I’m Joe Goldberg, a consultant that helps parents struggling with issues involving parental alienation. People always ask me how I got involved in helping others with this problem and can I help them where others have failed. That’s a fair question given the fact that so many legal and mental health professional’s are great at what they do, but just not in dealing with this specific problem.
I first had experience with parental alienation as a child. That’s right, I was an alienated child myself and I went through many years of pain being separated from my dad. I remember the progression of events very clearly. The alienation that was induced into me by my mother lowered my desire to contact my dad, to talk about my dad, to even think about my dad. I remember replacing all my memories of him with a belief that he was a pretty rotten guy. (That’s putting it mildly,
which it wasn’t.)
Years passed by into my early adulthood, then one day I came to the realization that my father deserved another chance, and that maybe a lot of the negative beliefs I had about him were simply distorted and unjustified. Once I came to this conclusion the iceberg started to thaw in the relationship between us and we reunited during a visit in Florida.
After that visit, we spent the next 20 years forming a bond as tight as a drum and the love and all of the good times we shared are my most treasured memories. As if the anguish over losing a parent for so long were not enough misery for one person to bear, I had to go through it all over again as a targeted parent.
Psychological research today confirms that many targeted parents have roots in the problem of parental alienation as alienated children. If you think your case of parental alienation is bad, why don’t you take a look at my website www.parentalalienation.ca and see what it’s like to have been in my shoes. Not only did I have to deal with an obsessed parental alienator, I found out her lawyer was writing hate filled letters that he wanted my children to copy and paste back to me.
Why, because he wanted me to think my children wrote them with their own free will. It’s all a part of the evidence that took place in my case.
How did it all end? Read my biography at the website and you’ll find out. The burning question people ask me is how do you get the Courts to understand what’s happening and how do you put an end to it all? I have to say that each case is a little different in the sense that there is a lot of information that you have to take into consideration, but overall the solutions are basically the same. I am not going to tell you how to boilerplate a quick fix, but I can tell you it is fixable.
My lifetime experience with parental alienation and my work as a PA consultant has enabled me to become widely involved in cases across the United States and Canada and while there are differences in each country, the solution to approaching this problem is not different. In a severe case of PA, often times referred to as PAS, we can look at the method of treatment in cases of Shared Delusional Disorder. The solution is to remove the secondary case from the first. As long as an alienating parent has access to the severely alienated child there isn’t much hope of anything improving for the child, and the targeted parents relationship with the child will continue to be undermined.
Did you know that even in cases where the Court has found a parent to be responsible for inducing alienation into a child and causing that child substantial harm, judge’s still allowed that alienating parent to have continuous access and visitation in approximately 83% of these cases? That’s a recent statistic from a study done in the Canadian Courts Would you expect a judge to give a parent that was a sexual abuser or a physical abuser the right to have weekend access with this child – unsupervised?
That is why my work as a PA consultant branched out into education. Today, I’m also the Founder of the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome.
The website for this organization is www.cspas.ca
In the Spring of 2009 I organized an international conference with 20 of the leading experts in the field of PA and PAS and for the first time in history we started to bring the legal and mental health community together to help protect children from this form of abuse. It was such a successful conference it made the front page of the National Post Newspaper. (How many conferences do you know that ever make it onto the front page of the country’s most widely circulated paper?)
The support for this educational conference is still coming in and the professionals that missed the event have asked us to do some more conferences just like it.
I want it known that although my mission is to help educate all of the professionals that become involved in these cases, I also make every effort to include and invite targeted parents to attend a conference, at the one we had in the Spring at the Metro Toronto Convention Center many divorced dads did come to learn what they could. I believe that parents need to come to these conferences especially if they want to get answers that they can’t find to their individual problems.
It’s a good feeling for me to have the help and support of DadsDivorce editor, Rick Ortiz Thanks to Rick, I’m getting another chance to tell all of the dads affiliated with this group, that we have an upcoming conference in Toronto on October 17th & 18th at the University of Toronto.
I want to invite every dad interested in learning more about PA to come to the next conference and if you have a case in the courts going on, let me encourage you to have your lawyer and mental health professional’s to come as well.
This is an opportunity to help yourself, help your child(ren) and to meet a few of the speakers and talk to them face to face.
Thanks Rick, for not just helping me to get the word out, but for all of the things you do for dad’s everywhere.
Joe Goldberg
Personal Attacks Don’t Negate PAS
Remember that children suffering in the custody of alienating parents use personal attacks agains the alienated parent very convincingly. Also alienating parents are great at slinging the argumentum ad hominum.
I am a parent who has been alienated from my twin sons by a mother who frankly is an emotional wreck. I did not abuse anyone. But in our family law system, the one that says from the outset that one parent will win and one will lose when it comes to contact with the kids, she decided that I would lose even if it meant creating fictions about my character.
I don’t know Goldberg, but I do know that after attending his seminar I don’t feel like a basket case anymore. My battle just to have contact with my kids is still extremely difficult, but I have hope.
Every expert at the seminar struck me as very professional and indeed concerned with separating the truth from the elaborate fictions of woven by alienators.
Is it hard to believe that given a win/lose family court model and given the profit motive and the ability to use the kids to gain “power” that parents will abuse the system the ex and the kids?
It happens and I’m living it. I have checked out Goldberg and all the other presenters and the truth is that they are slammed personnally by websites that seem little more than hysterical rants. That tells me something. Either argue against their points rationally or shut up and quit defending abusers!
Is your child a victim of parental alienation?
I too am a victim of parental alienation from my ex-wife. I would love to believe that there is a magic solution to my troubles and that I could see my children again. Mr. Goldberg may have latched onto a legitimate cause, but as his daughter has suggested, there seems to be some cause for concern in his approach. I would urge anyone who might want to pursue any financial dealings with Mr. Goldberg (aka Bernard Joseph Goldberg) to seek out referrals from a reputable lawyer(s) who have used him, and check him out thoroughly. He claims to be a lawyer operating out of Toronto, but works out of Florida. Go to his website and see whether he has any pictures of himself anywhere on either of his sites cspas.ca or parentalalienation.ca. He has plenty of pictures of his so called experts, but none of himself? Go to http://www.thelizlibrary.org and search Goldberg’s name. This site is hosted by a reputable Florida lawyer Elizabeth Kates who critiques his methods. I think if you dig a little further, you’ll come to the same conclusion as me. Don’t be blinded by your emotion.
what about me
my wife’s mother left greece with 6 year old twins in the middle of the night and took them back to america. I have been haunted by this ever since I met my wife. Supposedly he was a drug user and an abuser. Now my wife has done the same thing (albeit she moved from boca to hollywood fl). It has been 8 days that she has not let me see or hear from my kids (4&2) She is going to say the same thing about me now. This is a pattern. Adults fight, but when you use those events to usurp someone’s parental rights, that is an abuse on a much more sinister level.
I beg you (Joe’s daughter) learn from my wife and all other alienated children. You will want to know your dad one day. If he was pushed too far away you may never get that opportunity again. His blood is going to be coursing through your veins for the rest of your life. Emotions come and go. Listen to a complete stranger and don’t shut doors on your parents.
Good PAS Info
I have seen posts by this man’s ex and daughter often (I look for PAS references because of my own situation.) I would think that if he was the monster they say he was that they would wish only to be rid of him. Instead it seems they chase any reference of him around the vast internet, constantly berating him.
Again and again they bring up money as does my ex and son whom I have not been able to see in 6 years. I too attended the conference and did speak to J. Goldberg. All I can say is that if he truly is the fallible person that they blame him for being, well, we’re all fallible. But, what JG has done to raise awareness and to give hope to others has to be taken into account of his worth as a human being. There is nothing harder than having a child hate you and be unwilling to get past that hatred.
I too had problems with drinking (don’t know if JG truly did or not) but I KNOW I loved my child and still do, and yearn for him so much. I, and all these parents deserve a second chance at a once-in-a-lifetime relationship. And, so do these children.
Checked
I attended the conference and videotaped many interviews with many of the professionals who spoke. Search “PAS” on dadsdivorce.com and see for yourself.
I have met and interviewed Joe several times on this show.
Spoken Like A Child Of PAS
I checked Joe Goldberg out before I went to his seminar in Toronto. There are a few very venomous attacks on him and some of the other presenters.
However, after attending the conference, I had to admit that these were in fact truly experts and though I didn’t meet Joe at the conference I believe he was sincere.
Nobody is saying that either parent is perfect, but the level of anger and articulation of the personal attacks of children against their parents (a hallmark of PAS, I know because I’ve been on the receiving end of this wrath) is questionable.
I recommend that if you believe you are involved in a case of PAS you check out the conference and decide for yourself.
Wow
Maybe we should do a little more research on Joe Goldberg…
The corrupt Court system
One of the topics we hardly, if ever, addressed, is the Family/Divorce Court system. They are mainly 75% culpable for all our problems.The other 25% is? We got married. A wife files for a simple divorce(they do, 90% of the times) and the minute it gets into the hands of an attorney, every life involved, is turn upside down for years to come.Then they bring “every expert” in town to further complicate the case.They are “masters” at producing “documents” with proof of “abuse” where there is none. Their buddies, in the mental health community, will “write up” a report to further extent the case for another few years. “False Allegations” are their favorite tool. It means more legal fees, more confusion and more hatred between the “couple”. My best advice? Shop around. Do your homework. Interview as many attorneys as you possibly can. Talk to their old clients. Write a letter to the Florida Bar and ask for information on his background. If the judge doesn’t seem to eager to get to the “truth”, ask for a change of venue, otherwise, you will be stock in limbo for years to come.Who suffers the most? Our precious, innocent children.
The final blow.
How sad it is to see what we, as a nation, have come as far as our precious children are concerned. After fighting for my precious daughter all her life, she is soon turning 16 and she is telling me she wants nothing to do with me. She has a “new father”, who gives her everything and simply put, she told me to “move on”.It broke my heart. What the entire Family Courts System and their lynchmen couldn’t do, my teenage daughter is doing. I am a 63 years old man and DO NOT have the energy to start a new battle, so I am walking away from it all. I did the best I could and I lost.
I lost both my daughters at 16. Their mother has completely turned them against me. Like you I feel I have done all I can. My ex sees it as a win. I feel sick at what she has done to our daughters. But at this age what can you do? I love them with all my heart, but they no longer care.
This man is a crazy loon