VDWVeterans of Domestic Wars

They Said the Word Wasn't Real

Veterans of Domestic Wars (VDW) · Prisoners of War

Essay voice: this is a composite first-person account, drawn from the kinds of stories VDW members tell. It is not anyone's personal biography.

The first time my kid looked at me like I was a stranger, nobody had raised a hand. There was no squad car and no gunfire. It was a Friday pickup in a parking lot, a child in the back seat who wouldn't roll the window down, and a parent in the front seat who didn't have to say a word.

That's how this war takes prisoners. Nobody gets dragged off. A kid gets slowly convinced, one weekend and one whisper at a time, that the other half of who they are is the enemy.

We call it parental alienation. Then you walk into a courtroom and learn that the court won't use that word.

How the Weapon Works

Every veteran of this war will recognize the pattern. The phone calls that "nobody heard." The birthday card that never got handed over. Plans that get scheduled right on top of your weekend. "Your dad doesn't pay for anything." "Your mom chose her boyfriend over you." Then come the reports: a CPS call, a police call, an emergency-room visit, timed for the week before a hearing. Each one gets investigated and closed, and each one still costs months.

Researchers call this "parental alienating behaviors." Jennifer Harman, Edward Kruk, and Denise Hines reviewed the literature in Psychological Bulletin in 2018 and argued that these behaviors should be treated as a form of family violence that can be aimed at a parent of either gender. The damage outlasts the custody case. In a 2005 study in the American Journal of Family Therapy, Amy Baker interviewed adults who had been turned against a parent as children. Their reports clustered around low self-esteem, depression (about seven in ten), substance problems, trouble trusting anyone, and, worst of all, becoming alienated from their own children. The war gets passed down.

How big is it? Nobody has a clean count, and I won't pretend otherwise. In a representative 2016 poll of North Carolina adults, Harman and colleagues found that 13.4% of parents said they'd been alienated from at least one child, and about half of those called it severe. Fathers reported it slightly more often than mothers, but the difference wasn't statistically significant. It's one state and it's self-report. Still, it tells you this isn't a fringe problem, and it isn't only a men's problem.

It Happens to Mothers, Too

I came into VDW angry, and most of my anger pointed one direction. Reading the actual court records cured me of that. If we want to be taken seriously, we tell the truth about both sides.

When fathers were the targets (adjudicated):

  • In re S.E.K., 294 S.W.3d 926 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2009). The trial court found that the mother had engaged in a pattern of parental alienation. The court of appeals affirmed a modification that gave the father sole conservatorship of one child and put the mother's access to that child under supervision.
  • Anastasi v. McHorse, No. 03-23-00274-CV (Tex. App.—Austin Mar. 7, 2024) (mem. op.). CPS ruled out the mother's repeated abuse allegations against the father and his wife. A CPS investigator and the guardian ad litem both testified to concerns that the child was being coached. One forensic finding was never tied to anyone. The trial court named the father sole managing conservator, and the appeals court affirmed.
  • Malhotra v. Henhoeffer, 2018 ONSC 6472, and Bors v. Beleuta, 2019 ONSC 7029 (Ontario). Both courts found deliberate alienation by the mother, called it emotional abuse, and reversed custody to the father.

When mothers were the targets (adjudicated):

  • X, Y and Z (Children: Agreed Transfer of Residence) [2021] EWFC 18 (England). The court found that the father had "significantly alienated his children from their mother over several years." All three children were moved to live with her. The judge called it "the saddest of cases."
  • M.B. v. D.B., 2020 ONSC 790 (Ontario). The court found that the father had severely alienated the children from their mother, treated it as emotional abuse, and moved the younger children to her care with reunification therapy.
  • Canada's case law overall. Nicholas Bala and colleagues reviewed 175 reported Canadian cases from 1989 to 2008 (Family Court Review, 2010). Courts found alienation in 106 of them. In 31% of those cases the alienating parent was the father. The authors tied the higher number for mothers largely to the fact that mothers more often held primary custody. Whoever controls the house controls the narrative.

When "alienation" is the weapon (studied and contested):

Here's the part some people in our movement don't want to hear. The alienation label can be used as a weapon too. Joan Meier's team coded 4,338 U.S. custody opinions from 2005 to 2014 (Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 2020). When a mother alleged abuse, she lost custody 26% of the time. When the father cross-claimed alienation, that rose to 50%. When the court credited the alienation claim, it rose to 73%. Harman and Demosthenes Lorandos answered in 2021 (Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 967 appellate cases). They found that parents found to be alienating lost time and custody regardless of gender. The two teams have been fighting over each other's methods ever since. Serious reviewers on both sides now warn against a single-factor story: real abuse has to be screened first, and some children refuse contact for reasons that aren't "programming" (Johnston & Sullivan, Family Court Review, 2020). In 2023, UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem called parental alienation a "pseudo-concept" (A/HRC/53/36).

Then there's Kayden Mancuso. She was seven when her father killed her in 2018 during court-ordered unsupervised visitation in Pennsylvania, after her mother had warned the court about him. Kayden's Law went into the federal VAWA reauthorization in 2022, and Pennsylvania passed its own version in 2024.

I'm not putting those cases in here to cancel ours. I'm putting them in because they come out of the same machine. Real alienation gets ignored, real abuse gets dismissed, and the court sorts it all out by label instead of by evidence. A protective mother and an erased father are casualties of the same failure.

The Word They Won't Say

This is the lesson our members paid the most to learn.

Stand up in a Texas courtroom and say "parental alienation," and you'll hear some version of we don't recognize that. They're technically right. The Texas Family Code doesn't define parental alienation, and there's no freestanding lawsuit for it. Texas also abolished the old tort of "alienation of affection" between spouses (Tex. Fam. Code §1.107), so the word alienation alone makes some lawyers and judges reach for the dismissal stamp. Psychiatry doesn't settle it either. The DSM-5-TR has no "parental alienation" diagnosis, only a broader code, "child affected by parental relationship distress." The American Psychological Association has no official position on so-called parental alienation syndrome; a 1996 APA Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family "noted the lack of data" to support PAS (APA's later press statement; the task-force report itself is still secondhand in our research pack). The World Health Organization's Classifications FAQ still rejects "parental alienation" as a health-care term and removed related index entries after misuse concerns — and WHO's own ICD-11 clinical guide describes an alienation-type presentation under QE52.0 caregiver–child relationship problem (child allying with one parent and rejecting the other without evidence of maltreatment by the rejected parent), with an abuse-exclusion clause (WHO CDDR 2024, p. 721). Both sides can cite WHO. Neither APA nor WHO gives you a freestanding courtroom diagnosis.

One of our members lived that exchange in Burnet County Cause No. 34,767. He stood there and tried to make the only point that should matter: every factor that makes up parental alienation is already illegal — fraud, abuse, false promises, false reports, interference with possession, statute after statute. He laid the code sections out. The court kept dismissing him the same way the state's lawyers did: we don't recognize that as a legal word.

He wasn't asking them to invent a new tort. He put the dictionary game on the record and asked the question that ends it:

Did the Court find that Parental Alienation as a term is not a valid claim in Texas but that the elements of Parental Alienation are valid tort claims as well as criminal too?

The state's Title IV-D lawyers answered with a Rule 91a motion to dismiss (filed September 12, 2022). Their line, on the record: "no such tort claim exists in law or equity in the State of Texas." He named the pattern. They erased the word. They did not erase the crimes.

Other members have stacks of the same kind of paperwork: motions, orders, and transcripts where the label gets thrown out and the facts underneath it never get heard. Credibility here is simple. Alienation is not the same thing as estrangement. A child can refuse contact for reasons that are justified — abuse, neglect, a parent's own damage. Serious reviewers say you screen for that first. What this essay is about is the other pile: the illegal acts used to manufacture rejection. The case rests on those acts whether or not anyone will say the A-word out loud.

What we learned is that the label doesn't matter, because every piece of the conduct already has a name in Texas law.

  • Keeping a child from court-ordered possession. Taking or keeping a child in knowing violation of a custody order is Interference with Child Custody, a state jail felony (Tex. Penal Code §25.03). A noncustodial parent who entices a child away from the custodial parent is covered by §25.03(b) and §25.04. There is also a civil claim. Anyone who takes, keeps, or hides a child in violation of someone's possessory right can be sued for damages, including mental anguish and, where there's malice, exemplary damages. Anyone who helps is jointly liable (Tex. Fam. Code ch. 42).
  • Denying visitation. That's enforceable by contempt. If a parent violates a possession order, the court shall order that parent to pay the other side's attorney's fees and costs (§157.167(b)). The court may order make-up possession (§157.168(a)). If possession was denied because of a DFPS investigation that found no abuse or neglect, the court shall order make-up time within two years unless good cause is shown (§157.168(a-1)).
  • False CPS / abuse reports. A knowingly false report of child abuse made with intent to deceive is a state jail felony — a third-degree felony if the person was previously convicted under this section — and carries a $1,000 civil penalty to the state (Tex. Fam. Code §261.107(a), (e)). A convicted reporter shall also pay the falsely accused person's reasonable attorney's fees (§261.107(d)). In a pending custody suit, if one party reports abuse against the other knowing the report lacks factual foundation, the court shall deem it a knowingly false report, may use that evidence on conservatorship, and shall impose a civil penalty not to exceed $500 (§153.013). A SAPCR finding that a report was false or lacked factual foundation may also be grounds to restrict that reporter's access to the child (§261.107(b)).
  • Lying under oath. That's perjury. When the lie is material and made in an official proceeding like a custody hearing, it's aggravated perjury, a third-degree felony (Tex. Penal Code §§37.02–37.03). Fabricating evidence is also a third-degree felony (§37.09).
  • Poisoning a child against a parent. Texas defines child "abuse" to include mental or emotional injury that causes "an observable and material impairment in the child's growth, development, or psychological functioning" (Tex. Fam. Code §261.001).
  • Undermining the relationship. Texas public policy is to "assure that children will have frequent and continuing contact" with fit parents (§153.001(a)). Courts deciding joint conservatorship must weigh "whether each parent can encourage and accept a positive relationship between the child and the other parent" (§153.134(a)(3)).

Texas appellate courts have affirmed custody changes on exactly this kind of evidence, as S.E.K. and Anastasi show, whatever name the conduct goes by. So the problem isn't a missing law. The law is on the books, and it mostly goes unenforced. When was the last time you heard of a §25.03 prosecution coming out of a contested custody case? I'm asking honestly. Our members can't remember one.

Fairness cuts both ways here too. The same statute protects a parent who flees with a child to escape family violence (§25.03(c-2)). In 2025, Texas passed HB 3783, which amended Tex. Fam. Code §153.010: a court may not order counseling that isolates a child from a parent, requires overnight or out-of-state stays, forced transport, a change in possession periods, or force, coercion, or verbal abuse — and it may not put a victim in joint counseling with a perpetrator when there's credible evidence of family violence or sexual abuse. The statute does not even use the words "reunification therapy" or "parental alienation." Kids shouldn't be dragged to a camp any more than they should be brainwashed at home. In Michigan in 2015, a judge sent three siblings, ages 13, 10, and 9, to juvenile detention for refusing to have lunch with their father. The Michigan Supreme Court later publicly censured her (In re Gorcyca, 500 Mich. 588 (2017)). Prosecuting a child for being alienated isn't justice. The adults who do the illegal acts should answer for those acts, under laws that already exist.

Follow the Money

Now for the part that turns a family tragedy into a domestic war.

America produced 672,502 reported divorces and annulments in 2023, a rate of 2.4 per 1,000 people, and that count doesn't include five states (CDC/NCHS). The Census Bureau counted about 12.9 million custodial parents in its most recent report (2018 data), and 79.9% of them were mothers. The federal Title IV-D child support program carried about 11.6 million cases covering about 12.2 million children in FY2024. Distributed IV-D collections were about $26.7 billion; total distributed support including non-IV-D was about $29.5 billion (OCSS FY2024 Preliminary Report). Past-due support on the books: $115.73 billion in total arrears due (OCSS Table P-85), with only about $7.5 billion collected as arrears that year.

Here is how the program is funded. The federal government reimburses 66% of a state's IV-D administrative costs with no ceiling — about $4.0 billion of $6.6 billion in FY2024. On top of that, states compete for incentive payments under 42 U.S.C. §658a based on five performance measures: paternity establishment, support orders established, current collections, arrears collections, and cost-effectiveness. OCSS estimated incentive payments for FY2023 at about $532 million (Table P-1; the statutory incentive pool is a different figure — don't conflate them). Federal Access and Visitation grants — the money meant to help parents actually see their kids — run about $10 million a year.

When families are on public assistance, a slice of collections never reaches the child: in FY2024 about $808 million was retained as welfare/foster cost recovery, while only about $150 million was passed through to families (OCSS Table P-1).

Read those numbers side by side. The system is paid to collect and barely funded to reconnect.

Texas law even says the two can't be traded. A court "may not render an order that conditions the right of a conservator to possession of or access to a child on the payment of child support" (Tex. Fam. Code §153.001(b)). That sounds fair until you see how it works in real life. Support has an agency, a federal funding formula, wage withholding, tax intercepts, and license suspension. When a parent misses three months of support and doesn't keep up with a repayment schedule, Texas can suspend driver's, professional, hunting, and fishing licenses (Tex. Fam. Code ch. 232). Visitation has a private lawyer you probably can't afford anymore. One side of the order has an enforcement army. The other side gets a contempt motion and a wait.

The money drives this war, and the research shows how:

  • The debt lands on people who can't pay it. In the Urban Institute's nine-state study for HHS (Sorensen, Sousa & Schaner, 2007), 70% of arrears were owed by parents with no reported income or reported income of $10,000 a year or less.
  • The punishments make paying harder. In a New Jersey survey of suspended drivers (Carnegie, Rutgers/NJ MVC, 2007), which covered all license suspensions and not only child support, 42% lost a job when their license was suspended. Of those, 45% couldn't find another, and 88% of those who did took a pay cut.
  • Debt pushes fathers away from their kids. Turner and Waller (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2017), studying 1,017 nonresident fathers, found that child support arrears were associated with significantly less contact and less day-to-day involvement. The strongest link ran through the relationship between the parents. Debt poisons the co-parenting relationship, and that relationship is the door to the kid.
  • Jail can follow. In Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011), Michael Turner was ordered to pay $51.73 a week. He was jailed for a year for civil contempt without any finding that he was able to pay. The Supreme Court held that his imprisonment violated due process.

Put it together and the pattern is plain. Debt grows faster than a low-wage parent can pay it. The license goes, then the job, and arrears grow. The parent with the kids now holds a ready-made story: your father doesn't even pay for you. The parent without the kids is broke, ashamed, and losing in court, so he shows up less. Every missed weekend gets entered as more evidence.

To be honest about what the research shows: nobody has published a study proving that IV-D incentives cause parental alienation, and I won't claim one did. What the research does show is a system that pays for collections, barely pays for parenting time, and lets support debt erode the bond between a parent and a child. Ask who profits when a parent and a child drift apart. It isn't the child.

Prisoners of War

That's why VDW uses the language of war, and we don't use it lightly.

An alienated child is a prisoner of war, held on one side of a conflict they never chose, taught to hate a parent they used to run to. The alienated parent is missing in action from their own child's life, sometimes for years. A parent sitting in a cell over a support debt that was set on income he never earned is a prisoner of war too. Mothers who were disbelieved and fathers who were erased belong on the same wall.

If you're in it right now, here's what our members wish someone had told them. Stop fighting about the word — the judge may never say it back to you. Document the conduct: the denied weekends, the closed CPS cases, the baseless SAPCR abuse claims, the sworn statements you can prove false, the messages that never got passed along. Every one of those already has a statute number. Lay the statutes out the way he did. Make them answer those out loud, not the dictionary.

And if you're the adult child who finally figured out what was done to you, the door is still open. It always was.

They're Prisoners of War. Remember their names.

Veterans of Domestic Wars (VDW) · Prisoners of War

This essay reflects personal perspective and is not legal or medical advice. Case descriptions are drawn from published court opinions and peer-reviewed research. "Adjudicated" means a court made findings; studies and allegations are labeled as such.

Sources

Research on alienation and harm - Harman, J. J., Kruk, E., & Hines, D. A. (2018). Parental alienating behaviors: An unacknowledged form of family violence. Psychological Bulletin, 144(12), 1275–1299. doi:10.1037/bul0000175 - Baker, A. J. L. (2005). The long-term effects of parental alienation on adult children: A qualitative research study. American Journal of Family Therapy, 33(4), 289–302. doi:10.1080/01926180590962129 - Harman, J. J., Leder-Elder, S., & Biringen, Z. (2016). Prevalence of parental alienation drawn from a representative poll. Children and Youth Services Review, 66, 62–66. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2016.04.021 - Bala, N., Hunt, S., & McCarney, C. (2010). Parental alienation: Canadian court cases 1989–2008. Family Court Review, 48(1). doi:10.1111/j.1744-1617.2009.01296.x - Meier, J. S., et al. (2020). U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: What do the data show? Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 42(1). doi:10.1080/09649069.2020.1701941 - Harman, J. J., & Lorandos, D. (2021). Allegations of family violence in court: How parental alienation affects judicial outcomes. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 27(2). doi:10.1037/law0000301 - UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (R. Alsalem). (2023). Custody, violence against women and violence against children, A/HRC/53/36. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5336-custody-violence-against-women-and-violence-against-children - American Psychiatric Association. (2022). DSM-5-TR: "Child affected by parental relationship distress." - American Psychological Association. Statement on parental alienation syndrome (press page dated Jan. 1, 2008; archived): notes 1996 Presidential Task Force “noted the lack of data” for PAS; APA has “no official position.” - World Health Organization. Parental alienation — ICD FAQ. https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/parental-alienation - World Health Organization. (2024). Clinical descriptions and diagnostic requirements for ICD-11… QE52.0 caregiver–child relationship problem, p. 721. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/375767 - Johnston, J. R., & Sullivan, M. J. (2020). Parental alienation: In search of common ground for a more differentiated theory. Family Court Review, 58(2). doi:10.1111/fcre.12472

Cases where fathers were the alienated parent (adjudicated) - In re S.E.K., 294 S.W.3d 926 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2009). https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-court-of-appeals/1455542.html - Anastasi v. McHorse, No. 03-23-00274-CV (Tex. App.—Austin Mar. 7, 2024) (mem. op.). https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/third-court-of-appeals/2024/03-23-00274-cv.html - Malhotra v. Henhoeffer, 2018 ONSC 6472. - Bors v. Beleuta, 2019 ONSC 7029.

Cases where mothers were the alienated or disbelieved parent - X, Y and Z (Children: Agreed Transfer of Residence) [2021] EWFC 18 (adjudicated). https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2021/18.html - M.B. v. D.B., 2020 ONSC 790 (adjudicated). - Kayden Mancuso (Pennsylvania, 2018), as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Federal Kayden's Law was enacted in the VAWA Reauthorization Act of 2022, and Pennsylvania's Kayden's Law in 2024.

Courts and children - In re Gorcyca, 500 Mich. 588 (2017). https://law.justia.com/cases/michigan/supreme-court/2017/152831.html

Texas filings (label vs. elements — Cause 34,767, Burnet County; co-party names omitted) - Office of the Attorney General, Rule 91a Motion to Dismiss (filed Sept. 12, 2022): “no such tort claim exists in law or equity in the State of Texas” for state-sponsored parental alienation. - Request for Findings (~Sept. 23, 2022): asks whether PA as a term is not a valid Texas claim while its elements remain valid torts and crimes. - Response and Standing Objection (Aug. 17, 2022): “State Sponsored Parental Alienation” framing; public legal argument only — sensitive child narrative and co-party identifiers omitted.

Texas law (https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov, checked Oct. 24, 2026) - Tex. Penal Code §25.03 (interference with child custody), §25.04 (enticing a child), §§37.02–37.03 (perjury, aggravated perjury), §37.09 (tampering with or fabricating evidence). - Tex. Fam. Code §1.107 (alienation of affection abolished), ch. 42 (civil liability for interference with possessory interest), §153.001 (public policy; access not conditioned on support), §153.013 (false report of child abuse), §153.134(a)(3), ch. 157 and §157.168(a)/(a-1) (enforcement; make-up possession; mandatory after unfounded DFPS), §261.001 (abuse definition), §261.107 (false report; state jail / 3d-degree; $1,000 civil penalty; attorney's fees), ch. 232 (license suspension). - Texas HB 3783, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025), amending Tex. Fam. Code §153.010 (court-ordered counseling limits). https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB03783F.htm

Child support, divorce, and money - CDC/NCHS, Provisional number of divorces and annulments and rate: United States, 2000–2023. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm - U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017 (P60-269). https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-269.html - HHS Office of Child Support Services, FY 2024 Preliminary Data Report. https://acf.gov/ocse/policy-guidance/fy-2024-preliminary-data-report-and-tables ; total arrears due $115.73B FY2024 (OCSS Preliminary Report Table P-85); ~$7.47B distributed as arrears (P-86). - Congressional Research Service, The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) Program (IF10113) and Strengthening the Child Support Program (TE10120): 66% federal match, $6.6B administrative costs in FY2024, $532M estimated incentives for FY2023, $10M per year in Access and Visitation grants. - 42 U.S.C. §655 (federal match); 42 U.S.C. §658a (incentive payments); 42 U.S.C. §669b (Access and Visitation grants). - Sorensen, E., Sousa, L., & Schaner, S. (2007). Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation. Urban Institute for HHS/ASPE. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/assessing-child-support-arrears-nine-large-states-and-nation - Carnegie, J. A. (2007). Driver's License Suspensions, Impacts and Fairness Study. Rutgers Voorhees Transportation Center / NJ MVC. https://vtc.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/MVC-DL-Suspension-Study-Final-Report-Vol1_9-13-07_.pdf - Turner, K. J., & Waller, M. R. (2017). Indebted relationships: Child support arrears and nonresident fathers' involvement with children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 79(1), 24–43. doi:10.1111/jomf.12361 - Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-10

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