Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up, The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5

articles
- Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up
- Fresh claims put pressure on Cardinal Brady
- The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5

Brady under pressure as sex abuse victims talk of cover-up
By Greg Harkin
Tuesday May 01 2012

CHURCH leaders will come under renewed pressure when a BBC documentary is screened tonight outlining the widespread cover-up of clerical sex abuse here.

'This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church' is said to focus on Cardinal Sean Brady's role in an ecclesiastical investigation that led to the silencing of two victims of Fr Brendan Smyth.

Victims of paedophile priests in Co Donegal will also tell how the church failed to deal with complaints which allowed one cleric to  continue to abuse more victims.

The broadcaster has refused to comment on the investigation by reporter Darragh Mac Intyre but BBC sources say the documentary has "powerful
testimony" from abuse victims. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/brady-under-pressure-as-sex-abuse-victims-talk-of-coverup-3096117.html


Fresh claims put pressure on Cardinal Brady
By Andy Martin BBC News
1 May 2012

Cardinal Brady became the Catholic Primate of all-Ireland in 1996, but the appointment that may define his career was made 21 years earlier.

As a Bishop's secretary in 1975, he was tasked with investigating a complaint of sexual abuse made against a fellow priest, the man who would later be exposed as Ireland's most prolific paedophile, Fr Brendan Smyth....

Following two major and damning reports into the handling of clerical abuse in Ireland, it emerged that Ireland's most senior Catholic Priest had himself been involved in a process in which sex abuse was kept from the civil authorities....

However, McIntyre's BBC investigation reveals that the teenage victim, Brendan Boland, had also told the then Father Brady and his colleagues, about other children who were being abused by Smyth.

He even furnished the investigating priest and his colleagues with their names and addresses.

Father Brady interviewed one of those boys, who corroborated each of Brendan Boland's claims before being sworn to secrecy.

Father Brady however, failed to inform any parent of the children in the group that they had been abused. Nor were the police told of Smyth's crimes against them. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17853126




The Parental Alienation Debate Belongs in the Courtroom, Not in DSM-5
Timothy M. Houchin, MD, John Ranseen, PhD, Phillip A. K. Hash, DO, PhD and Daniel J. Bartnicki, JD
J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 40:1:127-131 (January 2012) - the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

The DSM-5 Task Force is presently considering whether to adopt parental alienation disorder (PAD) as a mental illness. Although controversy has surrounded PAD since its inception in 1985, pro-PAD groups and individuals have breathed new life into the push to establish it as a mental health diagnosis. In this analysis, we argue that it would be a serious mistake to adopt parental alienation disorder as a formal mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)....

The Origin of PAS

Richard Gardner, formerly a psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist on the clinical faculty at Columbia University, introduced the term parental alienation syndrome in his 1985 debut article on the subject....he openly supported abolishing child abuse reporting laws and controversially declared that sexual abuse cases are “turn-ons” for those involved in the court process, including lawyers and judges. Despite these unusual claims, Gardner was highly sought as an expert witness, testifying in over 400 child custody cases before the end of his career....

Controversial since its inception, PAS has compelled many scholars to write articles critical of Gardner's theory. Kelly and Johnston have been noteworthy critics of PAS, writing in their 2001 article, “The Alienated Child, A Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome, ” that “PAS terminology has led to widespread confusion and misunderstanding in judicial, legal, and psychological circles” (Ref. 9, p 250). They also highlighted the lack of empirical support for PAS as a psychiatric diagnosis and the barring of PAS testimony in many courtrooms....

Criticisms of PAS have not been limited to mental health professionals, as legal scholars have also been loath to accept the premise that parental alienation should be formally classified as a mental illness. For example, in her 2002 article, “Parental Alienation Syndrome and Alienation: Getting it Wrong in Child Custody Cases,”12 Carol S. Bruch, JD, voiced concern with Gardner's tendency to cite his own, non-peer-reviewed books and publications on PAS. She noted that in one typical article, Gardner cited 10 sources: 9 writings of his own and 1 by Sigmund Freud. She further refuted Gardner's suggestion that PAS was a generally accepted psychiatric phenomenon by pointing out that, when the validity of PAS was challenged in court, his testimony was often excluded.

In our opinion, Gardner's approach of self-publishing books and then citing himself as an authoritative reference in the scholarly literature went beyond simple self-aggrandizement; it was frankly misleading. We agree with Ms. Bruch that the inaccurate portrayal of PAS as an accepted and credible diagnosis gets it wrong on many levels. http://www.jaapl.org/content/40/1/127.full