Urgent recommendation from GREVIO to Greece
❗️GREVIO (Council of Europe) has called on Greece, as an urgent recommendation, to end the practice of removing children from non-violent parents or restricting their parental rights on the grounds of "parental alienation syndrome" or related concepts, such as suggestibility [ed. note: what we call "putting words in their mouth," manipulating them].
❗️It also calls on the Greek Authorities to ensure the training of judges and other relevant professionals regarding the lack of scientific basis for "parental alienation syndrome" and similar concepts such as suggestibility.
In recent days we have followed the tragic story of the nine-year-old girl who, despite having reported her father for sexual abuse during contact visits, has had custody removed from her mother by court decision and awarded to the father. The mother, with whom the child grew up, has not been judged an unfit parent. The only reason her custody was removed, punitively, is because she turned to the authorities to protect her child, following all the legal steps after the child's disclosure.
In this effort, she encountered many obstacles. The most significant, however, and the one that played a decisive role in the outcome of the case, was an expert (forensic) assessment from a public hospital, which ruled, without any scientific justification, that the child was suggestible—in short, it made use of the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation."
The expert (forensic) assessment, in violation of protocol, was conducted in the presence of the father, that is, the person accused of abusing the child. This was not the only irregularity, however, because, for an unclear reason, the child did not give testimony at the Athens Children's House, which is the only body legally competent to conduct forensic interviews of minor victims of sexual abuse, since these must only be taken by specially trained professionals. As a result of the expert (forensic) assessment, the prosecutor shelved the case, and ultimately custody was removed from the mother and given to the father.
At the same time, many similar cases are ongoing involving the removal of custody and, at times, imprisonment of the mother, following a report of domestic violence and sexual abuse of the child. This is the result of the Tsiaras Law and a key demand of the groups that lobbied for its passage: the so-called men's and fathers' rights movements, as well as certain lawyers and mental health professionals, because the legal trick of reversing the roles of abuser and victim, which they call parental alienation, not only rewards abusers but also opens up a particularly lucrative market for these professions, at the expense of children.
A common feature in all these cases is the alleged suggestibility of the child by the mother, that is, the justification of the decision based on the pseudo-theory of "parental alienation," which they now avoid naming explicitly in court decisions, partly to avoid backlash, and partly because of GREVIO's recommendations to Greece (the group of experts of the Council of Europe that monitors the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in the signatory countries).
On November 14, 2023, GREVIO published an evaluation report on the legislative and other measures implementing the provisions of the Istanbul Convention in Greece. In the report, it sets out 18 urgent recommendations (77 in total) which GREVIO calls on Greece to implement immediately.
In chapter 5, paragraph 3, titled Custody, visitation rights and safety (Article 31), GREVIO calls on Greece to take all necessary practical and legislative measures to end the removal of custody from non-violent parents and to train judges and other relevant professionals on the lack of scientific basis for "parental alienation syndrome" and similar concepts.
On the official website of the National School of Judges, a simple search did not turn up any document referencing GREVIO's recommendations. On the contrary, we found a document by the legal expert Ioannis Valmantonis that makes extensive reference to "parental alienation syndrome" and the myth of false allegations (a myth, because the rates of false allegations, based on international records, are minimal).
In violation of the Council of Europe's recommendations, we thus see that judges are being trained in the practice of removing custody from the safe parent. Judges are taught that all allegations are false and that mothers who try to protect their children should be punished. Judges are taught that it is good practice to send children to the parent they have reported as abusive, whom they fear and refuse to see—a traumatic and inhumane situation, not only for the children themselves but also for the adults who witness it.
Just as traumatic, for those who witnessed it, was the father's attempt to forcibly seize the crying, resisting nine-year-old child. Equally traumatic were the child's screams, for those who heard them, as the child was held from 11 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon at the Chalandri Police Station, under unimaginable conditions, with the aim of breaking their will and getting them to agree to go with their father.
Unprecedented and unacceptable was the detention at the Chalandri Police Station of journalist Mariniki Alevizopoulou, who was there to document the events, until 5:30 in the morning of the following day (a member of MOV, Evangelia Kasdagli, was also detained).
One by one, the countries that had incorporated "parental alienation syndrome" and related concepts such as suggestibility into their Family Law are now recognizing the need for legislative reform in the opposite direction from the presumption of shared upbringing, acknowledging the enormous harm caused to mothers and children who are forced to live with the parent they report as abusive.
An enormous number of children have been killed as a result of the so-called "contact at all costs" approach, either during contact with the violent parent or after custody was removed from the safe parent and awarded to the violent parent. In the United States, France, Sweden, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and so on. In Australia, in fact, the presumption of shared parenting, legislated in 2006, was only withdrawn this year, in 2024, following the reaction of the very children who grew up within that system with very severe long-term psychological and physical trauma.
Why, when we have this knowledge from international examples, and while our experts are issuing strict recommendations to us, must we walk the same path, traumatizing, at best, countless children and their mothers?
For these children and for these mothers, we are here, and we will fight with whatever strength we have to overturn this inhumane situation.
Children have a voice, and it will be heard.
#children_have_a_voice #stopchildabuse