accepting the divorce and that she was acting out. The Nex told the therapist that “Monica thinks that J should show her some respect but I don’t agree with that”. The therapist agreed with the Nex that J didn’t have to show her mother any respect. So that therapy session was a complete waste of time.
I found the services of a lawyer and paid her to draft consent orders and I agreed to pay the Nex the money he wanted in the divorce settlement being over $100,000 in cash and also a new vehicle which cost me $50,000. During the midst of the divorce I sent a text message to my daughter showing images of the Strand arcade in Sydney. Moments later I had an angry phone call from the Nex saying that he had taken $3000 out of the joint account in exchange for me getting hair extensions (which I paid for out of my salary). Shortly after that I had abusive text messages from my daughter saying “Be fair, be fair – stop taking all Dad’s money”. I had to put a caveat on the mortgage to prevent the Nex from redrawing significant amounts and I was concerned because of his gambling history. He had gambled several times during our marriage that he admitted to. I told him he had to stop and attend Gamblers Anonymous or I would lose my Top Secret Security Clearance and also my job. He never attended Gamblers Anonymous.
The consent orders said that each parent had 50/50 custody of the children however when she was drafting the orders I mentioned that the children were already refusing to come to my house. She said that as the parents we had to “insist” that the children spent equal time with each parent. From day one my children refused visitation with me or if they came to my house they stayed, showed extreme oppositional defiance including running back to the Nex's house. I paid for after school care for E as J just stopped coming to my house after a couple of months. I went to school to collect E and he hadn’t attended after school care, instead he had gone home with the Nex. I had paid hundreds of dollars for after school care. I had to try and get my money back. The situation continued to deteriorate.
By February 2016 I called Gungahlin Police in Canberra and asked what I could do to get my kids to come to my house. They told me that I had to have the consent orders enforced by a Judge, which seemed baffling as they had already been filed and lodged in Court. At this time I lost my job, because I was extremely depressed at work about my kids, my employer escorted me from the premises in front of 200 people. I went to the union and they got me a voluntary redundancy after several months.
I was working for the Australian Government (ARPANSA) and I had a nervous breakdown because I had no access to my kids who lived less than a kilometre away from me. My employer, despite my excellent work for almost a decade, had me escorted off the premises in front of 200 staff - on the basis that I was unfit for work. I had severe depression but my employer felt it was no problem to have me humiliated in front of the whole floor of staff in the Attorney General's Department. I went to the public service Union and I negotiated a voluntary redundancy. The remainder of the staff in my office all lost their jobs because new management was dominated by psychopaths. At least the Union helped me out, however I have been unable to obtain further employment in the public service since. I now help my husband run his online business.
In March 2016 I relocated to Sydney to live with my new husband as it was clear that my kids didn’t want to stay at my house and I had no job.
I tried to have the children visit us at our home for my 50th birthday in April. I drove to Canberra and collected both kids with the idea of having them for a week in the school holidays. We took them to museums, the aquarium. J was extremely difficult. One day she had a major meltdown and started screaming at me. I stood there just shocked. My husband reprimanded her for her rudeness. I told her that if she was having such a horrible time she could contact her father, the Nex and go home but I was not going to drive her home after only having her here for three days. She spent hours arguing with her father who intermittently said he would pick her up but he kept her dangling. She continued to blame me for her father’s flakiness. Her father, the Nex, collected her a day or so later.
We took both children skiing in July or August the same year with my new husband's three teenaged kids and his parents. My kids refused to eat and refused the skiing lessons that my husband had paid hundreds of dollars for. My daughter skied. My son just walked around on the snow. Because I was so upset about my kids not skiing, I got rid of my skis and just watched the kids. Because they were being so difficult and J kept facetiming her Dad constantly, I eventually returned them home a day early.
I married my new husband in August 2016. All my facetime contact with both my kids was immediately blocked from then on.
When I returned to Australia in September and since that time the only way I could see my kids was to take them to McDonalds at Gungahlin for an hour or so for the next year and a half. After three months of coming to Canberra once a fortnight, my daughter J stopped going to McDonalds with us. So it was just E and me.
So I became the McDonalds Mum – not the Disney Dad. Note that I have offered both children overseas holidays to the United States and to see Universal Studios and Disneyland – both kids declined.
After the events of October/November 2016 – the failed access visit – where I lightly grabbed J's wrist in an attempt to have her join me and E on a visit to McDonalds, the Nex called the police. My new husband videoed the entire event which we later showed the police. My husband and I were relatively calm – the Nex was screaming epithets at us in front of the kids. We showed the police the video – as a few days later the Nex put a DVO against me. The police advised that there would be no trespass charges but after we showed them OUR video evidence, Gungahlin Police charged both my husband and I with trespass. A year later we went to court and had all the charges dismissed – that said the experience cost us severe emotional distress and at least $2000 to fight the charges. I have recently signed the domestic violence order and the final order is now in place as I couldn’t see the point of trying to fight this anymore. This means essentially I can’t come anywhere near J for the next two years. So I don’t get to see my daughter J until she is about 15. At the present time I have not seen or spoken to my daughter for over a year – except for the 30 seconds I went to her school and told her I loved her and hugged her. She immediately told her father, the Nex and he threatened to invoke the DVO and have me thrown in gaol.
The aborted family report process where family report writer told me I was “emotionally dysregulated” and a risk to my children further confirmed my view that the system is completely broken and just not fit for purpose. I agree, I am emotionally dysregulated. I have complex post-traumatic stress disorder from 10 years of emotional violence from my ex-husband, the parental alienation and the children’s complete rejection of me, the loss of my job and my house (which I sold to pay my lawyers) and the legal abuse I suffered from the police and the courts and being demonised as a mother because my children reject me. For this reason I have no more energy to continue to fight.
I have seen numerous therapists the last two years. The therapist I saw in Katoomba said to me “Your children were turned against you years ago and none of this is your fault”. I completely agree with her. I was the breadwinner for 10 years in that marriage including during both my pregnancies, my ex husband worked for a couple of years packing shelves at Coles. I also did all the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, bathed the kids, helped with the homework. The Nex drove the kids to and from school. I was exhausted for a decade. Maybe I was a cranky Mum – although E told me that “Mum you weren’t the angry one, Dad was”.
When the family court reporter Fiona Perrett (Canberra) threatened to call the police and I was sitting calmly in her waiting room, waiting for my turn to see BOTH my children and have the family evaluation, it was at that point I realised that I was in a completely unwinnable situation. My daughter was being interviewed by Perrett, the Nex raced into her room and said “Monica’s here”. Immediately Perrett emerged from the room and told me to leave or she would call the police. I paid Perrett $2,500 for her services, which were not even remotely fit for purpose. She giggled during my interview with her. My new husband was nonplussed. When I was trying to hug my son to say goodbye – just after I told Perrett that she was incompetent, she snatched my son from me. I told her she should be ashamed of herself.
At that moment, I realised that I will likely never see my children again. Many of the parents I see on the parental alienation websites, who lost children in similar circumstances to mine, haven’t seen their kids in over a decade. One woman had her eldest son take his own life – he was 16. Two mothers on the sites took their own lives this year – one a very close friend of mine, aged 41. Her teen daughters were putting AVOs against her for trying to give them gifts for their birthdays. The day of her last court appearance coincided with her funeral. Her daughters had zero remorse – aged 21 and 19. Another close friend of mine also had her 16 year old son suicide two years ago. Her malicious narc ex continues to malign her and deny her access to her remaining children. The last text message sent by that boy was that he wanted a relationship with both parents. The next day he was dead.
In December I tried to speak to and email the Nex to try and come to some sort of conciliatory agreement. I did that in good faith. He seemed okay on the phone. A few days later he sent a threatening email to my lawyer once more threatening to have me thrown in gaol for breaching the orders and saying that my facetime calls and emails had upset him and the children – he sees himself as interchangeable with the children.
Curiously, the night I spoke to E, after I had engaged positively (or so I thought) with the Nex, E was really happy and talked to me for a really long time.
I spoke to E a few days later and I asked him whether my calls to his father had upset him, he said “No.”
The Nex has taken both children hostages in this situation which is one of severe parental alienation. The Nex is an obsessed alienator – as described in the professional literature.
“Once the hostage taker (Nex) has achieved the child’s complete psychological surrender, then the narcissistic parent begins to exploit the child’s symptomatic rejection of the other parent, and the child is used as a “human shield” against outside forces that seek to end the child’s psychological captivity. The hostage taker requires the child to take the lead position in initiating the rejection of the other parent, so that the child is placed in front and saying “I don’t want to go on visitations to the other parent”.
In my case this was happening really early on. I had no idea of the virulence of the Nex's hatred and determination to erase me from their lives but his last email is the final confirmation I required to realise that he is never going to permit me to have a relationship with my children.
I still have a positive relationship, albeit only digital on Facetime, with E – we talk about movies, books and computer games. I am concerned that this relationship could be severed at the conclusion of the court orders if the all of a sudden blocks E's facetime to me, which occurs every time I travel overseas (four times last year and twice in 2016).
In good faith, I tried to mediate with the Nex over the phone in December. He used my attempts as an opportunity to write yet another vicious email to my lawyer threatening to have me thrown in gaol. The Nex's go to position from the beginning has been hostile-aggressive parenting. I tried to mediate from the beginning. He refused. I even minded his dog while he took the kids on Christmas holidays in 2015.
I miss my kids every day. I just wanted to be a Mum. I know that J will need her mother as she matures and enters puberty. It is not fair that I am denied access to her. I have lost Year 6 and Year 7. I believe it is damaging for both kids to have an absent Mother. I am only absent because I am not permitted to be in their lives. Every school event or sporting event that I am not at, the kids must feel the loss as they see other kids with both their parents – and this includes blended families and children of divorce.
Childhood cannot be relived. Once it is over, it is gone forever. That sense of history, intimacy, lost input of values and morals, self awareness through knowing one’s beginnings, cannot be recaptured. My kids memories of are suppressed and often forgotten.
This was my third Christmas without my kids. If the alienation continues I am concerned that I will lose my kids forever – I won’t get to attend her high school graduation, her wedding, see my grandchildren be born. All the events and memories that I should have been part of. They won’t remember me. I am essentially an erased Mother.
Over Christmas and New Year I had about 2 minutes total Facetime with my son E. This has now ceased completely. The email below is one the Nex sent to my lawyer explaining why my Facetime with my son is now cut off:
Dear Lawyer,
We are on holidays at Thredbo at the moment; we don’t have wi-fi where we are staying nor do we have E's tablet. I have offered E the use of my mobile for a normal call but he is still upset and angry with Monica re some calls before we left and hence declined the offer.
Monica has rarely complied with the Orders re time of calls weekend or otherwise so it seems disingenuous that she asking permission to ring at other times. In principle, I do not object to Monica ringing at other times but I object vehemently to her offensive voicemails and contacting my friends and family with her outrageous claims of parental alienation. We are allowed to live a life without having to take E's tablet everywhere (shops, swimming, movies, bike rides, etc)!
Monica needs to be more patient. I have kept copies of all her offensive and threatening voicemails (including time stamps)!
Finally, I am well aware of the need to avoid discussing these issues with the children however I am not so sure that Monica is!
Yours sincerely,
Nex
This email is an example of the type of hostile aggressive parenting I have been dealing with since day one. The Nex is an obsessed alienator and he is determined to erase me permanently from my children's lives.
Many alienated children who reunite with the targeted parent return suffering from depression, eating disorders, sleep problems, complex grief, poor body image, weight loss/gain, brain fog, physical fatigue, lack of friendships, substance abuse, social identity problems and loneliness. In the most extreme cases, various forms of self-harm even lead to suicide.
Parental alienation is child abuse and prevention of parental alienation is a child protection issue.
If you want to help please sign the Craig Childress petition in the United States trying to change the laws to have the American Psychological Association recognise the pathology of parental alienation https://www.change.org/p/the-american-psychological-association-ending-parental-alienation-pathology-for-all-children-everywhere