Alienated Maine

One mother. One truth. Many families in Maine.

Maine Laws & Mapping Harm

The Strategies List page on this site provides descriptions of a specific type of post-separation and divorce harm, which some people commonly call “parental alienation.” Some of the leading experts in this space, regardless of what they call it, are Baker, Bernet, Childress, and Harman. I encourage you to read that page before reading this one. The information aligns directly with behaviors that Maine state law already defines as abuse, both against a partner or ex-partner and against a child. Also, this information addresses how an alienated child is incapable of making a “meaningful preference” in family court litigation, given the strategies used to cause this harm, and I encourage readers to review the explaination of “meaningful preference” according to Maine law.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice Office on Violence Against Women defines Domestic Violence as “a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.“

Further, the DOJ OVAW describes Emotional Abuse as “Undermining an individual’s sense of self-worth and/or self-esteem is abusive. This may include, but is not limited to, constant criticism, diminishing one’s abilities, name-calling, or damaging one’s relationship with his or her children.”

Under Maine’s protection-from-abuse statute (Title 19-A §4102), “abuse” includes compelling a person by force, threat of force, coercion, or intimidation to engage in conduct from which they have a right to abstain, or to abstain from conduct in which they have a right to engage. In 2025, the legislature amended this statute to explicitly add “coercion,” broadening the legal definition to include psychological, emotional, or manipulative tactics that restrict a person’s freedom and autonomy without physical force. When an alienating parent uses these strategies — limiting contact, blocking communication, coercing or forcing the child to reject the other parent, withholding or excluding from school and medical activities and information — these are acts that compel a targeted parent to abstain from their lawful right to meaningfully participate in their child’s life through the use of coercion and manipulation. Experts map alienating behaviors onto the Duluth Model power and control wheel of Domestic Violence, such as emotional abuse, isolation, threats, intimidation, and coercion, describing the very categories Maine’s domestic violence laws are designed to address.

On the child protection side, Maine’s Child and Family Services Act (Title 22 §4002) defines “abuse or neglect” as a threat to a child’s health or welfare by “physical, mental or emotional injury or impairment,” and defines “serious harm” to include “serious mental or emotional injury or impairment which now or in the future is likely to be evidenced by serious mental, behavioral or personality disorder, including severe anxiety, depression or withdrawal, untoward aggressive behavior, seriously delayed development or similar serious dysfunctional behavior.” Dr. Craig Childress’s three diagnostic indicators — suppression of the child’s attachment system, induced narcissistic personality traits, and an encapsulated persecutory delusion for secondary gain— are exactly the kind of induced personality and behavioral pathology this statute describes. He also identifies that these behaviors force the child to suppress their authentic self and their feelings. Maine’s own custody statute (Title 19-A §1653) already requires that in domestic abuse cases, court-appointed evaluators must have training in “domestic abuse tactics affecting adult and child safety after separation of the parents.” The alienating strategies the experts working in this space describe are precisely those post-separation abuse tactics.

The proof is evident in the child’s behavior and presentation, and in the alienating parent’s actions and behavior, according to the experts. What is causing the child’s resistance and refusal to have a relationship with the targeted parent, a parent they had a bonded, healthy, normal-range relationship with prior to the parent breakup? What is an alienating parent demonstrating to support a healthy co-parent relationship? What is the alienating parent demonstrating to support a healthy relationship between the child and their other parent?

The experts in this space seem to explain this is not a child and parent having disagreements or conflicts about doing homework, cleaning their room, or similar matters. It also goes well beyond co-parents having conflicts over parenting styles.

Is Maine’s family court system adhering to the established laws? Do judges, lawyers, and custody evaluators in Maine’s family courts lack the specialized training needed to identify child emotional and psychological abuse, post-separation and divorce domestic violence using coercive control? Are they dismissing a targeted parent’s legitimate concerns or mislabeling this as mere “high-conflict co-parenting” and “resist-refuse” when it is not? Do they recognize there is a power imbalance? One parent is controlling and dominating the situation, and the other parent has lost most, if not all, access to their child and their parental control.

It seems impossible that there is “parent-child conflict” between the child and the targeted parent because the alienating parent has created the child’s resistance or refusal to spend time with the targeted parent. In contentious proceedings, judges may receive conflicting information and be misled by constructs and instruments that lack reliability and validity. The reasons for this failure may be multiple: family court professionals may not recognize or understand emotional and psychological manipulation, gaslighting, and information control as the forms of abuse that Maine statute already defines them to be; Guardian ad Litems and evaluators may lack training in child attachment issues, and personality disorder training, as Childress argues is essential; and the sheer volume and complexity of these cases, along with high litigation costs, may discourage family courts to default to superficial solutions rather than applying the rigorous assessment that experts like Baker, Bernet, Childress, and Harman, call for. Family courts may fail to assess both parents and the child and to conduct a careful, thorough review of the historical timeline. The child and targeted parent typically had a strong, healthy bond during the parent’s relationship or marriage. When the family court fails to properly identify and intervene, it is effectively failing to enforce Maine’s own child abuse and domestic violence laws.

Additionally, when this form of child emotional and psychological abuse, commonly called “parental alienation,” is suspected by a parent, these cases must be taken seriously and expedited, according to the experts. The reason they say this is that the longer a child is separated from their targeted parent, the more entrenched the rejection becomes. Children have a much higher chance of recovery in milder cases and almost no chance in severe cases. This is a grim reality that will affect a child’s well-being across their lifetime.

The Folly of The Preference of the Child

Maine’s law (Title 19-A §1653) directs courts to consider, among the best-interest factors, “the preference of the child, if old enough to express a meaningful preference.” The word “meaningful” is doing critical work in that statute — and the research of Baker, Bernet, Childress, and Harman collectively demonstrates that a child subjected to “parental alienation” is incapable of expressing a genuinely meaningful preference.

Bernet’s observation that alienated children parrot borrowed scenarios using the alienating parent’s words, insist unprompted that their views are entirely their own (the “independent thinker” phenomenon), and display a complete lack of ambivalence, meaning they are seeing one parent as entirely good and the other as entirely bad, reveals that what appears to be a child’s “preference.” This is a rehearsed performance of the alienating parent’s agenda. Harman and colleagues describe how the alienating parent employs psychological manipulation and gaslighting to distort the child’s perception, disrupting the child’s cognitive schema and creating a polarization effect where one parent is idealized and the other wholly devalued. Childress explains the mechanism: the child has been induced into a false “victimized child” role by the alienating parent, producing an encapsulated persecutory delusion — a child operating under a delusional belief system is not expressing a meaningful preference; they are expressing a symptom. Baker’s 17 strategies — withdrawal of love, cultivating dependency, forcing the child to choose sides, confiding in the child about adult emotional and relationship matters, and in their parents’ court litigation — document how the alienating parent systematically dismantles the child’s capacity for independent thought and authentic feeling about the targeted parent. Maine courts have recognized that the reasons behind a child’s preference matter — that superficial or manipulated reasoning does not constitute a meaningful opinion.

When a child’s stated preference is the product of badmouthing, coercive control, induced delusion, and loyalty bind, as all four professionals describe, that preference is not “meaningful.” It is evidence of the harm itself, and treating it as a legitimate custodial factor rewards the alienating parent’s campaign and compounds the harm to the child.

The long-term harm to children is severe and well-documented. Research and work by experts in this field consistently identify long-term harm to children.

On the U.S. National Library of Medicine website is a paper called “The Impact of Parental Alienating Behaviours on the Mental Health of Adults Alienated in Childhood” (2022) by Suzanne Verhaar, Mandy Louise Matthewson, and Caitlin Bentley. Long-term harms are identified in adult child survivors of parental alienating behaviors, according to their research study’s findings that involved dozens of adult child survivors across eight countries:

Mental Health Difficulties

  • Depression and anxiety (reported by 55% of participants)
  • Personality difficulties, including emotion dysregulation, fear of abandonment, impaired authentic self-identity, and borderline personality disorder (40%)
  • Suicidal ideation from adolescence into adulthood (30%)
  • Self-harm behaviors, including cutting, beginning as young as age 11 (15%)
  • Eating disorders and body image issues (20%)
  • PTSD and complex PTSD symptoms
  • Psychosomatic symptoms such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and cognitive “fog” (10%)

Addiction and Substance Use

  • Alcohol misuse, typically beginning in early adolescence (55%)
  • Cannabis use, including daily dependency (35%)
  • Use of MDMA, methamphetamine, and hallucinogens
  • Sex and pornography addiction (10%)

Emotional Pain

  • Grief and loss — the most commonly reported experience (60%)
  • Shame, guilt, and ongoing confusion about their own reality (45%)
  • Anger and resentment toward the alienating parent (45%)
  • Low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness (40%)
  • Loneliness and isolation (30%)
  • Deep-seated trust issues
  • Feelings of abandonment and helplessness

Relational and Intergenerational Effects

  • Difficulty forming and maintaining healthy relationships
  • 50% became targeted parents themselves, suggesting intergenerational transmission of parental alienation
  • Attraction to partners resembling the alienating parent in personality and behavior

Harman, Kruk, and Hines (2018) found that alienation constitutes child abuse with consequences potentially more damaging than physical or sexual abuse, including depression, anxiety, addictions, poor relationships, and suicide. Research demonstrates that childhood exposure to parental alienation affects not only concurrent psychological functioning but extends into adulthood, manifesting as persistent depressive symptoms and reduced quality of life, along with attachment anxiety,, impaired self-esteem, loss of authentic self-identity, and sleep disorders. Baker’s longitudinal research with adult survivors documents lasting difficulties with trust, self-identity, self-sufficiency, and healthy relationships — harm that carries into marriages, parenting, and professional life. Childress’s framework explains why: when a child’s attachment system is suppressed, and they are induced into a delusional belief system and narcissistic personality functioning during formative years, the resulting developmental damage does not simply resolve when the child turns eighteen. The adult child survivors of alienation carry the deep imprint of having been psychologically conscripted against a loving parent, and they may spend years or decades in therapy trying to identify and sort out their mental health issues and the distortions before they can form healthy relationship bonds of their own.

Be Better, Maine: Every day a Maine family court fails to identify child emotional and psychological abuse and coercive control and take steps to intervene in these adverse behaviors is another day that abusers get unspoken permission by the state to continue their abuse, because existing laws go unenforced. An innocent child’s healthy developmental window narrows. These children desperately need to be seen and protected.

Relevant Maine State Laws: