I was so grateful that Elizabeth cared enough to risk speaking out. “You’re so brave. Thank you, Elizabeth. You can show the court my argument is real, that I’m not ranting about my ex-husband. You’re independent and you know what’s happening at the school because you have talked to the teachers yourself.”
“MacKenzie is nothing more than a predator at the school,” Peter wrote in a venomous note to Jamie. He charged Jamie with inventing Elizabeth’s affidavit: “By crafting and causing to be sworn and filed Elizabeth MacKenzie’s affidavit, you have caused this litigation to become so foul, and full of misrepresentations and so unpleasant for Dashiell, that you have summa cum laude succeeded in the alienation of Dashiell from his mother.” Dash had been shown the affidavit. Smelly. Ripped clothes. Nowhere to go. Failure. Worried teachers. Drunk father. Where will this man stop?
All the judges in the pretrial months had expressed concern over the absence of an up-to-date psychological assessment of Dash. Jamie had written letter after letter to Russell Tretiak, requesting Peter’s consent to the appointment of one of the three new and unknown psychologists he had found, but we were told Dash would see no one but Dr. Elterman. In early February 1996, a hearing was held to decide the issue and, despite our protests, Justice Janet Sinclair Prowse ordered that Dr. Elterman be our assessing psychologist again. He knows the case. Blah blah blah. The reasons bored me to tears. Having dragged his heels, once Dr. Elterman was appointed, Peter leapt into action. Within days he trotted Dash off for a chat with the psychologist, who dutifully wrote a letter to Peter’s lawyer (but not mine), applauding Dash’s “surprising insight and mature attitude.” He reported that now Dash couldn’t name any specific reasons why he didn’t want to visit me, except that the overstructured nature of the access schedule bothered him. Dash just wanted to be with his friends. He wanted to hang out. It sounded perfectly reasonable. But why would a schedule that he had ignored for years so bother Dash?
To my surprise, Dash had come skiing with us at spring break, just before Peter arranged that February session with the psychologist, and while I had cherished every second of it, I couldn’t help wondering if Dash had been enormously brave to come or whether he had been sent. Two weeks after that trip — a week before the trial began — Dash went again to Dr. Elterman. In court when my lawyer asked Dr. Elterman why he thought Dash had come to Whistler, he said, “Dash felt that there was a certain need to see his mother at that point.”
“Why at that point?” Jamie asked him.
“I don’t know. He, I mean, I could only say that he felt that with an assessment coming up, that this was an important thing to do.”
“Would an eleven-year-old child think like that or would his father think like that?”
“Well, I don’t know, but clearly Dash knew that an assessment had been ordered and then he went to visit his mother.”
I didn’t want Elterman on our case, but a court had ordered it and we had to live with it. So I asked Jamie to call him. “Mrs. Richardson has serious misgivings about your work on our case and believes you dealt with her negatively and prejudicially,” he told Dr. Elterman. “She doesn’t trust you to assess her accurately and professionally, but for Dash’s sake, naturally she agrees to see you. I hope that you are able to look at this material with the fresh eyes it clearly needs.”
I was anxious awaiting my interview. “Surely it’s so clear by now that even he will see it,” I said to Dave the night before the meeting. But in the back of my mind I heard Dr. Elterman speak glowingly of Dash’s “surprising insight.” He saw insight, I saw indoctrination. Could Elterman shift and acknowledge what we saw happening? At the custody and divorce trial, when Dash was six, my lawyer, Gerald Reid, had asked Dr. Elterman if Dash was an honest boy.
“Yes,” Elterman replied, “he’s an honest boy.”
“And is what Dash says the truth?”
“I would hope so,” Dr. Elterman replied.
The worst thing you can do is rely on the testimony of a PAS child. A PAS child is the abusive parent’s closest ally and the court’s least reliable witness. In their assessment interview leading to the second custody trial in May 1996, Elterman reminded Dash that there were long periods when we were not in court but he still wasn’t visiting me. Dash had said, “That’s because she never called. I’m the one that checks the answering machine. She never called.” Elterman was shocked to learn that I had called Dash four times a day during the specific period he referred to, and every second day in general. Elterman said defensively, “Well, that’s not what Dash told me.”
I prepared for the interview for days, fretting over it and checking and rechecking my documentation, organizing the same tapes I had given Dr. Beyerstein and testing the batteries on my portable tape player. I wrote out a bullet-point list itemizing everything I needed to tell him and copied all the affidavits, court orders, report cards, and my handwritten notes, and put them neatly in a folder with section dividers and labelled tabs. I listed all the people I wanted him to speak to: Elizabeth, Melody, Myrna, Dash’s teachers. I was determined to make Dr. Elterman understand that this was not a case of teenage angst or a parent with a laissez-faire lifestyle, but bona fide neglect and abuse.
As a mother, knowing that my child was being abused and neglected and being able to do so little about anything, ripped my heart out. To have been told for years that I had to just suck it in and wait for Dash to come around had been like asking a stampeding bull to stop and smell the pretty roses of Pamplona — I had wanted to scream and scream, but I had to stay calm instead. Couldn’t look emotional. Had to simply document it all. With anxiety rising in my stomach, I opened Dr. Elterman’s office door, smiled brightly, and sat down on the edge of the nearest chair with my folder of material on my lap. I was eager to begin, and because Jamie had already told Dr. Elterman that I didn’t trust him and did not believe he was impartial, I wasted no time on pleasantries.
“Dr. Elterman, if I can, I’d like to start by having you listen to some answering-machine messages that Peter left, over a number of weeks. I believe them to be representative of his drinking habits, and they appear not to have changed to this date. Some of the messages were left in the morning, some in the early afternoon, some in the evening.” I explained as we listened to the tapes that I wasn’t criticizing Peter or his lifestyle or avenging myself. I had had the same concerns during our marriage, and they had only become worse, “as it would,” I said, “if left untreated.” I wanted Elterman to understand that I believed alcoholism was a disease, not a personality flaw. I wasn’t attacking Peter. “So far as his drinking and drug use affect our son, I think I am right to be concerned,” I said. I watched Elterman for a response but got nothing. “Peter has said I am out to ruin his career or harm him professionally — well, I ask you not to believe that. I care only about Dash here.” As I was leaning forward to change tapes to the last one, Elterman spoke for the first time.
“Look,” he said impatiently, “how many more of these do you have? I get the drift.” (Weeks later when we were in court, when asked if he had noticed slurring on those tapes, Dr. Elterman said calmly, “I don’t recall.”) “I think Peter does have a drinking problem. I have actually thought that for some time.”
I looked up, quick as a whip. “How do you know this? And why didn’t you call me and talk to me?” As I watched his nonchalant expression, a shrill voice came to my head: He doesn’t think this is a big deal.
“Yeah, he would call sometimes with the same voice, and it sounded like he had been drinking. So?” So?!
“Umm. Well, Dr. Elterman, I am concerned that he calls me when he has been drinking and that he does it so regularly.”
“Perhaps he has something to discuss with you at the time? He admits to being ‘inebriated,’ as he says.”
But I had to drop the issue. Dr. Elterman was beginning to defend Peter. I just hoped that the implications of Dash living with a single parent who could be intoxicated from midday on would b
e clear once I left.
“Dr. Elterman, I have seen so little of Dash over the past three or four years. The structured access you recommended only happened for the first year. Then I tried to make access work by Dash and me deciding between ourselves when we saw each other. I thought that removing the court’s schedule would encourage Dash to make plans with me, and he did — visits, lunches, holidays, games, and outings of every kind — but our arrangements cratered once he returned home. I have a list of the times I have seen Dash in two years. It would often take me two weeks of calling and leaving messages to even reach him by phone. He never said he hated me or my family or that he was bored with me. He would say he couldn’t come over because he was busy, or doing something with his dad, but he was often just home alone. This is not a child who does not want to spend time with his mother. I believe this is a child whose loyalty to his father does not allow him to.”
Dr. Elterman shifted in his seat.
“It’s difficult for me to get a clear picture of what’s happening in Dash’s life because I don’t see him much, and I have no access to the school, so I can’t meet with Dash’s teachers. I hear negative things about my son and I can’t understand why I would if he is in such good hands with Peter. I have parents who tell me that Peter was drunk at the school choir night or the school play or on the soccer field. I hear that the teachers want to talk to me but aren’t allowed to. I hear that other parents won’t let their children play at Dash’s house because it is not supervised and the father drinks.”
“Do you have the names and phone numbers of any of these parents who won’t let their children play at the Hart house?” Elterman asked.
“Yes, I do. The head of Dash’s soccer division said to another mother, ‘Dash is skateboarding alone late at night, at one o’clock in the morning. He’s adrift in the community. His father doesn’t see it. He says, “Stay out of my business. Dash is fine. He’s happy.” Well, he’s not. Where is this boy’s mother?’ The mother he was talking to told him, ‘Dash’s mother has been in court for —’”
“Mrs. Richardson,” Dr. Elterman interrupted. “I’ll have to talk to Suzanne MacGregor about all this.”
I sat, stunned. Why? “Suzanne doesn’t live there any more; she’s been gone six months, even more. Why would you need to speak to her?” I was struck violently once again by the contrast between Elterman’s treatment of information that damned Peter and information that damned me. In previous years, when Dash went marching into his office saying “I hate Dave” or “They question me non-stop” Dr. Elterman never called us. Now he wanted to rush me out of his office so he could call Suzanne MacGregor. Suzanne appeared in Elterman’s report saying that, in all the years she and Peter lived together, there had been only “a few” occasions when Peter had consumed an “unreasonable” amount of alcohol, but that Peter “might have addressed this through counselling if it did not have ramifications for the custody case.” A few months later, during the second custody trial, Dr. Elterman told the judge that, when his report was released to Peter and me, Suzanne had called him right away. She had not meant to say that. Elterman had got it wrong. Flustered and probably panicking, she must have realized her injudicious comment about treatment had substantiated an issue Peter had successfully denied for years — the very existence of his drinking — and flagged that it was a problem so substantial that he should have been in counselling.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Elterman sounded bored and irritated, and it flustered me. There was so much more I wanted to say.
“Dr. Elterman, have you heard of Parental Alienation Syndrome?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Do you believe in it?” I asked. “Do you believe that a parent is capable of alienating a child from the other parent?”
“Do you mean, do I think this is a bogus syndrome? No, I don’t. I have been involved in about twenty cases.” It was like drawing blood to get anything even close to a dialogue going. I felt as though we were in parallel universes.
“Then you know of Dr. Richard Gardner? Have you read his book?”
“Yes, I read his book.”
“Well, I have, too. Dr. Norman Goodwell and the therapist I’ve been seeing for years, Dr. Bob Armstrong, believe like I do that Dash is a PAS child. I believe Dr. Gardner when he says PAS is child abuse and that children are profoundly affected by it.” I was desperate to add something that would shake him out of his complacency. I had one shot and I didn’t want him to go off and talk to Suzanne only about alcohol; that was just one of the factors. PAS is emotional abuse. I wanted him to understand that dramatic PAS interventions were needed here: the alienation had to be reversed. In order to do that, Dash had to see me or Dash had to be moved. But I was getting nothing from Elterman. I felt as if I had to beg for his time, but I couldn’t get impatient. I needed him.
“I believe that what is behind all this is that Dash has not been given permission to have a relationship with me, his mother, whom he loves. I see it destroying him. I have looked at my own contributions to this situation, but Dr. Elterman, in my mind there is only one possible conclusion — that my son has been programmed, that it has gone unchecked for years, and Dash is now entirely capable of taking on the campaign against me himself, with minimal help from his father. That is Parental Alienation Syndrome.”
“Well, obviously I have to talk to Peter. I will also be seeing Dash. Is there anything else?” Is there anything else!
“Well. I have a folder here with all the documents, affidavits, letters, and reports I have referred to and a list of people I would like you to contact.” It was on the tip of my tongue to add “if you don’t mind” and I wanted to kick myself.
“I really do need to call Ms. MacGregor now,” Elterman repeated.
Great. “Dr. Elterman, with all due respect, I believe Suzanne is one of Peter’s enablers. I don’t believe she is capable of giving honest information about Dash or Peter, because she is entrenched. You have to be either with Peter or you’re against him, and for her own reasons she chose to protect him and let all this happen while she was living there.” Oh, no. I’ve blown it by talking about “enablers.” He said six years ago that I “overpsychologize.” Labelling others wasn’t going to convince Elterman that what I was saying had merit. I had said too much. I got no sense that Elterman had shifted at all, or was able to shift, or that he was even concerned. I had a lot more to say, but thought I had probably talked about enough of the wrong things to warrant my leaving it where it stood. My time was clearly up anyway. I stood and without shaking hands we parted.
Elterman’s new report hardly deviated from his earlier two. He admitted no errors and stuck to his original story. Yes, Dash and I were alienated from each other, but he used the word in a general sense — implying that we had become detached from each other. He must not have believed my story, because his recommendation was not to “get the child out of Peter’s house and get Peter into substance abuse and psychiatric counselling” but that Dash and I should go to “counselling together for perhaps ten or twelve sessions in order to become re-aligned better as mother and son.” Peter’s behaviour was more of an omission than commission. “I do not believe that the responsibility for this can be placed entirely on Mr. Hart although perhaps he could have been more vocal and insistent that Dash go on access visits. It is not good enough to simply say that it is entirely the child’s choice. Mr. Hart possibly could have insisted at times and said that it was important to him that Dash have a relationship with his mother. There are, however, other sources of this apparent alienation, which emerges in Dash as a distance and a mistrust of his mother” — our “questioning” of Dash, Dash’s troubles with Dave, and on and on. In Dr. Elterman’s opinion, our alienation was something that had just happened, an incompatibility of sorts, not something that had been done to us.
Although Dr. Elterman believed Peter needed to address his alcohol use or it would “increasingly affect his professional and pe
rsonal life,” he didn’t appear to think Dash was already in an unhealthy environment. Dash, Elterman said, was still Peter’s first priority. He asserted that Peter had Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which even Peter said he didn’t have, but which apparently explained what to the rest of us looked like intoxication. He devoted just half a line to Dash’s threat to jump out a window. He didn’t mention Peter’s verbal abuse of me or his bullying of Dash.
Still, some of Dash’s responses to his questions in their interview must have struck Elterman as odd. When Elterman asked eleven-year-old Dash what he liked about living with his father, Dash said, among other things, “He gives me respect.” What did Dash mean by respect, Elterman wanted to know. “He says ‘You can have the bigger half’ or ‘I’ll get some later for myself.’” Dash’s inability to see anything negative in his father or their relationship was textbook PAS, but Elterman didn’t label it or interpret it as alarming, even though it was peppered throughout the report. About Dave: “He’s the opposite of my dad.” About whether or not Dash missed me in 1995, when he saw me for only a handful of hours all year: “I didn’t miss her because I associated her with the back and forth. I sort of miss my mom now, but because of how she’s been acting, I don’t feel that right now.” And what Dash didn’t like about being with his father: “Nothing.” Still my shoulders sagged as I read. Despite the curiosities, there was nothing in here that would help Dash, and when Dr. Elterman took the stand, he began his court testimony with assurances that Dash was a capable and mature boy. “Is he a child who is in any trouble emotionally?” Elterman asked the court grandly. “I don’t believe so.” Dash was “a reasonably happy boy made unhappy only by the court proceedings.” “He is self-confident, with good self-esteem.”
A Kidnapped Mind Page 16