A Kidnapped Mind

by Pamela Richardson

  When I told Drs. Goodwell and Armstrong in early 1997 that I wanted Dr. Elterman’s reports investigated, they encouraged me to go for it and said they would support me. If I could bring a case of negligence against Dr. Elterman, an independent assessor might be appointed to investigate our case. If that happened I was sure that the PAS would come out. No judge would leave Dash in that home if that happened. So, in April 1997, both Goodwell and Armstrong had written to the Professional Standards Committee of the B.C. College of Psychologists and asked that my case be investigated for evidence of professional misconduct and breaches of ethics — extraordinary and brave acts in a closed professional community such as theirs.

  A month passed with no reply, so I called and asked the registrar of the college, Dr. Ed Kramer, if he had received my complaint. He told me brusquely that he had sixty complaints on his desk. Yes, he had mine, but wouldn’t get to it until July or August.

  So I waited. And waited.

  Then I called. And called. And called again.

  At the end of August 1997, the college had written and asked for more documentation, including release forms that would allow them to interview Drs. Goodwell and Armstrong. I organized all the documentation in a binder, sent it by courier, and waited again. Another month passed with no word. I called and Dr. Kramer told me he had not received my package. “That’s curious,” I said. “I sent it by courier. I received a delivery confirmation. Why don’t I call you back after I speak with the courier company.” I called the company and they confirmed that the package had been delivered a month earlier. I called Kramer back and in the meantime my package had miraculously been found. It had been “put away in a confidential file.” By then six months had passed since the complaint had been filed.

  I waited five more months. I called Drs. Armstrong and Goodwell occasionally to see if they had been contacted, but they had not. Two months later again, in mid-March 1998, three months before I sat in the intervention meeting thinking of my next step, the college wrote and told me that an investigator had been hired after a long delay caused by a “lack of funds.” The investigator had presented an initial report to the college. Dr. Elterman had been asked to respond. I waited for more news while another month ticked by. Then another two. Eight more months would pass until I reached the end of my rope. In November 1998, I wrote to the college and told Dr. Kramer I was prepared to pursue legal action against the college for its inaction on my complaint. That got their attention.

  In January 1999, twenty months after I had filed my complaint, I received a definitive response from the college. My complaint did not “in any respect” “constitute grounds under which the board of the college could act.” It dismissed my argument. It dismissed Dash. It never did interview Drs. Goodwell and Armstrong. I had known them in a therapeutic capacity, the college said, prior to making my complaint, and neither of them had had any contact with Dash or Peter. But! But! I wanted to protest. Just talk to them! Conduct an inquiry! That’s all I want! I had sent four hundred pages of documents, given them two well-respected psychologists, and nearly two years to investigate. I had given them strong prima facie evidence and believed it would have been enough to pry open my case.

  My allegation that Dr. Elterman had made an improper diagnosis by attributing Peter’s erratic and unstable behaviour to AADD the college dismissed by downgrading Elterman’s strongly worded reported opinion to a mere “belief.” It said, “There is no evidence … that Dr. Elterman did expressly diagnose Mr. Hart as having AADD, nor indeed did Dr. Elterman systematically set out to assess whether or not Mr. Hart suffers from AADD, but rather Dr. Elterman just stated his belief in that regard.” When is a court-ordered psychologist’s belief a belief and when is it an opinion? Dr. Elterman believed Peter was Dash’s “psychological parent,” and that belief saw the custody of a five-year-old go to an erratic, occasionally violent, uncommunicative, non-negotiating alcoholic. Why wasn’t Dr. Elterman’s belief that Peter had AADD considered similarly solid? In a field where so little is actually “provable” these definitions seemed utterly situational. Did they shift to suit the circumstances?

  Not only had the college not talked to Goodwell or Armstrong, it had not called me, Peter, Dash, or any of my listed corollaries. Its members spoke to only one person before throwing out my claim: Dr. Michael Elterman. The college didn’t send me a copy of his responses, even though I asked for it and it was within the college’s by-laws to do so. “You will note the operative word,” I was told rather tersely, is “may, not must.” Like Emperor penguins huddling through the Antarctic winter, the members closed ranks around Elterman. The committee went a step further and decided that, because I had eventually threatened legal action, I was “adversarial and litigious” and would therefore never be satisfied with “any result other than the one you want.” It was Peter’s old argument and the same argument that has suppressed women for centuries. What then was termed “uppity” and “unfeminine” now was described as “litigious,” and they believed it of me without asking me a single question. The college’s letter also suggested that I had sought an investigation in order to help my custodial position, and I wrote back in disgust. “My child is the victim of extreme parental alienation at the hands of his father. Whatever the outcome of the investigation, it will have no bearing on my situation, and I did not start this process with that objective in mind. I have no expectation that a change of custody would even function, so bad is the situation. The psychological damage done to my child by a man described by Dr. Elterman as a “perfect parent” is probably irreparable, and I hold no hope of reconciliation.”

  Out of the ashes of disaster, though, came a phoenix.

  To apply some pressure to the college during the many months of its stalled or non-existent investigation, I had sent a copy of my complaint to then–attorney general, Ujjal Dosanjh. Twelve months before the college finally threw out my claim, the office of the attorney general offered to appoint Allison Burnet, a senior child advocate, to our case, to “act in the interest of the child.” I had been so crushed by my experiences with clueless bureaucracies, that I had simply filled out the form requesting an advocate, sent it in, and forgot about it, expecting nothing to happen. What I got was a powerhouse who knocked the system, like a roach, onto its back. The child-advocate program was not designed with neutrality or impartiality in mind. Instead, the advocates can take strong partisan positions on behalf of the child. The child advocate is allowed to take sides, favour one parent over another, oppose both parents, or even oppose the child if he is acting against his own best interests. Here finally was the super parent I had been searching for in the courts for so long. I wouldn’t have cared if she decided against me as well as Peter, or if too much water really had passed under the bridge for Dash to accept it. If she wanted to send Dash to a residential school or an intervention program out of the province to get him away from Peter or to slap us both in jail and raise him herself, I didn’t care. Whatever works. I just wanted Dash safe.

  At the beginning of March, three months, before the intervention meeting, Allison Burnet strode into my house in a tailored suit and high heels. I was struck by how feminine, or more to the point, how female, she looked. Where I had been intimidated and tried not to be noticed or hit with the stereotypes women in court are hit with, she projected an air of utter invincibility. Just try it, she seemed to say. Just try and get to me.

  We settled in at the kitchen table with hot coffee and I told her my story. I knew Allison was going to see Peter right after me, and I knew how persuasive he was. My worry was borne out when she called me that afternoon.

  “Pam, have you ever thought of just taking a break from trying to see Dash? Just wait for him to come to you?” she asked.

  I flew into action. I couldn’t watch another professional miss this. I begged her to grant me another interview. I had not hit my mark the first time, so I gathered more documentation, including Dr. Richard Gardner’s book with all its sticky notes.
I took with me to her office the manipulative faxes Peter had sent, his scrawled ravings to my lawyer, the transcripts of the teachers’ evidence from the year before, Dr. Beyerstein’s report, and the letters from Drs. Goodwell and Armstrong. I walked Allison carefully through the history of the case from the first trial onward; how I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that my son was a programmed child and that the last thing in the world he needed was for me to fall out of his life in the hope that he would come to me.

  “He won’t ever come. The time will never be right, Allison. There will always be something, because his father hates me so much that he has never given Dash permission to have a relationship with me. This goes very deep and goes back nearly ten years.”

  Allison looked at me and nodded. “You know, I saw this,” she said. “I saw Peter denigrate you in front of Dash during our visit, many times. If he can’t control himself even when he is with me, someone whose reason for being in his house is, to a certain extent, to judge his parenting, God knows what he must do when they are alone.”

  What I had said had meshed with what she had seen with her own eyes, and from that moment she became my strongest ally and Dash’s lifeline.

  Peter said Dash didn’t want an advocate and already had “a lawyer of his choice, whom he is very satisfied with.” Dash was “adamant” that he did not want to be “questioned” or have his teachers “questioned.” Dash, Peter’s affidavit said, “has had it. His last two years of primary school were made miserable by his mother’s actions, and during the last half of grade seven when Pamela started to attend the school, he became alienated from his teacher and the vice-principal, both of whom he got along well with before she began attending.” I knew Peter’s story by heart by now. If only we could all just chill out, cool off, take a break, Dash would be fine, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Citing respect for Dash’s wishes to be left alone, Peter refused to let Allison talk to Dash, and refused her access to Dash’s files at Lord Byng.

  Allison Burnet wouldn’t have a bit of it. She went straight to court and demanded that Justice Brenner force Peter to “provide the child for an interview” and sign the file-release form. Brenner ordered it, and I was shocked at his total lack of resistance to Allison. Someone had finally pushed Peter onto his back. I cried with relief when I called Dave and told him. I knew now that she was going to get us what we needed. She could help Dash. Allison Burnet talked more with me, and spoke to Dash’s educators and other parents in the community. She came firmly to the view that Dash was a full-blown PAS child and that his best interests were patently ill-served by both his father and himself. She was going to support me.

  A month later, with the iron-clad support of the family advocate, Jamie served on Peter a notice of motion: we wanted interim custody of Dash. In the alternative we wanted three months of unbroken access over the coming summer. We had to have time together, to “break the back of the alienation,” as Allison Burnet said. It’s what I had told a dozen judges for over seven years.

  Dash phoned me and left a message that he wanted to see me. Of course you do, I thought, weight hanging like a saddle across my shoulders. Dash’s first visit in two years was no more than Peter sending Dash, armed and loaded, to shut me down. Though Peter’s story for years had been “I just can’t get the kid to go,” he could get Dash to visit me, and he could do it whenever he needed to. As I drove to pick up Dash the next day, my stomach had been clenched for twenty-four hours.

  Still, the fact was that Dash had finally been given permission to see me. He held my hand all the way home. I made a big lunch, with fat sandwiches, cookies, milk, fruit, and chocolate, which we ate out in the back garden with Quin, now six years old, and Mimi as we planned our day. Dash wanted to go shopping for clothes, so off we went, just the two of us. Colby and Dave were fishing with Dave’s dad in Saskatchewan, and Mimi and Quin waved us off as though we, too, were going on holiday. That day he was telling jokes and acting silly. Nearly fourteen years old, he held my hand happily, which surprised and delighted me. His body had changed. His face was growing up. In the skate store he caught me looking at him and smiled broadly. I hadn’t seen him for so long that it was surreal being with him. It was still so easy. Every minute had a dreamlike quality, and even the most mundane events were punctuated with intense feeling. Renting the evening’s movie took on the significance of viewing a Fabergé egg collection. I had my son back — if only for the day, I had him.

  We drove home. When I asked Dash to call his dad and let him know he was staying for dinner, he answered, “He knows. He told me to visit you today.” Okay, here it comes. But still he said nothing. I prepared burgers and homemade fries for dinner, and the three of us hung out. Quin was beside himself that his big brother was there, and Dash was as calm and peaceful as I’d seen him in years. He visited his room and looked around at all his stuff. He picked up the framed photographs and looked at them with real interest and flipped through the photo albums I had left out for him. The three of us curled up and watched the movie, Dash’s legs lying over mine, Quin tucked under my arm. It was impossible to believe anything had ever happened between us. It was heaven. I waited patiently for him to say what he had to say, but he said nothing. He was stretching out his time with me. We made sundaes. Dash’s serving was huge and he ate the whole thing, hamming it up for Quin, who shrieked with laughter. Dash giggled; I held my stomach and howled. We cleaned up the kitchen and I told Dash I should probably be getting him home. He nodded, the smile wiped immediately off his face, and he started to gather up his shopping bags. Our day had been so wonderful, but I was beginning to feel sick. I dreaded the drive. Quin jumped in the back seat, Dash in the front, and a few blocks from his home he let go of my hand. I gripped the wheel and forced myself to be calm.

  “You like me visiting, don’t you, Mom?” he said.

  “Yes, Dash, I love it.”

  “Well you could see me more if you stopped the court stuff.”

  “I don’t see you, Dash. And I haven’t for nearly three years.”

  “I’ve read some papers,” he said. “About more court stuff.”

  I turned briefly and looked at him. He was composed, emotionless. I smiled. It may have come out as a grimace, but it was dark and I tried. “Dash,” I said gently, “you’ve been sent on a mission today, and now that you’ve delivered the message, we don’t need to discuss it any further. Let’s just get you home.”

  “I’ll never see you again if you don’t stop.”

  Oh, Dash. How can you possibly bear this? I wanted to keep driving. Over the border. To Mexico. Get this boy away from his life.

  “Dash, I don’t see you now,” I said again. “I don’t see you.” My voice was low. I wanted to soothe him. I knew he melted when I spoke to him with such love; he was melting now. He didn’t want what he was saying. He didn’t speak. “I don’t think it’s fair for your father to send you as a messenger, do you?” I said. He nodded quietly. He knew. “Your father should call me when he wants to tell me something. He should discuss these things with me directly.” Dash nodded again. Surely what I said made more sense than what he had been told to say.

  “If I have to come and see you, I’ll just get on a bus and go home,” he said, but it sounded hollow and childish, put on.

  “Dash, the courts have been very patient with your dad. You know they have been. But they are losing their patience.”

  At that Dash shut down. “I don’t want to discuss this now,” he said. He stared out the window and hauled his bag full of new clothes up onto his lap as if preparing to make a break for it. Stopped in front of his house, my heart was hammering. When will I see you again? Will I see you again? I wanted to ask. “I love you,” I said. I knew what was coming. Dash got out and stared at the ground for a long time. Then he spoke.

  “This is goodbye.”

  Peter’s lawyer called the interim-custody hearing “frivolous,” “vexatious,” and an “abuse of process,” but Allison Burnet wasn’t
scared of those guys. She had the power in this courtroom. She didn’t mind insulting the judge; his order had been a bad one. “I think this is a sorry state of affairs — when a court can listen to twenty-nine days of evidence, determine that this child should be seeing his mother, and still the child never gets to see his mother — and something has to be done to protect this child’s emotional well-being,” she said.