“The complacency of those entrusted to protect children is not a neutral failure. In the absence of action, complacency becomes complicity.”
If you found this page, you may already know what a certain type of post-separation and divorce domestic violence coercive control feels like, or you may be trying to understand what is happening in the relationship with the child you love. This website was created to bring the experience into Maine’s consciousness: to give it a name, to map where it intersects with Maine state laws, to demand recognition and enforcement of these existing laws, to offer public awareness through advocacy, and to speak honestly about its costs, including long-term costs for children. It is written anonymously, out of respect for the privacy of a mother and child. It is offered in solidarity with every Maine family living through it.
I am a mother in Maine, a survivor of domestic violence, which was also perpetrated right in front of my child, 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 – mother or father – 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 targeted parents in Maine, mothers and fathers, living in the same deep grief of ambiguous 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 lacking the insight and language to give their experience a name, and thus, seek out the appropriate help. Some of these children are now adults in 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 them into their own families, should they have them one day. As I understand from the published literature of experts, adult children who experienced a certain type of child psychological abuse post-separation and divorce, commonly called “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.
The single most important post on this website is, and I encourage you to read it first: “The Mask and The Journey“.
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 perspective, as well as from reading papers and publications by experts in this field. 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 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 how family courts allow children to express “meaningful preference” in custody matters when this type of abuse is happening, and, while this has not specifically happened to me, I’m aware of it routinely happening with other Maine parents. Some parents have shared having children as young as 9- 10 making “meaningful preference,” and without acknowledging that a child whose reality has been deliberately distorted by coercive control methods is incapable of making free and meaningful choice.
This family harm 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 living the experience. Like my daughter, the children’s experience doesn’t end in childhood; it is a core experience of a broken attachment and bonding, and psychological splitting that follows them well into adulthood, especially when left unaddressed, according to the experts in this field. When untrained professionals tell parents to “give it time,” or “they’ll come back around,” it enables and empowers abusers to continue their abuse. It doesn’t protect the child or the targeted parent.
What my daughter and I experience seems to fit clinical and legal terms. It appears to be 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 emotional and psychological abuse and coercive control that occur when a child is weaponized against one parent by their other 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 the risk of applying the wrong labels.
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, myself, or my family. Their privacy and mine are things I absolutely protect as we are still in it. This story is not mine alone. This space holds truth without exposure or unintended harm.
If you recognize yourself here
Whether you are the targeted parent or the child caught in the middle, I hope something here helps you navigate this tough space.
I am a targeted mother sharing my lived experience. I am not a credentialed professional working in this space. If you need support, please seek out an experienced legal or mental health professional who hopefully has competency in trauma, domestic violence, coercion, child attachment and bonding issues, and family systems.
I’m using generative AI to assist me in compiling and writing about relevant information from Maine state laws and scholarship by leading U.S. experts in this harm space, recognizing patterns, and writing content and blog posts that are easy to understand and approachable for any audience.
This site is dedicated to my now adult daughter and is intended for all Maine-targeted parents and their children who are caught inside this vicious harm. I wasn’t able to help my own daughter as a child, but perhaps this information awareness project will help other Maine families.
Do Better, Maine. Maine protection laws need to be enforced. Maine laws need to be amended and improved to protect targeted parents and their children from the lifelong harm and trauma caused by post-separation and divorce domestic violence behaviors. Maine needs better mandated reporter training that includes this particular type of emotional and psychological abuse using coercive control.
Every day that Maine fails families like mine and allows this vicious harm to go unaddressed and untreated is another day an abuser is emboldened, another day they are granted Maine’s unspoken permission to keep abusing the people Maine laws claim to protect.
With heartfelt care,
a Maine mom.
✉︎ alienatedmaine@gmail.com
Alienated Maine 