“Devaluing or minimizing a parent by the other in a child’s life, even subconsciously, can amount to parental alienation. It “is a legal concept as opposed to a mental health diagnosis”: Malhotra v Henhoeffer, 2018 ONSC 6472 at para. 107. In Bors v. Beleuta, 2019 ONSC 7029 at para. 119, Van Melle J. approved of the following definition of parental alienation described by Dr. Michael Stambrook in the Manitoba case of L.M.A.N. v. C.P.M., 2011 MBQB 49:
It is a descriptive term that refers to a process. It is not a diagnostic label. It doesn’t appear in any nomenclature about mental health disorders. It is a descriptive term that refers to a process where there is a systematic devaluation, minimization, discreditation of the role of, typically the other parent in a parental dyad. One parent systematically, through a variety of physical, emotional, verbal, contextual, relational set of maneuvers systematically reduces the value, love, commitment, relationship, involvement of the other parent by minimizing, criticizing, devaluing that parent’s role. It can involve children having their sense of history being “re-written” by a parent’s redefinition of history, reframing things, repetitively talking about things. It can involve sometimes very subtle and sometimes not so subtle suasion, coercion, direction, misrepresentation and so on…
So parental alienation is a process, an interactional process where systematically one parent’s role in, for the children is eroded over the course of time. (bolding added)
Delay is a significant, troubling factor in this case, too. Almost five and a half years passed between the time that the parties separated in December 2015 and the start of this trial in May 2021. For three and a half years the children’s time with their father was restricted by the mother and, sometimes, arbitrarily ended or changed until this case began and an Order was made by McGee J. in June 2019 giving the father greater parenting time. While the parties are to be commended for their serial mediation efforts, it should have been clear to them well before February 2019, to the father in particular, that far more urgent and definitive action was needed. The risk to young children is clear where meaningful time with the other parent is impeded and the child/parent relationship is unsupported. It is good that the children’s time with their father was increased after this case started but, as the father pointed out, that only happened as a result of the recommendations contained in the OCL report.
In L. (A.G.) v. D. (K.B.), 2009 CarswellOnt 188, McWatt J. (as she then was) dealt with the concept and qualities of alienation influence and its effect on families.
Dr. Fidler testified that children are more susceptible to alienation in certain age ranges. She explained that from 5 to 8 years of age, children can have shifting allegiances to parents. Once a child’s brain develops to a point where the child can hold both positive and negative information about a parent, though, children can become confused. They begin to question whether a parent is telling the truth about things in general or the other parent in particular. When the child reaches the ages of 10 or 11 years old, it can become very difficult for them to hold the different views they may have come to about their parents and, as a result, may choose to side with one parent over the other in order to free themselves from emotional conflict and the stress it causes. This becomes extreme in alienated children of 12 years old and older. These children, Dr. Fidler testified, can internalize the effects of alienation to the point where even the alienating parent could not get the child to visit the alienated parent. The child creates its own reasons to dislike or hate the alienated parent – ones which are not real.
JB was 8 3/4 years old when his parents separated, EB was just 6 years old and SB an infant.
In Hazelton v. Forchuk, 2017 ONSC 2282 at para. 75, Gray J. highlighted the importance of quick and consequential action where alienation is suspected, warning that inaction poses serious risks to children’s relationship with their parents,
“…where parental alienation exists, it is manifestly important that steps be taken immediately. If they are not, the situation will only get worse…At some point, the restoration of a relationship with the other parent becomes much more difficult, if not impossible. (bolding added)
In Moreton v. Inthavixay, 2021 ONCA 501, the Court of Appeal observed that in relocation cases it was in children’s best interests to have “the issue determined as quickly as possible to provide stability to [the children’s] living arrangements, finality and closure”: Ibid, at para. 10.”