Alienated Maine

One mother. One truth. Many families in Maine.

Mandated Reporters

This is a discussion on a certain kind of Post-Separation and Divorce harm and Maine’s legal definition of Child Emotional and Psychological Abuse: Maine Mandated Reporters Should Already Know

Under Maine law, abuse includes a threat to a child’s health or welfare by mental or emotional injury or impairment by a person responsible for the child. There’s a certain type of Post-Separation and Divorce Domestic Violence Coercive Control that some people commonly call “parental alienation,” which describes how one parent engages in post-separation and divorce coercive control to condition a child to reject their other parent. This harm seems to fit the definition of Maine domestic violence law (Title 19-A §4102) and child abuse law, which defines it as “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.”

Mandated Reporters should understand and review the established Maine Laws. Please consider reading the Mapping Harm & Maine Law page of this site.

This type of harm may emerge in children whose parents are engaged in what some experts call a “high-conflict” co-parenting post separation and divorce, except, if looked at more closely, it is not at all “high-conflict” because there’s an substantial power imbalance where one parent holds most or all of the power and control and may be using their child as a weapon to harm the other parent, who has almost or no control or power and has likely been marginalized or completely cut out of the child’s life.

Maine mandated reporters, including doctors and other medical professionals, school staff, and mental health professionals, are in the best position to recognize and report suspected child emotional and psychological abuse, and are required by law to do so. Maine law requires that every mandated reporter complete approved mandated reporter training. This particular kind of family harm is too often missed, dismissed, or ignored by mandated reporters and the child protection authorities who are responsible for protecting children from it.

Are neurodivergent children especially vulnerable? Some experts who work in domestic violence and intimate partner violence spaces say yes. For example, their sensory systems are often described as heightened, and their social understanding is often different. An alienating parent, the parent the child has aligned with, may have found a way to exploit these, redirecting, distorting, and gaslighting the child’s own beliefs and memories. What do you know about neurodivergence, such as ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder in children? Do you know what it typically looks like, including by a child’s age group and gender?

What looks like a child’s choice to reject a parent may actually be a trauma response and a conditioned fear.

Schools have a vital role. A child spends most of their waking day in school. School should be a safe, neutral space where no one will ask them to take sides and where both of their parents are welcome, respected, and encouraged to belong and engage. When one parent is being excluded or sidelined from school communications and events without a court order, that exclusion is a red flag. Schools must resist taking sides in conflict. Schools must resist pressure to exclude, minimize, or sideline a parent.

  • Do you know how to identify post-separation and divorce domestic violence using coercive control and child emotional and psychological abuse?
  • Do you know how it presents in a child?
  • Do you know how it presents in an allied parent?
  • Do you know how it presents in the targeted parent?

Warning signs for Maine’s mandated reporters, according to the leading experts working in this space:

  • A child’s rejection of one parent begins or intensifies during or shortly after separation or divorce, in a way that appears nearly sudden, total, and completely disproportionate to anything that parent has done.
  • A child unjustifiably resists and refuses to interact with one parent beginning or following separation and divorce. A child may insist it is their own choice or idea.
  • Significant school attendance problems: full-day absences, dismissals, and tardies. Schools should note the frequency of such absences and the extent to which an allied parent is involved in them. Maine law recognizes truancy resulting from a caregiver’s neglect as a form of child abuse.
  • Poor grades, lack of interest in classroom participation, and doing the homework. May likely avoid or skip classes.
  • The child may complain of headaches, stomachaches, or tiredness. They develop or show signs of anxiety, depression, hygiene neglect, low self-esteem, and diminishment of the child’s self-identity.
  • The child shows anxiety, hostility, or panic when asked or expected to spend time with the targeted parent, the parent who is being sidelined. The child may demonstrate black-and-white thinking. One parent is all “good,” and the other parent is all “bad.” This may be enhanced when children have also witnessed physical domestic violence against their targeted parent.
  • A child internalizes hatred toward the rejected parent, believes that the parent did not love or want them, is “bad,” “crazy,” or “unworthy”, and may even be denied the opportunity to mourn or speak about that parent. The allied or alienating parent projects their own issues onto the child, creating a fictitious and delusional belief in the child that they are being victimized, and a cross-generational coalition against the targeted parent.
  • A child uses adult-sounding, rehearsed language or uses manufactured narratives about the targeted parent, but cannot support accusations with credible personal experience that justifies the extreme negative treatment or cutting off of the targeted parent.
  • The allied or alienating parent denigrates the rejected parent to the child, over-involves the child in adult issues, problems, and family court litigation, and this forces or pressures the child to take sides and feel guilty.

To report suspected child emotional and psychological abuse in Maine, call the Maine OCFS statewide hotline at 800-452-1999, available 24/7. Good-faith reporters are immune from criminal or civil liability for reporting or participating in a related child protection investigation.