‘Swim, swim and die at the beach’: family court and perpetrator induced trauma (CPIT) experiences of mothers in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Gender-based violence (GBV) and Domestic Violence (DV) are prevalent in Brazil. There are growing concerns globally regarding the weaponisation of the pseudo-concept ‘Parental Alienation’ (PA) in the family courts against women. Additionally, a lack of understanding of mothers’ family court and health-related experiences indicated a need to explore this topic further. A qualitative study was conducted with thirteen mothers who are victims of Domestic Violence and have been accused of PA. Mothers reported a range of harmful health experiences, delineated here under the conceptual framework of Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma (CPIT). Six themes are presented, which encapsulate a range of harmful actions, behaviours and circumstances (ABCs) that surround these mothers and their responses to these ABCs. Multiple physical health conditions were reported as associated with family court proceedings. This included maternity problems, musculoskeletal, autoimmune, and respiratory conditions and a broad range of mental health implications including suicide and other trauma responses. Human rights violations, the weaponisation of ‘Parental Alienation’ and inherently misogynistic and oppressive justice systems in Brazil were also reported. Urgent measures and further research are now needed to investigate causal links between harm to health and the family courts and to strengthen human rights protection for women and child victims in Brazil and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s health
• domestic violence
• family court
• gender-based violence
• trauma
• parental alienation
• suicide
• human rights

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Participatory Research Fund, SHERA core Research Group and Expert by Experience Group, the mothers of CPI Voz Materna and Natalie Page of Survivor Family Network.

We thank the brave participant mothers who shared their experiences for this study.

Disclosure statement

Five of the authors are voluntary members of SHERA Research Group, a global research collective which explores the health, social, human rights and economic impacts of domestic abuse/violence on women and children. No financial reward is received for this work.

Notes

1. We note here our discontent with the term ‘intimate partner violence’ (IPV); specifically, the use of ‘partner’, as such gender-neutral definitions ignore who initiates the violence, differences in physical strength and fighting competence between men and women, motivations to use violence, whether violence is reactive or in self-defence (DeKeseredy and Hinch 1991) and implies an equal and reciprocal relationship, rather than a phenomenon where a perpetrator targets, controls and abuses their victim. We will refer to such literature indicating IPV using our preferred term, intimate perpetrator violence, at least diminishing the idea of ‘partnership’ or mutual blame.

2. In March 2022, the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women denounced PA as a ‘pseudo-aggressive’ concept (Francica 2022), while the 2023 report of the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women and Girls (UNSRVAWG), it’s causes and consequences, called on world leaders ‘to prohibit the use of parental alienation or related pseudo-concepts in family law cases and the use of so-called experts in parental alienation and related pseudo-concepts’ (p.19). Similarly, GREVIO (2023) (the independent expert body responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention)), considers PA to be a ‘scientifically unfounded concept’ (p.52). Numerous scholars have noted that PA is ‘junk science’ (see Cynwyd 2006, Thomas and Richardson 2015). We provide here a brief insight into what is considered scientific and what is considered pseudoscientific to further justify inclusion of our framing of PA as a pseudo-concept. González-Méijome (2017, p. 203) writes: ‘We should not confuse ‘evident’ thoughts with facts supported by ‘evidence’. Evident is sometimes used synonymously for ‘obvious’, something that can be seen. However, a better definition would be that the word ‘evident’ refers to something ‘clearly understood’. Personal thoughts can be evident simply because they make sense according to some biased facts or because they coincide with general beliefs. Evidence, however, is defined as ‘the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid’. Therefore, we should not confuse beliefs with evidence and should always seek confirmatory observations (facts), properly collected, and analysed. Ultimately, evidence can confirm our beliefs but not the reverse’. As delineated in chapters 11 and 12 of the edited book by Mercer and Drew (2022), PA proponents have failed to provide a shared scientific or clinical definition of PA, and therefore endeavours for PA to be ‘clearly understood’ immediately fail. Experts cannot ‘know’ to what extent one parent’s views about another are legitimate, or how those views have influenced a child’s perception of the non-preferred parent. PA cannot be directly observed, as many proponents of PA accept. PA research relies on confirmatory observations, which are not properly collected and analysed. PA studies have no control groups, no clinical or objective selection criteria and lack systematic consideration for alternative reasons for a child’s rejection of a parent. In sum, no scientific validity for PA has been proven. While there are multiple PA studies, they are highly questionable, as they are often based on samples from the client base of ‘alienation’ ‘experts’ (prone to subjective intuition (Lilienfeld et al. 2015) and conflicts of interest) or are deeply flawed methodologically (e.g. they are retrospective studies prone to recall, selection and confirmatory bias). The greater the number of these features, the more probable that such research is pseudoscientific, rather than scientific (Lee and Hunsley 2015). The President of the Family Division in England has denounced the use of pseudoscience in his 2021 memorandum (citing the guidance of Lord Reed PSC in the Supreme Court in Kennedy v Cordia (Services) LLP (Scotland) [2016] UKSC 6) (McFarlane, 2021). The use of and reliance upon pseudoscience by those working in justice settings can result in a plethora of adverse consequences to families and society and should be avoided at all costs (Jupe and Denault 2019). Additionally, there are no causal studies in existence demonstrating any links between ‘parental alienation’ and health/attachment impacts to children, which would need to be replicable and to be studied controlling for confounding variables to ensure that there is indeed a causal link between so-called ‘alienation’ and those impacts (ensuring the links are not explainable by other factors). As such, we utilise the well-founded framing of PA as a pseudo-concept.

3. Other health experiences are reported in detail elsewhere.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Participatory Research Fund to Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, Principal Investigator. The findings remain the responsibility of the research team.