The Father’s Rights movement, born as a reaction to the “tender years doctrine” that automatically awarded custody of young children to mothers, countered this principle with reasonable arguments of Shared Parenting. Equally reasonable was the presentation of the battle faced by many women–newly liberated with earned income–who saw that they no longer had to live with violence and brutal physical abuse to themselves or their children. Domestic violence legislation quickly followed, as well as the development of government funded shelters for DV victims. While the Domestic Violence Awareness movement was funded with charitable funds, it lacked funds for criminal prosecution of offenders.
On the other hand, Fathers’ Rights groups engaged Father’s Rights lawyers, organizing politically to put their power behind appointment of judges and the Richard Gardner, MD, model of “parental alienation,” in order to obliterate charges of abuse.
Even in the most reasonable and accommodating of divorces, the lives of children are disrupted. They resist and resent the back-and-forth visitations that shuffle them around between households, disturbing rest, socialization with friends, sports, religious activities, and the normal rhythm of life that used to be theirs.
Add into this the cases when one parent is an abuser, and now the court is forcing the children to visit the very person the protective parent was trying to protect them from.
This perceived need to keep the children in relationship with the abuser gave rise to the “reunification” model of responding to children who–with good cause and compelling evidence–are resisting the parent they fled.
The grim truth is that the Family Bridges “reunification therapy” model has no base of operations and no academic profile in terms of what the theory and philosophy are and who are the personnel who are enacting it, aside from the psychologist Randy Rand, who lost his license to practice psychology.
After children have sought refuge from abusers—with statements and documentation of heinous physical and sexual abuse—this “reunification therapy” program uses tactics of coercive control to force children into the exclusive custody of those very abusers.
The conviction behind this program is that whatever the charges are against an accused parent, they’re not true. These accusations, according to the “reunification” model, simply come from a disgruntled (protective) parent who is jealous and competitive with the right of the other parent to exercise control, physical and psychological, which includes sexual access to the child.
The “reunification” is driven by a court order that empowers the program to authorize “transfer agents”—thugs with court authority—to pick up the children from whether they are: hospitals, mental institutions, correctional facilities, or custody of the other parent. They are then taken to a hotel room where they will be confronted alone, without an attorney, protective parent, other advocate. The only other people there besides the child will be the “reunification specialist” team and the accused parent, who has gained access through the court.
With the assistance of the reunification team, this parent can inform the children that the abuse they reported never existed, but rather is the product of the villainous scheme of the other parent (who they were “deceived into believing” was their protector), to interfere with the relationship of the parent who is now seeking access to and control over them.
Children are told that if they don’t cooperate and conform to the program, then the parent who is opposing the program will go to jail for the rest of their lives, and the children will never see that parent again.
These third-world war prisoner tactics, these threats, intimidation, defamation of the protective parents, manipulation, lies, and gaslighting will be supplemented by several other tools, some of which are as follows:
Children are to have no contact with the outside world, no electronics, no television, no other people in their lives, especially not those who believed their cries for help.
The accused parent—even one accused of sexual abuse—will be allowed physical contact, touching, rubbing, feeling the child who has rejected them, in order to desensitize the child to physical contact with the alleged abuser.
The children will be subject to attempts at mind control through film, hypnotism, and medication/drugs.
The goal of these “reunification programs” is for the children to see the protective parent as the new enemy. The internal strength of each individual child will determine the success or failure of this model of modern warfare, this heinous assault on the minds, bodies, and spirits of the most vulnerable.