“The complacency of those entrusted to protect children is not a neutral failure. In the absence of action, complacency becomes complicity.”
I am a mother in Maine, a survivor of domestic violence and of a particular kind of coercive control post-separation and divorce.
What I lived with and still live with is what happens when a child is systematically turned against a parent who did nothing to deserve that loss. The harm to both the child and the targeted parent is real, documented, and lasting. I cannot reach my own daughter the way a mother should. The grief of this loss does not have an off switch.
Yet, sadly, I’ve learned that I am not alone. There are many other targeted parents in Maine, living in the same grief of loss, and suffering in the silence of it. There are children and adult child survivors carrying wounds they should never have to carry, absent the support they so desperately need, and lack the insight and language to give their experience a name, and thus, seek out help. Some of these children are now adults of every age group, and are walking through their lives, unaware, unhealed, and being internally shaped by the fictitious narratives constructed by one of the two most important people in their lives, and should be safe with. This harm follows children well into their adulthood and into their own families, should they have them one day. As I understand from the published literature of experts, adult children who experienced “parental alienation” as children report lasting damage to their mental health, capacity for trust, self-sufficiency, self-identity, and intimate relationships.
This is why I write.
What you’ll find here
My daughter and I have spent years in this space, and I write about it from my lived experience and from reading papers and publications by experts in this pathology. I write about my thoughts on what I witnessed within Maine’s legal, educational, medical, and mental health landscapes. About systemic failures that seem to fit nicely in the definition of institutional betrayal, regulatory capture, and the ways mandated reporters are routinely failing and are seemingly unprepared to recognize what is right in front of them.
“When professionals look away, when courts miss it, when school staff and medical professionals miss the signs, or fail to report, complacency does not excuse them. Silence in the face of a suffering child is its own form of complicity.”
I write about family courts that allow children to express “meaningful preference” in custody matters, and, while this has not specifically happened to me, I’m aware of it routinely happening with other Maine parents, some with children as young as 10 or 11, without acknowledging that a child whose reality has been deliberately distorted by coercive control methods cannot make a free and meaningful choice.
This family pathology is everywhere, and it doesn’t discriminate. All of Maine’s children depend on adults around them to protect them.
I share what the aftermath may look like for the targeted parents and their children, who now struggle with the trauma of the experience. Like my daughter, the children’s experience doesn’t end in childhood; it is a core experience of a fractured attachment and bonding, and splitting that follows them well into adulthood, especially when left unaddressed. When unskilled professionals and mandated reporters tell parents to “give it time,” or “they’ll come back around,” it minimizes the problem, and it enables abusers to continue their abuse. It doesn’t protect the child or the targeted parent.
What I believe my daughter and I experience does seem to have clinical and legal names. It is recognized in two of the most authoritative diagnostic frameworks: the DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association’s handbook for diagnosing mental health conditions) and the ICD-11 (the World Health Organization’s global standard for classifying disease and harm). Both recognize the behavioral patterns of psychological abuse and coercive control that occur when a child is weaponized against a loving parent. It is identifiable in the Duluth Domestic Violence Power and Control Wheel. The recognition matters. It moves the abuse and power imbalance situation out of “he said/she said,” “resist-refuse,” “parent-child conflict,” and “high conflict co-parenting,” and into documented, measurable harm, where, if recognized and diagnosed correctly, it immediately eliminates any other label possibility.
I also realized that I had to take a journey inward. I had to make an honest self-assessment, do some healing work, and learn about some very important things, like healthy self-boundaries.
“Complacency says ‘it’s not my problem.’ Complicity is what complacency becomes when a child pays the price.”
What you won’t find here
I will not name my daughter or my family. Their privacy and mine are things I absolutely protect as we are still in it. This space holds truth without exposure or unintended harm.
If you recognize yourself here
Whether you are the targeted parent or the trapped child, I hope something here helps you navigate this tough space.
With heartfelt care,
a Maine mom.
✉︎ alienatedmaine@gmail.com
Alienated Maine 