Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / TikTok Famous: Parental Alienation and Barricaded Bedrooms
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to It's All Your Fault Untrue Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California, where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In this episode, we're going to discuss a case in the United States state of Utah, about a teenager who barricaded himself along with his sister in his room for a couple of months to defy a court order, returning him from his mother's home to his father's home. We'll break this high conflict custody battle down about, first a couple of notes. If you have a question about a high conflict situation, please send it to podcast high conflict institute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Please give us a rate of review and spell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We're very grateful. Speaker 1 (01:27): Okay, so as many of our listeners know, we often talk about high conflict divorce and high and custody battles with alienation, or as some people call it parental alienation, being a driving force behind many of these battles. So that's today what we're gonna talk about. Recently, a young man, a a 15 year old boy in Utah sent out some TikTok videos into the universe that detailed his family's high conflict drama. According to him, he barricaded himself along with his 12 year old sister inside a room at their mother's house in order to avoid a judge's order to reunite them with their allegedly abusive father. His videos detailing this harrow and dramatic experience have made him TikTok famous at the very least. But the issue in many or most alienation cases is that the courts don't know who to believe is mom lying. Is dad lying? Speaker 1 (02:28): It's a mess for the courts to identify what's happening. Are the kids lying? So today, bill, we're going to do something a little different and how we present this and talk about it. And so I'm gonna provide the details first or some of the details. We'll have you chime in here and there, but I'd like our listeners to hear these details and try to decide who's telling the truth. Is Dad doing something he shouldn't? Is mom doing something she shouldn't. What's happening here? So I want you to think about that as you listen and then, uh, we'll dive into it and break it down based on, on all these details. Um, I know Bill has a lot, you have a lot to say on this, so we'll talk, talk a lot about it. So let's start with the details. The young man, 15 year old, uh, his name is Ty. Speaker 1 (03:19): He said he was abused both sexual, sexually and emotionally by his father until age 11. When he disclosed those allegations, he said his sister also faced abuse when she was younger. Uh, the young man said, quote, my own word does not matter, and they do not believe my truth. There was a child protective service investigation that deemed the sexual and emotional abuse the allegations against the father to be credible. This resulted in restrictions related to his kids, but he did not face criminal charges. Uh, the father is now facing an ongoing criminal investigations of some new allegations. Previous allegations from 2021 ended after, uh, not enough evidence was found. Two other police departments report investigating dad for child abuse. Now, dad's attorney denies all allegations saying there have been sim similar false claims repeatedly for years. The stories continue to change and expand each time, always about the same events. Speaker 1 (04:27): And that was end quote. Dad claims that his ex-spouse, who is also the children's mother, sabotaged his relationship with the kids through parental alienation. The young man, the son Ty, said that claims against mom are 100% fake. Mom denies accusations of parental alienation. The judge agreed with the claim and ruled that mother's conduct has caused the children's abuse narrative leading to reunification therapy. The judge wants the children and father to undergo a reunification process at a facil facility out of state. Uh, so Bill, I imagine that so far this is sounding so somewhat familiar and listeners, are you forming an opinion yet? Who's lying? Who's telling the truth? The father is not being allowed to spend unsupervised or overnight time with the children and the kids must stay at their paternal relative's home pending more, uh, court orders during time at reunification camp, the young man when he revealed these allegations of abuse, alleged abuse when he was 11. Speaker 1 (05:35): Um, at that time his mother took him to a doctor to deal with panic attacks and anxiety. He accused his father of holding his head underwater when he was four, while running the faucet in his anus until he couldn't breathe, uh, when he was eight years old. There's other sexual abuse allegations and he also said Dad threatened to kill his mother and sister if he told anyone about the abuse. The younger sister dis disclosed, alleged abuse to her mom around seven years old. And the state agency found both children's claims to be supported. Uh, so then the young man says in the TikTok video that he's barricading himself inside the home, the room at his mother's home to remain safe. Food is being delivered to the children's room by their mother. The young man, Ty drilled a hole in the wall to reach the bathroom. Uh, the judge has sharply criticized the mother for apparently enabling her kids' rejection of the court ruling. The kids are not attending school and the young man said in the video quote, the court system isn't trying to save us. Nobody's trying to keep us safe. So the court, uh, has spent many, many hours growing through evidence and testimony and it's a mess . So Bill, well let me ask first listeners, do you know what's happening here? Who's telling the truth? Who do you believe? Okay, bill, let's break it down Speaker 2 (07:03): There. Sounds like about six of my cases that I'm consulting on right now. So let's start with that. You have to have at least three theories of the case and really any high conflict case, kids say, dad's, dad's acting badly. And you have to consider that's a real possibility. You have to investigate that. Dad says Mom's acting badly. So you have to take that seriously and you have to investigate that and you have to consider the possibility that both are acting badly. And I have had each of these cases, okay? And, and it's not unusual. So let's, let's apply this general approach to this specifics of this uh, type of case. This has allegations of child sexual abuse, which is not common in divorce cases. Only about two or 3% of cases have those. So it's important to know that's not usual. Also, parental alienation is probably about 20% of custody disputes in family court have allegations of parental alienation that one parent is doing something, whether on purpose or not to discourage the children from a normal relationship with the other parent. Speaker 2 (08:37): A lot of these cases that are hard to figure out have those two opposing allegations, child abuse and alienation. Now it's possible people jump to conclusions often based on the children's behavior, but you're actually not supposed to figure this case out by going, what's the child's behavior? So the child's resisting going with dad, does that mean dad did something wrong? A lot of people jump to that conclusion. A lot of other people say, does that mean that mom's alienating the kids and that their resistance is attributable to mom? And when you do a parental alienation investigation, you don't attribute the child's behavior to either parent, you don't consume it just because they're at mom's house. It must be because mom's doing something wrong. So you have to dig deeper on the surface. These cases look the same. It's everybody's angry, everybody's pointing fingers, there's lots of emotion and you can't assume anything. Speaker 2 (09:51): I don't know if you're familiar with this saying, but from drug and alcohol treatment, we used to teach that assume makes an ass out of you and me ass. I have heard that and these cases operate on assumptions. A lot of people get involved who don't know what's going on and take positions and escalate them. This is the classic high conflict custody case. Now, some things you've said bear looking into. One is Child Protective Services said the allegations by both kids were credible. I would wanna know the details of that and I wanna, I guess start with that. I've had allegations of child sexual abuse cases that were true and a couple cases people went to jail because of that. Police were involved and it was proven true. I've had cases that were false. And in some of those cases the parent honestly believed it was true, but they were for one reason or another distorting their perceptions of what was going on. Speaker 2 (11:04): And evaluations and investigations basically showed up. It's the parent's overreaction and not child sexual abuse. The third possibility I've also had, which is a apparent, was knowingly making false allegations in order to get something, an advantage money, this or that. And I've had those. When you have a case like this, the key thing is the interviews of the child and the best cases they record the first interview with the child because if you interview the child 20 times and I had a case like that, it goes from nothing to something over those 20 interviews. The child absorbs what the answers are supposed to be and then starts giving the answers they think that the parent wants to hear. That's why you wanna record the very first interview. And that's why any parents who are listening, if this is a concern in a case you have or somebody you know, don't interrogate the kids, get them to professional like Child Protective Services to do a videotaped interview so that the case starts with credible evidence. Speaker 2 (12:24): Years ago, 30 years ago, when I graduated law school, I was studying this issue cuz there were several big cases going on and the conclusion, one of the states, I think it was New Jersey, required a taint hearing to see if the child's, uh, evidence had been tainted by interviewing. Because the interviewing process influences specialty kids. So you need to know what's that interview look like. And you need to know what the details are. You have to have to ask a ton of questions. You can't just go, oh, okay, well I get it. You have to ask the child. So are you sure that's what happened? Did anyone tell you to say that's what's happened? Uh, what were you wearing when that happened? Those kinds of questions. So you had to really be open-minded and not have what we call confirmation bias. An assumption in your brain of what the right answer is because if you do, the child will pick that up. Speaker 2 (13:31): I would wanna know a lot about that. I'd wanna know the interview, I'd wanna watch the video. One case I had four year old girl in the recorded interview, she was speaking normally, this and that. And then when she would say things like I was touched or this and that, she would change her voice and her voice became a growly voice and she was for some unconscious reason, sorting her voice. And it turned out in that case that those statements were false and uh, they had been influenced by the mother. Anyway. So that's one thing. Now, polygraph tests are another thing. They're not admissible in court. But if I ever had clients accused of sexually abusing a child, one of the first things I said is, I want you to get a polygraph test. And this isn't determined what's happening, but it may help us figure out what to do. And they come back with a polygraph test that says they're not lying, that they're being honest, that they're being consistent. Then I'm much more enthusiastic in looking into that maybe this really didn't happen. And what's interesting is I had a case early on where the mother also did the polygraph test and it said that she was, uh, distorting that she was deceptive. And it turned out that that's really what was happening. She was influencing the child and she was one of those knowingly false cases. Speaker 1 (15:10): And, and Bill I that that's, it's so fascinating with the the polygraphs. And I recently heard a, a criminal investigator, uh, a homicide investigator say that, uh, when they su he suggests a polygraph to, um, suspects. He's less interested in how the test comes out often, um, than he is whether they're willing to take it or not. Speaker 2 (15:33): Right. You know, when with that case I was telling you about that case was 20 years ago, I think I got to meet with the, uh, police officer who does the polygraph. And he really revealed a lot to me of the whole context that there's a lot, it's not just the graph, it's the discussion. It's, it's a lot of context. It's the questions you ask first, all this stuff. And I don't wanna say too much cuz I don't wanna influence it. Yeah. But, but anyway, so getting evidence is the key. So I've been talking about child sexual abuse, then let's look for evidence of parental alienation. So if you can't just assume the child's behavior is because of the mother, you have to see is the mother doing alienating behaviors? And that's one of the strict rules that many people don't follow, is they attribute the child's behavior to the parent without knowing is the parent actually doing anything because the child may be legitimately afraid of the other parent or not. Speaker 2 (16:47): So with parental alienation, what's the parent saying? What's their body language? Do they hate the other parent? When did this begin? And with divorce cases, it's often at the time of separation somebody's upset and angry about that. But there's cases where the alienation begins even before the separation because one of the parents is just a very high conflict person. So you look at what are they saying, what's the body language, what do other people see, what's been written? And, and one thing that's fantastic in these cases is looking at the history of emails and text messages because you often see like all or nothing language from one person and the other person's trying to be reasonable. Speaker 1 (17:38): Yeah. Digital, the digital world has changed investigations tremendously. Speaker 2 (17:43): Yes, yes, yes. And judges get a lot of these emails and texts and they go, okay, this is one of those cases that's mom, or this is one of those cases that's dad, or this is one of those cases that's both people looking, pointing fingers and actually acting badly at the same time. So I guess I don't wanna get too long-winded here, but the idea is you have to look for detailed evidence and you have to know the evidence you're looking for. You can't make assumptions. Assumptions are what ruins these cases, and the world has assumptions. And if he's on TikTok and it's on the news and all of that, most people are gonna have assumptions, but very few people are gonna have evidence. Speaker 1 (18:32): Interesting. So in, in this case, the judge ruled that reasonable force could be used to enter the, the door and, and get these children out. What, what's your, what are your thoughts on that bill? Speaker 2 (18:44): Okay, so this is because it's an alienation case. The judge is seeing it as in an alienation case, a severe alienation case. There's some where the child's resistant, but you know, still goes but complains. This is a severe, severe case where the children are that resistant, but kids resist. And if they've done a thorough, thorough, thorough investigation and concluded there's no child abuse, there's no domestic violence, there's no emotional abuse, that that's all been thoroughly explored. And that mom really is doing alienating behaviors. And there's a five factor model to examine for alienation. One of them is alienating behaviors that the parent is saying, doing disruptive things, undermining things, all of that. And repeatedly over months and years, you know, it did our webinar on, uh, resistance and refusal in the child's brain and repetition in isolation from the other parent. The child really absorbs one parent's point of view. Speaker 2 (20:05): And if they're between nine and 13, they start losing their memories of the other parent because there's a lot of pruning going on in the brain. It may not be all memories, but some memories. So you wanna investigate for that and see if, if mom's doing these things and dad really isn't doing these things, then in a severe case, the most effective approach appears to be an intensive like weekend, like four days with the rejected parent. So the court makes an order that kids are going with dad in this case that within four days it's almost like magic. The kids are back to the relationship they had before the breach occurred. And it's often less than 24 hours. It's just amazing. And with that, they say the other parents should have 60 or 90 days of staying away of no contact. So the child can really solidify their reconciliation with the parent that they used to be close to. Speaker 2 (21:15): And that used to be close to relationships, an important piece that has to be looked at too. So you get something like that and it's like magic and it works. So forcing the child to go kicking and screaming is often how they start. And within 24 hours of being engaged with that rejected parent, they're kind of back to normal. So it may sound harsh, but if all that good investigating has been done, then that's what makes sense. Now I wanna say I've been involved in cases that weren't well in investigated and that method was used and it wasn't successful. And within four days there wasn't a wonderful relationship. You have to really make sure you're doing, you've done all that research. And part of this is people's opinions can get in the way. So judges, lawyers, therapists, evaluators have their own opinions and they have to be good at being objective. And that's the key with all of this. So that's, that's it in a nutshell. . Speaker 1 (22:32): All right. Well, I think, uh, you know, we can see why it's such a dilemma for a judge and for anyone who is looking at a case like this or, you know, reading about it in the newspaper, it's, it's just, it's very challenging until you take what you've said into consideration. So, um, unfortunately a lot of judges might not have the, this kind of information going into, uh, a family court role. And it, they're, they're faced with some really tough stuff. So, uh, my, my, my sympathies lie with the judges and, and with the kids and, and everyone involved in these cases of course. So we can all get more educated and I think it's a wise thing to do. So, all right, thank you Bill and, uh, thank you listeners for being here today Speaker 1 (23:23): Next week. We hope you'll join us when we discuss the leaking of classified documents by a 21 year old Massachusetts Air National Guard employee who posted highly sensitive national security documents online. We'll be talking about why anyone would do this. You know, is he a narcissist needs fame, or to look important to friends and family, we will explore this. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast high conflict institute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast and tell all your friends about us, and we'd be very grateful if you'd leave a review wherever you listen to our podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing high conflict management skills and be kind to yourself and others while we all try to find the missing peace. It's all your fault. It's a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music, by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and zip Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app Laos ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.