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Estrangement and Alienation

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Alienated children
Alienated children reject a parent without guilt or sadness and without an objectively reasonable <span class="noglossary">cause</span>. Their views of the alienated parent are grossly distorted and exaggerated.
Alienation is most easily defined as the complete breakdown of a child's relationship with a parent as a result of a parent's efforts to turn a child against the other parent. Typically, alienation is only a problem when the parents are involved in extremely bitter and heated litigation as a result. Not every case of high conflict litigation involves alienation, but it does happen. A 1991 study by the American Bar Association found indications of alienation in the majority of 700 high -conflict divorce cases studied over 12 years.
This sort of intentional alienation is absolutely wrong and virtually unforgivable. In some circumstances, alienation can amount to child abuse. As J.M. Bone and M.R. Walsh put it in their article "Parental Alienation Syndrome: How to detect it and what to do about it," published in 1999 in the Florida Bar Journal, 73(3): 44-48:
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