Submitted to https://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Parental_Alienation_Consultation.
24 June 2022
Dear Department of Justice and the Honourable Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee,
Thank you for undertaking this tremendous task and asking for feedback from affected citizens and residents of the Republic of Ireland.
My name is Basil Sharaf, and I am a citizen of Ireland and permanently reside in the Kingdom of Bahrain. I am the father of three Irish girls, Zayna, Sirine, and Camila. I last saw my girls on 23 June 2019; at the time, they were aged seven, nine, and 11.
Their mother is a citizen of the United States, and she took the children to the United States without my knowledge. I never got to say goodbye; I never thought that the last time I would see them – would be the last time I would ever see them – I never knew!
I sometimes think of Charles Dicken’s novel, A Christmas Carol, whose main character was Ebenezer Scrooge – the ghost of Christmas past visited Scrooge, present and future – he was a lucky character because he got to see the end.
Do you wish to know about Parental Alienation and its impact? Unlike the lucky Scrooge, an alienated parent is filled with uncertainty. In my case, there are years of court hearings in the United States and Bahrain. Courts enact specific requirements like reunification therapy, but there is no remedy to prevent malicious actors.
The acclaimed American academician Amy Baker wrote: unless you have personally experienced parental alienation, or someone you know has experienced it – you probably didn’t know it existed. And it is true – I never knew Parental Alienation was a ‘thing’ until I experienced it.
Parental alienation is child abuse when a parent seeks to prevent an otherwise loving parent from having contact with a child and for that child to have the right to enjoy unfettered access and love from two loving and normative parents.
Your views of and/or experiences of it:
My view is that it is a hidden form of child abuse. It is easy to identify a child appearing at school with a black eye or a broken arm. Parental alienation is the ‘silent’ abuse – there are no physical scars and no bruises. But the scares are present; they are emotional when a child is forced to detach their love for a parent to please another parent. This is a so-called ‘loyalty conflict’ – and that child, a helpless minor, knows their shelter, food, and clothing rely on the physical custodial parent.
Let us extrapolate to adult terms. If you – an adult were held hostage and told that to receive shelter, food, clothing and safety – you needed to behave in a certain way. Would you comply with the hostage-taker? I would!
Its impact:
The impact of Parental Alienation is vast; where to begin? There is the loss of the parent to the child relationship. The child is growing up in a single-parent household.
The mental stress on the alienated parent – meanwhile, mentally coercing a child to reject a normally loving parent cannot be easy work for the alienating parent – that has to be stressful too!
There is compelling research from Philip Marcus, Judge (retired) Jerusalem Family Court, Israel – that clear evidence presents the cost to society of allowing such parental alienation to occur – from mental health expenditure to drug abuse treatments to unemployment benefits. The question of parental alienation – is a matter of life and death and the well-being of society for those affected.
There are grandmothers affected who previously had loving relationships with children. There are lost uncles and aunts, cousins, and cultural ties or linguistic connections.
It is a CUT – the child is cut from all known bonds taught to them previously – this is a new reality! They lose familial bonds, religious bonds, family ties, and linguistic ties. The alienating parent has solely and independently determined that a cancer is present; the alienating parent is the surgeon and, as such, will remove said cancer – and it is final!
And a parent thus loses their child – unilaterally – without consultation – and frequently, the courts are ineffective in creating suitable remedies.
How it might be responded to in the future:
Many wonderful organisations internationally are doing extraordinary work to address parental alienation. Many of these organisations spread awareness among families and youth, train legal professionals and educators, lobby for legislative reform and conduct evidence-based research on the topic.
A Non-Governmental Organisation I am part of – Find My Parent (www.FindMyParent.org) – uses AI technology to empower children and parents to reunite through its newly released mobile app. These technologies target children who have been alienated or abducted by a family member – two very-related social issues.
Moving forward, the Irish government must seek ways to involve civil society, youth, families, schools, and the private sector in a holistic solution to parental alienation. This solution must include awareness-raising, sound legislation and government processes, knowledge generation, training and technology.
Thank you for raising this societally critical issue and your desire to reunite families and children with loving parents.
Sincerely hoping for a better future,
Basil Sharaf
Concerned Citizen of the Republic of Ireland
[email protected]
www.zaynasirinecamila.com