CultNEWS101 Articles: 4/20/2022 (Occult, Event, Parental Alienation, LGBTQ, Jehovah's Witnesses, Swami Chetananda, Sexual Abuse, Legal, Child Abuse)

Occult, Event, Parental Alienation, LGBTQ, Jehovah's Witnesses, Swami Chetananda, Sexual Abuse, Legal, Child Abuse

 

The Cord: THE RISING POPULARITY OF THE OCCULT IN WESTERN SOCIETY

"The word 'occult' has gained an infamous reputation in western society. Often tied to satanism and 'mystic' practices outside of western world comprehension, using the word occult will frequently garner confused looks and skepticism.

After all, the largest religion in Canada is Christianity – as declared by the 2011 National Household Survey completed by Statistics Canada. In the survey, 22.1 million (67.3 per cent) of the population said that they were Christian.

However, what does 'occult' really mean? How is it interpreted in comparison to "traditional" religions such as Christianity?

Speaking with Rebecca Plett, a professor in the Anthropology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, the same theme was apparent – 'occult' being seen as problematic by society despite its actual definition.

"All occult means is 'hidden'…so you know, there's a number of practices that people do that could remain hidden" Plett stresses.

Instead of the word 'occult' Plett describes how anthropologists would prefer the term 'New Religious Movement' – a term that Britannica describes as "all-new faiths that have arisen worldwide over the past several centuries".

As with the understanding of 'occult', New Religious Movements are seen as alternative religious practices that are outside of the "norm". While not all of these movements are inherently harmful, many have the potential to be, as suggested by Plett.

"[New Religious Movements] pretty often start off as something rather idealistic and then they can turn into something a little bit more harmful, potentially."

In addition, using the term New Religious Movement can be seen as "just a way to kind of put the focus on why people might be interested in joining these groups rather than the harm that they cause." This is an important distinction considering the idealistic viewpoints pushed by many of these religions.

In a world reeling and rapidly shifting due to a global pandemic, it is unsurprising that New Religious Movements with their idealistic views and beliefs are appealing to many. Much of this growth can be seen among younger generations, especially on TikTok. The hashtag WitchTok on the platform has over 25.0 billion views, creators on the app using it to instruct their viewers on how to use crystals, pendulums and tarot."

ICSA Annual Conference: Unpacking Belief Systems

Kat Wallace, Judith Linzer Ph.D.; Sunday, June 26, 2022; 4:00 PM-4:50 PM

"How do people get trapped in cults? One tool cults use is emotional and mental coercion to exercise undue influence keeping people stuck in the group. Even without physically holding people prisoner, it is possible to hold them by building a closed system of beliefs and isolating them from other ideas. This is especially true for people who have grown up in high control groups because when they leave, they don't have a pre-existing set of beliefs to return to. High-control groups often excel at weaving a set of beliefs that are difficult to think one's way around. They form a circular system, using thought-stopping techniques, keeping people unable to think critically for themselves. Once embraced, it is nearly impossible to challenge those beliefs. One of the biggest struggles for Ms. Wallace, as a born-in cult survivor, is changing these implanted core beliefs. Even while logically disagreeing with the cult's beliefs, triggers can be intense. In this workshop we will discuss how cult survivors can change these implanted and debilitating beliefs. We will also discuss how professionals, supportive family, and friends can help people escaping high control organizations unpack and change self-harming beliefs and what might make matters worse for the "escapee". Join Wallace and Dr. Linzer for an exploration of these questions. Wallace will share her personal experiences "detoxing" from being raised a Jehovah Witness. She has spent the past twenty years struggling to get the cult out of her head. Dr. Linzer and Wallace spent years discussing Wallace's cult experience finding many similarities between child custody work and healing cultic experiences. Please join us as we discuss this process of helping someone leave a cult. We will talk for 30 minutes and then open it up to questions for the last 20 minutes."

Frank Report: Strangulation Swami Can't Get Hard Without It

"This is the first in a series on that inestimable guru, J. Michael Shoemaker, AKA Swami Chetananda, 74, a man who women allege likes to strangle them to get his old flaccid member erect.

"It's the only way he can get an erection," one of his students told FR.

Twenty years ago, Richard Read, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote a five-part series on old Swamiji Shoemaker.  His articles were published in the Oregonian.

Read spent three years tracking Shoemaker, investigating alleged financial scams, interviewing members who claimed abuse, and investigating followers' lives to portray the guru-disciple-like activities that Shoemaker and his followers were living.

Read never made a final judgment about the morality or legality of the Shoemaker group.  But we live in different times.

Shoemaker is alive and well and still strangling women to get off. Some of them are traumatized, and some of them are hospitalized. But Shoemaker keeps on.

So how will his activities be looked at now in the post-NXIVM world, the world of Larry Ray of the Sarah Lawrence sex cult fame, or R. Kelly, and others?

These like Keith Raniere all came to a bad end.

Will there be a documentary like Wild, Wild Country, Bad Vegan, Dirty John, Seduced of the Vow?

The new day dawns and suggests that coercive control can bring bad results not only for those gullible enough to come under the sway of leaders such as Shoemaker but also a bad end for the assholes like him who do it to others.

The question is:  Has Shoemaker, and his group stopped abusing and exploiting people?"

Houston Chronicle: Texas Supreme Court rules against Southern Baptist leader accused of rape, a win for survivors

"In a consequential ruling that legal experts say will give Texas sexual abuse survivors more power to sue attackers and the institutions that protect them, the Texas Supreme Court has allowed a lawsuit to go forward in which a Houston man alleges he was repeatedly raped by influential Southern Baptist figure and former Texas Appeals Court judge Paul Pressler.

At issue is Texas' civil statute of limitations, the time period that victims have to file a lawsuit. In 2017, Duane Rollins sued Pressler in Harris County, claiming the longtime conservative political and religious leader first began to molest him when Rollins was a member of Pressler's youth group at various Houston churches in the early 1980s. Pressler and his lawyers denied the allegations and moved to have the case thrown out of court, arguing that Rollins had filed his claims too late.

Rollins, however, said in court papers that trauma from the assaults led him to develop drug and alcohol addictions and suppress those memories until 2016, when they were revealed while undergoing psychiatric treatment in prison, where he was serving a sentence for driving while intoxicated. He argued that the statute of limitations should begin from when he realized he was the victim of the alleged sexual assault, not from when the alleged assault took place.

The state's high court agreed last week and ordered the case be sent back to Harris County district court. Legal experts said the ruling is significant because it opens the door in Texas for people who were sexually abused as children to sue both attackers and institutions that mishandled or concealed the abuses years or decades later.

"It's a massive and important step forward," said Rachael Denhollander, a lawyer and expert on child sexual abuse who was the first person to publicly accused now-imprisoned USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of abuse. "It shows a willingness to bring our justice system in line with what we know about sexual assault."

Lawyers for Pressler did not respond to a request for comment.

Decades of neuroscience research show that about one in three child sex abuse victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that many — particularly those abused by clergy — can develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome that prevents them from recognizing themselves as victims for years, if not decades. The average child abuse victim does not come forward until after their 50th birthday, long after it's possible to file a lawsuit, according to research by ChildUSA, an advocacy group for statute of limitations reforms.

'One thing we now know about sexual assault is that the PTSD and mental neurobiological injury often make it impossible for survivors to fully remember what's taken place or to even be in the position where they're healthy enough to come forward," said Denhollander, who has advised the Southern Baptist Convention and other religious groups on sexual abuse policies. "And that closes the halls of justice to many survivors.'" 

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Commentary: Predatory alienation wrecks lives. Criminalize it.

Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco

Times Union

November 10, 2020

Now that Keith Raniere of NXIVM — a multilevel marketing company that he ran for two decades outside Albany, and which encompassed a secret society of branded sex slaves — has been sentenced to life behind bars, what’s to stop another smooth-talking guru from spinning a web of lies to exploit others? Sadly nothing, for lawmakers have yet to connect the dots between high-profile displays of coercive control and the myriad ways undue influence infects ordinary lives.

On November 18, 1978, Jim Jones of the People’s Temple incited more than 900 members of his Guyana jungle colony to commit “revolutionary suicide” with a cyanide-laced fruit drink after the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan of California and three others—the largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001. A third of the victims were children. Books and docudramas recounted the gory details, but no policies against the malicious manipulation at the root of that tragedy were enacted.

In the decades between the Jonestown massacre and the NXIVM case, countless families have been emotionally eviscerated by the loss of loved ones to other coercive individuals and high-demand groups that managed to stay out of the headlines. Having no legal recourse, these bereft indirect victims often spend thousands on various advisers in hope of reconnecting, with no guarantee of success. Only if a prosecutable crime is committed will law enforcement step in, sometimes after irreparable harm has been done.

Laws skimming this area are piecemeal. In June, the California Senate unanimously passed a bill to include coercive control and isolation from friends, relatives, or other sources of support in its definition of domestic abuse. In 2014, California adopted a new definition for undue influence incorporating how elders can be manipulated by “excessive persuasion.” But as the NXIVM case shows, the targets of such unconscionable behavior can be of any age, anywhere.

Just as a thief can hack into a computer, a human trafficker, gang leader, abusive partner, con artist, or other predator can hack into a person’s mind—distorting memories into falsehoods and convincing them to cut off family and friends, rendering the isolated person dependent on the perpetrator. Key to maintaining control over the decisions and actions of another, such predatory alienation should be illegal.

A 2017 New Jersey law defined predatory alienation and ordered a study of its effect on young adults and senior citizens, conducted by the Rutgers University School of Social Work. Bills now before both houses of the New Jersey Legislature call for the Predatory Alienation and Consensual Response Act to implement some of the study recommendations, but do not criminalize the destructive behavior.

Those who seem to have abandoned all reason to give up everything they have and everyone they know—and even to submit to servitude in an equatorial jungle or to branding in an upstate suburb—can’t know they’ve been unduly influenced until they get away from their coercive handler. Yet once a son or daughter reaches the age of legal majority, parents lose all rights to rescue them from the psychological bondage imposed by the Keith Ranieres of the world, even if they have evidence of a pattern of deceptive control with no informed consent.

Meanwhile, victims of predatory alienation who say they’re “estranged” from their family typically don’t have to prove it to obtain subsidized housing or college financing. Such gaming of the social services system can render care providers unwitting accessories to predatory behavior.

Now that the gavel has come down on Keith Raniere, will lawmakers connect the dots among all manifestations of coercive control? Will they finally stop expecting those who get caught in the net of undue influence to extricate themselves, and start holding accountable those who cast it?

Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco is a co-founder of NJ Safe & Sound, a volunteer organization whose advocacy led New Jersey lawmakers to address predatory alienation.
http://www.njsafeandsound.org


https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Commentary-Predatory-alienation-wrecks-lives-15717919.php

The 8 Symptoms Of Parental Alienation

Shawn Garrison
DadsDivorce

April is Parental Alienation Awareness Month. DadsDivorce has spoken with a number of parental alienation experts and survivors about the factors that contribute to a parent being alienated and what affect that can have on families.

Today, we’re featuring a guest article from Dr. William Bernet, who is president of the Parental Alienation Study Group and Professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Bernet reviews the eight criteria for diagnosing parental alienation that were originally developed in 1985 by Dr. Richard Gardner. These eight symptoms all occur in the child rather than in either parent.

Although Dr. Bernet cautions that the symptoms still need to be studied further, he says they have held up well as indicators of parental alienation.

Denigration

The campaign of denigration is when the child repeatedly complains about the parent over and over again.

In fact, that’s often the first thing the child says when he or she comes into my office. They will say, “Dr. Bernet, let me tell you some things about my father that he did wrong.”

That’s the campaign. Even though they have these complaints, the justification for the complaints are frivolous.

Frivolous rationalization for the complaint

That’s the second symptom. The child will give some silly reason for not wanting to ever see the targeted parent again.

Lack of ambivalence

A really interesting symptom is called lack of ambivalence.

When we have relationships with people, they’re usually ambivalent in the sense that there are some good points and some bad points, and that’s normal. For almost everyone we know we can think of some good qualities and not-so-good qualities about the person.

These children have a lack of ambivalence, meaning they see one parent as totally good. I talked with one child who said, “My mother is an angel and my father is a devil.” And he meant it.

Independent thinker phenomenon

This symptom is a bit controversial. It’s important to note that we’re not criticizing children for thinking independently. That’s not what this is about.

There are some children who come in and they spontaneously say, “Dr. Bernet, these are my ideas about my father or mother. I thought of this all by myself. Nobody influenced me. No, my mom didn’t tell me what to say, but this is what I think about my father.”

In other words, the child goes out of his or her way to say they thought about these ideas without being influenced by the alienating parent.

Automatic support/Reflexive support

This symptom involves the child always choosing the side of one particular parent in any given argument or disagreement.

A typical situation might involve a family meeting. Regardless of the topic that comes up, the child will automatically side with the preferred parent and automatically disagree with the targeted parent.

Absence of guilt

Another symptom is absence of guilt. These children can be very disrespectful and say or do horrible things with absolutely no qualms.

They show a disregard for the parent’s feelings and emotions and it does not bother them at all to do or say these horrible things about one of their parents.

Borrowed scenarios

Borrowed scenarios refers to how a child tells a story about something that happened. Their story will be the exact same story their preferred parent has described.

In other words, if we’re doing an evaluation we might interview the preferred parent. They might tell us about something that happened with the targeted parent. Then later, we interview the child and the child gives exactly the same story and will sometimes even use identical words.

Spread of animosity

The final symptom refers to the spread of animosity to other people.

In other words, if the father is the targeted parent, the child’s hate spreads from the father to his family members such as aunts and uncles and grandparents. Even though these relatives have done nothing wrong, the child will suddenly hate them and never want to see them because of their connection to the father.

In extreme circumstances, this animosity can even extend to the targeted parent’s pets.

https://dadsdivorce.com/articles/the-8-symptoms-of-parental-alienation/

Parental Alienation: What Therapists Need to Know

Susan Heitler Ph.D.

Resolution, Not Conflict

Psychology Today

September 20, 2019

Diagnosis and treatment can both be tricky. Here's a guide to traps and tips.

Parental alienation is child abuse. We must do better at protecting these children and helping them to heal.

• A distraught divorced mother reports that when her formerly loving daughter returns from vacations at her father's house, she treats her with disrespect and hostility. 
• A divorced father of a 12-year-old boy who lives primarily with his mother says that his son insists that he does not want any contact with his father: "If I have to see him even in a therapy session I will hurt myself!” 

Parental alienation may seem obvious in these cases. Yet recognizing potential alienation, correctly diagnosing it, and providing treatment for this phenomenon can prove challenging.

Recognized earlier but first given a name in the 1980s by child psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner, parental alienation occurs when an alienating parent turns a child against a targeted (alienated) parent via deprecating innuendos (often based on projection), name-calling (“he’s a nitwit”), exaggeratedly negative reports of minor mishaps, and false accusations. 

Alienated children parrot the alienating parent’s excessively negative views of the targeted parent, expressing these as their own much as cult followers parrot the beliefs of a cult leader.
The result is a child’s unwarranted hostility (mild alienation), resistance to parenting time (moderate alienation), and/or severance of contact (severe alienation) with the targeted parent.  

Diagnosis of Parental Alienation

Let's start with why therapists and evaluators often miss alienation. 

Psychopathology assessment

Targeted parents generally present as anxious, depressed, and angry, but beneath these desperate situational reactions generally lies psychological health.

Alienating parents, by contrast, generally appear calm, cool, and charming and therefore look more attractive. They lie convincingly. Alienator and child appear credible by telling similar stories.

Yet beneath the alienator’s smooth exterior lie Cluster-B character disorders: (1) borderline emotional hyperreactivity, splitting, etc. (2) narcissistic ignoring of the child's needs in favor of using the child as their foot soldier against the targeted parent (3) antisocial lying and harming others without guilt. Parents without character disorders rarely, if ever, alienate.

What hypotheses need to be generated to evaluate potential alienation?

Explore the following possible causes of the child's negative view of one parent.  Note that more than one of these three factors may be occurring.

1. A negative home situation like alcoholism
2. Danger from verbal, sexual, and/or physical abuse
3. Brain-washing of the child by an alienating parent

When the child's negative reaction to a parent stems from a negative home situation, abuse, or mild alienation, children still want a relationship with the abusive parent. Severely alienated children, by contrast, manifest splitting. They insist that the alienating parent is all good; they eventually totally reject the all-bad targeted—though, in reality, emotionally healthier—parent. 

What about parent-child attachment patterns?

Alienating parents mingle nurturing with anxiety-provoking interactions, creating an insecure attachment—pathologically enmeshed, unreliable, controlling, parentified, or spousifed. The child’s bond with a targeted parent, in spite of prior good-to-excellent parenting and secure attachment, shows progressive deterioration as an alienator poisons it with negative comments and distorted or false memories.

Gardner detailed 8 characteristics of an alienated child, plus criteria for distinguishing between mild, moderate, and severe presentations. Amy Baker and Paul Fine (2008) delineate, for therapists and for targeted parents, 17 strategies of alienating parents, and how to respond to them. In a recent Psychological Bulletin article, Harman, Kruk, & Hines (2018) clarified that alienation is child abuse with consequences potentially more damaging than from physical or sexual abuse: depression, anxiety, addictions, poor relationships, and suicide.

Treatment of Parental Alienation

Treatment of alienation is basically the same for mild, moderate, and severe cases—with one exception. For successful treatment of severe cases, additional measures that require cooperation from the court are essential.

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Mild to moderate parental alienation

Effective reunification therapy depends on the child and alienated parent participating together in treatment. When an alienated child says, “I don’t want to see my father; I’m too anxious,” the therapist nonetheless must bring them together. Extended individual therapy with an alienated child consolidates alienation instead of relieving it and therefore is counter-indicated. 

While initial preparatory individual sessions may be helpful, treatment of alienation begins with therapeutic parent/child interactions. The therapists' job is to foster positive parent-child connecting.  One technique is to ask the parent to bring memorabilia of fun prior experiences they can recall together.  

Once a child and parent are re-experiencing warmth and affection, they can list the child’s negative beliefs about the parent and then circle back to address them.

Lastly, the therapist explains alienation, including projection, to immunize the child against future alienation attempts.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/201909/parental-alienation-what-therapists-need-know

WHO considers adding 'parental alienation' to new diagnostic guide

Avis Favaro
Medical Specialist
CTV News
March 30, 2019

An emerging mental health issue in which one parent turns a child against the other parent could be added to the international standard for diagnostics next month.

"Parental alienation" may be among an updated list of diseases and related health problems when the World Health Organization votes to accept the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in May.

The issue is a kind of psychological manipulation of a child. It occurs when one parent systemically "badmouths" the other parent. In extreme cases of high-conflict divorce and separation, the child may align with one parent and reject the other. Mental health experts and law professionals are lining up to label it as a form of emotional abuse that can damage the mental health of children.
Research in the field has labelled parental alienation an "unacknowledged form of family violence" and has found long-term mental health consequences for children who experience it, including anxiety, lowered self-esteem and general quality of life, as well as a greater risk of depression.

"Some of the stories are heartbreaking," says Barbara Fidler, clinical-developmental psychologist in Toronto who has specialized in high-conflict parenting. She says her caseload is growing. "I actually lose sleep over these families. We are losing sleep because children are suffering."

The issue has faced much debate -- what to call it and how to define it -- within the intersecting fields of health and law as parents and children become embroiled in family courts. An international meeting on the issue will take place in Toronto next month. Fidler is working on a special issue of the Family Court Review due early 2020 with Queens University law professor Nick Bala. They hope the collection of all the latest data on parental alienation will inform family lawyers, judges and therapists around the world.

"This is clearly a big problem," says Bala. "I get emails from people coast, to coast, to coast and internationally, raising concerns about being cut off from their children, being cut off from grandchildren."

Research shows that alienation doesn't happen all at once, says Fidler, but it may develop quickly. Experts should focus on the behaviours being exhibited by the children, she says. These may include:

Rejection and denigration of a parent for reasons that are trivial

Rigid refusal to consider alternative views or explanations

Repetition of the favoured parent's words

Rehearsed (or it sounds like rehearsed script)

Relatives are included in the rejection (even pets)

Little or no regret or guilt regarind behavior towards the parent being rejected.

Parents can:

Denigrate the other parent

Encouraging child to denigrate parent

Arranging conflicting activities

Inducing guilt about visits with other parent

Portraying other parent as dangerous

Involving child in spying

Alienating parents may not speak positively about the other parent, support the child's relationship with them, encourage cooperation or problem solving over conflicts with them, or even have photos of them visible.

A growing body of research is illuminating the effects of parental alienation on children, says Fidler, including:

Self-hatred and self-esteem issues

Higher rates and risks of depression, relationship difficulties and substance abuse

Loss of guidance and support of one parent

Loss of relationship with extended family

Inability to develop and sustain healthy relationships

Fidler and Bala say there is a need for more research into how to better define alienation in its various forms, since not all cases look the same. It's not just a mental health issue, but a legal issue that should require better training for family lawyers and judges, who can put a stop to alienation early.

"We need to recognize the problem earlier so that we can provide the education and in some cases therapy early on," said Fidler.

In Canada, a proposal to reform the Divorce Act outlines the importance of a child's relationship with each parent. "It is generally important for each parent to support the child's relationship with the other parent," an overview of the objectives of Bill C-78 reads online. "If a parent actively attempts to undermine their child's relationship with the other parent, courts may need to consider this in making a parenting order."

There is at least one high profile case in the U.S. that some experts point to as a case in point for a better understanding of parental alienation: Hollywood A-listers Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. In June of 2018, court documents obtained by The Blast showed that a judge in the stars' divorce case said the couple's children "not having a relationship with their father is harmful to them" and that Jolie should help mend their relationship with their father.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/who-considers-adding-parental-alienation-to-new-diagnostic-guide-1.4359286

Cult Recovery: Gaining Insight into the Experience and Inner Life of Group Leaders, Members, and Concerned Families

October 15, 2017

10 am to 4 pm

Doubletree Hotel

2117 Route 4 Eastbound

Fort Lee, New Jersey

The Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies (IPS) is joining the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) in sponsoring this one-day conference.

CE credits are available for mental health professionals – see information below.

This conference is offered in conjunction with the publishing of the ICSA book, Cult Recovery: A Clinician’s Guide to Working with Former Members and Families. 

The book and conference will provide mental health professionals with an understanding of the world of former cult members, cult leaders, and the cult environment. These dynamics also are applicable to those who become involved in any high-demand situation, such as gangs, terrorist organizations, and cases of Parental Alienation Syndrome.

Presenters

The presenters (Steve Eichel, William Goldberg, Lorna Goldberg, Shelly Rosen, and Daniel Shaw) are chapter authors who will provide participants with a road map for understanding the environment of coercive control and for learning how this population can be helped to gain insight into themselves and their experience. Participants will be offered therapeutic approaches for those who have been harmed.

The Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and the International Cultic Studies Association are cosponsors of this program. This cosponsorship has been approved by NBCC. The Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies is an NBCC Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6334. The ACEP solely is responsible for this program, including the awarding of NBCC credit.

CE credits

This course is approved by the Association of Social Work Boards - ASWB NJ CE Course Approval Program Provider #98 Course #1545 from 09/20/2017 to 09/20/2019. Social workers will receive the following type and number of credit(s): Clinical Social Work Practice 5.25

Continuing Education Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will learn the effects of coercive persuasion on an individual.
2. Participants will become aware of how the restrictions of cult life can impact an individual’s sexual life.
3. Participants will gain knowledge of several therapeutic approaches to help former cult members and families.
4. Participants will be able to describe several characteristics of a traumatizing narcissist.

More Information
http://www.icsahome.com/events/localevents/cult-recovery-ips-icsa

Register

https://icsahome.givezooks.com/events/icsa-ips-cult-recovery-conference

VERDICT: Ex-wife of Alex Jones wins joint custody after bitter trial

Jonathan Tilove
American-Statesman Staff
April 27, 2017

11:30 p.m. update: After nine hours of deliberation in the child custody trial involving internet broadcaster Alex Jones, a Travis County jury gave his ex-wife, Kelly Jones, a victory, awarding her joint custody with the right to have their three children make their primary residence with her instead of her husband for the first time since their 2015 divorce.

Infowars.com founder Alex Jones will share joint custody, which means that he will have visitation rights. But Kelly Jones and her lawyers want to begin the new arrangement with a period of time in which the children live exclusively with her while they adjust to the new situation, followed by increased visitation with their father.

She also wants the family involved in a program for undoing parental alienation, the phenomenon in which one parent turns the children against another parent, which she and her lawyers argued was what happened to her when the children began living with her ex-husband. She said during the trial she is thinking of writing a book about it.

“I am so grateful to God that he has kept me and my family strong through this,” Kelly Jones said after the verdict. “I just pray that from what’s happened with my family people can really understand what parental alienation syndrome is and get an awareness of it and we can stop this from happening in the future.”

When state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo read the verdict from the bench in the third-floor courtroom at the Travis County Courthouse, Kelly Jones sat quietly and dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex. Alex Jones stared at the judge. His mien was serious but he otherwise betrayed no emotion, a rarity for a man whose relentless expressiveness, even in silence, was an issue during the trial.

He had predicted during the trial that a verdict like this would lead his son to run away from home.

As the last juror left, unlocking his bicycle from a bike rack outside the courthouse for the ride home on the cooly comfortable night, he said the jurors thought both Joneses were good parents - “that’s why we deliberated so long.”

The juror, who did not identify himself, said that Infowars did not figure in the verdict.

“It was not dispositive,” he said.

10:20 update: In a stunning verdict, a Travis County jury has awarded Kelly Jones, the ex-wife of Alex Jones, joint conservatorship of their three children with the power to decide where the children will live. That means that the three children, age 9, 12 and 14, who have been living almost exclusively with Alex Jones, will now live with Kelly Jones.

Alex Jones will have visitation, but details have yet to be worked out.

Kelly Jones and her lawyers wanted a period of time in which he would have very limited if any access to the children while she starts the new routine and they make a break from what Kelly Jones’ attorneys considered the “parental alienation” of the children from their mother during the time they lived with their father.

Noon update: In his closing argument to the jury, the attorney for Kelly Jones likened Alex Jones to a “cult leader” who had brainwashed their children against her in what he described as a “straight up child abuse case” of parental alienation.

“Mr. Jones is like a cult leader,” Hoffman said. “The children appear to be cult followers, doing what daddy wants them to do.”

As Hoffman spoke, Alex Jones’ eyes narrowed and he shook his head.

“Somehow, this man has gotten away with murder,” Hoffman said. “It’s the equivalent of that and it’s wrong.”

Hoffman described Jones’ relationship with his wife during their marriage as “emotionally, sexually, physically abusive,” and yet, he said, in that and in his behavior since the divorce two years ago, “Mr. Jones has escaped detection.”

“Is it Mr. Jones’ celebrity, is it his vast wealth? How and why has Mr. Jones escaped detection?” Hoffman asked. “Please don’t let him escape detection in the jury room.”

Hoffman said that despite the fact that Jones is guilty of “spewing vile hatred” on the air, none of the health care professionals involved in the case said a word about that.

“Nobody knows how to stop this man,” said Hoffman, including, he said, Judge Orlinda Naranjo who repeatedly told Jones to stop making faces and nodding and shaking his head in reaction to testimony.

“Nobody can stop this man except the 12 of you,” Hoffman said. “You have an unbelievable amount of power.”

Earlier: Attorney Randall Wilhite said Thursday that Alex Jones’ three children are thriving living with their father and pleaded with a Travis County jury to let them stay with him.

“They are doing well, they are thriving at their father’s house,” Wilhite said in his closing argument to the jury. “Should we rip them out of that and see how they would do at their mother’s home?”

The answer he said is “no”, depicting Kelly Jones as a self-absorbed and emotionally unstable mother who has come to view every lawyer, judge and mental health professional in the case as “corrupt liars … conspiring against her.”

“Is that possible?”

Rather, he said, she was guided by “inverted logic, inverted reality.”

“It’s everybody’s fault but Ms. Jones,” Wilhite said.

Earlier: The Travis County jury in the Alex Jones-Kelly Jones child custody trial will hear closing arguments in the case this morning and then begin its deliberations.

At issue is whether to change the current arrangement in which the three children, aged 9, 12 and 14, live with their father, the Austin broadcaster with a vast Infowars radio and online following, and their mother has only very limited, supervised visitation that in the last year has amounted to as little as four hours a month.

At the trial, which enters its ninth day Thursday, Alex Jones’ lawyers have contended that the children have blossomed in the two years since the 2015 divorce settlement and to uproot them now would be counterproductive and against their wishes. They have argued that Kelly Jones has, in essence, earned her limited visitation because of her emotional instability — which they have identified as episodic “emotional dysregulation.”

But Kelly Jones’ lawyers have argued that their client has been a victim of a phenomenon known as “parental alienation,” in which one parent — in this case Alex Jones — effectively undermines the other parent by brainwashing the children into disliking and not wanting to be with the other parent. In this scenario, Kelly Jones’ emotional dysregulation is a perfectly natural response to a mother seeing her children unnaturally turned against her.

While the all the court records in the ongoing divorce and child custody case are sealed for privacy reasons, the case drew national attention because of the strategy of Jones’ lawyers, outlined at pretrial hearings, to separate Alex Jones, the parent, from Alex Jones, the bellowing, conspiracy-minded character he plays on Infowars.

But Alex Jones pushed back against any notion that he is only playing a role on the air, insisting that while he sometimes engages in humor and satire, his politics are authentic and what he really believes. But, he has said he leaves the drama at the office.

Kelly Jones, however, testified that her ex-husband is a volatile and hateful character both at work and at home, and that his home is not a healthy place for their children to be growing up.

She wants to reverse the current arrangement and have the children live with her and have Alex Jones have to earn increasing visitation time with them

http://www.statesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/verdict-wife-alex-jones-wins-joint-custody-after-bitter-trial/gsbA2MrX3pSmoEsexz7oeL/

Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties That Bind

Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. Amy J. L. Baker

Available from
 CULTS101 Bookstore.

From a review by Lorna Goldberg: “Those of us who are immersed in the cult field often find that our work has been marginalized by mental health professionals who see us as treating a population that has little to do with the problems they are addressing in their clinical practices. Over the years, I believe we have been able to bridge this gap with those who work with other trauma survivors. Now Dr. Baker has brought some of our cult-related insights into another field—family environments in which children need to maintain total loyalty to one parent at the cost of a relationship with the other parent. This is a family problem that occurs on a continuum of influence, from such behaviors as mild bad-mouthing of the other parent to using an array of strategies that might result in a case of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which happens in the most extreme cases.”

Available from CULTS101 Bookstore.