Negli USA gli ex minori facendo nomi e cognomi continuano a denunciare alla stampa le violenze subite durante i trattamenti di riavvicinamento ai loro padri temuti, ordinati da tribunali della famiglia in base a valutazioni di CTU.

Minacce, violazioni delle fondamentali libertà e dei diritti umani, aggressioni verbali, Violenza privata, pressioni psicologiche.

I danni subiti da questi minori a causa dello strappo subito dalle loro madri sono enormi.

Sul Wall Street Journal la storia di due fratelli, sottoposti a “parentectomia” (alias reset) all’ età di 12 e 16 anni.

Raccontano della loro esperienza con Randy Rand, psicologo più volte sanzionato, e della Gottlieb , assistente sociale che ammette di ritenere che subire un abuso sessuale incestuoso non provocherebbe danni ai minori.

PHOENIX—Tori Nielsen was 16 when she and her 12-year-old brother were whisked away from their mother at the Maricopa County courthouse by four strangers in a white minivan on the morning of May 27, 2021.

The strangers wouldn’t tell Tori and her brother where they were going, she recalled, as the siblings held hands and cried in the back seat. After hours on the interstate, they arrived at a hotel somewhere by the ocean. The strangers, three men and one woman, barricaded the door to their room with furniture so they couldn’t leave, Tori said.

The next morning, she remembered one of them saying: “You’re going to have a meeting with your father now.”

What Tori didn’t know was that a judge had ordered the children to attend a four-day family reunification program in Ventura, Calif., with their father. The judge determined it was the only way to repair their relationship, damaged during a decadelong custody battle, court documents show.

The children had been living mostly with their mother, Angela Nielsen, and resisted seeing their dad because of his temper, Tori said. But court-appointed evaluators determined that Nielsen was poisoning the kids against their father. She was suddenly barred from contacting her children to ensure they no longer rejected their dad.

It would be around two years before Tori and her brother saw or talked to her again.

“I tried to numb myself to what was happening. It was like surviving,” said Tori, who moved back in with her mom the day she turned 18 in May 2023. “But that only worked for so long because it all absolutely destroyed me.”

Tori’s father declined to speak about his family’s situation, saying he was focused on being the best father to his children.

The treatment the Nielsens underwent is part of an industry of intensive “reunification therapy” that has sprung up during the past decade and is ordered by family courts to settle custody fights. Services like Building Family Bridges, where the Nielsens were forced to go, use videos and exercises to try to break a child’s pattern of rejecting a parent. The child is then ordered to live with that parent for an extended period and barred from having contact with the other parent. A battle has erupted over the approach in courtrooms and statehouses across the country.

After Tori told her story at a hearing with Arizona lawmakers earlier this year, the Republican-led legislature passed a measure prohibiting courts from ordering any reunification treatment that cuts off a child from the parent they prefer unless both parents agree. It was signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in April.

Utah, New Hampshire and Tennessee approved similar proposals this year. California and Colorado passed laws restricting reunification treatment in 2023.

Some legal experts and family advocacy groups say the treatment is too extreme and traumatizes children. Child-abuse researchers have raised concerns that the operations, which can cost families tens of thousands of dollars, are unregulated and use pseudoscience to sway courts into believing they can help kids and parents.

“Children are being court-ordered into costly, unregulated reunification treatments or ‘camps,’ which force them into contact with a parent who they often fear for good reason,” said Danielle Pollack, policy manager for the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington University, which supports restricting the treatment.

But supporters say it’s a last resort during the worst custody disputes, when one parent wants to re-establish a relationship with a child who has shunned them. In these cases, they say, the other, favored parent must be temporarily cut off during the reunification process, to keep from interfering.

“The whole goal here is to ensure a child has a happy, healthy relationship with both their parents,” said Demosthenes Lorandos, a psychologist and attorney who has worked with Building Family Bridges.

A disputed theory

Only about 10% of divorces in the U.S. involve significant conflict over custody arrangements, and just a fraction of these need to be decided by a judge, according to Robert Mnookin, a Harvard University professor who studies divorces.

It’s in these cases that the idea of parental alienation syndrome emerged in the 1980s with the late child psychiatrist Richard Gardner.

Gardner posited that a child can be brainwashed by one parent into rebuffing the other during custody fights and even persuaded to make up abuse claims. He testified in numerous cases, recommending in extreme circumstances that a child be taken from the “alienating parent” who had custody and placed with the “rejected parent.”

Gardner’s theory spurred fierce opposition from some mental-health professionals and family-law experts, who said it dismissed children’s legitimate abuse allegations and was being weaponized by mostly fathers seeking custody of kids living with their mothers. Parental alienation syndrome has never been officially recognized as a diagnosis by major medical or psychiatric associations.

Because custody cases are mostly sealed, information is limited on how frequently courts mandate the treatment. Researchers say programs like Building Family Bridges are likely ordered by judges only in especially contentious cases—perhaps as many as several hundred over the past few years.

There has been limited research examining their effectiveness or safety, said Jean Mercer, a professor of psychology who studies the programs and believes they pose serious risks for children.

We don’t know the simplest things—like how often the mother is alleged to be an alienator, and how often the father is alleged to be an alienator,” Mercer said. “What we do know is there are potential dangers for the kids, like PTSD, and depression and anger at how they were treated. This can be extremely frightening for them.”

Matthew Sullivan, a psychologist and supporter of reunification treatment, said courts typically don’t order the programs until after less intensive interventions have failed and multiple evaluations by experts. Effective treatment seeks to challenge dysfunctional behavior exhibited by the child and both parents, he said.

“These are pretty awful situations on all sides,” said Sullivan.

Costs can range from $8,000 to around $40,000 for the programs, according to documents viewed by the Journal. There are also hourly therapist fees for the “aftercare” program that the so-called alienating parent must typically complete before seeing their children again.

Judges may order the rejected parent to pay the bill up front. In some cases, the favored parent ends up paying a portion.

‘Burst into tears’

The website for Building Family Bridges greets people with a silent video showing what appears to be a teenager on a couch having an intense conversation with a parent. A clipboard-toting counselor looks on

Describing itself as the “gold standard” of family reunification services, Building Family Bridges says it can help families who therapists and courts thought were beyond reach.

“This innovative four-day workshop helps children reunify with a parent they claim to hate or fear,” the site says.

The site quotes unnamed parents and judges lauding its success. It also cites a study by a former workshop leader that says out of 83 children who had participated in Building Family Bridges, a “significant number” repaired their relationship with the parent they’d previously rejected.

Tori Nielsen’s experience was far different.

After arriving in Ventura and spending a sleepless night together, Tori and her brother were ushered across the street to a Crowne Plaza hotel, she said.

In a conference room, their dad, his girlfriend and several Building Family Bridges staff members were waiting. One introduced himself to Tori. She later learned from speaking with other children who’d gone through Building Family Bridges and from a picture she found online that this was Randy Rand, a founder.

Staff read aloud the court order and laid out rules, Tori recalled. The children couldn’t contact their mother for 90 days. If they tried to leave or didn’t participate, they could be sent to a wilderness camp, she said. Bringing up incidents from the past was forbidden. If someone did, staff told Tori that they would stop them by saying, “Moratorium!”

The first two days were spent watching videos that appeared aimed at shifting the kids’ memories about their parents, Tori said. One focused on “The Monkey Business Illusion,” a psychological study that aims to show blind spots in people’s perception of events. The second two days were interactive, with the group writing down traits about themselves and family members.

Rand declined to comment on any specific cases and described parental alienation as “complex, painful for those involved, and nuanced.”

“The Building Family Bridges methodology is available for severe parental alienation cases and continues to be an effective tool for families,” he said.

Lorandos, the psychologist who worked with Building Family Bridges, said he’d observed its workshops and trainings. He likened their work with children who had rejected one parent to deprogramming people who’d been in a cult.

“There’s a lot of re-education around things your dad, for example, may have said about your mom that are not true,” he said.

At night, the children were moved into a hotel room with their father and his girlfriend, said Tori, recalling how the hotel phone was removed from the room so they couldn’t try to call their mom. Their cellphones had been confiscated the day they were taken from Arizona.

“One morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom, and I just looked in the mirror and I thought about what was happening and I burst into tears,” she said.

Immediately following the workshop, Tori and her brother were required to vacation with their dad, who took them to San Diego. Under the court order, they then returned to live with him at his home in the Phoenix suburbs.

Angela Nielsen lived just a few miles away. But under the no-contact order, she couldn’t interact with her children until she completed Building Family Bridges’s “aftercare” curriculum.

It included writing out explanations on why she was forbidden from contacting her kids and why the court had intervened to protect them.

Nielsen said she worked for countless hours on the responses. The therapist administering the program for Building Family Bridges said they were insufficient and that Nielsen was combative, documents show.

The therapist wrote that Nielsen drafted multiple iterations of answers but refused to acknowledge that she’d “ever engaged in any parental alienating patterns.” She therefore couldn’t move onto the program’s next level.

In another report, the therapist noted that while the children’s relationship with their dad was “close and healthy,” they missed their mother and desperately wanted to see her. The report said Tori would prefer to live primarily with her mom, and felt more supported and happier living with her.

These emotions, while normal, were also examples of the kids’ own alienating beliefs, the therapist wrote.

“I would get so upset and so down,” Nielsen said. “Like why can’t I pass this program? I would spend entire weekends working on these questions. I just wanted my children to come home.”

Now staying with her dad and his girlfriend, Tori buried herself in activities: cheerleading, a mentorship club, time at her boyfriend’s house. She stayed “neutral” toward her father, trying to get along with him, hoping it would speed a chance to see her mother, she said.

Her dad’s mood swings continued to upset her, Tori said. And she developed panic attacks, overcome with nausea and shakiness.

On her closet mirror, Tori marked off the days that passed. Just after midnight on May 7, 2023, her 18th birthday, she packed her belongings and told her dad she was leaving. He asked if she was certain she wanted to leave like this, she recalled. Her brother implored her not to forget about him. It broke her heart.

“I kind of just showed up at my mom’s house that day,” Tori said. “We just hugged and cried. It was a surreal and relieving moment, but it was really hard because my brother wasn’t there with me.”

Concerned by reports of children being traumatized after being removed from a parent to attend reunification programs, Danielle Pollack’s group at George Washington University has been working with lawmakers to limit them.

Kayden’s Law, passed by Congress in 2022, provides federal funding to states that restrict reunification treatment not shown to be effective, and trains judges on how best to evaluate abuse allegations in custody fights. The law was named after Kayden Mancuso, a 7-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was fatally beaten by her father after a judge allowed him unsupervised visits despite warnings from her mother about his violent history.

“These camps are not about protecting our children or bringing families together. They manipulate children and pass on exorbitant fees to families,” said Arizona state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, a Republican who sponsored the recent measure there.

Supporters of more restrictions note that while the reunification industry includes some well-intentioned therapists, leading proponents have come under scrutiny.

Randy Rand of Building Family Bridges was disciplined by the California Board of Psychology in 2009 for misconduct in two cases, records show. In one, the board found Rand blatantly sided with the father in a custody case he was supposed to be impartially mediating. In a separate case, Rand recommended a permanent custody change without ever interviewing the child, which amounted to gross negligence, the board said.

Rand’s license was placed on probation for five years unless he agreed to have his practice monitored, take an ethics course and pay a $43,000 fine. His license is currently inactive.

In board filings, Rand denied wrongdoing.

Rand said he does not lead Building Family Bridges workshops and serves as “administrative services director.” He said he occasionally provides support to the licensed mental health workers and legal professionals running the sessions.

Linda Gottlieb, who runs the Turning Points for Families reunification program in New York, is the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York state court in March. In the lawsuit, an Ohio woman, Tricia Singer-Romohr, sued Gottlieb for violating rules on deceptive and unfair trade practices, alleging she falsely represented parental alienation as a scientifically accepted disorder that her program could cure.

A judge ordered Singer-Romohr’s two children to participate in Gottlieb’s program in 2021 after determining she was manipulating them into rejecting their father and after hearing testimony from Gottlieb. Singer-Romohr, who had primary custody, was initially barred from contacting her kids for 90 days until Gottlieb determined she was supporting the kids’ relationship with their dad.

In court filings, Singer-Romohr included copies of letters that Gottlieb required she write to her children. Her letters included recollections of good times the kids shared with their dad, and encouraged them to have a loving relationship with him while apologizing for making them feel like they shouldn’t.

Gottlieb told Singer-Romohr that wasn’t enough, according to emails from the filings. After Gottlieb said Singer-Romohr wasn’t complying, the no-contact order ultimately got extended for around 900 days, according to the suit.

Attorneys for Singer-Romohr referred to the lawsuit when asked for comment.

Gottlieb, a marriage and family therapist and social worker, wouldn’t comment on the case. In legal filings, she said parental alienation was widely accepted by courts and that she favors lifting no-contact orders as soon as it’s “clinically advisable.” Gottlieb asserted that it was the judge who extended the no-contact orders and she never made any recommendations about them. In court filings, her lawyer said Singer-Romohr didn’t object to Gottlieb’s involvement until she disagreed with the outcome of the case.

“I think my entire profession, including what I do, has been unfairly criticized with deliberate lies,” Gottlieb said in an interview.

‘Unnecessary and sad’

The house where Tori lives with her mother is cluttered with court documents that have been the weapons in her parents’ war.

Three years since the two children attended Building Family Bridges, Tori’s brother still lives solely with his dad. The aftercare program is effectively on hold, Nielsen said. Earlier this year, a judge granted her four hours a week of supervised visitation with her son.

Tori, who is heading to college in the fall, sees her brother about once a month at her dad’s house and occasionally accompanies her mom on her visits. She leaves feeling despondent.

Among boxes of court filings, several cards and letters are displayed from both kids, expressing how much they love their mother and want to spend time with her. Somewhere in the boxes, there’s a photo of the entire family from more than a decade ago, before the divorce and its aftermath.

Tori, who was 6 when her parents split, said it’s surreal to see them all together. She struggles to understand why her father pursued reunification treatment as a solution. She wants a positive relationship with him. But if anything, the past three years have driven a deeper wedge between them, she said.

“I always asked my dad, ‘Can we please figure this out ourselves and stop involving the courts?’ It all seemed so unnecessary and sad. We could all have gotten along,” she said.

“None of this ever had to happen.”

Negli #USA gli ex #minori facendo nomi e cognomi continuano a denunciare alla stampa le violenze subite durante i trattamenti di riavvicinamento ai loro padri temuti, ordinati da tribunali della famiglia in base a valutazioni di CTU.

Minacce, violazioni delle fondamentali libertà e dei diritti umani, aggressioni verbali, Violenza privata, pressioni psicologiche.

I danni subiti da questi minori a causa dello strappo subito dalle loro madri sono enormi.

Sul Wall Street Journal la storia di due fratelli, sottoposti a “parentectomia” (alias reset) all’ età di 12 e 16 anni.

Raccontano della loro esperienza con Randy Rand,.psicologo più volte sanzionato, e della Gottlieb , assistente sociale che ammette di ritenere che subire un abuso sessuale incestuoso non provocherebbe danni ai minori.

PHOENIX—Tori Nielsen was 16 when she and her 12-year-old brother were whisked away from their mother at the Maricopa County courthouse by four strangers in a white minivan on the morning of May 27, 2021.

The strangers wouldn’t tell Tori and her brother where they were going, she recalled, as the siblings held hands and cried in the back seat. After hours on the interstate, they arrived at a hotel somewhere by the ocean. The strangers, three men and one woman, barricaded the door to their room with furniture so they couldn’t leave, Tori said.

The next morning, she remembered one of them saying: “You’re going to have a meeting with your father now.”

What Tori didn’t know was that a judge had ordered the children to attend a four-day family reunification program in Ventura, Calif., with their father. The judge determined it was the only way to repair their relationship, damaged during a decadelong custody battle, court documents show.

The children had been living mostly with their mother, Angela Nielsen, and resisted seeing their dad because of his temper, Tori said. But court-appointed evaluators determined that Nielsen was poisoning the kids against their father. She was suddenly barred from contacting her children to ensure they no longer rejected their dad.

It would be around two years before Tori and her brother saw or talked to her again.

“I tried to numb myself to what was happening. It was like surviving,” said Tori, who moved back in with her mom the day she turned 18 in May 2023. “But that only worked for so long because it all absolutely destroyed me.”

Tori’s father declined to speak about his family’s situation, saying he was focused on being the best father to his children.

The treatment the Nielsens underwent is part of an industry of intensive “reunification therapy” that has sprung up during the past decade and is ordered by family courts to settle custody fights. Services like Building Family Bridges, where the Nielsens were forced to go, use videos and exercises to try to break a child’s pattern of rejecting a parent. The child is then ordered to live with that parent for an extended period and barred from having contact with the other parent. A battle has erupted over the approach in courtrooms and statehouses across the country.

After Tori told her story at a hearing with Arizona lawmakers earlier this year, the Republican-led legislature passed a measure prohibiting courts from ordering any reunification treatment that cuts off a child from the parent they prefer unless both parents agree. It was signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in April.

Utah, New Hampshire and Tennessee approved similar proposals this year. California and Colorado passed laws restricting reunification treatment in 2023.

Some legal experts and family advocacy groups say the treatment is too extreme and traumatizes children. Child-abuse researchers have raised concerns that the operations, which can cost families tens of thousands of dollars, are unregulated and use pseudoscience to sway courts into believing they can help kids and parents.

“Children are being court-ordered into costly, unregulated reunification treatments or ‘camps,’ which force them into contact with a parent who they often fear for good reason,” said Danielle Pollack, policy manager for the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington University, which supports restricting the treatment.

But supporters say it’s a last resort during the worst custody disputes, when one parent wants to re-establish a relationship with a child who has shunned them. In these cases, they say, the other, favored parent must be temporarily cut off during the reunification process, to keep from interfering.

“The whole goal here is to ensure a child has a happy, healthy relationship with both their parents,” said Demosthenes Lorandos, a psychologist and attorney who has worked with Building Family Bridges.

A disputed theory

Only about 10% of divorces in the U.S. involve significant conflict over custody arrangements, and just a fraction of these need to be decided by a judge, according to Robert Mnookin, a Harvard University professor who studies divorces.

It’s in these cases that the idea of parental alienation syndrome emerged in the 1980s with the late child psychiatrist Richard Gardner.

Gardner posited that a child can be brainwashed by one parent into rebuffing the other during custody fights and even persuaded to make up abuse claims. He testified in numerous cases, recommending in extreme circumstances that a child be taken from the “alienating parent” who had custody and placed with the “rejected parent.”

Gardner’s theory spurred fierce opposition from some mental-health professionals and family-law experts, who said it dismissed children’s legitimate abuse allegations and was being weaponized by mostly fathers seeking custody of kids living with their mothers. Parental alienation syndrome has never been officially recognized as a diagnosis by major medical or psychiatric associations.

Because custody cases are mostly sealed, information is limited on how frequently courts mandate the treatment. Researchers say programs like Building Family Bridges are likely ordered by judges only in especially contentious cases—perhaps as many as several hundred over the past few years.

There has been limited research examining their effectiveness or safety, said Jean Mercer, a professor of psychology who studies the programs and believes they pose serious risks for children.

We don’t know the simplest things—like how often the mother is alleged to be an alienator, and how often the father is alleged to be an alienator,” Mercer said. “What we do know is there are potential dangers for the kids, like PTSD, and depression and anger at how they were treated. This can be extremely frightening for them.”

Matthew Sullivan, a psychologist and supporter of reunification treatment, said courts typically don’t order the programs until after less intensive interventions have failed and multiple evaluations by experts. Effective treatment seeks to challenge dysfunctional behavior exhibited by the child and both parents, he said.

“These are pretty awful situations on all sides,” said Sullivan.

Costs can range from $8,000 to around $40,000 for the programs, according to documents viewed by the Journal. There are also hourly therapist fees for the “aftercare” program that the so-called alienating parent must typically complete before seeing their children again.

Judges may order the rejected parent to pay the bill up front. In some cases, the favored parent ends up paying a portion.

‘Burst into tears’

The website for Building Family Bridges greets people with a silent video showing what appears to be a teenager on a couch having an intense conversation with a parent. A clipboard-toting counselor looks on

Describing itself as the “gold standard” of family reunification services, Building Family Bridges says it can help families who therapists and courts thought were beyond reach.

“This innovative four-day workshop helps children reunify with a parent they claim to hate or fear,” the site says.

The site quotes unnamed parents and judges lauding its success. It also cites a study by a former workshop leader that says out of 83 children who had participated in Building Family Bridges, a “significant number” repaired their relationship with the parent they’d previously rejected.

Tori Nielsen’s experience was far different.

After arriving in Ventura and spending a sleepless night together, Tori and her brother were ushered across the street to a Crowne Plaza hotel, she said.

In a conference room, their dad, his girlfriend and several Building Family Bridges staff members were waiting. One introduced himself to Tori. She later learned from speaking with other children who’d gone through Building Family Bridges and from a picture she found online that this was Randy Rand, a founder.

Staff read aloud the court order and laid out rules, Tori recalled. The children couldn’t contact their mother for 90 days. If they tried to leave or didn’t participate, they could be sent to a wilderness camp, she said. Bringing up incidents from the past was forbidden. If someone did, staff told Tori that they would stop them by saying, “Moratorium!”

The first two days were spent watching videos that appeared aimed at shifting the kids’ memories about their parents, Tori said. One focused on “The Monkey Business Illusion,” a psychological study that aims to show blind spots in people’s perception of events. The second two days were interactive, with the group writing down traits about themselves and family members.

Rand declined to comment on any specific cases and described parental alienation as “complex, painful for those involved, and nuanced.”

“The Building Family Bridges methodology is available for severe parental alienation cases and continues to be an effective tool for families,” he said.

Lorandos, the psychologist who worked with Building Family Bridges, said he’d observed its workshops and trainings. He likened their work with children who had rejected one parent to deprogramming people who’d been in a cult.

“There’s a lot of re-education around things your dad, for example, may have said about your mom that are not true,” he said.

At night, the children were moved into a hotel room with their father and his girlfriend, said Tori, recalling how the hotel phone was removed from the room so they couldn’t try to call their mom. Their cellphones had been confiscated the day they were taken from Arizona.

“One morning, I woke up and went to the bathroom, and I just looked in the mirror and I thought about what was happening and I burst into tears,” she said.

Immediately following the workshop, Tori and her brother were required to vacation with their dad, who took them to San Diego. Under the court order, they then returned to live with him at his home in the Phoenix suburbs.

Angela Nielsen lived just a few miles away. But under the no-contact order, she couldn’t interact with her children until she completed Building Family Bridges’s “aftercare” curriculum.

It included writing out explanations on why she was forbidden from contacting her kids and why the court had intervened to protect them.

Nielsen said she worked for countless hours on the responses. The therapist administering the program for Building Family Bridges said they were insufficient and that Nielsen was combative, documents show.

The therapist wrote that Nielsen drafted multiple iterations of answers but refused to acknowledge that she’d “ever engaged in any parental alienating patterns.” She therefore couldn’t move onto the program’s next level.

In another report, the therapist noted that while the children’s relationship with their dad was “close and healthy,” they missed their mother and desperately wanted to see her. The report said Tori would prefer to live primarily with her mom, and felt more supported and happier living with her.

These emotions, while normal, were also examples of the kids’ own alienating beliefs, the therapist wrote.

“I would get so upset and so down,” Nielsen said. “Like why can’t I pass this program? I would spend entire weekends working on these questions. I just wanted my children to come home.”

Now staying with her dad and his girlfriend, Tori buried herself in activities: cheerleading, a mentorship club, time at her boyfriend’s house. She stayed “neutral” toward her father, trying to get along with him, hoping it would speed a chance to see her mother, she said.

Her dad’s mood swings continued to upset her, Tori said. And she developed panic attacks, overcome with nausea and shakiness.

On her closet mirror, Tori marked off the days that passed. Just after midnight on May 7, 2023, her 18th birthday, she packed her belongings and told her dad she was leaving. He asked if she was certain she wanted to leave like this, she recalled. Her brother implored her not to forget about him. It broke her heart.

“I kind of just showed up at my mom’s house that day,” Tori said. “We just hugged and cried. It was a surreal and relieving moment, but it was really hard because my brother wasn’t there with me.”

Concerned by reports of children being traumatized after being removed from a parent to attend reunification programs, Danielle Pollack’s group at George Washington University has been working with lawmakers to limit them.

Kayden’s Law, passed by Congress in 2022, provides federal funding to states that restrict reunification treatment not shown to be effective, and trains judges on how best to evaluate abuse allegations in custody fights. The law was named after Kayden Mancuso, a 7-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was fatally beaten by her father after a judge allowed him unsupervised visits despite warnings from her mother about his violent history.

“These camps are not about protecting our children or bringing families together. They manipulate children and pass on exorbitant fees to families,” said Arizona state Sen. Shawnna Bolick, a Republican who sponsored the recent measure there.

Supporters of more restrictions note that while the reunification industry includes some well-intentioned therapists, leading proponents have come under scrutiny.

Randy Rand of Building Family Bridges was disciplined by the California Board of Psychology in 2009 for misconduct in two cases, records show. In one, the board found Rand blatantly sided with the father in a custody case he was supposed to be impartially mediating. In a separate case, Rand recommended a permanent custody change without ever interviewing the child, which amounted to gross negligence, the board said.

Rand’s license was placed on probation for five years unless he agreed to have his practice monitored, take an ethics course and pay a $43,000 fine. His license is currently inactive.

In board filings, Rand denied wrongdoing.

Rand said he does not lead Building Family Bridges workshops and serves as “administrative services director.” He said he occasionally provides support to the licensed mental health workers and legal professionals running the sessions.

Linda Gottlieb, who runs the Turning Points for Families reunification program in New York, is the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York state court in March. In the lawsuit, an Ohio woman, Tricia Singer-Romohr, sued Gottlieb for violating rules on deceptive and unfair trade practices, alleging she falsely represented parental alienation as a scientifically accepted disorder that her program could cure.

A judge ordered Singer-Romohr’s two children to participate in Gottlieb’s program in 2021 after determining she was manipulating them into rejecting their father and after hearing testimony from Gottlieb. Singer-Romohr, who had primary custody, was initially barred from contacting her kids for 90 days until Gottlieb determined she was supporting the kids’ relationship with their dad.

In court filings, Singer-Romohr included copies of letters that Gottlieb required she write to her children. Her letters included recollections of good times the kids shared with their dad, and encouraged them to have a loving relationship with him while apologizing for making them feel like they shouldn’t.

Gottlieb told Singer-Romohr that wasn’t enough, according to emails from the filings. After Gottlieb said Singer-Romohr wasn’t complying, the no-contact order ultimately got extended for around 900 days, according to the suit.

Attorneys for Singer-Romohr referred to the lawsuit when asked for comment.

Gottlieb, a marriage and family therapist and social worker, wouldn’t comment on the case. In legal filings, she said parental alienation was widely accepted by courts and that she favors lifting no-contact orders as soon as it’s “clinically advisable.” Gottlieb asserted that it was the judge who extended the no-contact orders and she never made any recommendations about them. In court filings, her lawyer said Singer-Romohr didn’t object to Gottlieb’s involvement until she disagreed with the outcome of the case.

“I think my entire profession, including what I do, has been unfairly criticized with deliberate lies,” Gottlieb said in an interview.

‘Unnecessary and sad’

The house where Tori lives with her mother is cluttered with court documents that have been the weapons in her parents’ war.

Three years since the two children attended Building Family Bridges, Tori’s brother still lives solely with his dad. The aftercare program is effectively on hold, Nielsen said. Earlier this year, a judge granted her four hours a week of supervised visitation with her son.

Tori, who is heading to college in the fall, sees her brother about once a month at her dad’s house and occasionally accompanies her mom on her visits. She leaves feeling despondent.

Among boxes of court filings, several cards and letters are displayed from both kids, expressing how much they love their mother and want to spend time with her. Somewhere in the boxes, there’s a photo of the entire family from more than a decade ago, before the divorce and its aftermath.

Tori, who was 6 when her parents split, said it’s surreal to see them all together. She struggles to understand why her father pursued reunification treatment as a solution. She wants a positive relationship with him. But if anything, the past three years have driven a deeper wedge between them, she said.

“I always asked my dad, ‘Can we please figure this out ourselves and stop involving the courts?’ It all seemed so unnecessary and sad. We could all have gotten along,” she said.

“None of this ever had to happen.”

A giugno 2024 l’Unione Europea adotta la direttiva (UE) 2024/1385, pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale dell’UE il 24.5.2024, sulla lotta alla violenza contro le donne e alla violenza domestica, che dovrà essere recepita dagli Stati membri entro il 14.6.2027

v. testo della Direttiva 2024/1385 in https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024L1385

La direttiva si colloca nell’ambito della Strategia per la parità di genere 2020 – 2025 (v. in https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-equality-strategy_it )

elaborata dalla Commissione Europea e finalizzata a realizzare «un’Europa garante della parità di genere» in tutti i settori di competenza dell’Unione. Tra le azioni chiave proposte dalla Commissione la strategia individua l’eliminazione delle disuguaglianze tra uomo e donna e la lotta alle violenze di genere e alle discriminazioni sessuali.

La violenza contro le donne costituisce infatti una forma di violazione dei diritti umani sistematica e diffusa a livello globale.

Nel report del 2014 dell’Agenzia europea per i diritti fondamentali (FRA) gia’ emergeva che una donna su dieci ha subito una violenza sessuale (una su venti è stata vittima di stupro e una su cinque di violenza domestica) v. in https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-vaw-survey-at-a-glance-oct14_it.pdf

Durante la pandemia, tra il 2020 ed il 2021, il fenomeno della Domestic Violence ha registrato una rapida crescita anche sotto le sembianze di violenza online, tale da costringere l’europa a mettere in campo misure piu’ stringenti. Tanto piu’ che la Convenzione di Istanbul non veniva ratificata da tutti i Paesi membri ! (ultima in ordine temporale e’ stata la Lettonia nel gennaio 2024)

La proposta di direttiva della Commissione e’ stata presentata l’8.3.2022 (si puo’ prendere visione al seguente link https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A52022PC0105) si poneva dunque in linea con la necessità di colmare una lacuna esistente sul piano normativo europeo non essendovi fino a quel momento alcun strumento espressamente dedicato alla protezione della donna, ma solo alla vittima in quanto tale tramite la Direttiva 2012/29/UE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 25 ottobre 2012 e la Convenzione di Istanbul del 2011 del Consiglio d’Europa sulla prevenzione e la lotta contro la violenza nei confronti delle donne e la violenza domestica.

Riguardo la Direttiva 2012/29/UE v. in https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32012L0029 . A tal proposito vedasi articolo di Sara De Vido in https://www.ejiltalk.org/a-first-insight-into-the-eu-proposal-for-a-directive-on-countering-violence-against-women-and-domestic-violence/

Circa la Convenzione di Istanbul si veda in link seguente https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=treaty-detail&treatynum=210 Vedasi anche S. De Vido, M. Frulli, Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. A Commentary on the Istanbul Convention 2023. in https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/preventing-and-combating-violence-against-women-and-domestic-violence-9781839107740.html

Come accennato il processo di ratifica della Convenzione di Istanbul ha visto la mancata adesione di tutti gli Stati membri alla Convenzione ( l’Italia la ha firmata nel 2012, ratificata nel 2013). Il processo e’ stato sbloccato il 1.6.2023 grazie a due decisioni (la n. 2023/1075 e la n. 2023/1076) del Consiglio d’Europa, grazie alle quali la Convenzione è entrata in vigore per tutta l’Unione Europea ad ottobre 2023.

v. in https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list?module=signatures-by-treaty&treatynum=210

La recente Direttiva del 2024 si occupa tuttavia di ulteriori aspetti della violenza di genere, come quella online e informatica, che non trovavano ingresso nella Convenzione di Istanbul.

v. il Comunicato Stampa del giugno 2023 sul progetto della Direttiva https://www.consilium.europa.eu/it/press/press-releases/2023/06/09/violence-against-women-and-domestic-violence-council-agrees-position-on-draft-eu-law

Il 6 febbraio 2024 il Consiglio e il Parlamento europeo hanno raggiunto un accordo su questa direttiva, il primo atto legislativo dell’UE sulla violenza contro le donne.

L’8 marzo 2024 migliaia sono state tuttavia le donne europee che hanno manifestato nelle strade di Bruxelles,a ridosso dei Palazzi dell’UE, contro la decisione di escludere il reato di stupro dalla direttiva. In verita’ anche altri aspetti della Direttiva non ci convincono.

Il 7 maggio 2024 il Consiglio ha adottato la direttiva che armonizzerà nei Paesi UE le sanzioni e i termini di prescrizione per tali reati. Le mutilazioni genitali femminili, ad esempio, devono diventare punibili in tutti gli Stati membri con una pena massima di almeno 5 anni di reclusione.

Come precisato nella stessa Direttiva 2024 essa trova fondamento ne:

• l’articolo 2 del Trattato sull’Unione europea (TUE)
• articoli 21 e 23 della Carta dei diritti fondamentali dell’Unione europea .
• Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sui diritti dell’infanzia e dell’adolescenza (Convention on the Rights of the Child – CRC), approvata dall’Assemblea Generale delle Nazioni Unite il 20 novembre 1989 (ratificata dall’Italia il 27 maggio 1991 con la Legge n. 176).
• Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sull’eliminazione di ogni forma di discriminazione nei confronti della donna (CEDAW) adottata nel 1979 dall’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite,
• Convenzione delle Nazioni Unite sui diritti delle persone con disabilità CRPD Conclusa a New York il 13 dicembre 2006, v. traduzione italiana
• Convenzione del Consiglio d’Europa sulla prevenzione e la lotta contro la violenza nei confronti delle donne e la violenza domestica dell 11 maggio 2011.
• Convenzione dell’Organizzazione internazionale del lavoro sull’eliminazione della violenza e delle molestie nel mondo del lavoro, firmata a Ginevra il 21 giugno 2019.
• Direttive 2011/36/UE  –  2011/93/UE  e la direttiva 2012/29/UE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio.
• artt. 82, par. 2 e 83, par. 1 TFUE.

L’art. 82, par. 2 TFUE si occupa di predisporre norme minime riguardanti i diritti delle vittime della criminalità al fine di facilitare il riconoscimento reciproco delle sentenze e delle decisioni giudiziarie e la cooperazione di polizia e giudiziaria in materie penali aventi dimensione transnazionale. L’incremento di fiducia reciproca tra Stati membri derivante dall’armonizzazione dei diritti sanciti nella direttiva è stato ritenuto prova sufficiente per il soddisfacimento del requisito della «dimensione transnazionale».

Maggiori criticità ha destato l’art. 83, par. 1 TFUE, che fornisce la base giuridica per le norme minime relative alla definizione dei reati e delle sanzioni in sfere di criminalità riguardanti, tra l’altro, lo sfruttamento sessuale di donne e minori e i reati informatici, per questioni di dimensione transnazionale. In particolare, erano emersi dubbi sulla connotazione di «sfruttamento sessuale» come un euro-crimine autonomo o intrinsecamente correlato alla «tratta degli esseri umani» (E. Bergamini, 2023, p. 26 ss.).

La direttiva stabilisce norme minime comuni per prevenire e combattere la violenza contro le donne e quella domestica in tutta l’Unione europea. Il suo contenuto può essere strutturato in quattro parti.

La prima introduce definizioni comuni di reati, tra cui mutilazioni genitali femminili, matrimoni forzati, condivisione non consensuale di materiale intimo o manipolato, stalking online, molestie online, istigazione alla violenza o all’odio online. Nel testo inizialmente proposto figurava anche il reato di stupro per mancanza di consenso, successivamente abbandonato. Accanto a questi reati, la direttiva configura disposizioni relative alle sanzioni, alle circostanze aggravanti, alla giurisdizione e ai termini di prescrizione.

Il testo contiene norme dettagliate rivolte a potenziare l’accesso alla giustizia, ad assicurare una protezione adeguata alle vittime prima, durante e dopo il procedimento penale e a offrire loro un’assistenza specialistica (seconda parte).

Gli Stati membri sono tenuti a disporre di canali accessibili e prontamente disponibili per denunciare atti di violenza, compresa la possibilità di sporgere denuncia e di presentare prove online, almeno per i reati informatici, nonché di dotarsi di strumenti investigativi efficienti.

Attenzione è poi dedicata alla valutazione individuale delle esigenze di protezione e assistenza delle vittime, mediante la predisposizione di appositi servizi di supporto, includendo la possibilità di emettere ordini urgenti di allontanamento e di protezione.

Sono inoltre previste norme per l’adozione di misure rivolte alla rimozione di materiale online, per la limitazione delle prove sul comportamento sessuale passato della vittima e sul risarcimento integrale del danno.

Per quanto riguarda l’assistenza alle vittime, la direttiva predispone l’istituzione di una linea di assistenza telefonica 24/7, di centri anti-stupro e di case rifugio.

A seguito dell’esclusione del reato di stupro, particolare priorità è stata conferita alle attività di prevenzione della violenza contro le donne, cui è riservata la terza parte.

Gli Stati sono tenuti ad impegnarsi, mediante campagne o programmi educativi e di sensibilizzazione, a migliorare la consapevolezza e la comprensione del pubblico verso le diverse manifestazioni di violenza, le cause e le conseguenze di tali atti, a contrastare gli stereotipi di genere e a promuovere una parità di genere e di rispetto reciproco.

Infine si incentiva un coordinamento e una cooperazione effettivi a livello nazionale e dell’Unione europea (A. Pitrone).

REATI INFORMATICI Uno degli aspetti maggiormente innovativi della direttiva poggia sull’inserimento di un catalogo di reati connesso alla violenza online, tra cui la condivisione o manipolazione non consensuale di materiale intimo, lo stalking e le molestie online.

Si riconosce il merito al legislatore europeo di aver saputo rispondere alle impellenti esigenze di armonizzazione emerse su diversi fronti: la decisione della Corte Edu sulla cyberviolence dell’11.2.2020, n. 56867/15, la General Recommendation del 2021 del GREVIO sulla dimensione digitale della violenza contro le donne nonché la risoluzione del Parlamento europeo del 14.12.2021 sui medesimi temi (E. Bergamini, 2023, p. 501 ss.).

Si registra infatti una crescita degli episodi di violenza online e il fenomeno si è particolarmente acuito durante la pandemia: secondo uno studio del 2021 il 4-7% di donne ha subito molestie online nei dodici mesi precedenti e l’1-3% episodi di stalking online. Le donne su internet rappresentano un facile bersaglio per ragioni legate al sesso e al genere, specialmente coloro che sono impegnate nella vita pubblica, in politica o nel giornalismo.

Sulla violenza online la direttiva ricomprende un elenco di reati non contemplato nella stessa Convenzione di Istanbul.

Reato di stupro: il grande escluso!

La definizione comune di stupro ha costituito moptivodi contesa tra gli Stati membri in seno al Consiglio. Le discussioni vertevano sulla ritenuta impossibilità di ricomprendere entro la nozione di «sfruttamento sessuale», di cui art. 83, par. 1 TFUE, il concetto di stupro. La nozione di stupro avanzata dalla Commissione si basava sul concetto di consenso, manifestazione di volontà libera e ritrattabile in qualsiasi momento, quale elemento centrale e costitutivo del reato («only yes means yes»). Dall’altra alcune legislazioni nazionali per la configurazione del reato esigono una condotta aggressiva/prevaricatrice dell’uomo sulla donna incapace di resistervi (cfr. Definitions of rape in the legislation of EU Member States). La maggior parte degli Stati ha votato infine a favore della esclusione del reato di stupro: tra questi l’Ungheria, Germania e Francia.

E’ stata inserita una disposizione (art. 35) che impone agli Stati di promuovere campagne di sensibilizzazione e di educazione al consenso, nonché una clausola di riesame (art. 45) in cui si specifica una futura valutazione sull’introduzione di nuovi reati.