Parental alienation a problem in TT

PARENTAL alienation is a global crisis and a university lecturer, attorney and MP have all joined the call for more children’s courts and trained judges to deal with this phenomenon.

Attorney Saira Lakhan said with its emergence in TT, “We now have to stand together in a united front to promote awareness of it with the intention of combatting and eliminating parental alienation from our society.”

Lakhan said the legal system in TT does not treat this issue with the urgency it deserves for a variety of reasons, which include “an overloaded case system where we need more family courts and trained family judges.”

Lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St Augustine Dr Jerome Teelucksingh said the two Children’s Courts at Fyzabad and Port of Spain are insufficient, and advocated for one in every county.

MP for Fyzabad Dr Lackram Bodoe offered support to do his part to get Parliament to enact legislation to this effect.

The three were among panellists on a Parental Alienation first community awareness forum, organised by International Men’s Day TT in collaboration with Parental Alienation Solutions of TT, at Naparima College, San Fernando on Saturday.

Parental alienation is described as the process and the result of psychological manipulation of a child into showing unwarranted fear, disrespect or hostility towards a parent and/or other family members. It occurs almost exclusively in family separation or divorce, particularly where legal action is involved, and often leads to long-term adverse childhood experience that overflows into adulthood.

Teelucksingh said, “Parental alienation has become a plague, a social disease, but here in TT it remains an invisible national problem. It is a global crisis that has crossed the boundaries of culture, ethnicity, religion and politics.”

Even more troubling, he said, is the absence of statistics indicating the increase and impact on the region,

“If we do not act now, it will soon be an epidemic that will destroy the fabric of our society.”

Teelucksingh said people must deconstruct their thinking and stop demonising men as the first step to combatting this issue. He said there must be gender equity within the Caribbean’s “biased legal system” in cases involving separation or divorce, where mothers are awarded custody and fathers are seen as unfit, causing children’s minds to be “poisoned” into believing their fathers are “a waste of time.”