In der Kritik: UN Sonderberichterstatterin Reem Alsalem

Eingabe des KiMiss-Instituts an das UNHRC wegen Desinformation zum Thema 'Eltern-Kind-Entfremdung' durch die UN Sonderberichterstatterin Reem Alsalem:

To the
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commisioner

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

The KiMiss Institute, localized in Germany, conducts scientific studies on child well-being and regards the proposal suggested in this call with great concern.

The call intends to establish justifications for the problem of 'parental alienation', which - increasingly worldwide - is defined as a form of child maltreatment and abuse. However, establishing justifications for child maltreatment and abuse is inconceivable, regardless of whether it refers to a physical, sexual, or emotional form of child maltreatment or abuse.

The KiMiss Institute investigates emotional and psychological forms of child abuse and child maltreatment. An important component in the research field of non-sexual forms of maltreatment and abuse is the concept of 'hostile-aggressive parenting', which in many cases leads to parental alienation. Hostile-aggressive parenting is a form of child abuse and maltreatment, occurs in many cases of conflictual separation of parents, and is often used to alienate the child from the other parent.

In its current design, the call creates three serious problems : 1) out of the spectrum of 'violence against children', the call ignores most of the forms of violence; it creates a serious risk of a 'legalization of parental alienation' as a source of violence against children; 2) from a scientific point of view, the conceptual framework of the call is largely inacceptable because wrong results and wrong conclusions are pre-programmed; 3) the call does not propagate a peaceful coexistence between parents and children, but starts from a basis of 'Hate between mothers and fathers'.

The call presented here is problematic because it seeks to investigate the problem of 'violence against children' while ignoring a wide spectrum of forms of violence: the call reduces 'violence against children' to physical violence (by men). Psychological and epidemiological studies, however, show that violence against children in developed countries arises mainly from emotional and psychological forms of maltreatment, much of it caused by separation and divorce of parents, with gender-specific effects usually absent or weak.

Under such an approach, many additional cases of child abuse would arise because parental alienation would not be diagnosed and would be erroneously be declared as non-existent. However, it is the task of effective, governmental child protection to recognize and prevent child maltreatment and child abuse. In this respect, the call causes a fundamental problem: Parental alienation would be defined as an instrument of misuse by a parent, and no longer as a form and a source of maltreatment of the child. In the case of sexual abuse, such propositions are unconceivable. Therefore, such propositions must be rejected in principle, regardless of whether the form of maltreatment occurs in a context of physical, sexual, or emotional and psychological forms of violence against children.

In its current form, the call would create a substantial risk that certain forms of child maltreatment and abuse would be 'legalized', in this case concerning 'child abuse through parental alienation.'

The current state of research does not confirm that 1) the combined emergence of domestic violence and parental alienation would be frequently observed and correlated (KiMiss results suggest rather the opposite: little overlap between both factors), nor, that 2) parental alienation would exhibit gender-specific patterns of substantial dimension. Current trends point into an opposite direction: the more the custodial roles of men and women align, the less are gender-specific differences in parental alienation.

Some studies suggest a gender-specific tendency: Physical violence against children is more often associated with 'male' violence, and psychological and emotional forms of violence are more often associated with 'female' violence. By limiting the call a priori to 'physical' violence, it ignores a wide range of 'female' violence against children. This is a substantial problem in the study design, known in scientific methodology as 'selection bias'. This is discussed in more detail in the following sections.

The call shows substantial shortcomings in dealing with hypotheses, because the result of the 'study' to be conducted here has already been pre-formulated. In terms of content, the call formulates an expected study result more or less this way: domestic violence is male violence, and the concept of parental alienation is misused by fathers to burden or even harm mothers and children. The call basically intends to collect data to prove that this hypothesis is true. This is far from a scientific approach, which requires that a null and an alternative hypothesis be formulated, and a significant result requires the rejection of the null hypothesis.

From a societal point of view, it would be important to estimate the frequency of the rate of false accusations in cases of 'parental alienation' (likewise, this would also be important in cases of sexual abuse). However, this is not an objective stated in the call. In this respect, the call does not describe the investigation of a research question but wants to provide evidence for a hypothesis for which no alternative hypothesis has been provided. Such an approach is not only scientifically unacceptable, but socially dangerous when it will come finally to 'study' results and conclusions.

The adequate investigation of the problem described in the call would require reliable diagnostics to distinguish between true and false accusations. However, such diagnostic methods are lacking or are highly error prone. In this respect, the call creates a dangerous constellation: if no reliable diagnostics exist to distinguish between true and false accusations, then the collection of data in this situation is likely to produce 'false' data.

Studies involving diagnostic methods require in general the consideration of concepts such as sensitivity and specificity, estimation of the false positive rate, positive and negative predictive values, etc. In addition, a clear definition of the study population is required as well as pre-defined criteria for inclusion and exclusion of subjects, etc. A scientific approach would require that a study design is defined prior to the 'study', and then will undergo a scientific review. The present call, however, aims to collect data without a study design. This does not meet the standards required by 'good scientific practice' today.

It is not clear from the call that an objective and neutral approach is planned. In particular, it is problematic that the call does not differentiate between the fundamentally different forms of 'induced' vs. 'non-induced' parental alienation. The research question of this call cannot be examined without a diagnostics that distinguishes between these two fundamentally different forms of parental alienation. Instead, the call formulates the highly ideologized hypothesis that the misuse of the concept of 'parental alienation' is the norm rather than the exception, the latter of which is reality.

To describe the depth of the problem, one more detail is briefly described: Let's assume, for example, that family courts assign the children to parent X (and not parent Y) in 90% of the proceedings. In this case, it is trivial (and only to be expected) that 90% of parental alienation cases are associated with parent X. In such a case, it must not be concluded that 90% of the cases are caused by X, because this bias, called autocorrelation, has nothing to do with causality. Therefore, it is very problematic when statements are made in this call such as "the correlation between resorting to the concept of parental alienation and the persistence of gender-based violence against women" and similar other passages of the call.

The call is based on a gendered ideology: mothers and children are a kind of natural entity that is threatened by fathers. Fathers are perpetrators, mothers and children are victims. In particular, there is a focus on domestic violence, which is equated with male violence. The call suggests that parental alienation can be justified in cases of domestic (male) violence, and it focuses on fathers abusing allegations of parental alienation. The call formulates an extensive dimension of threat that originates from men, against women and children.

However, this is not a vision that can guide our human society into the coming decades. Unfortunately, the call does not contain a single option to 'solve the problem'. As described above, there is an urgent need for methods to improve the diagnosis of 'false accusations'. The conceptual framework of the call gives reason for the concern that the intended approaches of data collection will not decrease the number of abused children but increase the number of 'falsely accused persons'. From the point of view of a scientific research project, the risk of false findings is greater than the chance of constructive conclusions.

The KiMiss Institute is concerned that approaches as described in this call can produce justifications for certain forms of child abuse and child maltreatment. Again, for purposes of comparison: In the case of sexualized violence against children, it is inacceptable today to formulate conditions that would justify the cruelty. The same is true for all the other forms of abuse, e.g., the emotional forms of child abuse and child abuse, to which parental alienation belongs. There are many forms of abuse and maltreatment; but there should be none for which justifications are intended to be established.

The global community has made great efforts over the past 100 years to recognize, treat and condemn sexualized violence against children. In the same way, this progress must be continued for the other forms of maltreatment and abuse of children, i.e., the emotional and psychological forms of maltreatment and abuse. Without exception. And parental alienation is not an exception.

13th Dec 2022, The KiMiss-Institute, Germany